AFTERSHOCK (2010) - heart-rending disaster movie from China

AFTERSHOCK
(2010, China, Tangshan dadizhen)

The psychological debris from a natural disaster

The city of Tangshan in China suffered a devastating earthquake in 1976 that left 240,000 dead. But Aftershock doesn't exploit the extent of the devastation, but homes in on the lasting effects of the disaster on one family.

Early in the story, the quake is shown from the perspective of a few people in one neighbourhood (rather than an overview of the city), as a mother and father race to protect their children. The amazing scene is a seamless mix of CGI and large-scale sets. But unlike the disaster movies that I'm used to, the accent wasn't on spectacular destruction. The deaths had more emotional impact, helped by the random victims being played by actors rather than 'digital stuntmen'.


The story really begins when the dust settles and it emerges who survived. As rescuers dig through the rubble, the mother is forced to decide between the lives of her son and her daughter. A natural disaster has forced her to make the most difficult decision of her life, and could ruin the rest of it. She reluctantly chooses to save her son. Without her knowing, her daughter has miraculously survived, but heard her mother decide against saving her. Also completely traumatised, she walks away from the city to a new life.


The story then repeatedly leaps forward to see how these survivors lead their lives, still haunted by the day of the quake, right up to the present day, 32 years later. Some of these 'fast-forward' fades-to-black avoid many events that are ripe for melodrama. The director avoids many of the cliches, often leaving the viewer to deduce some of the major changes in the characters' lives.


In the background, there's a summary of the last thirty years of life in China. It's interesting to see the similarities and differences between western life and communist society. I've read that this film didn't get an Oscar nomination because it didn't appeal enough to an international audience, but it's far from inaccessible. There are very few important references to historic events or unfamiliar places.


There also seemed to be a conscious decision to appeal internationally. An orphan being fostered by both parents in Red Army uniform looked like it was aimed at non-Chinese viewers, trying to counter decades of negative depiction of communism.

The opening shot had me a little worried, a swooping helicopter shot of Tangshan, filled with unconvincing CGI dragonflies, (an illustration of the kinds of natural warnings China had before the quake). Understandably, there were also CGI establishing shots of Tangshan as it was before the quake. But soon the film settled down as a very high-quality production, with the exception of one non-Chinese actor who spoiled a later scene.

Xiaogang Feng, director of Assembly (2007) and The Banquet (2006) assembled a fantastic cast who convey some truly heart-rending scenes. Though apart from the quake itself, the many intimate dramatic scenes were hardly an obvious choice for an IMAX presentation, as it was in China.


With so many regular natural disasters around the world, and so many people affected, it's hard to let yourself be affected by each new catastrophe. Hollywood disaster movies also maintain this distance, rarely depicting death tolls, permanent injuries and lasting emotional effects.

For a disaster movie, this unleashed a huge emotional impact on me, emphasising the personal tragedies that last for decades after the funerals are over.


I watched a DVD from Hong Kong, released by Media Star, with good subtitles and widescreen anamorphic aspect. The extras were deleted scenes, cast interviews and a trailer, but these had no English subtitles. The USA has yet to release this, but there was a limited run in the UK and there's now a DVD, with cover art misleadingly showing skyscrapers in the background (above) - compare it to the Chinese DVD art (at top).

An extensive, spoilery review on Asia Pacific Arts.

An original trailer on YouTube...

TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES (1973) - still shocking?

TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES
(1973, West Germany, Die Zärtlichkeit der Wölfe)

A recreation of the exploits of a German serial killer who attacked young men with vampirism, cannibalism and necrophilia. Watching it again, I've changed my mind about this film.

In post-war Germany (the film moves the setting from the end of the First World War, to the end of the Second), two petty crooks find a new way to find meat to sell to their bankrupt neighbours. Fritz Haarmann murders young homeless men, then sells pieces of their bodies to a local cafe. His lover helps dispose of the remains and cashes in the victims' belongings on the black market.

One of Haarmann's neighbours notices that young men go to his flat but are never seen again. But his reputation as a generous do-gooder and his job as a deputised police inspector help hide his crimes from the authorities...


