THE FALL (2006) - when, will it, will it be famous?

THE FALL
(2006, India/UK/USA)

It’s possible to fall in love with new Hollywood movies that cost millions of dollars but no-one has heard of. These can be box-office flops that were killed by word of mouth and/or negative critical reaction. I think The Fall just never got a good enough launch. Looking at the reviews and reactions of anyone who's seen it, there's a potentially large audience out there. An audience that is having to discover the film for themselves. Logically, this is a bizarre phenomenon for an epic film. Sort of similarly, another film slowly gaining an audience is last year's Speed Racer, which had a huge marketing push that somehow failed to attract an adult audience. Speed Racer was special effects-heavy, as in every single scene, while The Fall is also spectacularly beautiful, but naturally so.

Last year, after a telling delay, it was finally released in the UK. I was very interested because of director Tarsem Singh’s previous film The Cell (2000), a mixture of imaginatively lush visuals and dark subject matter - a journey into the mind of a serial killer. I suspect that more people would have gotten to see The Fall if the story hadn’t taken such a late hairpin turn into the dark side, because it's almost a children's film... for all ages.


It's Hollywood, 1915. A stuntman is recovering in hospital from a broken leg. Another patient, a little girl, happens to visit him one day and he starts making up a story for her. A swashbuckling tale full of colourful characters in even more colourful, fantastic locations. The little girl has to imagine it all, but we see everything as he describes it. A band of skilled adventurers from far-flung lands, teaming up against a common foe in a mysterious desert kingdom. The little girl visits him every day for a little more of the story. But as the stuntman’s luck goes bad in real life, he evokes his troubles on the characters in his story, much to the distress of the little girl. Will there be a happy ending to his story?


The Fall starts off as a good-natured, multi-cultural adventure intercut with the light-hearted friendship of the stuntman and the little girl, a slightly unusual and different-looking family film. But towards the end, the tone shifts and gets very dark very quickly, making the film rough for young children and adults expecting to chill out. This leaves the film in a niche category of adult-biased dark fairytales. Presumably this made the film too hard a sell but shouldn't have sunk it completely. It's hopefully being discovered on DVD and, especially, Blu-Ray which is perfect for spectaculars like this.


Director Tarsem (as he now calls himself) has carefully picked beautiful and astonishing locations that I’ve not seen before, though I suspect that some may have already appeared in Indian cinema. Of the many other countries used in the film, he's also revisited a few choice locations from Baraka (1992), a mix of startling images and music from the cinematographer of Koyaanisqatsi (1982). With Tarsem's flair for cinematographic splendour and outlandish fashions, the movie regularly looks surreal, though the marvellous vistas actually exist.


The international cast is led by the charismatic Lee Pace (star of Pushing Daisies). Whenever I see an actor successfully play two entirely different roles, I’m very impressed. Pace impresses as the attractive romantic action hero, but he was also totally convincing as a male-to-female transsexual in A Soldier’s Story! Anyone who can succeed in polar-opposite roles can surely play a whole range between.

While the climax is problematic, The Fall is still the most sumptuous, FX-lite, eye candy of last year, and likely to fuel holiday ideas for decades to come.

DVD Beaver has more screengrabs here, and the promotional website is still live.

After a clue in the end credits, it turned out that the story has been filmed before, on a much lower budget. Yo Ho Ho (1981) is a Bulgarian film that's provided the inspiration here. Though Tarsem has made The Fall very much his own, it would be interesting to compare it. There's a plot description and some useful screengrabs here at Gotterdammerung.

Happy Birthday, Gerry Anderson - thank you for the rock snakes

My first memory of going to the cinema was of being frightened by a Martian rock snake (above). My mum had taken me to see a movie that span off one of my favourite TV shows, Thunderbirds. Thunderbirds Are Go is still in my top ten, and after all this time never fails to entertain me from start to finish. During the Zero X expedition to Mars, man encounters a strange new alien lifeform that haunted my nightmares for years.

While Thunderbirds has always been derided for being entirely cast with puppet characters, and sent up recently with Team America: World Police, I've always taken it at face value, immersed in the stories. The modelwork and special effects were unprecedented for any TV show, even adult ones, for years to come. For a children's show, it didn't get any better for adventure, action and entertainment.


Thunderbirds is the pinnacle of Gerry Anderson's 'puppet years', inspiring me to watch everything he has ever produced. I have boxes of his shows, most of which are from the 1960's and 1970's. Fireball XL5, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, UFO and Space 1999 are the best, but all his series have endured repeated TV showings and every subsequent home video format.

Despite moving into live-action TV back in 1969, Gerry has remained firmly associated with his puppet shows. He recently leapt into the CGI world with a reinvention of the Captain Scarlet series, using motion-captured 3D computer-generated characters for a terribly overlooked and gritty series.


