Privileged Biker Zombies – Psychomania

Psychomania (1973) isn’t like any other biker movie I’ve seen. The biker movie genre, in my mind, is quintessentially America, whether it be in youth exploitation movies about vicious cycle gangs such as Al Adamson’s Satan’s Sadists (1969), counter-cultural classics like Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969), or movies which straddle the divide such as Roger Corman’s The Wild Angels (1966). British biker movies are much less prevalent – the only examples I can think of are The Damned (1963), in which the bikers stumble into a military experiment, and Quadrophenia (1979), a period piece dramatising the conflict between the Mods and Rockers in 1964, loosely inspired by The Who’s 1973 rock opera concept album of the same name. But where the bikers of those two films are firmly rooted in a recognisable reality, the cycle gang in Psychomania is something else entirely.

We first meet our bikers in a striking opening sequence as they drive widdershins in slow motion around a stone circle in Avebury, shrouded by the early morning mist, accompanied by psych rock guitar. It’s a beautifully evocative sequence which stirs up decidedly mixed feelings in me as I feel very protective about the preservation of stone circles and can’t help but wonder about damage to the site… but it sure does look good. It doesn’t take very long after this for Tom (Nicky Henson), the leader of the gang (dramatically named The Living Dead), to take offence at a motorist who somehow failed to show proper respect and to drive him off the road with the eager assistance of red-leather-jacketed Jane (Ann Michelle). The only other female member of the gang is Tom’s girlfriend Abby (Mary Larkin), whose preference for blue corduroy over black leather marks her out as the nice one. Most of the other male gang members have either made up their own names or had very odd parents: Bertram (Roy Holder); Hatchet (Denis Gilmore); Chopped Meat (Miles Greenwood); Gash (Peter Whitting); and Hinky (Rocky Taylor). Rather helpfully, each of the gang members has their name embroidered in large, colourful letters on the left breasts of their leather jackets, which must come in very handy for the police whenever they receive reports of the gang’s depredations. (Not that the police seem particularly useful – despite knowing the identities of all the gang members, there’s no indication that they’ve ever even attempted to arrest a single one of them before the film begins.)

The members of The Living Dead are a thoroughly middle class lot who still live with their parents. Their leader Tom is very much the child of privilege – he lives in a large country house with his mother (Beryl Reid) and her manservant Shadwell (George Sanders). Mrs Latham hosts spiritualist meetings and conducts seances, but rather than being a charlatan living off ill-gotten gains, she charges no money for her sittings and appears to be genuinely talented. Shadwell is a rather more mysterious figure who looks after her and tends to her needs, but is treated by her as an equal or even (in some ways) a superior. Oh, and apparently he hasn’t aged a day as long as Tom has known him. Inquiring into the mysterious death of his father from unknown causes in a locked room, which is somehow connected to mysterious secrets of post-mortem survival, Tom convinces his mother and Shadwell to give him the key. Protected by an amulet depicting a toad, Tom undergoes some sort of cryptic occult trial/vision quest experience which provides hints to aspects of his past but doesn’t provide the answer to his burning question. This is inadvertently provided by his mother’s conversation with Shadwell while waiting for him to regain consciousness – apparently all it takes to survive death is to believe you’ll survive (his father had last minute doubts). Excited, Tom promptly drives his motorbike off a bridge.

Abby, who was with him at the time, reluctantly admits to his unfazed mother that it was suicide. She asks permission for the gang to bury him “their way”, to which his mother readily agrees. You might not think that a small motorcycle gang in a small English town who’ve just experienced their first fatality would have a traditional method of honouring their dead, but you’d be wrong. They bury Tom sitting on his bike, dressed in his full regalia, posed in a manner not exactly representative of the way most corpses would behave without considerable assistance. The funeral song is a jaw-droppingly inappropriate hippy folk anthem about a biker who just wanted to live free on the road but the oppressive culture of The Man led him to choose death in preference, eulogising an anonymous death mourned only by The Chosen Few who knew him. Musically it’s a desperately misguided choice, something you’d expect the gang to mock rather than willingly listen to, and the lyrics describe a gentle soul who just wanted to live his own life, somebody who has nothing in common with the bored thug that we’ve seen – which might have been an intentional choice on the part of the filmmakers, but I suspect this was a production decision made without the involvement of the director or writers. The pretty young hippy boy miming the song stands out like a sore thumb among the gang members and strums the guitar when he should be picking at it. Compared to this, Shadwell’s brief appearance to deposit the toad amulet in Tom’s grave and tip his hat to the mourners seems almost normal.

Presumably our deceased biker likes an audience, because it’s not until a stranded motorist (Roy Evans) takes a shortcut across the stone circle in the middle of the day that Tom erupts from the grave on his motorcycle (very impressively staged), pausing only to run him down before going on to murder a petrol attendant and several pub customers. He then lets the rest of the gang in on his secret, prompting a series of spectacular suicides which occasionally verge on the farcical, such as the guy in his speedos who staggers to the side of a river and throws himself in while chained to a bunch of weights. My favourite is the guy who left his bike in a clearly marked “no parking” zone. He lurks inside a 14^th story apartment waiting for a policeman to turn up and yell for him to come down, allowing him to surprise the relevant authorities by taking the direct route from window to pavement. It’s rare to see that level of dedication in a practical joke.

One of the suicides fails to return, but the others set out to enjoy their new existences as immortal super-strong undead bikers who can tear apart prison bars and drive unharmed through brick walls (raising the question of whether their bikes are also immortal). Only Anne – whose attempted suicide by sleeping pills failed, resulting in nothing more than a series of anxiety hallucinations – is determined to hang onto life. While Chief Inspector Hesseltine (Robert Hardy) enlists her cooperation as bait in order to arrest the gang, Mrs Latham has become increasingly disturbed by her son’s willingness to share the secret of immortality with his friends. His stated intention to work his way through the country murdering everybody who’s part of The Establishment leads her to enlist Shadwell’s assistance in bringing an end to their depredations – but will Tom manage to take Anne with him first?

Tasmanian Don Sharp is a director with solid credentials when it comes to action and stunt work, having been responsible for the action sequences in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965) and the Alistair MacLean adaptation Puppet on a Chain (1971). He directed the Hammer Films productions Kiss of the Vampire (1964), The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964) and Rasputin: The Mad Monk (1966), but by this point Hammer’s influence was on the wane, while Sharp’s overall career trajectory took him away from horror and more into the action thriller mode. He pulls off a great range of vehicular stunts here, helped no end by having access to an extensive stretch of curving roads which hadn’t yet been formally opened to the public. Award-winning director of photography Ted Moore adds an extra touch of class to proceedings. His CV includes seven out of the first nine James Bond films (1962-1974), as well as the final three Ray Harryhausen productions (1973-1981). The film’s screenplay was the second and final collaboration of Arnaud d’Usseau & Julian Halevy, who were responsible for the delightful nonsense that was Horror Express (1972) (reviewed here). This screenplay is far less coherent than their first, failing to explain many of the details behind their own scenario, but I think it adds to the movie’s overall charm – it’s hard to imagine it being as much fun if every little plot detail had been nailed firmly down.