I've always regarded this as a similarly taboo movie as I Spit On Your Grave, Straw Dogs and Last House On The Left. A 1970s' horror that pushed the envelope too far. An experiment in bad taste that history wouldn't repeat. Viewing it again, my knee-jerk reactions started kicking in again, critical that this was a worst-case representation of gay men. A weird-looking outcast who preys on young straight men for sex, sucks their blood, kills them and eats them... but not necessarily in that order. If that's not enough stigma-by-association for you, some of the victims were under-aged.

More objectively, I imagined the film with female victims, and it became more typical of seventies Euro-horror. The extreme elements of the murders are mostly implied and not shown. The most explicit angle of the film is the sexuality of the killer, and by explicit I mean kissing his boyfriend and the nudity of his prey. Compared to other films of the era, there's little difference in pushing the boundaries, besides gender. In Martin, the bloody victims and the nudity are female. Blood On Satan's Claw and To The Devil a Daughter both had full-frontal nudity of young women.

Admittedly many of the naked young men in Tenderness of the Wolves are gratuitous to the plot, once Haarmann's obsessions have been established. This casual and unflattering male nudity is surprising today, as it continues to be rare in horror or any other genre. I think it's this aspect that makes it relatively obscure, excluding it from it's two genres. Horror and gay-themed cinema continue to keep a mutually-exclusive distance.

I'm accepting the film now, but my paranoid defences originally made me back away, writing it off as indefensible back in the 80s when I first saw it. The theme of gay vampirism was too perfect for providing fuel for demonisation in the decade of AIDS hysteria. But Tenderness of the Wolves was made a decade before the AIDS crisis and might even have been considered relevant had it been released a few years later. It unhelpfully mixed the genre of lurid 'true crime' exploitation with the story of a gay love affair going sour. While it's a truthful and sympathetic depiction of a gay relationship, this isn't a great genre for making positive political statements. But what should you expect from director Ulli Lommel, collaborating with producer Rainer Werner Fassbinder (who also appears in the film as a sleazy pimp)?

Anyone frightened off by the recent quality of Lommel's films can be assured that this early work is well-produced and dramatically convincing. Though it's less of a narrative than a timeline of case history highlights. Even the detective work, usually the focus of true crime dramas, is sidelined as music replaces their dialogue. The corruption angle is hardly exploited, despite Haarmann working for the police while they're also hunting for him.

There are homages to Fritz Lang's M in quoted imagery and Haarmann being as completely bald as Peter Lorre's character, even though the real Haarmann had hair. M was also based on a different serial killer - Peter Kürten, the 'Vampire of Düsseldorf', whose most horrific crimes involved very young girls. The two films and their subjects are often confused, the original cases both being from Germany in the 1920s. Fritz Haarmann was known as the 'Butcher of Hanover', and his victims were young men between 13 and 20.

The shaven-headed Kurt Raab gives a relatively restrained performance as the killer (imagine Klaus Kinski in the same role), charming his neighbours and evoking sympathy when his boyfriend leaves him. Raab only lived to be three years older than Haarmann, ironically dying of AIDS-related illnesses. He'd had a full career as a screenwriter and actor, one of his last appearances was in Escape from Sobibor with Rutger Hauer.

I watched the Connoisseur Video VHS release from the UK (with a slight variation of the English title), which has good subtitles and a 1.66 widescreen aspect. The Anchor Bay release DVD is still available in the US.

R.I.P. John Barry (1933 - 2011)

Really wasn't expecting to have to say goodbye to John Barry so soon. He composed some of the most beautiful and the most exciting movie music I've ever heard, first impressing with me with his extraordinary scores for the Bond films I saw as a child in the sixties. There are more of his albums than any other artist in my collection, soundtracks or otherwise.

I'd like to spend some time and care preparing a proper tribute. But for now I need a little time to mourn the man who wrote the background music to The Black Hole.

THE BRIDGE (2006) - suicide is painful

THE BRIDGE
(2006, UK/USA)

The Bridge begins with an extended montage of scenic views of San Francisco's beautiful Golden Gate bridge and the people who enjoy it. Driving over, walking over, sailing under or just enjoying the view. But then one of these 'scenic views' captures someone ending their life. And one of the many people walking across stops, gets over the railing and jumps. After that, it's compelling to watch and listen very intently, horrified by what might happen, while listening to the possible reasons that these people ended it all.

