BLACK TIGHT KILLERS

1966/Director: Yasuharu Hasebe/Writers: Ryuzo Nakanishi, Michio Tsuzuki

Cast: Akira Kobayashi, Akemi Kita, Mieko Nishio, Bokuzen Hidari, Eiji Go, Toshizô Kudô, Chieko Matsubara, Hiroshi Nihon’yanagi, Kaku Takashina

AKA: Don’t Touch Me I’m Dangerous, Ore Ni Sawaru To Abunaize

Recently got in two films by Japanese director Yasuharu Hasebe. I watched Black Tight Killers first and later skimmed over Assault! Jack the Ripper! to just check the quality -if it is bad then I have to find another rip somewhere- and was fairly stunned at how different the two films were. Not only in style but content matter as well. Surely Black Tight Killers falls more into the category of films I prefer more and that is not to say the more graphic content matter of Assault! offended me in some way. It did not. But I am talking here of film style and presentation. A review of Assault! Jack the Ripper! will be made after I have watched all of the film but just from the few moments I watched I can tell it is more in the syle of the Pinky Violence films of the seventies -which along with the softcore Roman Porno films is what Nikkatsu wound up making almsot exclusively by the end of the 70′s- while Black Tight Killers is a stylized Nikkatsu Studios Yakuza type film which is paying homage in many scenes to the James Bond films of the time. Some of the scenes are similar to what Seijun Suzuki –for whom Hasebe worked as assistant director for eight years- was doing at the time though Suzuki seemed to prefer luscious  b/w for his noir/gangster films. I do have some earlier Seijun Suzuki films that are in color but, to be honest, have not got around to watching them though what I have seen of them look marvelous. Anyway for Black Tight Killer Yasharu Hasebe chose not only to work in color but in a bright and lurid style of color that is reminiscent of some of Mario Bava’s work during the 60’s. Black Tight Killers has been compared to Bava’s 1968 Danger Diabolik and not without good reason though Black Tight Killer’s predates Danger Diabolik by a couple years so it could hardly have been influenced by Bava’s film. Both films have a comic book feel to the look and feel. Both films are lit rather garishly to say the least and both seem to be inspired by the Sean Connery James Bond films as far as the use of life saving secrets gadgets go. Of course Danger Diabolik was actually based a comic book character. I have actually read a couple reviews that said the lighting and photography of Black Tight Killers is horrible and I am at a complete lose as to what the hell these folks are talking about. And before moving on another element of the film that reminds me of Bava’s superb work of the 60’s is Hasebe’s use of how to stage and frame a shot. The technical word is mise-en-scène and there is some dispute over what the term actually refers to. I tend to keep things simple and define at as the total visual aspects of a scene. This includes the lighting and all props and placements of the objects in the scene. Bava –as an art director and cinematographer himself- understood this in his early films. I have only seen one complete Hasebe film –but have other lined up for downloading soon- and am not qualified to comment on those films at the moment but I can say I love the visual style of Black Tight Killers.

Before going into the film and bombarding my readers with spoilers out the wazhoo I want to mention it stars leading man Akira Kobayashi whose charisma, acting ability and dashing good looks holds the film’s story together during some pretty weak moments. As I mentioned a couple posts back when I posted a video of the groovy title sequence Kobayashi sang the theme song as well. I want to find some of the Wandering Guitarist and Rambler series of films where he plays, I guess, a wandering/rambling guy with a guitar and gets into all sorts of adventures. In fact the title song for Black Tight Killers translates as Don’t Cry Drifter and must be some reference to these earlier films since his gainfully employed photo-journalist character Daisuke Hondo in Black Tight Killers hardly seems like a rambling drifter to me. But Kobayashi adds a James Bond type of flair to the character that he plays straight and serious to good effect for the most part. Now the film does have a few problems in the story department but much of it is done tongue in cheek –I hope- and so it never really falls apart the way films that take themselves too seriously do when things begin to get confusing or absurd.

The story follows photographer Hondo on his return to Tokyo from Vietnam where he worked as a war photographer. On the plane he falls for stewardess Yoriko (Chieko Matsubara – who had previously played along Kobayashi in three Seijun Suzuki films making them somewhta of a team by this time) and pursues her in the why men always pursued women in films from the 60’s which amounts to nothing short of felony stalking these days. He refuses to take no for an answer as far as dinner goes –and women in these older flicks love it when a guy makes all their decisions for them and never hear the word no- and later they are in a ritzy night club. Hondo is soon dancing with Yoriko and compliments on her on how well she holds her liquor. Men in these old movies like women who have drinking problems it seems. The evening takes a turn for the sinister when Yoriko runs from the restaurant in fear that she is being followed. Hiondo chases her outside and soon finds himself in the midst of a violent confrontation between black leather clad females and what appears to gangsters. They appear to be gangsters because they dress well but look ugly and make scowling facial expressions all the time. The girls kill the man by stabbing him in the back and then setting up Hondo for the crime after they have thrown some hi-tech spy weaponry his way. And that would be bubble gum in his eyes. The plot suddenly gets rather convoluted and best to just go along for the ride rather than try to figure it all out. His American friend Lopez –who is totally white and not Hispanic- helps to bail him out of the frame-up using his perfect Japanese. In fact there are lots of big Americans in the film and they all seem to be in league with the Yakuza or up to no good. I have read that Hasebe seems to take an unkind look at the American occupiers of Japan in many of his films and the negative effects they had on Japanese culture. Hey but they should have thought of that before they began WWII right! And the sexily clad Black Tight Killers are in the middle of it all. They are a group of go-go dancers from Okinawa who have come looking for the same thing the Yakuza are looking for; information leading to a fortune in gold that Yoriko’s uncles knows the location of. But he was killed in the war and left a clue somewhere to be found and figured out. It becomes a race between the Black Tight Killers and the Yakuza to get their hands on Yorika and find the location of the gold that she has no clue about. In the middle of all this Hondo is trying to pursue a relationship with Yoriko who constantly being kidnapped and re-kidnapped. While, he is serious about Yoriko –telling a friend that she is special and that she may be the one- this does not stop him from doing the dirty with one of the Black Tight Killers… and hell, who can blame him. Although the seduction is actually a trap set by one of the girls so she wrap her thighs around him and lock him into place while pinching s pressure point on his neck to get information out of him. But it still looks fun.

