PERSONA (2000) - Chiaki Kuriyama - behind the mask

PERSONA
(2000, Japan, Kamen Gakuen)

No, no, not the one by Ingmar Bergman

Need mystique and allure? Who ya gonna call? Time for another Chiaki movie...


A schoolboy arrives in class wearing a featureless mask. He says it’s to disguise himself from bullies. As other students start wearing masks, the ploy works because he’s no longer recognised. As masks begin to catch on around the city, pushed by an influential fashion guru, one schoolgirl sets out to investigate who’s making the masks and why. She even finds a secret society clubhouse hosting a type of Eyes Wide Shut masqued orgy. But, when a mask burns someone’s face off, she teams up with a reporter to solve the mystery of the masks.

From the downbeat opening, I was hoping for a supernatural thriller. But this strangely turns into a typical Japanese mystery movie (like any of the Kindaichi series). It starts off teasing that something spooky is afoot, but in fact there’s a more Scooby Doo explanation. Which is a shame, because the film starts powerfully and mysteriously, exploring themes of identity, invisibility, and even anonymous sex (though the teenage orgy gets no more racy than open-mouthed kissing).


There are still some early startling mask scares, certainly enough to send mask-o-phobes behind the sofa. But halfway through, it settles into a dot-the-dot Murder She Wrote mystery among some 80’s style fashion shows. Surely curly perms and new romantic make-up weren’t still around Japan in 2000?

Although this is directed by Takashi Komatsu, who made the interesting Kidan, I really wanted to see this for Chiaki Kuriyama. She only has a small role, but it’s good to see her alongside Tatsuya Fujiwara just before they were in Battle Royale together.


Though this almost looks like a two-part TV special, with a critical shift in tone in the second half, the perky lead, Maya Kurosu, manages to hold it all together. The potential of the story could have been explored more thoroughly - what if Hachigatsu could remake the second half…

Persona seems to be a rare title on DVD outside of Europe. I watched the UK region 2 PAL release from Terra.

If you want more Chiaki Kuriyama, this obsessive website is scarily thorough...

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SHIVER (2003) - Seven meets The Ring in Hong Kong

SHIVER
(2003, Hong Kong, Sam Hon)

A unsteady balance between Hong Kong thriller and horror

There's currently little in my Hong Kong section, here in the Black Hole, because I like my horror free of slapstick and kung-fu, (Mr Vampire is of course an exception). Serious HK horror is relatively thin on the ground, though I’m still digging around. Even if I include the Pang brothers, who don’t exclusively get funded by Hong Kong, but rather as multi-territory co-productions - for example, The Eye is listed as Hong Kong/Singapore and was mostly shot in Thailand.

Now that China, Hong Kong’s major new market, has again banned horror films, things are looking serious for horror there. Recently, I tried out Andrew Lau's Haunted School which was pretty poor. I now take a look at Shiver, which looks like it was made in the early nineties, with basic filmaking techniques, flat lighting and live sound.

Chen Ming (Francis Ng) and Sum-Yi’s marriage is in trouble. Things are so bad, even their divorce is in trouble! Stuck in traffic, they get caught in a shoot out and Sum-Yi (Athena Chu) gets hit in the head. She survives, but finds that she can see ghosts… and predict serial murders. It’s handy that she's married to a cop.

As her visions get scarier, and her behaviour gets more hazardous, hubbie is closing in the serial killer. Though it’s hard to identify with Chen when Sum-Yi’s doctor, Ko Chun (Nick Cheung) is a far more compassionate character.

Like Chen’s driving, the movie veers wildly around between good and bad. The script mixes up the genres and throws in some good twists, aiming to please serial killer and horror fans, with police shootouts and car chases thrown in. I was also shocked to see full-frontal male nudity, on a corpse with its legs sawn off by chainsaw. There’s something you don’t see every day.


But many scenes have serious drawbacks, which I'll credit to the low budget rather than inexperience – director Siu-Hung Chung’s track record is certainly long enough. There’s a good enough cast, but they’re made to look bad by slack, unflinching editing during the harshest emotional scenes. There’s also a multiple car crash which is haltingly edited. Add to that some rather dated make-up effects. If you want actors to look stressed, don’t paint them green. If you want corpses to look like they're out of Seven, don’t use plastic.