Certainly not a subject for everyone to want to watch, but an insightful, fascinating, carefully structured and tense documentary.

Director Eric Steel filmed the bridge for a year, shooting with long lenses from up to a mile away. He, like the bridge authorities, were on the lookout for potential suicides, preventing them whenever there was enough time. But as you see in the film, it can only take a few seconds to get over the barrier and over the edge.

The film recounts stories from the two dozen fatal leaps that happened over the year. It struggles with the reasons that people pick the bridge, especially when the 25-storey drop into the water isn't a surefire or painless way to die. One of the 'jumpers' even survives. His interview providing insight into what makes anyone contemplate and attempt what should have been suicide.


Families, friends and passers-by can only guess what finally pushed these souls to climb over the edge, describing how there can be few warning signs from even the most desperate. But with each new story, you never know which of the many possible outcomes it'll lead to.

Afterwards, I remembered one of the most famous San Francisco movies, Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), had a suicide scene by the bridge. But that was a thriller, a dark fantasy. I'd never considered this wonder of the modern world to be a real suicide spot.


While the startling footage of actual suicides is the kind of mondo video clip that's specifically hunted down online, this film is very different because it provides so much context. Backstory, aftermath and implication. This is all provided from interviews, and not dictated through captions or voiceovers.

The Bridge is a valuable and astonishing film for talking at length about suicide and the widespread problem of serious mental illness.

The original 2003 New Yorker article 'Jumpers' is here.

THE GREEN SLIME... finally on widescreen DVD!

THE GREEN SLIME
(1968, Japan/USA/Australia)

Greeeen Sliiiiiiiiime!

There was something of a geek-frenzy when this debuted on DVD last year, so I'm sure you know about this already. But I couldn't not have Green Slime somewhere on these pages.

A one-eyed, tentacled monstrosity unafraid of a spaceman's raygun. Even as a black and white photo in A Pictorial History of Horror Movies, this was already one of my favourite movie monsters. But it was twenty years before I saw it in action on a Turner movie channel. It's been another fifteen years before this widescreen DVD release from Warner Archive. I think they've been surprised at quite how popular the response has been to this nutty monster movie, proving there's gold in them thar archives...


The story predates several familiar sci-fi action films. A space probe lands on a distant asteroid and unwittingly picks up a parasite that multiplies tribble-like when the probe docks in Earth orbit with a military space station, (the flimsy-looking Gamma 3). As the aliens' number increases, the space soldiers have to fight this bizarre deadly menace both inside and outside the satellite station...


The Green Slime begins by scampering through the plot of Armageddon (1998) in under thirty minutes - with a desperate mission to save Earth by landing on the asteroid to plant explosives.


The story then morphs into Alien as one of the demolition crew unwittingly picks up a strange slimy lifeform. It then shifts into Aliens as the soldiers have to tackle the multiplying threat in their orbiting base.


Originally an adult-only 'X' certificate in the UK, there's little here that would scare the average Doctor Who fan, but its generous with bloody make-up jobs and close-up electrocutions. It's the super-serious acting when faced with rubber monsters and furious pacing helps make this so enjoyable.


The aliens' blood is dangerous, as are their electric tentacles, but these monsters often look far less threatening than their publicity photos as they casually stomp around.


The tempo of the soundtrack rarely accelerates beyond weird space atmospherics - a fast-paced action theme would really have helped the frantic (and bizarre) outer space battle. The most memorable music is of course the blistering acid rock theme, belting out the immortal chorus "Greeeeeen Sliiiiiime".


This was an unusual Japanese/American hybrid production, with a solely western cast (the only Japanese actors are inside the monster suits). Richard Jaeckel (Grizzly) and Robert Horton are a treat to watch, butting heads over Luciana Paluzzi (Thunderball) who has little to do besides add a ton of glamour. While Jaeckal adds gutsy realism to his heroics, Robert Horton plays an incredibly bullish commander, consistently and unpleasantly pulling rank.


With no Japanese actors, and substandard model work (the space rockets, satellites and launchpad all look tiny), there's really little to betray that this was filmed in Japan. Made by Toei Studios, the director was no less than the Kinji Fukasaku - the genius who gave us Battle Royale (2000).