And now some word about the Black tight Killers themselves. Some reference is made by someone where in the film that they must be ninja trained. And that may well be though we never find out for sure. Not only can they adroitly use the traditional ninja weapon of bubble gum to blind an adversary but they are equally skilled in slinging vinyl records as shurikens and ordinary tape measures become a lethal tool in their capable hands. They are also able to hit exploding golf balls that do not explode when struck byt golf clubs when when they impact with office doors. But one big problem with the lovely gals is that after they ruthlessly stab one guy in the back with a switchblade they suddenly start dying off with relative ease at the hands of the Yakuza. One by one they die off and for the most part in the arms of Hondo where they exchange some sweet words before the heroine succumbs. After a couple die Hondo mutters how she was a “nice girl”. What? Nice girls? They just stabbed a Yakuza in the back earlier over gold. The death scenes are a trifle corny to say the least in particular one scene where a girl is shot in the back and falls over a stair railing several floors high. She lands with a splat but manages enough life to not only say some sweet words to Hondo but to appropriately cover her nipples with cupped hands before she dies. Now that is Japanese modesty at it best. another problem I had with the Black Tight Killers is that I got confused as to which girl was which most of the time. In fact this might not sound PC but I bet I am not the only one out there who has this problem at times. In most Asian pictures I have a hard time telling one character from another. Unless the character stands out like Akiro Kobayashi does I start getting bewildered as to who is now talking to who and especially with female character who all dress the same and have the same hairstyle. And I want to tell you something, I live in China and I know for a fact that Chinese people have the same problems! They often cannot tell one female character from the other themselves especially when it comes to the newer, mainstream films where all the ‘good’ females have the same sort of overly innocent, doe-eyed look anymore. Women do not have to look like a manga cartoon character okay. But I degress and this post is not really about newer Asian cinema which I rarely enjoy the way I do the stuff from the 50′s to the 70′s. And one more issue; the subs for this film do not make solving these problems -like who the hell is who- any easier. While readable in most areas they are white and, as I understand it, burned into the original print.  Meaning they can never be edited. So when the background is white you simply cannot read the subs. But I tend to not worry too much about these trifles in a film like this and some consternation is part of the package.

The film, as I said, seems to be paying homage to the James Bond films of the time and one scene in particular seems lifted right out of 1964’s Goldfinger. In the memorable scene from the opening of Goldfinger Jill Masterton (played by Shirley Eaton) is spray painted gold and dies from suffocation as her skin pores are all closed up. Does seem like this is a bit of a scientific error and people would die of suffocation so long as they could still breathe through their nose and mouth but they could die of  excessive heat exhaustion from not being able to sweat any longer, though it would take a couple days perhaps for this to happen. In any case it is a neat idea for a spy film and it is recreated in Black Tight Killers when the Yakuza begin to spray paint Yoriko unless she gives them the information they seek. The deal is she still has on her bikini top and bottom so she would hardly be covered head to toe in spray paint. But the scene and the following conflict with what’s left of the Black Tight girls and the Yakuza mobsters is another vehicle for Hasebe to go a little crazy with the lights, colors and camera work. In one part a ganster is in front of cans of paint that spew forth bright primary colors of blue and red when bullets hit them. Yoriko’s body is covered in paint but she is placed in front of a wall of multi-colored hues that was used for testing spray paint. The fight sequence is exceptional, as are most in the film, and the image of Hondo walking around with a spray gun as flame thrower is as powerful as any image of a  gunfighter in a Sergio Leone film.

The film ends up with all the Black Tight Killers dead as far as I can tell and the white guys being the real bad guys. If we can learn any lesson from the film –as Hondo certainly did- it is do not close your eyes for a girl when she asks to, especially when you just confessed to having slept with a slinky ninja femme fatale. Of course be sure to tell it was only one time. That way she only knocks out a few of your teeth. The film has me more than a little interested in  seeing more of Nikkatsu’s Yakuza Eiga (gangster films) from this time period, but I doubrt most will be as light hearted and fun as this one. It is a delight to watch scene to scene and it is not crucial to try and follow all the action and plot twists. I guess next I will be checking out Assualt! Jack the Ripper! but somehow I feel I will comparing it to this one, the way I compared Bava’s 70’s films like Shock to his 60’s masterpieces like Planet of the Vampires and Black Sabbath. I always get the feeling when I see these latter type films that it is a sign of a visionary losing creative control and power to the studio that needs to turn a profit. Hey, you gotta make a buck to survive, right? But I haven’t seen the film yet and will get back, eventually, after I do. For now I will savor the good taste left in my mouth by Black Tight Killers.

]]> http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2010/07/10/yasuharu-hasebes-1966-stylized-spy-thriller-black-tight-killers/feed/ 0 http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2010/04/03/female-trafficking-and-social-apathy-in-china-are-explored-in-li-yangs-harrowing-1997-film-blind-mountain-mang-shan/ http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2010/04/03/female-trafficking-and-social-apathy-in-china-are-explored-in-li-yangs-harrowing-1997-film-blind-mountain-mang-shan/#comments Sat, 03 Apr 2010 07:54:43 +0000 Uranium Willy http://uraniumcafe-the.com/?p=9469

At times the nation of China, where I have lived now for five years, seems to be nothing but a nation of impassioned bystanders. People who just do not want to be involved in other people’s matters. If it does not affect you or your family directly it is something to ignore or gaze upon, hands folded behind your back, in remote curiosity. There can be a sense of helplessness on the part of a person who in dire straits here. They can be not only over looked by their fellow citizens but by the police, community leaders, doctors and most certainly by strangers who seem to see others only as opportunities. If you serve no purpose for them such as some quick money) they will not waste any time on you. This not a statement about 100% of the population of course. But in Li Yangs second film, Blind Mountain, one of the recurring themes is the indifference of just about everybody involved in the plight of college girl Bai Xue Mei who is kidnapped then illegally sold as a wife and baby machine to a villager and his family living in the remote mountains of Sha’anxi Province. Many people in the story could have rescued her if they simply did something.