The cast is surprisingly strong for an obscure low budget British horror filmed in 1971. Nicky Henson (Witchfinder General) took the job as biker gang leader to supplement his income while performing Shakespeare in the evenings. He takes the role seriously, setting the tone for the rest of the gang and providing a solid spine on which to hang the film. He’d later turn up as Demetrius in the BBC Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1981). Roy Holder (The Virgin Soliders) has also done his fair share of Shakespeare – Othello (1965), The Taming of the Shrew (1967), Romeo and Juliet (1968) – and was one of the series regulars in Ace of Wands (1972) around this time. Rocky Taylor is a stunt performer with an extensive career, including 12 James Bond films (1962-1999) and 3 Indiana Jones films (1981-1989). Robert Hardy (the police inspector) had played Henry V in An Age of Kings (1960) but is probably best remembered as Siegfried in All Creatures Great and Small (1978-1990). A really thorough trawl through the various cast members’ credits would reveal a series of parts scattered throughout classic British TV and cinema (both prestige and cult), from Doctor Who to Jane Austen. But the unquestioned stars of the film, who earn their billing at the head of the credits, are George Sanders and Beryl Reid. Beryl Reid is probably best known as a comedy performer – she had recently parodied conservative activist Mary Whitehouse in The Goodies: Sex and Violence (1971) – but she’s equally adept as a dramatic actor and never mocks the material she’s given here (much as she might have been tempted). The on-screen bond she has with Nicky Henson (playing her son) is a vital component in selling their central family dynamic. Even so, she’s overshadowed by George Sanders in his final screen performance, bringing all of the charm and poise of a career spent mostly playing smooth-talking cads – a career, sad to say, which has largely passed me by. Apart from a few scattered earlier roles – Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) – I’m most familiar with his 1960s work, from the Disney movie In Search of the Castaways (1962) through the Pink Panther series entry A Shot in the Dark (1964) to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1965), Batman (1966) and The Jungle Book (1967). In fact, come to think of it, Psychomania is the first film I’ve seen him in which I didn’t first encounter during my primary school years. Despite the unfounded rumours that his suicide (which occurred shortly after making this film) was a reaction to seeing a rough cut of the movie, he appears to have had a great time on set and he dominates the material with ease – if this had to be his final work, it’s a pretty good way to go out.

BFI Flipside assembled an interesting selection of short films to accompany their Blu Ray release. Discovering Britain with John Betjeman: Avebury, Wiltshire (1955) is a 3 minute B&W mini travel guide for British motorists, one of a series of 26 short films sponsored by Shell-Mex Petrol and narrated by poet Betjeman. It provides an opportunity to glimpse more of Avebury’s stones and teases potential visitors with its “sinister atmosphere.” There are even some sample tourists on hand, presumably to model appropriate “visiting the local sights” behaviour.

Roger Wonders Why (1965) is a weird little glimpse into the conservative England of the mid-1960s, a desperately amateurish production put together by a church youth group from Chelmsford. Roger is the narrator and “star” of the piece, taking us into the world of the Saint Andrew Young Communicants Fellowship and their wacky nights of fun forming a conga line and jumping up and down. There’s a strange new visitor in a leather jacket who doesn’t fit in, so Roger goes over to talk to him. This is Derek, a Rocker, who’s also a member of The 59 Club, a motorcycle enthusiast social venue run by fellow biker the Reverend Bill Shergold (who remained the club’s president from its foundation in 1962 until his death in 2009). Luckily Derek happens to be carrying a complete second set of Rocker gear in Roger’s size. One shoddily edited quick change later, they’re off at The 59 Club visiting the Reverend, who doesn’t pressure club members to attend church but is a strong advocate of respecting other drivers and using motorcycles “to the glory of God”. Inspired to continue his new life as a biker, Roger stops to help a fellow motorcyclist who has broken down and follows him to an exciting meeting with a group of venture scouts. After some rope play and abseiling, Roger shoehorns in some heavy-handed messaging about how these activities make him think of his faith in God, before finally returning to his youth group to share his experiences (while continuing to wear his new leather gear – which, come to think of it, was only intended to be a loan, which leaves some awkward unanswered questions about Derek). It’s hopelessly lacking in quality of concept or execution, but as an authentic social document it has its interest.

Life Day Strikes Back – The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special

The Rise of Skywalker (2019) generated a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced (or took their cries to the internet). The upheaval caused by this outrage was so great that it affected the very fabric of reality itself, rippling backwards through time and tearing open the hidden pocket of time when Life Day was last celebrated. The resurrection of Life Day caused the people of the universe to be transmuted into the form of children’s toys inhabiting a happier and more entertaining place, and thus the LEGO Star Wars universe was born. This is the secret legacy of The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special (2020).

Freshly awakened in this new reality, Rey (Helen Sadler) felt a deep ennui, a hint of the role she had still to play to complete the universe’s rebirth. Uncertain of what this feeling truly meant, she became distracted from training Finn (Omar Benson Miller) in the ways of the Jedi. Burying herself deeper in her texts, she became distracted from her path and Finn lost confidence in himself. The arrival of Poe Dameron (Jake Green) clad in a tacky green Life Day sweater caused her to retreat into meditation, leading to the rediscovery of a sacred Jedi text directing her to visit the Temple of Kordoku, where a blue-green crystal would allow her to unlock the past.

Travelling through the portal with BB8 in tow, she emerged in the swamps of Dagobah to witness Luke Skywalker (Eric Bauza) being trained by Yoda (Tom Kane). Escaping from a tentacled swamp creature, they travelled further into the past to meet Obi-Wan (James Arnold Taylor) and Anakin (Matt Lanter), before a hasty escape landed them in Luke’s cockpit while he was trying to engage his targeting computer and destroy the Death Star.

Things began to go wrong when they popped in on the second Death Star, just after Emperor Palpatine (Trevor Devall) had rejected the “Galaxy’s Best Emperor” mug given to him by Darth Vader (Matt Sloan). Following her to the Rebel base on Hoth, Vader became distracted by a battle against himself before pursuing Rey through an increasingly rapid series of time jumps (including a brief glimpse of Grogu and his Mandalorian carer), each time dragging just a few more people through with them until chaos broke out on Tattooine. An accident with the portal resulted in a young Luke being stranded in the Jedi temple with Rey while Darth returned to the Emperor with the crystal. Teaming up with a petulant Kylo Ren (Matthew Wood), the Emperor was miffed to learn that he’d been thrown into a reactor by Vader and really began ramping up on the passive aggression. Although more complications were to ensue, the Emperor’s decision to turn on Vader ultimately led him to cause his own demise while Rey and her friends tidied up their own continuity mess and returned to celebrate the renewal of Life Day.

So deep was the trauma caused by The Rise of Skywalker that, after the transmogrification of the populace, most of them sounded subtly different. Of the core group of characters, only Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), whose presence had almost been erased from those troubled times, retained her own voice – as if in recognition of the indignities which had been heaped upon her. The reason for the survival of two other voices is less clear. C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) may have retained his vocal character as an apology for the poorly justified mindwipe he’d recently received, but Lando (Billy Dee Williams) had barely been recognisable as the same man when he was last seen – perhaps this was the universe’s attempt to restore his lost dignity.

Many of the other voices stem from an earlier reality quake, when the Star Wars universe attempted to redress the damage of those troubled times known in legend as the Prequel Trilogy. Testing the waters with Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008), this project of revitalisation flowered into Star Wars: Rebels (2014-2018), Star Wars: Forces of Destiny (2017-2018) and Star Wars: Resistance (2018-2020). While I have little personal experience of this period, the legacy of this era of renewed hope is evident in the voices which have echoed forwards to the LEGO times. Although The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special lacks the ambition of these animated universal grafts, it serves a useful purpose in putting darker times (however temporarily) behind us.

Two Black Christmases

I had grand plans about doing a spate of Christmas movie reviews this month, but I got derailed by the Japanese Film Festival and now it’s down to those last few days when seeing friends and family (in a conservatively covid-safe manner) begins to displace everything else. But I’ll squeeze in what I can, kicking things off with some female-centred horror with a movie that has been called the prototype of the modern slasher film, Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974), followed by Sophia Takal’s recent reimagination Black Christmas (2019).