The Green Slime has been available widescreen on laserdisc and DVD in Japan, but the Japanese version was 15 minutes shorter than the US, Japan opting to prune back the dialogue scenes to keep the action moving. Added to this, the Japanese home video releases didn't have English subtitles or language tracks, despite totally being filmed in English.

Released at the end of 2010, the new Warner Archive DVD (pictured at the top) is special for being digitally remastered, and for making the 2.35 widescreen of the US cut finally available. For years, The Green Slime has been seen on TV (and VHS) as a cramped 1.33 pan-and-scan version, making the space battle climax a confusing mess. Well, even more of a confusing mess.

I'm still a little nervous about shelling out full price for a DVD-R. Hopefully Warner Archive's best-sellers will eventually get normal factory-pressed DVD releases. Maybe even special editions? But for now, I'm just thankful it's been remastered, and I had the chance to see it properly.

If the trailer doesn't make you want to see it, you're already slimed...

Three flies in wide aspect - CURSE OF, RETURN OF, THE FLY (1958)

A very watchable trilogy, the first three films of The Fly...

David Cronenberg's infamous 'body horror' The Fly inspired vomiting over your food and a sequel, The Fly II. They revolve around unlucky experiments with a teleportation device. Like any brand new scientific device in a horror film, there are only the worst possible results. Especially when two lifeforms are accidentally transmitted together, and merge...


Nearly thirty years earlier, the original film spawned two sequels. All of them released before the Star Trek crew started their own catalogue of transporter malfunctions.

THE FLY
(1958, USA)

The Fly wasn't the first ever tale of teleportation, but it certainly brought the concept into the public's imagination, first as a short story, then as a hit film starring Vincent Price. Famous for a grisly opening sequence, where a woman squashes her husband in a mechanical press. The mystery being, why she did it twice...

The brother of the dead scientist tries to find out why she would kill, and if she should be executed for murder. As her story unfolds, it could be that she's completely mad. She claims Delambre was experimenting with a matter transmitter in the basement. Starting with crockery and family pets, he decided to test the machine on a human subject. If only there hadn't been a fly in the laboratory that day...

Filmed in vivid Technicolor (especially effective for gratuitous blood smears and the purple neon equipment in the lab) and 2.35 Cinemascope, both unusual for 1950s' sci-fi, this is a mad treat from over fifty years ago.

Strangely, Vincent doesn't play the mad scientist, instead it's the role of sympathetic detective. This was just before his image was totally synonymous with horror and villainy in a stream of William Castle and Roger Corman horror films. Price often told the tale about how he and Herbert Marshall had immense trouble taking the film's closing scene seriously. Horror with a Mickey Mouse voice...

David Hedison is the scientist, also making a creditable romantic lead. But despite an action role in The Lost World (1960) remake, he found lasting fame through TV, as Captain Crane in four years of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He was also the first actor to play James Bond's American contact, Felix Leiter, more than once (in Live and Let Die and Licence to Kill).

RETURN OF THE FLY
(1959, USA)

Again in 2.35 widescreen but not in colour, the sombre grey palette adds to the depressive and more violent atmosphere of this sequel. Thankfully, Vincent Price is back, the only original cast member to return.


Return of the Fly begins with a dirty Alien 3 trick, killing off a likeable character that survived the previous film. Downer. It's 15 years later and Delambre's son is continuing his experiments to commemorate his father's work. Understandably, he's still very nervous about flies, an obsession that will threaten his life when an industrial spy wants to steal the discovery.


The sequel delivers more of the same head-swapping thrills, but adds new twists and new animals. There's more of the fly monster, now with an impressively larger head, but there's little life in the mask. Gone are the twitchy mouth and nervously darting head moves. It looks fantastic in publicity photos though.


The memorable moments of the original are replaced by a higher body count, and it's fun to watch new ways that matter transmission can go horribly wrong. Some of the optical work used to create new 'hybrid' visual effects is both simplistic and utterly bizarre.

CURSE OF THE FLY
(1965, UK)

Shot in Britain, the second sequel adds three more mad scientists to the Delambre family. Again it's 2.35 widescreen and black and white, and the experiments are going more and more wrong.