The action gets really confusing towards the end, when inexplicable motivations really pile up. In short, our hero the cop is a really lousy detective, a lousy shot, and a lousy medic. Plus, we get to hear way too much of his annoying mobile ringtone.

Finally, one of the minor characters is called Kitty Chow. Is that a brand name of catfood in the US?

In some scenes, I started getting into Shiver - the drama worked, the tension worked, but then something really cheap or stupid happened. Shiver is almost good, it just needed a bit more care in the execution.

Added to the dated production values, is this old-style HK DVD from Universe Video, before they improved their releases. There are poorly-translated subtitles in mangled English, a non-anamorphic widescreen picture, and it's from a soft print that jumps at all the edits.


I'll keep looking for Hong Kong horrors that match the quality achieved by the Pang brothers. I also have high hopes for the live-action BLOOD THE LAST VAMPIRE, being made there at the moment.

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GOLDFRAPP - SEVENTH TREE - thank goodness

I don't talk about music much here, because the chances we all like the same movies and all like the same music are pretty slim. But when one of your favourite bands release a new album when you're having a shit week, I feel that some sort of thanks are in order.

Goldfrapp have released a new album. It takes a different direction from their previous Supernature by being gentler but still delicious. They seem to have returned, almost but not quite, to Felt Mountain territory. In one track, Alison's vocals stray up into the ether, where only The Cocteau Twins used to dwell.

The promo video for the first single A&E shows how the band are determined not to repeat themselves or follow any trends. It's also still good to see a video when you think "how did they do that?". There's also a short film included in the special edition release of the album and one of the A&E single releases, that talks about the new album while showing us footage from their new animal-oriented photoshoots, intercut with random super-8 gorgeousness.

More about Goldfrapp here and here...

Thank you.

(But please release a compilation of all your promo videos on DVD. And a DVD of your Supernature concert. I know you recorded it on HD, I was in the audience that night...)

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FUNNY GAMES (2008) an anti-horror movie

FUNNY GAMES
(2008, USA)

Movie audiences get a battering

I've tried Funny Games before. I tried Funny Games again. This time, I'm still recovering.

As the onscreen title (Funny Games U.S.) pointedly reminds us, it's a remake. Of the 1997 Austrian film Funny Games. And it’s by the same director. After the success of Hidden (Cache), Michael Haneke has seized the opportunity to bring the experience of Funny Games to the originally intended audience, the American public.


Two overly polite young psychos use the flimsiest of excuses to wreak a prolonged and savage attack on a nice middle-class family, who are on vacation in a remote beauty spot by a boating lake. We’re initially presented with a couple and their young son. They have an expensive car, their own boat, two sets of golf clubs, and a rather dull taste in opera CDs. The two cheeky psychotics on the other hand enjoy speed metal music. They are more likely to represent a typical movie audience - anti-establishment anti-heroes looking for new thrills. What they’re interested in is violence, and almost unthinkingly, vicious psychological torture.


But this convincingly portrayed story is a stealthy set-up. A trap for fans of screen violence and mayhem. It’s from the genre of violent films that are about violence, a traditionally tricky genre that can easily backfire. Witness the double-edged reaction to Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange or Oliver Stone’s Naural Born Killers. Funny Games U.S. avoids the usual pitfalls and succeeds at making the audience react realistically to violent situations, without exploiting them. Turning death and torture around from being entertainment, back to being repellent.

When violence happens it’s painful and prolonged, accompanied by screams of agony and the tortured reactions of loved ones. The effect is intensified by the reality of the situation – there’s no background music, and the camera often holds a fixed gaze on the situation as we see it play out without cutaways, as it would for real. If pain and death are going to be used to sell tickets, let’s be reminded of what it’s actually like.

I don't disagree that we should get reality checks like this. Last House on the Left had a similar sobering effect on me, making me question exactly what it is I get out of horror films. It’s timely that we should get some perspective on the current craze for ‘torture porn’.