The original movie’s screenplay by A. Roy Moore was loosely inspired by a series of murders in Montreal and linked with the old urban legend about a babysitter receiving disturbing phone calls which turn out to be coming from inside the house. The opening of the film is shot from the killer’s point of view as he approaches a sorority house with a Christmas party in full swing, peering through the front door and windows before retreating, scaling the walls and entering through the attic. After suffocating Clare (Lynne Griffin), the first girl to retire for the evening, he hides her in the attic and (as far as the viewer can tell) spends the rest of the movie hiding up there, popping downstairs every now and then to make weird multiple-voiced phone calls or to kill somebody else. Arguably, though, the killer is the least important part of the film – the inhabitants of the sorority house are very much the primary focus. It’s the intricacies of their lives which are the main source of interest, while barely any attention is paid to the killer – although it’s possible to form a vague idea of him from the semi-incoherent babbling of his phone calls, his motivation remains a complete mystery.

The opening party is the Phi Kappa Sigma sorority’s last bash before most of them head home to their families for Christmas. The house is run by Mrs. Mac (Marian Waldman), a grumpy old drunk who keeps secret stashes of booze all over the place and keeps sneaking swigs every chance she gets – she even has a bottle stashed in the bathroom for gargling with after brushing her teeth. She finds her charges entertaining but has zero interest in putting herself out or acting as any sort of moral guardian, much to the chagrin of Clare’s father Mr. Harrison (James Edmond) when he comes looking for Clare the next day. Of the featured sorority sisters, it’s Barb (Margot Kidder) who immediately stands out, a hard-drinking, cheerily abusive bad role model who thinks it’s funny to convince dim-witted police Sergeant Nash (Doug McGrath) that “fellatio” is the name of the new telephone exchange hosting the sorority’s telephone number. Phyl (Andrea Martin) is the quiet, bespectacled peacemaker with a good sense of humour. Jess (Olivia Hussey) is the main character, the last person to see Clare before she went to bed and the most serious of the four, probably due in part to her recent discovery that she’s pregnant. It’s been difficult to find time to speak to her boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea), who keeps blowing her off to practice for his piano exams. When she’s finally able to grab a precious moment of his time to tell him that she’s pregnant but planning on an abortion, he goes ballistic about her “selfishness” and later that evening tells her they’ll get married, oblivious to her complete lack of interest in perpetuating what is clearly a doomed relationship.

The film is infused with a generally cynical outlook on human nature. There’s Mrs. Mac, who embodies all of the values diametrically opposed to what is generally expected of somebody running a sorority house. When we first meet Mr. Harrison as he waits for his daughter, some random children knock his glasses off into the road with a carefully placed snowball. The desk sergeant at the police station has neither the intelligence nor the work ethic his job requires, dismissing any problem to do with college girls as evidence that they’re either off partying with boys or have had a fight with their boyfriend. Even when multiple complaints are lodged about events at the same address, it takes the direct intervention of Lt. Fuller (John Saxon) to point out to him that this might be significant and to initiate any helpful police involvement. And the sorority house killings (which are not suspected as killings until very late in the film) aren’t even the only murders taking place – there’s a whole different thread involving the disappearance of a 13-year-old girl which doesn’t tie back to the main plot at all.

Given that this film has been retroactively adopted into the slasher movie genre, it’s fascinating to see how differently it reads from most of its successors. For a start, there’s very little visceral violence. Any blood is seen only on the murder weapon or on the bodies of the deceased – the acts of violence themselves are mostly suggested rather than shown. Although most of the sorority are sexually active, there’s no sex on screen and no nudity. There’s also no sexual shaming, which has become notorious as a puritanical undercurrent of the genre. Contrary to the cliché of sexually active women being murdered and the killer being defeated by a lone virginal survivor, in this film the only member of the sorority who’s identified as a virgin is the first person to be killed. In contrast, the audience identification figure is a girl who has had a long term pre-marital sexual relationship and is planning an abortion so her unplanned pregnancy won’t disrupt her life goals – just the sort of person who would normally be high on the victim list. (Interestingly, she also has some religious tendencies – she wears a cross and clutches it while listening to carollers – a level of nuance which is also often lacking in the cardboard cutout slasher-fodder of other films.)

Lead performer Olivia Hussey is a talented actress who made a huge impression with her award-winning performance as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968), but her later career became increasingly patchy and saw her appearing in films of widely divergent quality. She’s pretty good here, but it would be very difficult for her not to be overshadowed by Margot Kidder’s performance. On some level, she will always be Lois Lane to me, thanks to childhood viewings of Superman (1978) and its three sequels (or its first two sequels at least – the last one looked awful and I avoided it). Her highest profile film prior to Black Christmas was Brian de Palma’s Sisters (1973) in which she played the titular lead roles – that one’s still on my to-watch list. Her character here spends most of the movie drunk and being obnoxious, and Kidder is clearly having a whale of a time. It’s a shame that Lynne Griffin has such little screentime as a living person – like Olivia Hussey, she has a background in Shakespearean performance – but she does a good job with what she’s given.

Among the men, John Saxon stands out as the experienced old hand who can make even small parts in terrible films work – here he has the less onerous task of portraying a capable and good-humoured police lieutenant. John Edmonds brings a quiet dignity to his role as an out-of-his-depth doting conservative father, generating audience sympathy as each new trial is laid upon his shoulders. Less impressive is Keir Dullea (2001: A Space Odyssey) – he does at least display more range to his performance than I’m used to seeing from him, but I struggled to understand what Hussey’s character saw in him – he alternated between being a domineering but dull conservative and a twitching, sweating nervous wreck who sees his plans for life falling apart in front of him and blaming it all on his girlfriend. It’s a weird balancing act which never really felt real.

Director Bob Clark made a few other interesting horror movies in the early 1970s which I’ve read about but never seen – Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972), Deathdream (1974) – although I did enjoy his Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper movie Murder by Decree (1979). It’s a shame that his best known movie is probably the teen sex comedy Porky’s (1981) – although who knows, on the basis of Black Christmas maybe Porky’s isn’t as bad as I remember. Apparently the two movies share several actors in common, and Black Christmas does have a strong thread of grotesque humour running through it.

It was only in the process of putting this piece together that I discovered the existence of Black X-Mas (2006), a remake of the original by writer/director Glen Morgan (The X-Files, Final Destination) featuring actresses such as Katie Cassidy (Arrow), Michelle Trachtenberg (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World), Kristen Cloke (Final Destination) and Jessica Harmon (iZombie), along with a return performance from Andrea Martin in the role of Mrs Mac. The main change in this version was the introduction of a complete back story for the killer, based in part on real life serial killer Edmund Kemper. Although it would be inappropriate for me to judge the film without having seen it, I can’t help but feel this was an unnecessary addition. The absence of this information from the original, when combined with the unrelated murder of a young girl, places the film firmly in a 1970s struggling to come to grips with what was perceived to be an increase in seemingly unmotivated violent crime. Adding in the killer’s backstory makes it more like the rest of the slasher genre, privileging the killer as the character of interest and downgrading the relative importance of the female cast. This could be partially attributable to the producers, the Weinstein brothers – Morgan is on record that they insisted that he pack more violence into the film and change the ending, leaving him unhappy with the final film.

Far more interesting is Sophia Takal’s approach in reinventing the concept for Blumhouse Productions’ Black Christmas (2019). Takal has kept very little from the original movie: both movies are set around a sorority house at the end of the year as the students begin to return home; both films are very much female-centred; both include sequences with a killer concealed within the sorority house; and both include a fluffy white cat (Claude in the original, Claudette in the new version). The incompetent desk sergeant has an equivalent in the campus security guard who is more interested in eating his sandwich than listening to a “hysterical” woman’s concerns, but the new version has no equivalent to the more competent and trustworthy police of the original. The threatening phone calls of the original manifest as unsolicited DMs received by each of the potential victims before they are attacked. But the 1970s concern with random violence (largely directed at emancipated women) has been impeccably updated to take on (mostly white) male privilege as reflected through academic MRAs and #metoo.