Li Yang is like Ye Che’s Diao Yinan and is one of the new 6th Generation of Chinese film directors. Their films are less polished and extravagant than the directors before them like Zhang Yimou. Working with smaller budgets and often funded from outside China their films push the strict censor boards and sometimes do not even play on the mainland. Blind Mountain was released the same year as Night Train (Ye Che) and played along side at certain foreign film festivals such as the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. While visually the country sides of Blind Mountain are more beautiful to behold than the gray, industrial skylines of Ye Che the story itself is as, or more, bleak and painful to experience than Ye Che. In rural villages in China preference is given to male children for all the reasons one would expect in a farming based culture. Female babies are commonly murdered after birth (with legal impunity for the most part). People here usually do not have recourse to such things as sonograms and if they did the daughters would no doubt be aborted before birth. As it is they are discarded, as the film depicts, like garbage later and the couple gets back to work on trying to bare a boy immediately. A disproportionate number of males therefore exist in rural communities where education is none existent and thinking is backwards. The idea of buying a wife, like people have done for centuries, seems the most natural thing to the families in these isolated communities. Now this is not always a legal issue and some rural women are sold by their parents longing to get rid of the burden of a daughter to families to want to get their sons to breeding a new generation of boys. Some rural women see this as what a woman has done to her in life. There are no other options. And while buying wives is illegal in China it is another matter to try and enforce these laws as the film makes clear.

Now what also happens in China with less frequency but causes a little more of a stir is the abduction of city bred and college educated girls. That’s is the basis for the film’s story and had Bai Xue Mei (played perfectly by Beijing actress Huang Lu) been a farm girl from the start there would have been no story here since the practice is still common in the country side where women are less than second class citizens. College student Xue Mei is duped by new friend’s into thinking she can make some quick money by picking herbs in the mountains. She can help pay some of her family’s debt and assist with her brother’s tuition. She soon wakes from being drugged to find she has been sold to a village family as wife of the son. It all seems like a joke or dream but too soon she realizes how serious her situation is as she is beaten and raped and forced into daily labor. The village is located high in the mountains with only one way in or out. She is more educated than even the local school teacher considers the villagers nothing more than animals and she will do anything to escape. She develops a relationship withe the sensitive school teacher who promises her a way out someday if she can just hold on. While the man’s promises seem sinecere they come to nothing in the end except more misery. But the village men, who all have wives who have been abducted and sold to them, are used to wives trying to run away and the community, men and women, work together to keep the women in the village. The other wives have resigned themselves to their fates and seek to end the constant beating they once received but Xue Mei is determined to escape. But her every attempt is painfully thwarted and everything that seems like an opportunity becomes yet another exercise in desperation and futility. As her attempts at freedom progresses one witnesses the lack of concern on the part of everyone in the community and even in the large town she, at one point, manages to reach. The mailman. The police. The village leaders. Van drivers. Bus drivers. All seem unconcerned with the plight of the screaming kicking woman. Once it is stated ‘she is my wife and she is crazy’ all interest is dropped and the husband is even advised by tax collectors visiting the village to beat her more to keep her quiet. A police tell the men who have yet again caught her to move her along and to stop blocking traffic in the street.

Xue Mei’s situation is worse than the depressed court bailiff Wu Hong Yan in Ye Che. Hong Yan resigns herself to a life that is bleak and pointless but she somehow finds some reason and hope to face each day. Xue Mei’s lives only to escape and soon realizes how futile the situation is when even the police for the neighboring city cannot protect her against the barbaric villagers who have no respect or concern for modern laws. Even when she finally gives birth to a baby, to a boy thankfully, she learns to love the baby but soon she sees that the family stands between her and the child the way they stand between her and her freedom. I do not want to spilt the whole film or the ending but I will say that the film had to have an alternate and more upbeat ending in order to receive some limited showings on the mainland. Li Yang uses only a couple professional actors, like Huang Lu, and relies on locals to play the parts of the villagers and the result is amazing. Huang Lu delivers a performance that one would not really see from Zhang Ziyi or Gong Li in a Zhang Yimou film. Zhang Ziyi played as lightly similar character in the early, and wonderful, Zhang Yimou film Not One Less. But the direction, story and acting in Blind Mountain is tough and brutal in a way that Zhang Yimou never came close to in his finely crafted and safer films. I will tell you that Ye Che is a tough film to watch to the end Blind Mountain makes it look like The Wizard of Oz. Blind Mountain is an indictment by another gifted 6th Generation Director not only about the uneducated and barbaric ways of the rural peasantry but of the ineffectiveness of the government to address social problems and control its masses. A great movie but not for anyone who loves a Hollywood ending.

Was not able to get my screen capture software to work on this file but have resolved that fianlly by using some a new player. The above images are from the net and they look okay but I thought I would provide a small thumbnail gallery of new images even if it is a couple months late.

Ye Che (Night Train)

2007/Director: Yi Nan Diao/Writer: Yi Nan Diao
Cast: Rongcai Fu, Chao Ji, Dan Liu, Shudi Liu

In case you stumbled onto this site for the first or are a visitor who may not know it I live and work in China. I want to make that little information clear from the start since the film I am writing about in this post, 2007’s Ye Che (Night Train), is one of the more brutally accurate glimpses into life in modern China I have seen in a Chinese film since coming here. Most of the films being produced here are these atrociously boring historical epics that I cannot sit through. Those films seem to be trying to follow the path set by Li Ang’s great heroic epic Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon that won the 2003 best foreign film Oscar award. Almost everything coming out of the mainland now is some sort of epic set in the Tang or Qin dynasties and have a feel of the old Hong Kong ‘wu xi pian’ (basically kung fu films) that are not only safe as far as the Chinese censors go but might just, all the directors hope, win another Oscar. There are other films that come out of the mainland but I never really see any of them. Stupid comedies and propaganda films that show how evil the Japanese were and still are or how glorious was the founding of modern communist China back in the days of Mao Zi Dong and his little gang. Most of the new films from the mainland are lackluster and vapid. But that is not to say that there are not original and gifted film makers on the mainland whose visions run contrary to the efficient propaganda machine here. It just means their films are often financed and shown outside of the country and the versions shown here are censored and edited to death. As was the case with the Blind Mountain (Mang Shan), released the same year as Night Train. Blind Mountain tell the anguished story of a college girl in modern China who is drugged and kidnapped and held prisoner in a remote mountain village and forced to bear a child for a village man and his family. She is assaulted and beaten by the family and villagers routinely. It is a reality that this happens in modern 21^st century China still but that is not the type of film the government here want to promote. A review of Blind Mountain may be around the corner.