I could talk about his work for hours, though these pages are fairly unaffected so far. I'm not alone though - there's these new books coming out for instance. Filmed In Supermarionation goes behind the scenes on the extensive special effects work involved in the shows, and two volumes of Century 21 reprints some of the beautiful comic strips that appeared in the tabloid-sized comic TV21. Also, Gerry's shows are being remastered for HD presentation. Fanderson, the fan club, is still thriving, and new merchandise still keeps coming out for shows that are over forty years old (besides endless Japanese Thunderbirds replicas, there's also a new Stingray CD soundtrack just out).


But, for providing me with so many thrilling memories, I can only say thank you, and...

Happy 80th birthday, Gerry. Wishing you many more.

Walking in L.A. - BLADE RUNNER locations and Japanese shopping

A quick, furtive look round Downtown Los Angeles

Last year, I had a couple of days to spare in Los Angeles, but no car. Luckily I was staying near a subway station of the slowly spreading LA County Metro Rail. There are convenient stops near tourist attractions like Universal Studios (the Metro stop is Universal City), Mann's Chinese Theater and the Kodak Center (both near the Hollywood & Highland stop). The tunnels and the Hollywood station featured extensively in the central heist in The Italian Job remake in 2003.


I first surfaced at the Civic Center stop, just two short blocks from the new Walt Disney Concert Hall, at 111 South Grand Avenue, an architectural marvel from the same designer as the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum (which was seen briefly at the start of Tomorrow Never Dies). The curved reflective silver surfaces intersect in shapes that almost defy description. On a sunny day it's hard to look at the outside without being blinded by the glare, perfect for busy intersections!

Walking downhill, I wanted a closer look at the huge tower atop City Hall, that was blown to pieces (in miniature) in the original The War of the Worlds (1953).


I kept going until Little Tokyo, that has several streets of Japanese stores. I was surprised by a huge replica of a space shuttle standing in the street, that celebrates the first Japanese astronaut in space.


In a small outdoor multi-level mall off E 1st Street is Kinokuniya, an excellent Japanese bookstore that had a good selection of DVDs and film-related books and magazines. Many of the DVDs had English subtitles, but there wasn't much anime.


Not to worry, for only a block away at 319 E 2nd Street was Anime Jungle, a store full of rare DVDs, magazines and Japanese toys. A mixture of the best US and Japanese anime releases.

A short walk to 304 South Broadway meant I could return to the Bradbury Building, a stop that we made on our first trip to the East Coast, ten years earlier. The interior of this office block was a pivotal shooting location for Blade Runner (1982), doubling for the interior of J.F. Sebastian's apartment block.


The staircase, lift, entrance hall, elevator, balconies and skylight are all in the film - an evocative place for BR fans. The exterior shots of the front entrance were dressed up with huge pillars, but the cinema opposite, the Million Dollar Theater, was visible in the reverse shots, like when Pris bangs into Sebastian's car.



A couple of blocks north is the 2nd Street tunnel, used for a startling night scene of Deckard driving, his headlights illuminating the shiny interior of the tunnel. Luckily there's a sidewalk running through the tunnel so it's easy to get a close look.

From the tunnel it's just a short walk back to the Walt Disney Concert Hall - a very satisfying circular tour.


Back onto the Metro, it's only one stop further to Union Station, where the main hall was also used in Blade Runner. The establishing shot of Deckard being escorted towards the police chief's office used the huge interior of this beautiful art deco building.

So if you're ever in town, just a few reasons to detour Downtown.

ORANG MINYAK (2007) - the Oily Man of Malaysian legend

ORANG MINYAK
(2007, Malaysia, The Oily Man)

I couldn't visit a new country without sampling the local horror films. While browsing DVDs, I remembered this title one from a poster on 24framespersecond, back when it was first in cinemas. There's definitely better Malayan movies out there and low-budget horror films give a remarkably skewed view of a country's film industry. But while Orang Minyak (2007) is pretty bad, it led me to a previous version of the legend Sumpah Orang Minyak (1957) which was far more impressive, and I review it further down...

Watching Orang Minyak, the complexities of the plot, if there are any, were hamperered by the lack of English subtitles. Like Thailand, the available languages on DVDs vary from film to film. But here goes...

In a small village in the rainforest, young women are being attacked in their homes at night. A bald, naked man, apparently covered in black grease, hypnotises his victims with red glowing eyes, rapes them and leaves them comatose. The villagers know that the Oily Man of ancient legend is back. But two of them are confused because they'd already vanquished the evil spirit by imprisoning it in a small bottle and throwing it in a lake. Meanwhile the Oily Man is loose, and has sealed a deal with the devil - he's going to need 21 victims in all...


While I've little idea about local beliefs and customs in rural Malaysia, I do know when a camera is out of focus, which it repeatedly is in many shots. Added to this the special effects, brightly coloured animated overlays, which give the film the surreal look of a Chinese ghost story from the 1980's. Together with a flurry of film scratches that belong to 1970's prints, this movie looks decades older than it actually is.