Riley (Imogen Poots) is one of the senior girls in Mu Kappa Epsilon sorority, assigned as “big sister” to Helena (Madeleine Adams). Three years ago, Riley was roofied by Delta Kappa Omicron fraternity president Brian (Ryan McIntire), but her reports of sexual assault weren’t believed (which, despite the complete lack of consequences for him, doesn’t stop people from accusing her of ruining his life). Kris (Aleyse Shannon) is the activist of the group, who counts among her successes the removal of the bust celebrating the college’s founder, Calvin Hawthorne, due to his history as an unrepentant slave owner in the North. (There’s also a passing reference to contemporary accusations of meddling with the occult.) Her latest campaign is for the removal of Professor Gelson (Cary Elwes), a teacher of classic literature who is resistant to including any works outside of the white male canon. In the final lecture of the semester, he singles out Riley (who did not put up her hand) to provide her assessment of the piece he’s just read to the class – a piece which characterises women as slaves to instinct who owe all the benefits of society to their intellectual male superiors. Her assumption that the text was by a man, when it was actually by Camille Paglia, is somehow supposed to prove his intellectually dishonest argument that he’s justified in his choices, while also publicly pressuring her to see the petition quashed.

Riley’s friends Kris, Marty (Lily Donoghue) and Jesse (Brittany O’Grady) rope her into their musical number at the DKO frat party after Helena becomes unavailable. What looks at first like a giggling cheesecake act in slinky Santa suits about sex with frat boys quickly turns into a brutal satirical attack on the fraternity’s attitude to rape. The next morning, Riley discovers that her friend Lindsey (Lucy Currey) never made it home to her parents after her departure two nights ago. Two more sorority members go missing during the day and at that night’s party the assaults begin in earnest as attacks by a hooded killer occur at multiple sorority houses.

Introducing a supernatural element is a significant shift from the tone of the original, but it’s really just there as a McGuffin to escalate the level of the threat. By shifting away from the lone mad killer to a cult of organised misogyny, Takal is also able to justify a shift in the resolution of the plot, replacing the lone female survivor fighting to defend herself with group action as a sisterhood, a more realistically effective response to fighting institutionalised patriarchy. Takal’s attitude to depicting violence is very much in line with Clark’s original, with very little blood on display and no sexualisation of the deaths (if anything, the death scenes are less disturbing). Imogen Poots (Vivarium) and Aleye Shannon (Charmed) are the most notable, and prominent, members of a generally strong cast – Nathalie Morris (Killer Sofa) also stood out in a relatively small role. Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride) is excellent casting for the Professor role, providing an appropriate level of sickly smarm and disingenous statements for a character clearly modelled on Jordan Peterson and his ilk.

My first reaction to hearing about the 2019 remake was indifference mixed with confusion – what was the point in keeping the title of an obscure 45-year-old horror movie and annoying its fans by creating a completely new plot? Now that I’ve seen it, it makes sense – Takal has created a film which retains enough of the spiritual DNA of the first movie to warrant retaining the title, but which is sufficiently its own thing to stand alone as an original work relevant to the times in which it’s made.

(NB: The trailer below for the 2019 version includes some scenes which surprised me, since they appear nowhere in the final film. But I won’t tell you which ones.)

Italian Lucky Dip – They’ve Changed Faces

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie without some sort of prior knowledge such as a basic idea of the plot, an interest in one or more of the creators, or an awareness of its contribution to the development of an idea or genre. In the case of They’ve Changed Faces […Hanno cambiato faccia] (1971), although the Italian title seemed vaguely familiar, I had no idea what to expect – which was a great way to experience this film!

The movie opens with a fairly normal scene of a man on his way to work, while the music suggests we’re about to watch a poliziotteschi or some other type of police procedural. Alberto Valle (Giuliano Esperati), a corporate drone working for a car and aircraft manufacturer, arrives at work and is summoned upstairs to meet first his manager, then the vice president, and finally the CEO on the top floor. Before turning to greet him, the CEO puts on a crackling record which sounds like the theme music to a contemporary Italian gothic or giallo movie. The CEO informs him that he’s fortunate enough to have been plucked from obscurity as a mid-level employee at the behest of the company’s owner, a respected scientist, who would like to meet him immediately. His name is… Giovanni Nosferatu!

Since this is basically the equivalent of calling your antagonist Johnny Dracula, it’s not difficult to guess what the general trajectory of the movie might be – but how we get there and what happens along the way are what makes it interesting. Journeying to a village on the point of collapse which is close to his destination, Valle agrees to give a ride to a hitchhiker (Francesca Modigliani) in return for directions to find petrol. Apparently Laura’s standard approach when hitching is to walk around bare-chested underneath a fur-lined ¾-length coat. Initially dubious, he agrees to take her with him, but when they arrive at his destination she seems reluctant to let him enter Nosferatu’s villa, asking whether he wouldn’t prefer to keep driving with her instead – or, if not, to at least have sex with her first – but he turns her down in favour of professionalism and leaves her at the gate.

Although nobody had responded to his knocks at the gate, barely has he begun to make his way up the driveway when two small white Fiats peel off from either side of the gates and drive up behind him, escorting him on either side. The drivers wear white jumpsuits and helmets but don’t speak or turn their heads. His eerie honour guard accompanies him to the villa, where he is welcomed by Nosferatu’s secretary Corinna (Geraldine Hooper). She entertains him until, after the sun has set, Nosferatu (Adolfo Celi) appears at the top of a staircase – announced on the soundtrack by the same music that the CEO had played to Valle (which delighted me no end)! Nosferatu reveals his purpose for requesting Valle’s presence – he wants Valle to be the new CEO of the company.

Dinner consists of an experimental range of food, sorted into courses by colour. When Valle complains that the food doesn’t taste like the ingredients that went into it, Nosferatu quotes Freud to argue that temporal pleasures are a distraction from productivity and that a rational society would get rid of such distractions. The furniture in Valle’s living quarters is set up to play product advertising pitches whenever they’re used – he can’t sit in a chair or have a shower without the same ad being repeated every time. Travelling around the estate grounds at night, he thinks he sees a body in the grounds. Corinna informs him that he’s mistaken, that it’s just a log, but that it’s too dangerous to approach – and as soon as he tries, the headlights of multiple small white cars illuminate him from all sides, revving threateningly. These cars seem to be constantly in motion around the villa when seem from above, like a prowling pack of dogs on constant alert for intruders (or escapees?). While Valle and Corinna become lovers, Laura is abducted by the drivers and fed upon by Nosferatu.

Writer/director Corrado Farina is adept at playing with the conventional gothic aesthetics of mist and crumbling buildings, but is equally skillful at using modern trappings to a similar end, turning the restlessly ranging automobiles into a creepy threat and layering peculiarities and oddities into the corporate world for which Valle is being groomed. The conversation of the visiting board members includes surprisingly varied topics, such as an appeal to the authority of German philosopher Marcuse in support of the thesis that science fiction has achieved the status of an art form, before the board meeting itself plays out as a nightmare confirmation of all the worst instincts of purely profit-driven capitalism. A board member is disposed of for failing to notice that his workers were reading during their break times. An environmentally unsound detergent is deceptively rebranded so that all existing stock can still be sold. And there’s a bizarre succession of three different ads marketing LSD to workers, each modelled after a different artist – Jean-Luc Godard (rejected), Federico Fellini (rejected) and finally the Marquis de Sade (a farrago of sadism which goes on for much longer than the other two and is ultimately successful). Two years before The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), Corrado has not only anticipated Hammer Studios’ attempt to turn Dracula into the ultimate bloodsucking capitalist, he has done so much more successfully and with greater finesse. The title – They’ve Changed Faces – refers to the ways in which creatures such as vampires change to suit the society they find themselves. Although Valle is initially horrified at seeing the extremes of capitalism laid bare, shooting Nosferatu and leaving the villa, he is ultimately defeated when he finds Laura waiting for him in his car – having become not, as assumed, a blood-drained corpse, but rather another part of the corporate machine, no longer interested in doing her own thing but just another career woman. Unable to deal with the disillusionment of seeing carefree youth embrace soulless conformity, he returns to Nosferatu’s villa to take his place.