Curse also belongs to the genre of 'the heroine is recovering from a nervous breakdown in a creepy house where everyone is lying to her'. Patricia (Carole Gray) breaks out of an asylum, in her underwear, in slow motion. Subtle. As bad luck would have it, she runs into a handsome young Delambre (George Baker) who marries her and takes her back to his large creepy house. There he tries to keep her from discovering his work, as he experiments in transmitting people long-distance between Canada and England. But she has secrets of her own...

As Patricia sneaks around the old creepy house, she discovers the depths that scientists will sink to in order to succeed. The proof lies out back, behind four doors. Four experiments that went very wrong...

While there are no weird animal hybrids in this instalment, flies included, the teleporter has a new slew of nasty side-effects. One disaster is almost Cronenbergian, and a close-up of that monstrosity has noticeably been removed from this British print (on the UK release DVD).

There's a meandering and confusing start, in a Canada that looks like West London, with Canadians that sound like Brits, and a Delambre family tree that doesn't quite hook up to the previous stories.

While the plot is scatty, the special make-up work is effective, mostly variations of melted flesh. Brian Donlevy gives a remarkable performance as a bullying, headstrong inventor, intent on results at absolutely any cost. Remarkable partly because he slurs his lines and staggers about, almost certainly drunk on duty. Donlevy was in a far better state as the first movie Quatermass in Hammer Film's first two film adaptions.

Playing his son is a young George Baker, who later had a key part in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) in which he dubbed George Lazenby's voice as he impersonated a very English heraldry expert to infiltrate Blofeld's mountaintop lair. Despite a dodgy North American accent, Baker continually makes his character sympathetic, despite the most outrageous lies to his new bride, and his dedication to bad science. The Delambres' crimes against humanity are some of the worst I've seen since Frankenstein did volunteer work in a hospital...

As his new wife, Carole Gray has the hardest job, being scared, naive and confused for most of the story. Her acting career was very short, despite her skill and tremendous appeal. She appears here between The Young Ones opposite Cliff Richard, and Island of Terror opposite Edward Judd and bone-sucking silicate monsters. I can't honestly decide which is the more terrifying.

I watched the US region 1 double-bill DVD of The Fly and Return of the Fly. Both widescreen transfers are anamorphic 2.35 widescreen and it includes both trailers.

Curse of the Fly was first released on DVD in the UK in 2006, as a bare bones' edition without even a trailer. But it was the DVD debut for the film in widescreen.

The latest release in the US has all three films as 'The Fly Collection', which adds a commentary track from David Hedison to the first film, and an extra DVD of documentary material. Full details and great screengrabs here at DVD Beaver.

A new way to watch new Japanese horror films

I like to plug movies rather than companies, but this brand new label is specialising in recent Japanese cinema, including horror films. I'm still a big fan of J-horror and it was always frustrating to hear about new films coming out in Japan, only to have to wait four or five years for a US or UK distributor to release it on DVD with the all-important English subtitles.

Japan Flix have the potential to be faster in making translated J-horror films available, and have some from 2009. Their label may also signpost the future of home viewing - the films will initially only be available to either watch online, or buy from iTunes in HD. An American firm, they hope to expand into the UK.


What immediately caught my eye was the debut of the latest in the Tomie series, Tomie vs Tomie (reviewed here) (made in 2007, also called Tomie x Tomie) which hasn't been available in the US before. It's on Japan flix here. While low-budget, it's one of the better sequels. It's not good news that Robogeisha director Noboru Iguchi is hoping to make the next Tomie instalment.




Japan Flix also have two new horror films directed by Koji Shiraishi, who last year caused controversy when his extreme Grotesque was banned in the UK. When usually his horror films are the typically spooky Ring-like urban legends, like Noroi: The Curse and Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman (reviewed here).


In the same vein are his two Teke Teke films, both available with Japan Flix. Shiraishi playing it safe with schoolgirls, urban legends, and a shot-on-video Tomie/Grudge vibe. The creepy killer creature scuttling around in the dark is effective, but the witless Scooby duo on its trail (above) make the detective work hard-going, even for a short film. Japan may still have a hundred urban legends, but it may have run out of inventive ones.


This tale is bloodier than most, the creature enjoys cutting its victims in half. I'm still interested in where the story goes next in Teke Teke 2.

Trailers for all their films are on the Japan Flix website.