The demon, with red glowing eyes, looks most effective in close up. But in longshots he's unconvincing, wearing what look like skindiver's rubber trousers pulled up to his chest. His superhuman leaping around is achieved with rather slow wirework. The atmosphere is helped by the deep blue light that bathes the night scenes, but the Oily Man is often far too well lit to look anything other than a non-oily man.


The story stalls as the attacks continue without progressing the plot. The young hero tries to defeat the Oily Man with martial arts and cheap animation, where the local priests' ceremonies and endless angry villager meetings have failed.

The broad acting from the supporting cast, and lush jungle locations reminded me of Thai horror films of ten years ago. While this film is sold as horror, and despite the theme of sexual violence, the film is actually non-explicit and I'm presuming it was made for a general audience, particularly with it's many slightly comical characters.

The trailer is here on YouTube, but you have been warned. If you want a horror film, this isn't one. The Malaysian DVD, from Golden Satellite, has no other languages on it, 5.1 stereo, and is letterboxed but not anamorphic. The cover art is the same as the poster. (Movie stills and poster courtesy of Sinema Malaysia).

SUMPAH ORANG MINYAK
(1957, Malaysia, Curse of the Oily Man)

Looking around online for more information about Orang Minyak (which hasn't even got an IMDB entry), I learned of the earlier filmed version of the legend, Sumpah Orang Minyak (1957), which I thought I'd little chance of seeing, until discovering it was also on YouTube in it's entirety (linked below)! It's a very different story, grander in scale, in budget, and in the end more effectively scary than the modern version. Again, it has no subtitles.

Starting off as a drama, in the vein of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a facially disfigured man (possibly referenced in the new version by a priest with a hugely swollen jawbone) is taken in by an unlucky batik printer. But the dirty-faced outcast is also an excellent artist and helps turn the printer's business around.

When the hunchbacked outcast gets viciously bullied by local fishermen, the women of the village take pity and he begins to fall in love with one of them. While believing she couldn't ever love him back, he appeals to the gods and is miraculously restored to full health and a handsome appearance. But when he approaches his intended love, the villagers realise who he really is and get ugly. They attack him, and by killing one of them, he angers the gods. Outcast once again, he makes a deal with the devil, and is transformed into the Oily Man, and takes revenge with a rampage of violence.

This black and white film gets a handsome budget and big sets, managed by Run Run Shaw, the producer who went on to make it big in Hong Kong by making dozens of internationally successful kung fu films. Some of the special effects rely on simple editing, and appear a little bit Monkey, but there are elaborate camera effects too. The cinematography and acting are far superior to the modern version - but it's a fantasy drama that only really enters the darker supernatural world towards the climax.

While it's again aimed at a family audience, this version is slightly more explicit, more bloody and even gets unsettling, when we hear the nerve-jangling screams of his victims. A grisly touch is the oily 'X' he draws on their faces.

Altogether it's very watchable, and one of the best 1950's Asian films (from outside of Japan) that I've seen.

The film is available on VideoCD, as an example of a Malaysian classic movie, and also for the lead actor P. Ramlee, a much-loved actor and singer of the time. He plays the multiple central roles, sings a couple of songs, in the heaven sequences and directed as well.

The entire film is on YouTube, part 1 is embedded below, but the Oily Man doesn't appear in the story until part 8...

THE CHASING WORLD (2008) - deadly fast-paced fun

THE CHASING WORLD
(2008, Japan, Riaru onigokko)

My friend Del (the brains behind 24framespersecond) showed me the trailer for this one and I immediately wanted to see it. So far, the only English-subtitled version is this Malaysian DVD (above) which I stupidly purchased just before visiting Malaysia. The disc isn't recommended, due to lousy subtitles and poor motion compression, but at least I've seen it now.

While the literal translation is something like The Real Monster Game, it's known in English under the catchier title of The Chasing World. The low budget makes the very most of a little. Like Monty Python and the Holy Grail couldn't afford real horses, The Chasing World is like Death Race 2000 without the cars. Scary masked assassins (the iconic poster image) roam the streets and garrot their victims with red hot wire weapons that cut through bodies like Swiss cheese!

Tsubasa Sato is a teenager who's great at not being caught. He can run fast and even up the walls, parkour-style, useful for evading school bullies. But throughout the city, there's a wave of freak accidents killing anyone with the rather common surname of Sato. Just as Tsubasa gets cornered by his enemies, he suddenly swaps dimensions into an alternate world where everything looks similar but different. There, his best friends are a gay couple, his dad isn't a drunk, and Japan is ruled by an insane emperor who's rooting out anyone called Sato in a series of sanctioned street fights. It's their actions that are triggering the freak events in the real world.

As Tsubasa Sato starts running for his life, he starts piecing together his alternate life, family and friends. If he survives, maybe he can also fix his family problems by altering events in this parallel world.