A few years ago, I didn't ‘get’ the first Funny Games. I tried watching it, but didn’t get emotionally involved with the characters. With this new version, in a cinema, with a cast I like, I got it. This time it was an experience. I was in a constant state of dread about what was going to happen next. The violence hurt. The screaming was unbearable.

This isn’t to say that every technique the director used was successful. I didn’t understand the film’s most blatant communications with the audience, but I’m intrigued enough to see more of Haneke’s films and what he’s about.

The two wild jokers in the story taunt the audience that they are giving us what we want. We’re teased with some facetious details about why they’re like this, but it’s irrelevant. The audience are more interested in the action than the motive. The bloody infantile games they play are why we’re watching.

The hoodlums echo the amoral duos from Rope and Compulsion, both based on real-life murder cases. They’re played by former teen heart-throbs Michael Pitt (Dawson's Creek, The Dreamers) and Brady Corbet (Mysterious Skin, Thirteen) who aren’t totally successful in portraying the ‘wily and dim’ double act of the original. But Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive, The Ring and Tim Roth (ironically from Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction) are intensely good in gruelling roles.


I’ve not seen many interviews with the director, or figured out his precise views. But he’s obviously very keen that this story reaches a wide audience that thrives on movie violence for entertainment. Rather than pick on the omnipresent serial killer genre or slasher films, he’s used the ‘home invasion’ scenario. This has previously been used to supposedly analyse violence in society, while crassly exploiting it – like in Straw Dogs and Death Wish - though these films are now obscure targets.

Without referencing a specific genre, Funny Games ably rallies against the exploitation of pain, with a typical nightmare premise filmed in a very different way, questioning how we watch atrocities that have been presented as entertainment.

Funny Games U.S. is constructed to lure all of us naughty horror fans in and try and teach us a valuable lesson. Though a mainstream audience may not get the point.

It's on release in the USA mid-March and in the UK from April 4th.
The official UK website is here...

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DESTINATION INNER SPACE (1966) - not on DVD, unsurprisingly

DESTINATION INNER SPACE
(1966, USA)

A futuristic underwater sealab is having problems with a UFO that's parked between them and a nearby deep ocean trench. As they investigate, they attract the unwanted attention of a dangerous creature who puts the scientists and crew in danger. No, it’s not The Abyss. It’s more like a wet rip of IT! The Terror From Beyond Space.

Wow, this was bad. The only real thing going for this monster movie is the monster. A wild and imaginative bug-eyed amphibian that would look comfortable in Mars Attacks! It looks great in photos. The unusual back of the costume is so big it presumably hides an aqualung cylinder - remember, The Creature from the Black Lagoon had no such luxury, and stuntman Ricou Browning had to hold his breath for every shot!

The alien underwater creature costume also capitalises on this movie being in COLOUR, with it sporting bright orange fins.


But the story and everything else has had far less effort lavished on it. The underwater models of the sealab are ridiculously small, and look exactly the size they are. The producers could at least have studied the TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea a little closer, for tips.

Speaking of TV, this looks like an early TV movie, mostly a TV cast, TV-friendly aspect ratio, and tame on the violence...

The only faces I recognised were Wende Wagner, (one of the few interesting things in The Green Hornet TV show, besides Bruce Lee) and James Hong as a comedy chef. At least he’d seen the movie Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea - why else would he have a parrot on his shoulder? I'm pretty sure he'd rather be remembered for his performance in Blade Runner.
I rewatched Destination Inner Space to remind myself what it was like, and to see the wonderful monster again. I’d seen it back in the seventies on TV - when monster movies were so rare, they became must-sees. But now it's only entertaining for the stupid logic, shaky science and ridiculous stereotypes.

It's not on DVD, which is unfair because there's a lot, lot worse out there.

APT. (2006) another haunted high-rise

APT.(APARTMENT)

(2006, South Korea)

Far scarier than Apartment 1303, far harder to see…

Having been disappointed by Apartment 1303, I thought I'd try again with Apt., also known as Apartment or 9.56...