I had never even heard of Ye Che until I saw it listed on one of my weird bittorrent sites. My wife had never heard of it nor had any of my Chinese students. There is little information on the net about the film actually. The film was funded and promoted by French and American sources and played at 2007 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard Program section and lost out to Blind Mountain. It won various other awards in festivals in Buenos Aires and Warsaw, but the film is all but unknown here in the land it was filmed in. The movie is written, directed and produced by second time director Diao Yi Nan. It was shot around Baoji, the city he lives in his native Sha’anxi province. The film stars Liu Dan (who won best actress in the 2008 Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema) as the life weary court bailiff Wu Hong Yan. Among Hong Yan’s duties is the carrying out of executions of convicted females prisoners. In China arrests, trails, sentencings and executions normally take place in the space of about a week. We see the end result of a ‘trial’ of a young woman named Zhang Lingling who is convicted of voluntary manslaughter of a man who was forcing himself upon her sexually. For the crime of manslaughter she is sentenced to death. The judge shows disgust at her fainting spell and the man’s family assaults her on the staircase. Wu Hang Yan yawns in boredom during the court room proceedings. She later carries out her duty as executioner by a putting a single bullet into the back of the woman’s head. It seems Hong Yan really does like what she does and when she is not doing her dreary work she is looking for love at single’s dance halls and dating services. She only seems to meet psychos and scam artists. Her is a mundane and depressing routine and she seems to even envy her prostitute neighbor’s lifestyle in ways.

She becomes aware she is being followed by a man she does not know. She confronts the stranger in a tunnel and believes he is from the dating service. Nothing could be further from the truth. The man is Zhang Lingling’s broken brother (Wikipedia claims he is her husband but that is nto accurate I am certain) Li Jun. Li Jun has been transferred from his job in a metal factory to a sort or caretaker or watchman at a hydraulic plant on a river. His sister asked that her daughter be giving over to Jun Li for caring but the child’s father will have nothing to do with it. Jun Li is shattered and more than a little over the edge. Despite his lowly job and pay (about $25 a month) Wu Hong Yan becomes attracted to him and they initiate a sexual relationship. Some parts are reminiscent of Monster’s Ball as Hong Yan comes to realize who Jun Li really is and why he has been following her and yet she is so lost, lonely and guilt ridden in life she finds her options wanting.

The film is bleak and painful. It moves at a slow pace that may alient many viewers. But it may also draw in many others. It is shot sans a soundtrack and many of the shots linger on the blue and gray landscape of the industrial city the characters find themselves trapped in. The dialog is minimal and the characters are often immersed in a dark, depressing photography style. It gives a view into the lives of Chinese people that one will not see in the propaganda that Beijing wants the world to see. China is certainly a rising economic super power. It hosted and swept the 2008 Olympics and will host the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai this summer. A manned lunar landing is planned. And yet most of the people here are forgotten exist in isolated despair. It holds the morbid records of having both the country with the highest rate of female suicides as well as the only country in the world where the female suicide rate exceeds that of men.  The justice system is swift and brutal to people without money and connections. Judges typically lack college educations and in many cases people are sent to work camps straight from police stations, never to see the inside of a court room. The hopelessness of it all is shown in Liu Dan’s heartbreaking performance. I know that sounds cliché as hell but sometimes clichés are the only appropriate language to use. The final scene that involves a cart horse is gut-wrenching and many western viewers will be offended as it is all real. There should more films like this coming out of China and less historical dribble like this year’s Kong Zi and last year’s film about the Nanjing massacre. This movie is brilliant but excruciating. I cannot recommend you see this one enough. I am distressed there is so little information on the film on the net and I could not find a trailer even. I made up a clip myself and uploaded it to Viddler. The subs did not copy onto the clips of course and I do not know how to hardcode them, but I think the scenes explain themselves well enough.

CLIP OF SELECTED SCENES FROM YE CHE

TODAY’S SEXY ACTION PACKED ADVENTURES FROM NIPPON:

GIRL BOSS GUERILLA w/ CRIMINAL WOMAN-KILLING MELODY

GIRL BOSS GUERILLA

CRIMINAL WOMAN-KILLING MELODY

HORRORS OF MALFORMED MENK (Kyôfu Kikei Ningen)

1969/Director: Teruo Ishii/Writers: Teruo Ishii, Masahiro Kakefuda

Cast: Teruo Yoshida, Yukie Kagawa, Teruko Yumi, Mitsuko Aoi

I have been delving back into Japanese cinema of the 60’s and 70’s and focusing on the Pinky Violence variety as well as the b/w noir style films by people like Seijun Suzuki. I have a few films here by director Teru Iishi but had yet to get around to watching one all the way through. I mean I tend to skim over these things for quality assurance purposes before burning them a disk then deleting the files from my hard-drive. I think I have Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf, Female Yakuza Tale, Blind Woman’s curse and the focus of this review The Horrors of Malformed Men. I will have to confess something here. I often have no clue as to the history of many of these before I download or that the above films were even all by the same director until I began doing some research for this review. I may download a film simply because I like the title or the poster art and screen captures. I will skim over the review to get some idea of when it was made and what other work the director was involved with then decide whether to use up my bandwidth and hard-drive space with the download. Usually any Japanese film made from the late 50’t to mid 70’s has a better than 50/50 chance of getting downloaded in the first place. So when I saw the review snippets about the Horrors of Malformed Men and how it was banned in its own country for some forty years and never released on VHS I was thoroughly enticed.  My first thought was how freaky could the film be in order to be banned in Japan of all places. Well the lure of a film made in 1969 Japan being banned for so long is something I personally cannot resist but there is actually a slight catch to the banned aspect of this film.