Like a classic Roger Corman film (let's say anything between 1950 and 1979), the constraint of the low budget has made this inventive but no less ambitious. The story is more anime adventure than science fiction, a story that supports the premise of the running game rather than any consistent logic. There are several witty touches early on, but the tone gets more downbeat and starts taking itself a little too seriously. For such a flimsy premise, it could have had a little more fun with it. Likewise, the implied sexual abuse of his semi-comatose sister makes the story more real than it needs to be.

Otherwise, it's fast-paced fun, with dynamic fights, a little gore, and special effects that verge on impressive, particularly the futuristic imperial tower dominating the city skyline. Though shot on video, there's superior camerawork and dynamic composition giving it a very filmic look. Just because there's no money, doesn't mean not taking the story, the acting and the cinematography seriously. Veteran actor Akira Emoto is particularly impressive as the nasty doctor. In the end, this was a surprise hit in Japanese cinemas.


The Malaysian DVD is fairly easy to get hold of, until a better release comes along, at HKflix for instance. The subtitles are very vaguely translated and didn't convey the complexities of the plot. The action scenes are juddery and spoilt by the poor compression. The trailer I mentioned isn't on the DVD. So I'll definitely buy this again if/when it gets released anywhere else in English.

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN (1980) - a blast into the past

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
(1980, USA)

This was far better than I remembered in the cinema, when I was expecting a big summer blockbuster movie. High on the possibilities posited by mysterious non-fiction paperbacks like Charles Berlitz' The Bermuda Triangle and The Philadelphia Experiment, I was initially disappointed by this slightly science fiction, naval drama. It's like a single Twilight Zone episode padded out by a US Navy recruitment film. That’s not to say it doesn’t have a certain bonkers charm.

Though the widescreen photography of military hardware would soon be eclipsed by the stylish, kinetic camera-moves and even faster editing in Top Gun six years later, this has a tantalising premise that carries along most of the story. A US aircraft carrier sets sail from Pearl Harbor in 1980, but is sucked back in time to 1941, just before the fateful sneak attack by the Japanese air force. The Final Countdown sets up far more possibilities than it delivers on, but it's Sunday afternoon fun while it lasts. The variable acting from the supporting cast, the actual crew of the USS Nimitz, is bolstered by an impressive display of jets, helicopters, perilous take-offs and landings.

A top-heavy cast tries to pump up the drama of the meagre plot. A battered-looking Kirk Douglas never quite takes it all totally seriously, despite the evidence before his character's eyes, and he looks much older than he did in his previous Holocaust 2000 or The Fury. A young-looking Martin Sheen appears relaxed and grateful to be out of the jungle hell of Apocalypse Now, looking good despite his heart attack during filming. James Farentino (Dead and Buried, Blue Thunder) appears grateful he's not doing TV. Katherine Ross (The Stepford Wives) looks grateful that the so-bad-they're-good The Legacy and The Swarm are behind her.

Bizarrely, future chief of schlock quickie, straight-to-video factory Troma Films, Lloyd Kaufman, not only associate produces here, but gets a bit part as communications officer 'Lloyd'. This must be the biggest film he's ever worked on. In fact, the budget would probably pay for everything he's done before and since. (Update: there's a blatantly honest interview with Lloyd on the Blue Underground special edition that's well worth watching, detailing how the movie could have been very bad indeed, or almost never made at all. Plus a frank account of his experience of the cast and crew!).


Though it's light on special effects (especially considering it was up against The Empire Strikes Back in the cinemas), the impressive aspect is the use of real craft instead of effects. Though James Bond title sequence veteran Maurice Binder produced the beautiful, simple, and scary time tunnel effects - the genre highpoint of the film, heightened by eerie sound effects. While John Scott composed the stirring soundtrack that’s almost too good to be used on this - the music was the only thing I'd actually remembered over the years between viewings. Recently, it's had a CD release, with some interesting liner notes in which Scott recalls his time on the project. He also mentions that his music was 're-used' in Japan and even became a hit single! Anyone out there know what Japanese music in the style of The Final Countdown soundtrack? I'll ignore any quips about Europe...

Blue Underground have released a handsome 2.35 anamorphic widescreen DVD, and a Blu-Ray! Lavish treatment indeed, but I'm very tempted. The largely location photography bathed in sunlight should look good in high-definition.

HAKABA KITARO (2008) - the graveyard origin of GeGeGe No Kitaro

HAKABA KITARO
(2008, Japan, OVA, Graveyard Kitaro)

I've written as much as I can about GeGeGe No Kitaro in this total series guide, which I also keep updated. But while the character is enjoying a revival in Japan, all 400+ episodes of the animes now available on DVD. Creator Shigeru Mizuki has a museum all about his characters, and there's a Kitaro street of statues flourishing as a popular tourist destination in Sakaiminato. But in the west, Kitaro has only recently been represented on home video, by a single DVD release, the first live-action film. We've yet to see any anime, which first appeared back when Scooby Doo was first on TV!