Miss Oh moves into a new apartment but is unlucky enough to witness one of her neighbours commit suicide. She notices that the lights flicker in the apartments opposite hers every evening at 9.56 - the same time as when the suicide happened. When she reports these coincidences to the police, they regard her with cynicism and suspicion. As Oh contacts her neighbours to warn them, she gets dangerously closer to the truth…

While Apartment leans on Ring for ideas, there’s also large splashes of Hitchcock too, resulting in effective scares as well as an involving mystery. Miss Oh has a view of dozens of apartments facing hers, that recalls the setting of Rear Window, without plundering it for ideas.

The acting is anchored by So-young Ko, surrounded by a strong ensemble cast. The only exception is the twitchy long-black haired ghost, who doesn’t quite convince. Isn't there a school for this type of acting by now?

As with many South Korean films, there is as much emotional pain as there is physical, evoking sympathy from the suffering of those trapped in terrible situations.

It’s difficult not to compare this to Apartment 1303, but Apartment is far and away more effective, original and stylishly constructed. But while 1303’s director hasn’t made a decent horror film since Tomie, Apartment’s Byung-ki Ahn improves with every film he makes. He started off fairly badly with the popular Nightmare (Gawi), where there was plenty of bloodshed but little logic, but at least it got him attention. Phone was better, with some remarkable performances, then Bunshinsaba proved more frightening than Japanese films in the same vein.

Lastly, don’t be put off the name of the production company that precedes the film with a customary flashy intro sequence, the unfortunately named Toilet Pictures!

Apartment/Apt. seems to have gotten lost in a muddle of movies with similar plots and samey titles. This is a shame because it’s easily the best of the haunted high-rise genre. It has yet to be released in the UK or US, and in the east it’s mainly for sale in a pricey two-disc set.

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DVD release updates

Finally! Blood+ is getting released on DVD in the US. The 50 episode anime series from 2005 starts out with a first volume in March. Continuing Saya's story on from the spectacular short film Blood The Last Vampire (2000), this epic tale sees Saya travel the world to try and wipe out vampire creatures and their allies. The live-action version of Blood The Last Vampire, from Hong Kong, is due for release later in the year.
More about Blood+ here.

The vengeful little Hell Girl is finally being released on DVD in the UK, just as NEO magazine reports that series three of the anime is now in production in Japan. No news from anywhere of a DVD release for the live-action series though. Can't find the UK cover art, though.

All about the Hell Girl series here.

Supernatural Thai slasher Ghost Game gets a UK DVD release on February 25th, ahead of the US.

My Ghost Game review is here.

The recent Chinese ghost story The Matrimony should have been out in January in the US from Tartan, though it's release appears to have been delayed.

See my review of The Matrimony here.

This South Korean ghost train horror film was remade on a plane in the US under the same name. But the original Red Eye has now arrived on DVD as well.


The recent Japanese disaster movie remake, The Sinking of Japan, has also got a DVD release in the US, but under the title Doomsday...
See my coverage of The Sinking of Japan here.

Finally, Takashi Miike's fast-moving and funny superhero Zebraman arrives on DVD in the US, February 18th.

My review of Zebraman (from 2005!) is here.

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THE EYE 2 (2004) a solid sequel from the Pang Brothers

THE EYE 2
(2004, Hong Kong/Thailand)

The Eye 2 has renewed my interest in the Pang Brothers. After really enjoying The Eye (2002), I cooled off after seeing their Bangkok Haunted and The Tesseract, both of which failed to grip my attention.

The Eye 2 succeeds as a well-conceived sequel, faithful to the premise of the original, without copying it. There’s a new set of characters and a whole new haunting.



Reversing the locations of the first film, the story starts in Bangkok as Joey (Shu Qi) tries some shopping therapy to get over a messy break-up. After her ex refuses her phone calls, she attempts suicide. Her near-death experience activates her ability to see ghosts…


As she returns to Hong Kong she discovers she’s not only pregnant, but haunted. When she's trapped in a hospital lift, a terrifying incident convinces her that a ghost is trying to kill her unborn baby.

This could be the worst film to watch if you’re expecting a new baby. Shu Qi gives a sustained and emotional performance, spending much of the story terrified that she’s going to lose her baby. It’s difficult not to sympathise with her enduring this gruelling ordeal, despite some revelations about her character.