The film was indeed banned for some four decades but the ban was self-imposed by Toei Studios themselves and the controversy, if there ever was one, was centered around the use of the term ‘deformed’ or ‘malformed’ in the title and that the film displayed deformed people at a time the issue was sensitive in Japan. This sensitivity seemed to have something to do with the issue of radiation deformities following the destruction of the cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII. Now it seems the film’s notoriety of being banned for so long has led to the idea that what is contained in the movies is some of the most shocking sights one has ever seen in a Japanese film. And while there are some pretty freaky scenes in the movie they, of course, pale in comparison to the over the top shock cinema coming out of Japan these days. But for the time the material is still a bit outlandish and deals with pretty taboo subject matter like incest. Of course some of the scenes may actually be a bit too much for some viewers even though it was filmed in 1969 and I am saying it is not that bad while I have seen films that have literally warped my brain beyond repair. Sometimes more than once even.

The story is taken from some short stories by mystery writer Edogawa Rampo (a pen name derived from the Japanese pronunciation of Edgar Allen Poe) and from his 1932 novel The Strange Tale of panorama Island. The film is a mystery story actually and tries at times hard to be a whodunit.  Actually the film suffers from this and the ending really messed up an otherwise great piece of artsy Japanese cinema when a minor character in the film shows up and reveals he is in fact an undercover police detective. He then unravels the series of events and clues that led him to his final conclusions in a typical detective film fashion. All the main characters gathered together in the parlor (okay, in this case they are all in a cave full of flesh eating crabs but it is sort of the same thing)  and the brilliant detective unfurls his narrative much to the shock and awe of all present. The only problem is you are thinking to yourself “who the hell is this guy!” Other than that irritating flaw and the other corny aspect of the ending I will discuss later this is in fact a pretty good film. It is well shot and the colors are lush and vibrant in each scene. The acting is good and the score is very effective. As one reviewer observed the film has the surrealist film making elements of people like Alejandro Jodorowsky and the film’s dream like quality may not appeal to everybody. So what is the big mystery then that unravels in the cave at the film’s end?

Well I must remind you that much of the story is a little hard to follow at times and one is strung along at best in many instances and if do not enjoy this sort of thing it may be tough to keep your attention focused. I had a hard time but often settled for the brilliant and haunting images and figured the film would maybe make sense at the end. Well, it made less sense by the end but the movies opens up with a man named Hitomi a patient in a strange asylum where women danced around drugged and naked and bald men stare at him from a distance and plot his murder. Hitomi has no idea why he in the institution and all he has are a couple jumbled memories in his head: a recurring scene on a beach with a wild haired man with strange fingers and a lullaby melody. Hitomi is forced into a situation where he kills the creepy bald guy in self defense and somehow manages to escape from the asylum and is soon seeking information on his own past and who he really is. He meets a young girl who performs at a circus where Hitomi seems to have picked up and odd job. She is able to identify the lullaby but before she can provide him with more information a knife is thrown in her back. You know, right as she about to utter the first syllable of the secret he needs to hear. And then to make matters worse Hitmoi decideds to pull the knife out and then everyone happens upon the scene and believes he murdered the girl. Man, I hate when that happens.

While traveling incognito (wearing an eye patch) Hitomi happens to notice a newspaper headline about the passing away of the head of the powerful Komoda family. He is startled to see the picture of the man who is his dead ringer. His curiosity is piqued and he heads to the coastal area where the family’s business empire is situated. Further coincidences fall into play when a birth mark on his foot, he discovers from an old masseuse, is identical to one on the now dead Genzaburou’s foot. The birthmark is in the shape of a swastikia but the image does not have the same evil connotations in the Orient as it does in post the post Nazi Germany west. The story is situated time wise before the war during the 1920’s I believe. Well, with all these events piling up and the fact that the family house is within walking distance of Hitomi now he does the most logical thing a person in his situation can do; he sneaks in the cemetery where Genzaboru is buried and takes his body from the grave and hurls it into the sea with a suicide note and then returns to the grave and assumes the identity of the head of the Komoda family. It is a little shaky a first but soon everyone accepts the fact that a mistake was made and Genzaboru was mistakenly buried for dead. There are various levels of intrigue in the Komoda household as Kitomi gets closer and closer to the secrets of his true identity. Poisonings and strange deformed men groping bathing servant girls top the list. Soon Kitomi begins to realize that the answer to his mysteries must lie on the island where Genzaboru’s father Jogoro lives in self-imposed exile conducting unknown experiments. The experiments are basically the delusions of a madman who is transforming normal people into malformed mutants. Seems he has long been bitter because of his own congenitally deformed hands and now wants to make a sort of master race of deformed men who will, I gather, rule the world someday. Not only will they rule the world but they will have sex with all the normal beautiful girls out there. A demented but inspiring dream I must admit.

It is not far fetched to guess that Hitmoi is actually Genzaboru’s twim brother who was sent away as a young lad by Jogoro to study medicine so that later in life he could return home and help his dad create mutants. Hitmoi is having none of it. He is man of strong moral fiber. Of course he does not mind having an incestuous relationship with his sister who was only recently a male/female Siamese twin experiment but we all have our shortcomings don’t we. All these years Jogoro’s wife has been chained up in a damp cave eating crabs. Seems she had some hanky panky with a man with normal hands and this really sent Jogoro further over the edge of sanity he had already slipped off. This is told in monochromatic flashback sequences. The films spirals out of control at the end when, as I mentioned earlier, a Charlie Chan type scene occurs where an uncover cop unravels all the truth as everyone stands around listening with mouths agape. I felt this was totally unnecessary. Further at the end we are treated to a type of theme I often see in Asian films. The evil Jorgoro suddenly breaks down in tears and confesses his love for his wife who he kept chained in a cave for a couple decades and forced into acts of cannibalism on her dead lover. She starts wailing and crying and then he is wailing and crying and the scene drags on way too long. I have seen this sort of ending too many times in Japanese films and Asian films in general. The bond of blood or love is deeper than the viscous and sadistic acts that severed the pair and it the end they cry and weep and say “I have always cared for you and loved you, forgive me for keeping you chained in dark isolation in a cave with live crabs as your only source of sustenance for twenty something years. I did it because I loved you”. With some response like “Sure, I understand. I always loved you too and forgive you”. Then there is some double suicide of Hitomi and his sister because society could never accept their deep, but forbidden, love. Hell, I think he only knew the girl for a week or so and half of that time she was co-joined mutant. Well, those little flaws only add to the film’s strangely grotesque appeal. The photography is wonderful and it is an early example of Japan extreme cinema by a director  who would serve as an inspiration for the much more extreme and shocking Japanese cinema that was to unleashed over the coming decades. The themes are dark and moody and the movie ends on a down note but the over all ride is enjoyable.