Giuliano Esperati is fine in the lead role but not particularly exceptional. Adolfo Celi, best known for his role as the lead villain Largo in the early James Bond movie Thunderball (1965), brings a greater presence and a calm certainty to his role as the ultra-rationalist corporate vampire. Geraldine Cooper (Deep Red) displays an eerily dispassionate calm with just enough flashes of warmth to convince that her character might actually feel something for Valle. I only wish that there had been more to Francesca Modigliani’s role, as she brings a great deal of liveliness and personality to a character whose main purpose was to represent youthful vitality and a flouting of societal conventions. I was shocked to see that this was the first of only two roles for her – after appearing the following year in The Sin [Bianco rosso e…] (1972), her career disappears from IMDb.

They’ve Changed Faces won the Golden Leopard award for the Best First Feature at the Locarno International Film Festival in 1971. Corrado Farina only made one more feature film, Baba Yaga (1973) – an adaptation of Guido Crepax’s dodgy erotic horror comic Valentina which was butchered by the censors and has only recently been made available in a version approximating the director’s intent. Continuing his collaboration with editor Giulio Berruti and cinematographer Aiace Parolin, I’ve seen it described alternately as a classic of eurotika or as ploddingly dull – but based on They’ve Changed Faces, I’d be prepared to give it a chance. They’ve Changed Faces is an unexpected gem and deserves to be more widely known.

JFF Plus Online Festival Wrap-Up – Animal Spirits

The Australian component of the Japanese Film Festival wrapped up on the 13^th, leaving me with one more film to cover – but since there’s only so much I can say about a 10 minute short animation, I’ve paired it with one more addition of my own to the official programming. Having watched a 1950s science fiction film and a 1960s gangster film, I decided to stick with the era and round things off with a 1960s historical fantasy.

The Mad Fox [Koiya koi nasuna koi] (1962) is a heavily stylised film incorporating kabuki techniques and set in a historical era (the Heian period) far enough removed from the present that it’s treated as a fantasy setting, with little regard for adhering to historically established dates. It’s adapted from the Bunraku puppet theatre play A Courtly Mirror of Ashiya Dōman [Ashiya Dōman Ōuchi Kagami] (1734), which was later adopted into the repertoire of kabuki performers. The film opens on an illustrated scroll, gradually unfurling as the camera pans slowly from right to left, providing a pictorial summary (with narration) of the backstory established in the first three acts of the play. As the opening narration nears its end and the camera moves slowly in on the menacing glow of the erupting Mt Fuji, the image shifts into a view of the Emperor’s court saturated in red as they gaze in fear at the terrible omens.

Kamo no Yasunori (Usami Junya), the court astrologer and a real historical figure (917-977), consults the scroll of the Golden Crow and determines that the Emperor’s successor has been cursed. Locking away the scroll (which requires two keys to access, held by his wife and adopted daughter Sakaki), he sets off to visit the Emperor but is ambushed and killed shortly after leaving by the wicked Akuemon (Yamamoto Rinichi). Sakaki (Saga Michiko) travels to visit the Emperor in his place, but she can only convey news of the curse mentioned by her father and not its remedy, as only the designated heir can have access to the scroll and Yasunori died without formally naming a successor.

The two potential heirs are Abe no Yasuna (Ōkawa Hashizō) and Ashiya Dōman (Amano Shinji). Although Yasuna is engaged to Sakaki and was to be named as Yasunori’s successor, they are no match for the scheming of Yasunori’s wife (Hidaka Sumiko) who arranged for his death in order to install the more unscrupulous (and more easily manipulable) Dōman as heir and toyboy. She frames Sakaki for the theft of the scroll and has her tortured to death (supposedly to find out where she hid the scroll) in front of Yasuna. Although Yasuna manages to escape, retrieve the scroll and enact his revenge on the guilty parties, the death of Sakaki leaves him insane with grief – and suddenly we’re no longer in the world of courtly intrigue.

The screen is filled with yellow as Yasuna peforms a kabuki dance to a sung accompaniment, moving across a stage rotating in multiple sections to depict the grass shifting in the wind, before the bright gauze curtain at the back of stage is suddenly yanked away to reveal he’s not inside on a sound stage but on a grassy hill. He’s somehow found his way back to Sakaki’s family, encountering her younger identical twin sister Kuzunoha (Saga Michiko) and becoming unshakably convinced that she is Sakaki returned to life. He also happens to be in a part of the country populated by kitsune (shape-shifting fox spirits), saving the life of an old woman who has been shot by hunters seeking a white fox for ritual purposes. Yasuna escorts the old woman back to her home, incurring the gratitude of her family – including their granddaughter Okon (Saga Michiko), who takes a shine to him. After the foxes rescue him from Akuemon, who has come looking for the scroll, Okon changes her shape to that of Sakaki/Kuzunoha and tends to his wounds.

The last section of the film jumps ahead six years. The stylisation has advanced another notch – a curtain is drawn back from a stage containing a single set, the shared house of Yasuna and Okon where they have been raising a child. Kuzunoha and her family turn up looking for Yasuna so they can formalise his marriage to Kuzunoha (in love with him despite constantly being mistaken for her sister), where they are understandably confused to find another woman who looks just like her. When Yasuna sees them altogether, he finally has a sanity breakthrough and Okon returns to her own world, leaving their child (and the scroll) with him. Uchida Tomu uses the stage particularly cleverly in this final section, maintaining its position relative to the audience but using rotating stage sections to allow for different perspectives on the inhabitants of the house, before the artifice of their entire setting is exposed and the set falls apart, sections of the house collapsing to the ground and being replaced by grass, other parts of the set being whisked away into the sky, and a sculptured white fox flying away.

Although hints of the political turbulence in the rest of Japan are threaded through the last half of the movie, this part of the story is abandoned and left unresolved, presumably to be dealt with in the future by Yasuna’s child. This child, who would become Abe no Seimei, is apparently a far more prominent character in Japanese folklore than his father and was also a historical figure (921-1005) although, as alluded to before, this does present some chronological issues – rather than being born after Yasunori’s death, the historical figure was only his junior by four years! Still, despite being set in an identifiable historical period, the film (and the original story) are clearly not intended to be strictly historical, and it apparently wasn’t at all unusual for this era to be treated as a mutable fantasy setting which could be adjusted to suit the author’s requirements. The choice of title for the English language market, however, is an odd one – it’s not the foxes who are mad, but rather Yasuna himself. The alternative title Love, Thy Name Be Sorrow is far more appropriate, but admittedly more generic and less likely to draw the attention of western audiences (at least in my case, I know that the title of The Mad Fox was part of what drew my interest).

Leading actor Ōkawa Hashizō had an extensive background in kabuki theatre and his skills in that area are clearly on display throughout the film. Saga Michiko also stands out in her tripartite role, which thankfully allowed more scope for her to lead the action (in two out of three roles) than the more passive female romantic lead roles of some other films in the genre. Contrary to the impression given by some reviews, which characterise the film as a madcap bag of hard-to-follow craziness, this is a slowly paced movie which is not at all difficult to follow if you are paying any attention. True, the kabuki interludes can be confusing if you have no cultural context for them, and the film draws attention to its own artificial nature, but these are conscious artistic choices which have a purpose and follow their own cultural logic – they are not random unmotivated weirdness. If you’re open to different story-telling techniques, it’s definitely worth a look.