But the animes never fully established exactly who Kitaro is. His origin has remained in the manga, even too scary for Japanese children's TV. Now comes Hakaba Kitaro, a short anime series, shown last year as part of the 40th anniversary of the Gegege anime, which has omitted much of the scarier, ickier side of the early manga stories. Whereas the ghost boy is regularly introduced emerging from a graveyard, like in the TV title sequences, episode 1 of Hakaba Kitaro dares to reveal Kitaro's mum and dad, his ghoulish birth and even the loss of his eye.


The series develops with Kitaro trying to find his place in the world, a young yokai living among humans. He meets Ratman and Catgirl for the first time, both portrayed to extremes, bigger farts and sharper claws respectively. His father, the eyeball (also explained), guides him towards his various powers as he gets used to modern city life, the lower reaches of hell, and angry yokai monsters.

The anime successfully mixes a deliberately retro style with the latest CGI effects. The drawing style reflects Shigeru Mizuki's earliest Kitaro manga. The human characters look angular and realistic - from before the time when he drew them in a rounded, cartoon style. The early Hakaba manga also provide many of the storylines, though the series interweaves these into a long continuing story. The almost primitive Kitaro character starts as a monstrous, hunched, cackling demon, carefree of the troubles of the world and netherworld, unlike the usual conscientious hero.


While there is humour, there's also sadness, shock and horror. The scares are often pitched at a level of near-hysterical terror like a Kazuo Umezu manga. There are more than a few echoes of Hell Girl - perhaps the creators are reminding us that Mizuki did it first, with Kitaro and his other early character Akuma-Kun, (Devil Boy), who also wore a stripy shirt.

I found two DVD releases of the series in Kuala Lumpur, intended for Hong Kong and Malaysia, both cramming the eleven episodes onto a single disc. The English subtitles on both were identical and accurately translated. They are the first translated DVD releases I've seen of any Kitaro anime. But while they looked like official releases, with holograms and carded sleeves, and bought in official video stores, the unreliable performance of the discs indicates otherwise.

But I look forward to a time when this rare scary anime is widely enjoyed as a stand-alone series, or as an introduction to this Japanese phenomenon, like the recent live-action films. I'm hoping that one day the many yokai monsters of these series will be seen outside Japan.

There's an interesting, related article about the series and Kitaro's history here on The Japan times online.

TOMIE vs TOMIE (2007) - she's back... both of her!

TOMIE vs TOMIE
(2007, Japan, Tomie x Tomie)

(Review updated on 19/01/2011)

I thought we'd seen the last of the movies about Junji Ito's creepy creation. But then came this eighth entry in the Tomie series (here's my guide to them all). It's been out on DVD in Japan since 2007, and I first saw it on a Chinese DVD in Malaysia, pictured above, but now Japan Flix have released it officially, online with English subtitles.

With Tomie's unnatural ability to completely regenerate from dismembered body parts, it's surprising she hasn't had to face herself before...


Two factory workers are tangling with Tomie, well, two different Tomies. One guy is recovering from the death of his girlfriend, but is being pursued by a Tomie, who has a gaggle of his colleagues at her bidding. Unknown to him, a close friend is helping another Tomie through a difficult regeneration...

In this 'episode' in the saga, Tomie is more in control than usual, manipulating many men around her in a small factory. But both the Tomies have a serious problem, decay...

The traditional mayhem, obsession and violence ensues. But the promised confrontation of the two Tomies is far too brief and falls short of the bizarre heights of the series. But this is still a creepy, coherent and occasionally bloody tale. It's an above-average but small-scale Tomie film, far better than the last two entries (Revenge and Beginning), and achieves the paranoid atmosphere of the best Tomies, of being in a bad dream.


Framed 16:9, it appears to have been shot on HD video, but is far better photographed than the previous two, with careful lighting and composition. It's well directed by Tomohiro Kubo, an assistant director on Tomie: Forbidden Fruit and Hideo Nakata's Sleeping Bride, adding visual layers to the many mysteries.


With consistently creepy music and creative shock moments, this is a Tomie overdue in the west. Though Japan Flix aren't yet releasing any DVDs, this is only available to rent online or purchase in HD on iTunes.

By the way, the English subtitles on the Malaysian DVD (at top) were very poor quality, as if they'd been translated in an online website, rarely making grammatical sense.

Here's a trailer on YouTube...

Malaysian DVD stores - gateways to Asian cinema

Before I forget, here’s a little about Malaysian DVDs – releasing movies from all over South East Asia. Plus a few locations of DVD stores that I descended on during a brief stay in Kuala Lumpur, if you should ever be passing through.

Malaysia lies on the peninsula between Thailand and Singapore, as well as owning a northern chunk of the island of Borneo. It was a different experience to Thailand, Malaysia is a very different mix of peoples and religions. While Thailand is predominantly Buddhist, Malaysia is largely Islamic, with Indian and Chinese temples sitting alongside mosques and Christian churches.