]]> http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2010/02/16/teru-ishiis-1969-banned-toei-classic-the-horrors-of-malformed-men-kyofu-kikei-ningen/feed/ 2 http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/10/07/bai-ling-assassinates-gene-hackers-in-the-gene-generation/ http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/10/07/bai-ling-assassinates-gene-hackers-in-the-gene-generation/#comments Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:34:43 +0000 Uranium Willy http://uraniumcafe-the.com/?p=6918

THE GENE GENERATION

2007/Director: Pearry Reginald Teo/Writers: Keith Collea, Pearry Reginald Teo

Cast: Ling Bai, Alec Newman, Parry Shen, Faye Dunaway, Ethan Cohn

The Gene Generation with Chinese actress Bai Ling (or Ling Bai as it sometimes appears if you put the family name first) is one of those films that definitely falls into the category of it ‘could have been better’. The movie is not a waste of time and as the Café has evolved from its early posts I have taken a rather neutral position on most of the films I write about and I do not feel I actually recommend or pan films. I will leave that up to the reader to decide. While I cannot say I liked The Gene Generation all that much it seems to earn a post here not so much for the erratic storyline and touch and go production quality of the film itself but for the presence of lanky and luscious Bai Ling. Before talking about, and hopefully defending, the sometimes (actually usually) maligned Bai Ling I think I will say a word about my blogging process and why sometimes it is a drawback for me.

One problem I have is that I watch simply more movies than I can do decent posts on. I am not the type of person who wants to review every movie  right after I watch it, like better reviewers do I suppose. I started the Necrofiles category which is a way to skim over four or so movies at a time with comments of a brief paragraph or two at most. I work as an ESL teacher in China and the job, as well as life here at times, is draining. I may have the time to write but not the mental energy. I think over the last year I have begun to develop a writing style I like a little. I like to create a post that draws information from different sources on the net, as well as my own personal opinion, and brings them together in one place with images I either find online or make myself in the form of vidcaps, some that are pretty decent. The first thing I do when I decide to write about a film is find articles I like and make them into PDFs for future reference, get cast and crew info from IMDB or a similar site and then start collecting images and then they are all brought together in a rough form and stored as a nearly complete draft that I may save for months sometimes before I get around to writing the article. I must have over a dozen drafts now that have are laid out with images and cast/crew info but no written article. During that time of course I am watching more movies of a Uranium nature as well as mainstream films and sometimes doing posts as well on something I just watched.

Now what is the point of all this. Well, I checked the draft date on The Gene Generation and the draft goes back to the middle of August. It’s been close to two months since I saw the film and to be honest I can’t really remember that much about it but I do know I have no desire to watch the film again to refresh my memory on the minutiae. One thing I remember distinctly is that I had a hard time following the film while I was watching it so I do not think it will help me much to skim back over the movie just to churn out a review. So as can often happen in a situation like this I must rely on my over all impressions of the films and information from the PDFs I made to give the reader some idea of what the movie may be about and they can decide whether or not to see the movie. My feelings about most all movies here at the Café is that they should be seen. I know my taste can be questionable at best but I am trying to promote or bring to public awareness films that are overlooked, forgotten or not well known for a variety of reasons, not the least being that they are simply bad movies. But does bad equate to unenjoyable? That is a question of a deep philosophical nature I may take up another day.

But one thing I remember is enjoying Bai Ling in the role of Michelle the assassin. She had the look the part needed and she did well with the action sequences. She conveyed all the necessary elements needed in a brooding, lethal femme fatale and at this point I will diverge once again to say I am a fan of Bai Ling as a personality while not a huge fan of her films roles in general. I liked her as the dirty talking peep show girl who helped to push William H. Macy further over the edge in Edmond and I have a copy of Shanghai Baby here somewhere but have yet to pop it in the player and watch it.  She seems to be most known for showing up at swanky parties and movie premiers with her humongous nipples hanging out of some selection from her gaudy wardrobe. She has dated or spent quality time with a mixed selection of Hollywood guys like Mickey Rourke, Ralph Fiennes and Lionel Ritchie. She draws scorn and ridicule from every direction but like the proverbial duck lets it all run off of her. She receives the most viscous vitriol from sores of nationalistic Chinese who see her has a near traitor for becoming an American citizen and living such an open hedonistic lifestyle in the west with no repercussions. The same scorn lately has been directed at Gong Li and Jet Li for becoming citizens of Singapore.

She is from Si Chuan province and lived in the fairly well developed city of Chengdu, which has a reputation for simply gorgeous and open women. I have been to Chengdu and did not notice any of the legendary women because I was dying from the area’s equally notorious heat. Chengdu is called, rightfully, one of the Four Furnaces of China. She is no doubt a wild party animal but if you peruse her blog, with the misleading title of Naked Seduction, she conveys a type of human insight, sensitivity and kindness you tend to find in many Chinese people and that is sorely lacking in many Western people these days. But that is way off topic. I do suggest you check out her blog which she writes herself and so there are certain grammar mistakes related to articles and prepositions common to people who think in Mandarin and then write in grammar rule laden English but I would give her an A+ in my class. She has led an exciting and sometimes tragic life (she was committed to a mental institution in China, which usually reeks of political dissent more than actual mental disorders here where psychology and psychiatry as a practices really do not exist) that makes her the type of person that gets promoted here at the Café.