And now to bring the festival to an end with a selection from Day 9, The Girl from the Other Side: Siúil, a Rún [Totsukuni no Shōjo] (2019). In the case of The Mad Fox, I was able to learn about a lot of the context I lacked through the commentary and essays included with Arrow’s Blu Ray release. In this instance, I’m similarly lacking in the context to be able to assess this piece properly – but this time I don’t have a handy package of special features to educate me. I suspect that this short film will make more sense to those who are familiar with Nagabe’s original manga series (2015-present) – I certainly can’t tell you why it has been named after an Irish folk tune about a woman whose lover who has joined the military.

Young girl Shiva is found alone in a forest which is inhabited by dark animalistic spirits whose touch has some sort of deleterious effect. One of these creatures, a tall antlered figure identified as Teacher, takes her into its home and looks after her but remains careful not to touch her. There’s another creature which seems more like a manifestation of death which haunts her dreams and appears to want to corrupt her. And that’s about it really – it just stops without an apparent ending. It felt like a small chunk of a larger whole which would make more sense to somebody who’s read the comic – and even then, I doubt a more informed reader would see it as reaching a conventional ending. The animation appears to reproduce the art style accurately, which resembles the illustrations you might find in a dark children’s fantasy storybook, but any budding young goths are probably better off seeking out the original manga rather than starting with this film.

JFF Plus Interlude – Youth of the Beast

I’ve gone well and truly off-program for the last few days of the Japanese Film Festival. Although I still have one more short animated film to write about, today’s post is a quick journey into the world of the yakuza film, a genre whose popularity exploded in 1963.

Suzuki Seijun was a contract film director for Nikkatsu who worked on whatever script he was assigned, turning out films at a rapid pace – reaching a total of 40 movies (mostly supporting features) made for the studio between 1956 and 1967. As long as a director could deliver the required work on time and meet the demands of a small budget, the studio didn’t particularly care how they went about it – which left a space for directors like Suzuki to allow their imagination free reign to experiment with the form and style of the finished pictures.

Suzuki’s first film of 1963 was the evocatively titled Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! [Tantei Jimusho 23: Kutabare Akutōdomo], an action comedy about a private detective who infiltrates a new yakuza group. It’s a lot of fun, but I get the sense it’s looked down on to an extent for not being distinct enough from others of its type. It was adapted from a novel by Oyabu Haruhiko, as was Suzuki’s follow-up Youth of the Beast [Yajū no seishun] – but it’s this latter film which is generally agreed to be the point at which his personal style really began to flourish and to dominate the source material.

Leaving aside the inevitable twists along the way, the story concept itself is fairly straightforward. Mizuno Joji (Shishido Jō) is a disgraced police officer fresh out of jail who served time for embezzlement and assault (charges which were trumped up but had some basis in fact). Learning of the death of his mentor in what appears to be a murder-suicide pact involving a call girl, Mizuno is suspicious of the official verdict. He sets out to establish himself as a troublemaker in order to get closer to the underworld and discover who was responsible. In the process of his investigation he joins one gang and informs on them to another, playing the gangs off against each other much like in Kurosawa’s Yojimbo [Yōjinbō] (1961), whittling down their numbers while he looks for the truth.

Leading man Shishido Jō appeared in six of Suzuki’s films and is well-suited to the tough guy cop/detective/gangster type of character. Although his bizarre decision to undergo cheek augmentation surgery in 1957 lends his face a chipmunk-like appearance which could make it difficult to take him seriously, in this context it serves as the sort of distinctive physical oddity traditionally sported by comic book gangsters in both the east and west.

Suzuki adds all sorts of interesting touches to the film, from set design to use of colour to camera techniques. To make the gang hideouts more visually appealing and easier to tell apart, Suzuki has added busy backgrounds which stretch the full width of the screen. The first gang’s hideout is based in a nightclub panelled wall-to-wall with one-way mirrors, so while the gangsters discuss their plans in the bottom half of the screen, the nightclub activity continues in the top half as a dancer clad in a sparkly bikini and bright pink feathers performs her act. The cinema location of the rival gang’s hideout allows for a constant stream of black & white gangster films to accompany their scheming. Although filmed almost entirely in colour, Youth of the Beast is book-ended with two black & white sequences – one setting up the inciting incident, the other representing an inconclusive coda. Splashes of intense red are used throughout the movie to draw the eye away from the centre of screen, even intruding on the B&W sequences in the form of camellia flowers. And in one vividly realised sequence, a scene which begins on a grey carpet with ripples resembling a sand dune transitions through the rear wall into a mustard-yellow-saturated wilderness of unbridled nature.

If you’re watching primarily for the plot, I’d lean towards the earlier Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! – the comedy elements, while perhaps not always successful, make it more of a madcap romp. But if you want to see how cinematic choices can elevate a straightforward story to another level, Youth of the Beast is a good place to start.

JFF Plus Online Festival Day 6/7 – Manic Wrestling and Sedate Nature Trails

Two days in one this time, since I only really felt like watching one selection from each of Days 6 and 7. Considered as a double bill, this pair of films would really give you whiplash.

Yuasa Masaaki’s Kick-Heart (2013) is a hyperkinetic wrestling love story (of sorts) packed with hallucinatory imagery. Masked Man M (Suzuki Tatsuhisa) is an obscure male wrestler with a bondage fetish who pretends to be a CEO in his civilian identity so that the nun-run orphanage in which he was raised will be proud of him. Lady S (Honda Takako) is the superstar wrestler he longs to face, who just so happens to be the attractive young nun who has recently joined the orphanage. Masked Man M goes on the run from his employer after inadvertently winning a match he was supposed to lose, but all is forgiven when he agrees to fight a charity match against Lady S which is more an exploration of their mutual kinks than a battle royale.

Yuasa uses a mix of pencils, crayons and paints to bring to life his messy, constantly moving imagery bursting with over-the-top emotions and garish colours. Yuasa was responsible for the bizarre SF short “Happy Machine”, an extract from the Genius Party [Jīniasu Pāti] (2007) anthology which was showcased earlier this year at the We Are One Global Film Festival. His work here is a lot less disciplined in style but his fervid imagination has clearly not been idle in the interim. In 2014 he contributed an episode – “Food Chain” – to the wonderful US animated series Adventure Time and he has since gone on to reinvent Nagai Go’s creation Devilman [Debiruman] (1972) for the Netflix animation Devilman: Crybaby (2018).

My selection from Day 7 is a huge change of pace, both from the previous film and from the regular run of “lost in the woods” movies in my viewing history, which tend to have a high body count and end with at most one survivor. This is not one of those movies. Ecotherapy Getaway Holiday [Taki wo mini iku] (2014) follows a group of seven women, all in their forties or older, travelling on a tour guide bus to visit waterfalls and hot springs. Their guide (Kuroda Daisuke) struggles to maintain the attention of any of his passengers while on the bus. After disembarking for the hike to the waterfall, the increasingly flustered actions of the guide make it apparent that this is his first time conducting the tour and he has no idea where he’s going. He asks them to wait while he scouts ahead, but after a long absence the women decide to try to find their own way.