The haunting scenes are imaginatively shot and cleverly conceived. Though I didn’t find as many scares as creepy as the first film, there are some powerful and grisly shocks. The only real mis-step in the story was when a rapist attacks her, the character looked more like a sitcom geek. The next scene didn’t work for me, as he appeared again covered in comedy bandages.

Considering that the Pang Brothers former careers were in grading (tweaking the colours of film for continuity and a stylised look) and editing, they avoided the trend for flashy editing and surreal grading.

Oxide and Danny Pang are currently in the US, directing a remake (is that called re-directing?) of Bangkok Dangerous, starring Nicolas Cage. Perhaps they found time to go see Jessica Alba in The Eye remake that's just been released.

Meanwhile, I’ve got to catch up on their Ab-Normal Beauty, Omen and Eye Infinity, the third of the original Eye films.

The Eye 2 is on DVD in the US and UK, though I watched the Hong Kong disc which has DTS sound and an alternative ending.

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PULGASARI (1985) - it came from North Korea!

PULGASARI
(1985, North Korea)

Bought this on VideoCD hoping to see a lost giant monster classic, but on reflection it's better off lost. Hard to see a nice presentation of this, since it's from North Korea, and it only crept out of the country in 1998. Not hard to see why, and I'm a fan of 'men in rubber suits stomping on toy tanks' genre.

It's a crazy story set in Korea 1000 years ago, when an evil Emperor kept his people in place with an iron fist. Boo! Well, the downtrodden people pray for help and up pops baby Pulgasari, who just loves eating iron fists. In fact, the more iron it eats, the bigger it gets, until it towers over the Emperor's army and eats his guns. The downtrodden populus then have to figure out how to get rid of the monster…

This may sound more fun than it is. There's a long wait for the monster action to kick in, especially since the first monster is tiny (a mixture of glove puppet and man-in-suit in overscaled sets), then man-sized (man-in-suit in man-size sets), before turning gigantic (man-in-suit in tiny scale sets, Godzilla-style). The young monster is fairly childish, acting a lot like the Son of Godzilla (1967) - which cinematically, is not a good look.

Actually, the big-guy suit is very robust and detailed, and the models he stamps on are huge and well-made (thanks, apparently, to a Japanese FX team). But the action is uninteresting and there's a lack of interaction with the actors. When the monster isn't around, the human sets look low enough to be for TV, a lot like The Water Margin used to look. The wigs and fake facial hair look like TV standard as well, making it all very hard to take seriously.

Added to that, it's trying to portray land-owners and kings as bad people - a monster movie as communist propaganda, this is precisely the sort of film the McCarthy commission warned would happen!


The Thai VideoCD I watched was presented in an aspect ratio best descibed as '4x3 squashed'. It was dubbed cheaply into Thai, with the music & fx obliterated by any added Thai dialogue, with no attempt to mix it in.

Not much fun to be had, though there's a much more interesting story about the making of the film, and how Kim Jong-Il oversaw the kidnapping of a South Korean movie director, in order to make several films for him, including this one!
Here's a detailed account of the real-life story...

I talk about more Korean giant monsters, old and new, in this article here.

If you really want to sample Pulgasari's dubious delights, I recently discovered that the entire film, English subtitled, is on Google Video…

There's also more Pulgasari facts and screengrabs here at Stomp Tokyo.


I can't find the VCD online anywhere, but Japan released it on DVD in 2004.

TAXI 4 (2007) Luc Besson's fast-moving comedy

TAXI 4
(2007, France)

Luc Besson - Producer
Ever since The Big Blue in 1989, we used to track down every Luc Besson film out there. We were rewarded with a string of classics: La Femme Nikita, Leon (aka The Professional), the underwater travelogue Atlantis, The Fifth Element… But after The Messenger (1999), he stepped out of directing and into producing.

But Besson’s name in the credits kept leading us to entertaining films. More mainstream perhaps, and usually in French. A new gamut of Luc Besson movies that were less well known in the big wide world of English-speakers.