There are relatively few Malaysian movies, while Hollywood product and American franchised TV dominate the multiplexes and toy stores. But the larger DVD shops also has extensive selections from China (i.e. Hong Kong), as well as India, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. This makes Malaysia a great place to find a huge variety of movies from most of Asia.

Shelves of TV Boxsets are dominated by Japanese TV series and anime, and Malaysia releases English-subtitled DVDs that even Hong Kong hasn’t got. It’s a rare chance to get subtitled DVDs of practically every major Japanese TV series, like the live-action Hell Girl. Multiple releases can be due to Hong Kong versions being stocked as well as Malaysian, and also because some of them might be bootlegged.

The widest selection of Asian DVDs that I found, was at Classic World Entertainment, on the 3rd floor of the Times Square mall (nearest monorail stop: Imbi). The sign over the store simply says ‘Classic’. Here there were Hong Kong, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Indian and Malaysian horror films, plus a large section of anime.

Elsewhere in the Times Square mall were several stores devoted to Japanese anime figures and model kits – two can be found next to the indoor rollercoaster! I was pleased to find plenty of Ultraman and Masked Rider stuff in most of the toy stores too.

For anime fans, there's an even larger selection of DVDs in Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown, which has two stores of Hiro Comic World on neighbouring streets. They also have a branch on the 3rd floor of the amusingly-named S&M shopping arcade.


The Video Ezy chain offer a more limited choice, with more Hollywood product, but were easier to find, like in the Times Square mall, and in the KLLC mall at the base of the Petronas Towers (pictured). I also visited the large DVD section upstairs in the Sogo department store, which had a generous Japanese TV selection.

Like I said, not all of Malaysia’s DVD releases appear to be official, no matter how official-looking the packaging is. The cover details aren't always accurate about languages and aspect ratios. The quality of the English subtitling is fairly stilted, like the Hong Kong releases, but sometimes much worse - misspelled, mistimed and loosely paraphrased. I've persevered with awful subtitles in the past, with their challenges of lateral thinking, because there's been no alternative available anywhere else.

Like Thailand, be careful as the latest films are also released on the VCD (VideoCD) format – these play in DVD players, but are much more compressed (worse picture quality) and the subtitles are burnt-in (not optional). If the film is on two-discs (VCDs only hold one hour of video), check whether there’s a VCD symbol instead of a DVD one. The artwork for VCD releases can be different from the DVD.


So, huge choice, but varying quality of product and English translation. It’s still a good way to pick through many weird and wonderful films that may never appear in the west.


Until now, the only online Malaysian websites I’ve used is Zoom Movie, which doesn't list many details about the DVDs, like the languages. Also, MovieXclusive from Singapore offers similar titles. Both sites offer releases that won't be found on the major Asian DVD suppliers like YesAsia.

FRIDAY THE 13th (1980) - finally Friday uncut, and on Blu-Ray

FRIDAY THE 13th

(1980, USA)

The first was only the beginning...

I keep returning to Crystal Lake, expecting to learn why it became so insanely popular. Now on Blu-Ray, it's possible to see the original movie clearer than it was ever projected. I couldn't even hear all the dialogue when I first saw it in a suburban fleapit.

It was a packed house on a Saturday night, the audience was hungry for the high bodycount promised by the trailer - a serial slasher film with guaranteed gore. Ironically at the time, America and the UK were unlikely to see much blood, sex or nudity after films had been past their respective censorship boards. The violence in the film was cut down - each kill faded to white early rather than show the whole murder. The week it came out in the UK (I’m guessing that was June 13th, 1980), I wish I’d seen it on Friday, and not Saturday, because I was sat in front of a loudmouth bastard who’d also seen it the night before. He proceeded to spoil every single surprise by telling his date what was about to happen. Not fun. But the film continued to fascinate, partly because of the bloody behind-the-scenes photographs in Fangoria, and also the series' subsequent longevity.

The new uncut US releases restore the death scenes that were only previously seen on home video on the Japanese laserdisc. There are also extras, old and new, talking about the original production – casting, special effects, story ideas and music. The director, Sean Cunningham, talks about misdirection, distracting the audience from where the next scare is coming from, which originally worked well. At the time, no one was sure whether the killer could be Crazy Ralph, Mr Christie the supervisor, or even the pot-obsessed cop… there were enough red herrings to keep us guessing. In interviews, the writer is honest about ripping off elements from the recently successful Halloween, and topping it all off with a shock ending like Carrie.

They talk about the making of the film, but not the key to it's success - the publicity machine. The classic bodycount trailer, and timing the premieres on Friday the 13th, selling it both as a ghost train ride and a date movie. We went to see everyone die. The characters weren’t expected to live, they weren’t given enough personality for us to get to know. Many of them were even annoying. The only thing that broke the boredom of the simple storylinewas the next kill. This is what the movie promised. Seeing it again, I was surprised at how few onscreen murders there were.