What follows is basically a massive female bonding exercise at the women get to know each other, discover the range of skills and knowledge that they share, support each other, resolve a couple of minor disputes and generally have a good time, not panicking even when they’re forced to spend the night in the woods before setting out again. Junko (Negishi Haruko) is the glue holding them all together, a quiet woman whose daughter bought her the tour package as a gift so she could get out of the house for awhile. Whenever it looks like things might turn bad, she pulls out yet another unexpected wilderness survival competency, even catching a snake which they cook and eat. Yumiko (Yasuzawa Chigusa) is the youngest of the group, a woman who hides her insecurity under a brash exterior and has recently suffered a breakup. Yuriko (Ogino Yuriko) is a tai chi instructor who used to go bird-watching with her husband before his death the preceding year – there’s a beautifully simple dream sequence in which he turns up from nowhere unquestioned, only to disappear again after a brief exchange, which is perhaps the most deeply touching part of the film. Mie (Kirihara Mie) and Kumiko (Kawada Kumiko) are old friends – Mie has a bad back and Kumiko is an opera singer with a penchant for Schubert. Keiko (Tokinou Keiko) is the oldest and most openly friendly, a nature photography enthusiast who has taken fellow enthusiast Michiko (Watanabe Michiko) under her wing.

Writer/director Okita Shûichi has assembled a cast of amateur performers to tell this quiet and relaxed story of female friendship, as you might have guessed considering that each actress shares either a first or last name with her character. Of the seven central women, only three of them have any IMDB credits prior to this film (minor supporting roles on television), while for Kawada Kumiko this is her sole credit. It’s a choice which pays off for the story Okita wants to tell, adding a level of straightforward naturalism to the women’s interactions. The hapless mud-encrusted tour-guide finally reappears at the end after the women have made their own way to visit the waterfall, making quite a contrast as he staggers up towards them and needs to be assisted in climbing the slope. As the only professional actor among them, it seems appropriate that he volunteers to be left behind as the seven women get a ride back to civilisation on the back of an old farmer’s tractor-trailer – he belongs to a different world, watching them recede into the distance before finally beginning to descend the path himself.

We Interrupt This JFF Plus Report for a Warning from Space

It’s Day 5 and I’ve gone rogue. I decided to skip the day’s programming entirely and instead watch Shima Koji’s Warning from Space [Uchūjin Tokyo ni arawaru] (1956), Japan’s first science fiction film made in colour.

The story follows a fairly standard 1950s science fiction movie model. While making routine observations of the sky, Dr. Isobe (Kawasaki Keizô) spots an unknown object which approaches the Earth, stops, and begins to emit smaller objects. These coincide with power disruptions in the area and bright lights in the sky, fuelling public speculation about flying saucers, an idea which is ridiculed until the sober scientists are finally able to compare notes. It also marks the beginning of a number of sightings of giant glowing starfish stalking the streets which leave behind a luminescent, mildly radioactive blue goo.

After half an hour or so of the slow build, we finally meet the Paisan aliens on their craft in the most hypnotic scene of the entire movie. Six people stand around in starfish costumes, with a glowing central eye indicating which of the Paisans is talking – which is a more important visual cue than you might think, since we can’t hear anything other than a background electronic burbling. Pillars of Japanese text appear on either side of the screen to inform the viewer of the Paisans’ conversation, which reveals that they have come to Earth to save us from ourselves but appear to inspire panic whenever they are seen. Their leader pulls a polaroid out of nowhere and somehow flicks it across the room to be pinned against the wall – as this is an example of what Earthlings consider beautiful, one of the aliens will sacrifice their form and allow themselves to be transformed into her identical double (despite disparaging comments about that ugly blob in the middle of her face, i.e. her nose).

The photograph depicts famous nightclub dancer Aozora Hikari (Tomoyi Karita), who we have just seen in what appeared to be an entirely gratuitous dance number. Given that the filmmakers go on to insert an even longer and more gratuitous dance number a little later on, this is clearly a blatant excuse for the studio to show off their new talent and attempt to promote her as an up-and-coming star – an attempt that was unsuccessful, since she apparently had a very short career. The secondary purpose of these scenes seems to be pure revelry in how different things look in colour. There are numerous scenes throughout the picture of people going about aspects of their daily lives which otherwise have little narrative purpose, even considering that lengthy scenes of people walking from one location to another were still a common sight back then.

The transformed alien, using the name Ginko, is found floating in the bay and taken in by the scientists, who know there’s something odd about her because her white blood cell count is too high. After demonstrating an astonishing leaping ability during a game of tennis, Ginko reveals her true purpose – to warn Dr. Matsuda (Yamagata Isao) against the development of Element 101 (your generic “more dangerous than a nuclear bomb” element), and to warn the people of Earth about the approach of Planet R on a collision course, which can only be averted by firing all of the world’s nuclear missiles at it simultaneously. The Paisans have approached Japan since, as the only nation to have been subjected to atomic attack, they are in the best position to appreciate the danger. Unfortunately the rest of the world is inclined to think that Japan is either making it up or easily deluded until the planet is close enough to detect, by which point it’s also having an adverse affect on our own planet.

Supposedly based on a novel by Nakajima Gentaro of which there appears to be no evidence, the story clearly owes a great debt to The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) (the benevolent alien warning of human self-destruction) and When Worlds Collide (1951) (the discovery of a pending collision with Earth). The team of Japanese scientists investigating the situation are disappointingly generic – other than such basic distinguishing characteristics such as “the young one” or “the one who invented the element”, there’s very little to differentiate one character from another and I quickly lost track of who was who. This isn’t the first Japanese SF movie I’ve seen throw in a complication by including some opportunistic criminals, but in this case they’re bolted onto the story in a particularly clumsy way. After a sinister man offers to buy Dr. Matsuda’s formula in order to make a huge profit in the international arms trade, he disappears from the picture remarkably quickly, only to reappear to kidnap him while Tokyo is being evacuated due to the extreme weather conditions caused by the approach of Planet R. Not only are they short-sighted enough to do this when his expertise is clearly needed by the rest of the world, their strategy for making him reveal the formula appears to be to handcuff him to a chair in an evacuated flat, threaten him a little, and then disappear from the movie, leaving him alone to be rescued by the Paisans at the last minute. Neither the criminals nor the writer seem to have thought this through – which is very disappointing coming from Oguni Hideo, a screenwriter best known for his collaborations with Kurosawa Akira such as Seven Samurai [Shichinin no Samurai] (1954), Throne of Blood [Kumonosu-jō] (1957) and The Hidden Fortress [Kakushi toride no san akunin] (1958). He does bring some humour to the script, but on a purely plot level it’s underwhelming.

Warning from Space (whose original Japanese title translates as Spacemen Appear in Tokyo) was eventually picked up for American distribution in 1963, where (as was typical for Japanese SF) it was taken apart and re-edited before being dubbed. Although I haven’t watched the American version, apparently one of their priorities was to remove all evidence of humour just in case anybody thought they were mocking the material. The biggest difference, though, is that the big meeting of six Paisans in all of their costumed glory as they discuss their reason for visiting Earth has been shifted forward to the opening scene, completely undercutting the original version’s gradual build-up of menacing half-glimpsed appearances. A reversed transformation sequence showing Ginko turning back from human to Paisan has been added at the end, completing the shift in emphasis from a movie about humans struggling to survive, into a movie about aliens coming to save humanity.

In closing I have to acknowledge the renowned avant-garde artist Okamoto Tarō, who made the single most important contribution to this movie – the design of the Paisan costumes, which dominate most of the poster art and promise a far more interesting film than we actually got. The costumes are at their best in the movie when seen in the shadows with their glowing central eye. They’re a little more disappointing when seen en masse during the conference scene, but the way this scene plays as a telepathic conversation backed by abstract electronic noises in the Japanese version adds a level of eerie alienness. It was the appearance of the Paisans which drew me to the film, and they remain the best thing about it.

JFF Plus Online Festival Day 4 – Anime Day

Today I’m only covering the two animated offerings from Day 4 of the Japanese Film Festival. Although I was curious to try The Great Passage [Fune wo amu] (2013) – a romantic drama about man’s 15-year project to create a new dictionary – I just didn’t have the mental energy to face it in the 24 hour window available. Maybe some other time.