Many of them are a fusion of East/West action. In Wasabi (2001) and in The Transporter, a young woman from the Far East is teamed up with an older gun-toting action man. Wasabi was also interesting to me for being set in Japan. Unleashed (aka Danny the Dog) cast Jet Li with Morgan Freeman and Bob Hoskins!

I thought Besson’s name would also guarantee cult status for the Taxi series, which started off in 1998 as an action/comedy heavy with jaw-dropping stunt-driving from the superb Remy Julienne troupe (still going strong since The Italian Job in 1968). Despite the sequels and the obligatory awful US remake, the Taxi films are still relatively unknown but easily accessible off-beat entertainment.

Taxi 4
...or more accurately T4xi, (but just try asking for it by name), is the latest. Although it starts off with a football hook, sport isn’t central to the plot. The familiar faces are back, with the local police from the French Riviera put in charge of a scheming and dangerous crimelord. As usual it takes a local taxi driver to save the police from themselves.

This is quite a break from the Taxi formula, with far less complex auto action. Taxi’s tricks are demoted to just high-speed driving and weaving through traffic. The accent here is on comedy, specifically aiming for an audience that enjoys jokes about policemen smoking grass, a base-thumping soundtrack, and stereotyped baddies that you could spot from a satellite.


But there’s also intricate physical comedy, sharp dialogue, and a faithful continuation of the character storylines from movies 1 2 and 3. The humour is easily accessible, despite numerous jokes about different regions of France, and beaucoup de Belgian-bashing. There’s also far more screentime for the demented Inspector Gibert, than Daniel the taxi driver, again steering the film away from the usual formula. But it’s still a strong entry, the third to be directed by Gérard Krawczyk.


The Marseilles Police Force must squirm as they hand out filming permits to the crew, only to see themselves portrayed onscreen as uniformly dimmer than Inspector Clouseau (which reminds me that Jean Reno is doing Pink Panther 2, ooch!)

With minimal car carnage, the climax is instead a handsomely mounted pastiche of Pacino’s Scarface. So relax, lower your expectations of a car chase finale, and you’ll enjoy Taxi 4 all the more.


At the moment you have to search around for Taxi 4 with English subtitles. I found a no-frills release from Thailand, in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen. The subtitles miss out a few lines of dialogue, but they are clear and well-translated. Canada is also a good place to look. Meanwhile Taxi, Taxi 2 and Taxi 3 are all out on DVD in the UK.

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APARTMENT 1303 (2007) - don't go in...

APARTMENT 1303
(2007, Japan)

A flat-warming party in a seafront apartment block goes horribly wrong as the hostess starts eating dog food, then dives out the window to her death. As her sister investigates, she discovers that the apartment has very creepy neighbours, and a curse. Something the estate agent failed to mention...

The mystery here is not why young women keep hurling themselves off the balcony of apartment 1303, but how director Ataru Oikawa went so wrong after Tomie (1998). It’s starting to stick out from his filmography as his only good film, and not many people agree on even that. His recent sequels Tomie: Revenge and Tomie: Beginning were far from good.

On the plus side, the acting is strong, and I was pleased to see Eriko Hatsune again, the star of Uzumaki. Other actors convincingly convey uncontrollable grief and impending madness.

At the heart of the story, the tragedy flashback is dramatic enough. But we've seen the resulting haunting too many times before, and done far better.


Ten years down the line, it’s time to stop recycling Ring and Ju-On. Especially when the scares don't work. There’s a couple of good ones, but 2 out of 20 isn’t an acceptable score.

The ghostly make-up looks like make-up. The sets look like sets. The rubber corpse looks like rubber. The long black hair effects are overused and, yawn, reminiscent of the vine-attack from The Evil Dead. There’s even a scene straight out of Carrie.

"A Tale of a Haunted House"...well no, it's just an apartment

The fatal falls aren’t gory or shocking, with some unconvincing green-screen work. I thought that it was compulsory that directors of Japanese horror learnt to shoot suicide falls effectively - it’s a given that it'll be needed sooner or later.

I can’t say I was bored by it, but I won’t be returning to Apartment 1303. It's out on DVD in the UK and US.

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