Friday the 13th became part of the horror movie genre called ‘have sex then die’. The inadvertent subtext is also ‘smoke pot then die’ or ‘play strip Monopoly then die’. Missing also is any mention of the handheld camerawork – Halloween opened with a memorable roving camera from the point of view of the murderer (itself an acknowledged steal from Dario Argento’s giallo thrillers). The success of much of Friday’s suspense are the twitchy point-of-view shots through the killer's eyes – indicating that they were nearby and also conveniently hiding their identity. I remember, In the cinema, there was screaming whenever the camera started creeping in on anyone.

Naturally, no mention is made of the uncanny resemblances to an earlier bodycount slasher, Mario Bava's 1971 Twitch of the Death Nerve, otherwise known as Bay of Blood. It has many of the same murder methods, a waterside setting, corpses rearranged for shock effect, and even a fisherman's pullover... But with far more explicit violence, more onscreen carnage and even gushing blood. The difference being it's Italian dubbed into English, and it has a twisty complex plot, perhaps too complex for a Saturday night crowd of teenagers. The similarities between Bay of Blood and the first two Friday the 13th films are as shocking as the nudity, and the gratuitous use of squishy squid close-ups. From the machete in the face, to the couple skewered with a spear during love-making. From a wheelchair murder, to a close-up decapitation... all from a film made nine years earlier.


Cunningham never planned on getting as far as a sequel, as is obvious from the bizarre premise of Friday the 13th Part II. He simply made a low budget horror, and look what happened.

On Blu-Ray, it looks remarkably good. It makes the most of the very dark, underlit, exterior scenes. The 5.1 audio mix isn’t tricksy, just slightly broadened, and there’s also the mono mix for purists. It’s the first time I’ve seen the film in a 16:9 aspect since the cinema release, and the composition looks strong and not cramped, even after all the years of 4:3 home videos. I’ve just finished watching all the Fridays in order. Now they’re coming out on Blu-Ray and in DVD special editions, with Friday the 13th Part III viewable in 3D on home video for the first time. For a better selection of cast and crew interviews, there's also the extensive documentary His Name Was Jason out on DVD.


Strangely, I can't find the Blu-Ray of Friday the 13th on Amazon.com, only on Amazon.co.uk which is ironic as this new Uncut edition and Blu-Ray haven't been released in the UK. I guess they're trying to minimise confusion with the new remake. Also, Amazon lists it as 2.35 widescreen, when it's really 16:9. Part III was the first Friday to be shot 2.35 (and also the first in the series to feature the iconic hockey mask).

Don't worry, I'm not going to review the rest of the series, I just wanted to share my memories of when it all began. And I didn't even mention Kevin Bacon or his speedos.

BASKET CASE 3: THE PROGENY (1992) - Belial begets a basket of babies

BASKET CASE 3: THE PROGENY
(1992, USA)

There's something you don't see every day

The last of this supremely surreal comedy horror trilogy. It's not easy to follow the bizarre heights of Basket Case and Basket Case 2, but 3 is worth it for more from Granny Ruth, her brood, and a chance to see Belial's brood of bouncing babies.

After a lengthy recap from the end of Basket Case 2, the characters then verbally re-remind us of where the story is at. A few months have passed and there are some new 'faces' at the commune. Everyone's back for the sequel, at least, everyone who survived... But with a looming medical emergency, Granny Ruth drives everyone onto a schoolbus and heads on down to Georgia, where she knows a trusted doctor friend, who is himself blessed with the largest 'freak' of all... a mad inventor called Little Hal.

It's not long before there's trouble with the locals, the police, Duane and of course Belial, who's lost none of his face-ripping charm. Indeed his murder methods have gained a few new twists...

Besides the bloody mayhem, there are a few brief sexual escapades for the Bradley twins, only slightly less bizarre than Basket Case 2. While Henenlotter's films homage grindhouse ideals, lightly exploiting sex as well as violence, he always balances the cheesecake with beefcake. Which means there's something for everyone.

This last Basket Case is the least tidy story of the three, with scattershot ideas and dozens of characters. There's more comedy, and more of it is less successful, but the hits are worth the misses. While the highlight, or is that lowlight of Basket Case 2 was a parallel sex scene, Basket Case 3 satirises the miracle of birth like no other movie...


The music is exceptionally cheap and cheesy, a really nasty-sounding synthesizer trying to stand in for an orchestra. But Basket Case 3 also features the musical highlight of the series, as Annie Ross flexes her vocal muscles with an apt rendition of 'Personality'. I was recently hearteneded to learn that she was born in South London, only a few miles from where I live.

All in all, this is a wilder, sexier and more violent than film than Basket Case 2, but less even. This is the only Basket Case still without a special edition. It's only available in a 4:3 aspect, but looks comfortably framed. In many countries, it's included in a DVD double-bill with Basket Case 2.