The film is about what are known as gene hackers. In the post apocalyptic civilization we see in the film people with a certain type of DNA are allowed to live outside what are essentially ghettoes and the gene hackers steal the proper DNA sequence and sell it to people who want to escape the horror and drudgery of life in the dark and violent world they are trapped in. The film here resembles, in look and concept, some other films like Blade Runner, Gattaca and The Matrix. But of course those were all great movies and when you rip-off ideas and visual appearances from great movies you had better do a good job of your movie will simply look like a rip-off. I am not saying that The Gene Generation is a horrible rip-off but it suffers from trying too hard to look like something else than it is. One good example is the use of the hovering crafts over the city the way they hovered over future LA in Blade Runner, with the huge faces of Japanese women promoting products or services while Vangelis’s haunting soundtrack played in the background. In The Gene Generation we have basically the same thing. Huge dirigibles that resemble Chinese junks hover over the ghetto advertising some things or promoting propaganda. It looks sort of cool even given the low budget but it is too obvious that the idea came from Blade Runner and that is not really a bad thing.

There is a group of evil scientists who want to take a DNA device that can be used as a medical wonder tool and turn it into a weapon of some sort. The team is, or was led, by Dr. Hayden, who has had her DNA all scrambled up by the device is now hangs from the wall in a mass of slithering tentacles in a state of constant pain. Hayden is played by Faye Dunaway who appears as herself on screen for all of about five minutes. The one remaining by one of it inventors Christian (Alec Newman) who does not want the device used for evil ends. Of course Hayden and her equally evil associates want the device back and will stop at nothing to get it. Now as it so happens Christian’s next door neighbor happens to be Michelle (Bai Ling) who is a paid assassin who kills gene hackers. Little does she know that down the chain her employer actually happens to be one of the evil scientists looking for Christian and the DNA contraption.

Their paths cross when her sniveling weasel of a brother Jackie (Perry Shen) breaks into Christian’s apartment to steal things to pay off gambling debts to a loan shark who seems to have a perverse attraction to Jackie as well as an urge to kill him. The story really gets too convoluted here and that is where most of the problems arise. Too much time is spent on trying to get under the surface of the sibling discord and they both ask each the other ‘would mom and dad be proud of what you do’? Michelle is always bailing out Jackie but this time he has gone too far and the gangsters accept her paying off the debts but they have decided to do in the little smart ass anyway. Michelle gets all tangled up with Christian in more ways than one. And if I have to spell it out for you Bai Ling gets naked with him.

Some people criticize the action sequences but I thought they were pretty good. I may have some reservations about the over use of CGI blood spatter rather than good old fashioned real fake blood but that is where a lot of new films seem to be headed and in particular here in Asia. The film is working on a low budget and spotty script but young Asian director Pearry Reginald Teo handles things admirably and with a bigger budget and tighter script I think will turn out some good, gritty films in the future. The story is based on a comic book but I did not check into that too much. I just wish there had more action in this one and less brother/sister/family emotional struggle. Now living in Asia I know that that theme can be more important in films than in the West and we are even treated to a protracted and excruciating death scene that is really becoming cliché in Japanese, Korean and Hong Kong films. Probably in mainland Chinese films as well but I end to avoid movies made on the mainland because they are not watchable anymore to me. If Bai Ling had killed more bad guys and been naked more this would have been a pretty good movie. Sadly her skills wasted by trying to emote too much with her loser brother who we never come to like anyway. There are certainly moments in this film and I would not be adverse to a better budgeted sequel. The film has a following so who knows. I would only watch it however  if sultry and sassy Bai Ling returned as Michelle.

TRAILER FOR THE GENE GENERATION

]]> http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/10/07/bai-ling-assassinates-gene-hackers-in-the-gene-generation/feed/ 2 http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/09/19/shaw-brothers-horror-with-1976s-black-magic-ii-aka-revenge-of-the-zombies/ http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/09/19/shaw-brothers-horror-with-1976s-black-magic-ii-aka-revenge-of-the-zombies/#comments Sat, 19 Sep 2009 05:28:47 +0000 Uranium Willy http://uraniumcafe-the.com/?p=7108

REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES aka BLACK MAGIC II (Gou Hun Jiang Tou)

1976/ Director: Meng Hua Ho/Writer: Kuang Ni

Cast: Lo Lieh, Lung Ti, Ni Tien, Lily Li, Feng Lin, Wei Tu Lin, Terry Liu

AKA:
Bewitch Tame Head
Black Magic II
Ngau Wan Gong Tau

Shaw Brothers Studios leading horror/exploitation director Meng Hua Ho returns to the helm for this 1976 sequel to the previous year’s Black Magic. Also returning are veteran wuxia pian (‘heroic kung fu films’ usually with a wandering swordsman on a knight errant mission) actors Lo Lieh (sometimes Lieh Lo if you search using the Asian method of family names first) and Ti Lung with Lo Lieh serving this time as the black magician. While I have not yet been able to find of a copy the first Black Magic film I understand that Lo Lieh was not the black magician in that one and will reserve any comments on that film until I have actually seen it. While the two Black Magic films have the reputation as Shaw Brothers studio most famous horror films they were in no way the first as the studio had dabbled in non-Kung Fun genres as far back as the 50’s. The Hong Kong horror genres would evolve , after the 80’s, into the Category III variety (meaning sexually explicit but not quite hard core porn) and contain the sort of gory shock elements found in most modern Japanese horror. With Black Magic II (Revenge of the Zombies and Gou Hun Jiang Tou) there are more than enough elements visually and story wise to keep the film somewhat linked to the classic Shaw Brother’s films of the 60’s and early 70’s and yet has a few twists make it a little surprising as well.

The version I have, along with many of the Shaw Brothers film I have here, maybe a couple dozen or so, is not dubbed into English but was dubbed into Mandarin from Cantonese. I speak a little Mandarin and even learned some phrases from the movie but I will be honest when I say that I usually prefer these things to be dubbed into English. I know there are purists who cringe at the idea of a film being dubbed and in many ways I fell the same way. My problem is often with the subtitles themselves being too small, the phrases being too long and moving to quickly I am constantly replaying scenes to see what the hell the subs are saying. I would certainly prefer to see the film in Chinese language but I typically hate fighting the sub quality. Now that being said the version of Black Magic II I saw had readable subs over all. Reasonabley large font, short phrases that did not vanish off the screen before I could finish a sentence. Later the same night I tried to watch the Shaw Brothers kung fu film Winged Tiger and had to give up as the text was too small and scrolled along way too fast. Another thing is that I simply love the poorly dubbed dialog in most Asian B-movies. It is consistently priceless. I am posting a trailer to the film at the bottom of the article that is dubbed in English and it looks great and campy and I hope I can find this version online eventually. And lets be honest about this since my slight skill in Mandarin helped me to realize that the film was dubbed anyway from the southern style of Chinese spoken in the more liberal and creative Hong Kong to the standard Chinese of the mainland where films like this are just not made. Some people feel they cannot compromise on a film dubbed into English but probably, in general, wouldn’t know if it was dubbed from Mandarin to Japanese. In anycase this is a pretty good movie on one level but on another it is campy, chessy and corny fare and many people may be disappointed with it, but I loved it. Is that a recommendation or a warning?

The film starts off with a scene that looks like it is shot in a rural village that is situated on the banks of a muddy brown river. We are quickly treated to topless Chinese peasant girls frolicking in the murky water and just as quickly to one being eaten by a hungry crocodile. The village witch doctor soon catches the croc and kills it and fishes a trinket owned by the dead girl from its belly. Not really sure what this all has to do with the film as a whole except that it introduces the character of the witch doctor who I all but forgot about until he reappears at the end of the film for a few minutes. The action suddenly jumps to downtown Hong Kong and a disco where a man is fascinated with what appears to an alluring bargirl (euphemism for hooker in Asia) who vanishes with someone else. The girl turns out to be a zombie that is controlled by the black magician Cong Kang played by Lo Lieh. These are old school zombies in that they are the products of some sort of magic or voodoo ritual rather than some virus or military experiment. The zombies are usually under the control of some evil sorcerer as is the case here. The zombies are placed under his power when Cong Kang drives an incredibly long nail into the top of their skulls and then they shrivel up into a putrid pulp when he removes the nail later in the basement of his evil mansion. Not only does Cong Kang pimp out zombie girls but he runs a very profitable spell casting business. The rates start at about $5000 and this seems reasonable since each spell takes fives years off of his life, or so he claims. He maintains a ‘youthful’ (more like middle aged) appearance by drinking breast milk from young women who later give birth to deformed, freakish babies. The potion he gives the women contains the essential ingredient of some of the victim’s own hair, and I ain’t talking about head hair either. Seriously. In a really odd scene the guy trims some pubes off a girl, burns the wad a bit and then mixes it up in his concoction and then gives it back to the girl to drink.

Maybe I am getting ahead of myself here with spoilers. We are introduced to two couple who meet at the airport and while sharing a ride we learn the guys are both doctors but with different points of view concerning the powers of black magic. The more skeptical of the pair is played by kung fu star Ti Lung. He is the man of science and cannot his good friend, played by Wei Tu Lin (Cantonese Lam Wai-Tu), can seriously believe the local superstitions about many recent patients in the hospital being the victims of spells. The guys are married to hot looking 70’s style Hong Kong girls Ni Tien and Lily Li. Even though skeptical Ti Lung sees all sorts of freakish disorders with patients in the hospital he remains convinced it all has a logical explanation. While all of this is going on we go back to the man we saw in the disco at the beginning of the film who goes to Cong Kang with a picture of the girl he saw in the disco and tells the sorcerer he is in love with the girl and wants to meet her. Cong Kang takes his hefty fee and is soon banging a nail back into the head of the now rancid girl. She transforms back into the beauty the man lusts after and he soon is dropping his current date and heading off to a hotel room with the zombie girl. There while in the middle of passionate love making she sees the Buddha necklace the man wears and she turns back into a withered old woman. Cong Kang begins torturing a wax effigy of the man and he shortly falls to pieces on the sidewalk whilst a crowd looks on in horror.

Things get complicated (and confusing for me as sometimes I could not tell who was who as far as the females actresses went) as the two couples get pulled into Cong Kang’s diabolical activities after he puts a spell on Wei Tu Lin’s wife played by Lily Li and is soon snipping her pubic hair and sipping her breast milk to retain his youth (he claims to be eighty). Seems that, as luck would have it, the unfortunate couples are actually neighbors with Cong Kang. Small world indeed. Ti Lung says he will believe in black magic if Cong Kang can cast a love spell between Wei Tu Lin and Lung’s wife Ni Tian (or Tain Ni sometimes). Ti Ling is soon a believer after his wife and best friend are all but ripping each other’s clothes off and winking to each other while corny sound effects boing away in the background. The action picks up after Wei tun Lin and Lily Li dissolve in the park and Ti Lung heads to the evil mansion to free his wife from the dark spell Cong Kang has cast over her. He battles hordes of zombies who bounce up and down on trampolines. The old wizard from the beginning of the film appears long enough to have a magical duel with Cong Kang and get killed off but gives Ti Lung his eyeballs in one very memorable scene, instructing him to eat them so them will give him special sight. I would hope so. There is the obligatory fight scene between the kung fu stars on a cable car between and a final showdown in front of the wizard’s burning mansion where good triumphs over evil. I found the movie to be pretty fun and wished I had been able to get the English dubbed version so I could relax and veg out on it when I watched it at two in the morning but I like the way Mandarin sounds and am glad it was not in Cantonese at least. Samples from the disco bar scene were used in the song looking Down the Barrel of a Gun by The Beastie Boys.

TRAILER FOR BLACK MAGIC II

TODAY’S THRILLING TOHO FREATURE:

MATANGO-ATATCK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE

TODAY’S FEATURE: TOKYO GORE POLICE

(HORRIBLY DUBBED IN ENGLISH)

]]> http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/04/16/the-uranium-cafe-matinee-tokyo-gore-police-english-dub/feed/ 0 http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/01/07/eighteen-minutes-of-action-from-the-machine-girl/ http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/01/07/eighteen-minutes-of-action-from-the-machine-girl/#comments Wed, 07 Jan 2009 23:50:48 +0000 Uranium Willy http://uraniumcafe-the.com/?p=3308

HOMEMADE CLIP OF ACTION SCENES

FROM THE MACHINE GIRL

]]> http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/01/07/eighteen-minutes-of-action-from-the-machine-girl/feed/ 1