This VHS cover, for the UK rental release, is my favourite artwork for the film, and is strongly reminiscent of the killer baby saga It's Alive (1974), which also stretched to a trilogy. This cover design was recently mirrored in Synapse's artwork for the Basket Case 2 special edition DVD.

On my region 2 DVD from Synergy (pictured at top), the only extras are trailers, but they're extremely entertaining straight-to-video movies - like Dolph Lundgren in Red Scorpion, The Exterminator and the first Maniac Cop. However, the Basket Case 3 trailer is extremely clumsy and stupid - every major plot point and gore effect is lazily spoilered and should certainly be avoided before seeing the film.

Soon, I look forward to revisiting Frank Henenlotter's Brain Damage, just as rewarding as any Basket Case, and then watch his brand new film, Bad Biology.

RAUMPATROUILLE (1966) - Germany's SPACE PATROL

RAUMPATROUILLE

(1966, West Germany, TV, Space Patrol))

'The fantastic adventures of the Spaceship Orion'

Some sixties sci-fi that used to look futuristic, now doesn't. But those retro-predictions now provide glimpses of alternate futures of varying optimisms. I've now seen most of what the fifties and sixties offered and am currently in the mood for black-and-white TV shows, like Fireball XL5. There are still a few films from the period that I haven't seen - I only recently caught Planeta Bur from Russia, for instance.

So, if you want to see spaceships taking off from an underwater base via a whirlpool, ironclad beehive hair-dos, space cardigans, and invading aliens (called Frogs), you're in luck. Raumpatrouille (literally Space Patrol) was the first major German sci-fi TV show. It threw a big budget at huge sets and major special effects. As a result of the cost, it only ran for seven one-hour shows, but achieved a unique look - another future that never was. A future where spaceships are spacious, and unnecessarily huge. When Earth is no longer divided up into countries (and, apparently, everyone is now German).

My introduction to the show was through the lounge music par excellence of Peter Thomas, also famous in Germany for his TV themes and krimi movie scores. A European answer to Vic Mizzy, his enthusiastic and eccentric electric tunes aimed at being catchy enough to turn into hit singles. During the lounge revival of the 1990s, several CDs featured his work and the soundtrack for Raumpatrouille even got its own CD release. Not to be confused with the American Space Patrol TV series of 1950, or the British Space Patrol puppet series of 1963, the German series was released on DVD in 1999, and I had to see it.


Now, I've just bought the German three-disc boxset, of 2005 (pictured at top). The first two discs are exactly the same as the 1999 2-disc release (pictured here), which also had all seven episodes, remastered 5.1 audio, plus a few extras. The difference now being a third disc, with additional extras and a 2003 'movie', condensing the series into a single 90 minute storyline. Because of the series' kitsch value in Germany, this re-edited 'redux' adds newly shot scenes of a newscaster setting the scene and filling in the story gaps, but for laughs. It's an easy target to lampoon, but viewers could easily work out for themselves that the hairstyles and dance moves look bizarre. This unwelcome additional footage is intrusive but fairly brief.


The best aspect of the movie version is that it is subtitled in English. Amazon.de lists the 2005 boxset as having English subtitles, but these only appear on the movie condensation, and unfortunately not on the individual episodes. At least we can now it's possible to understand the important plot points of the series. Usefully, this movie version, sometimes called 'the producers cut' is also available as a separate release (pictured here).

The series was digitally remastered for the DVDs and looks brand new. It appears to have been made on 35mm film, but some of the visual effects appear to have been composited electronically - this could either have been pioneering work, or recently added. In any case, there's much to admire. The spaceship is as impressive for its manoeuvrability as its design, though the enemy Frog ships are less convincing as they dart about. Any rare personal appearances by the Frog aliens are ethereal. A haunting effect, seen as barely humanoid, sparkling shadows.


The huge, solid sets, alive with built-in lighting, backlit plastic, and shiny surfaces date from when silver in sci-fi was compulsory. The spaceship interior features control panel designs that defy description and gravity, much like the floating multi-armed robots (see below). The centrepiece is the commander's impressive circular table-top viewscreen, displaying intricate navigational information, (stop-frame animation and back-projected into the set, presumably from below).


But for many, watching the series without subtitles won't be tempting, especially when it's so talky, but the 1999 boxset is now sold for under 10 euros - that's seven hours of future Euro retro, people.

In Germany, the story of the Spaceship Orion and its crew lived on in over 100 paperback novels. The popular Perry Rhodan was more famous for a similar space adventure premise, and ran into hundreds of novels (and two movies, which are also rare outside Germany).


I've not seen any other German sci-fi, except for Star Maidens (1976), a co-production with the UK, where more was spent on hair-styles than special effects. Again, the soundtrack was the series' most memorable legacy.


Do you want to know more?

There are some great stills and memorabilia on this English Peter Thomas site, and there's this extensive German Raumpatrouille fansite - the Starlight Casino.


Here's the opening of episode two, including the original theme tune, on YouTube...

...and here's a recent remix of the theme tune, with clips from the show...