Sumikkogurashi: Good to Be in the Corner [Eiga Sumikko Gurashi: Tobidasu Ehon to Himitsu no Ko] (2019) is an hour-long animated movie based on the Sumikko characters, who I’d never heard of before but are drawn in a very familiar style – their bodies are basically blobs with facial expressions made of very simple lines. Their design is deceptively simple and they’re very cute – which may be part of the reason this was my favourite animated offering so far. It appears to be better known in English as Sumikko Gurashi The Movie – The Pop-up Book and the Secret Child.

Shirokuma is a shy polar bear. Penguin? is a green creature who likes cucumber and thinks it’s a penguin but may actually be a kappa who has lost its bowl. Neko is a cat who scratches things when anxious. Tonkatsu is the leftover edge of a pork cutlet (99% fat and 1% meat) who hangs out with Ebifurai No Shippo, the tip of a fried shrimp – their dearest ambition is that one day somebody will eat them. Tokage, a dinosaur pretending to be a lizard, is best friends with Nisetsumuri, a slug pretending to be a snail. Zassou is a cheerful weed who dreams of becoming a bouquet. Obake is a ghost who loves to clean, and there are a few other creatures who play a smaller role.

While cleaning out a newly discovered basement, Otake discovers a glowing book and is sucked inside by a demon. When the other characters go looking for Otake, they are also sucked into what turns out to be a pop-up book of fairy tales. The characters find themselves separated and thrust into the roles of various characters depending on which page they arrived on, experiencing the stories of Momotaro, The Little Match Girl, The Little Mermaid, Arabian Nights, Little Red Riding Hood and The Ugly Duckling. (My favourite scene depicted the slightly perverse situation of Little Red Riding Hood (Tonkatsu & Ebufurai No Shippo) drooling at the thought of being eaten by the Big Bad Wolf, who is weirded out and backing slowly away.) They gradually regroup by climbing through tears in the pages or activating pop-up buttons, having various adventures before escaping back to their own world. It drifts along pleasantly from incident to cute incident and was just right for my mood.

Li’l Spider Girl [Wasurenagumo] (2012) is cute in a different way than Sumikkogurashi, but a little less child-friendly. Suzuri (Tsuchida Hiroshi) runs an antiquarian bookshop with the (minor) assistance of his landlord’s granddaughter Mizuki (Shimoda Asami), who has little interest in books. When she accidentally removes the paper sutra sealing a book telling the legend of a battle against giant spider spirits, the one surviving spider child is released from the book, manifesting as a small human girl with a spider’s limbs. Suzuri thinks that Spider Girl (Kaneda Tomoko) is adorable and wants to look after her, but Mizuki is concerned that the girl will revert to her human-eating ways and seeks the advice of her grandfather (Hoshino Mitsuaki). A return to the site of the original resolves matters to an extent, but not in quite the way I’d expected.

This short animated film was commissioned as part of a showcase for up-and-coming animators and marks the directorial debut of Kaiya Toshihisa, having previously worked on projects such as Gunsmith Cats [Gansumisu Kyattsu] (1995). It marks the second screenplay for Tanimura Daishirou – his earlier work Drawer Hobs [Tansuwarashi] (2011) was showcased on Day 3 of the Film Festival. The animation style is much more in line with the fantasy/horror-tinged anime I’m more familiar with, doing a fine job depicting both epic mythic battles against terrifying giant spiders and the more kawaii-inflected (yet still disturbing) Spider Girl. It’s been a good day for animation – this one’s very different to Sumikkogurashi, so it’s difficult to compare the two, but I think this one edges out the other as my pick for best animation shown so far.

JFF Plus Online Festival Day 3 – Internet Hysteria and Guardian Spirits

Stolen Identity [Sumaho o otoshita dake na no ni] (2018) begins as if it’s a gentle romantic comedy. Tomita (Tanaka Kei) texts his girlfriend Asami (Kitagawa Keiko) about their planned evening while on his way to work. Stuck in heavy traffic and running late for an important meeting, he abandons his taxi for the train, but all trains have been cancelled due to an accident. He can’t call his boss because he dropped his phone in the taxi and has to run the rest of the way to work. His girlfriend, wondering why he hasn’t been responding to her texts, speaks to the person who has the phone and arranges to collect it from a cafe. The phone is collected, the date goes ahead and everything seems fine. Then we jump back in time to discover that the person who found the phone is a giggling, jittery wig-wearing maniac with a comprehensive phone hacking setup, before cutting to a team of police as they unearth two women’s bodies buried in the woods, both with long dark hair and a shaved spot.

Tomita and Asami both become prey to various forms of cyber-attack while the police attempt to find the serial killer – who is, of course, the person carrying out the cyber-attacks and has chosen Asami as his next target. A number of potential culprits are set up, each of whom uses (or is framed for using) typical male forms of harassing women, but it’s not difficult to identify the real culprit if you have any familiarity with basic identity-scamming methods. For those who don’t, the new junior police officer (Tanaka Kei) who has transferred across from the computer crime division is on hand to explain the basics to his experienced homicide-investigation partner (Harada Taizô) and to come up with random speculations about the killer which all happen to be correct and have inexplicably never occurred to a team who nod in an impressed manner when they should have been able to reach the same conclusions themselves.

If you’re beginning to suspect a certain level of impatience and frustration with this film, you’re absolutely right. Nakata Hideo is a talented director who made his breakthrough with the internationally successful Ring [Ringu] (1998), but there’s little sign here of the brilliance displayed elsewhere in his career. The screenplay was adapted by Oishi Tetsuya (Death Note [Desu nôto]) from a novel by Shiga Akira published the year before. Presumably a lot of the movie’s problems – such as a ridiculously implausible piece of backstory for one of the leads involving a different sort of stolen identity – stem from the novel, but that still leaves unanswered the question of why the people involved would be interested in adapting it in the first place – let alone commissioning a sequel! The movie’s worst sin is the portrayal of the sinister villain, who is such a ridiculous conglomeration of outdated cliches about mad killers that it would have looked bad twenty years ago, let alone now. Although the other performances are fine, there’s little here that’s worth watching.

Tokyo Marble Chocolate [Tōkyō Māburu Chokorēto] (2007) tells the story of two self-sabotaging romantic disaster areas. Yudai (Sakurai Takahiro) is a helpful and polite boy with massive anxiety issues – one relationship ended when his girlfriend’s dog barked at him, another ended because she lived at the top of a building and he passed out as he got out of the elevator. Most crucially, however, he’s never been able to bring himself to say “I love you”. Chizuru (Mizuki Nana) is a clumsy girl who has inadvertently frightened off several boyfriends and has internalised a drunken friend’s statement that it’s impossible for anybody to truly love her.

Yudai has brought a present for Chizuru and is working up the courage to use the L word. Chizuru has also brought a present, intending to have one last good day out before breaking up with him – although, since her present is later revealed to include a statement of her love for him, she apparently hasn’t considered the mixed message that sends. Yudai’s present was supposed to be a rabbit, but he gets a call from the pet store telling him that a mini-donkey broke out and replaced the rabbit in the box. When he returns to the table, the box is open and Chizuru is unexpectedly missing.

Tokyo Marble Chocolate is an OAV split into two half-hour episodes. The first episode presents the events of two consecutive days from Yudai’s perspective while the second covers the same period from Chizuru’s side. Despite complications along the way – including an unexpected visit from one of Yudai’s exes and an overbearing playboy who has found Chizuru’s phone – the mini-donkey’s disastrous determination to follow its own whims reveals it to be a hopelessly romantic creature determined to bring the two of them together.

This is Shiotani Naoyoshi’s first attempt at directing an original animation after working as a storyboard artist on the vampire anime series BLOOD+ (2006) – a series which has very little in common with this story, beyond brief fantasy sequences which externalise the characters’ respective fears as mildly horrific creatures. Apart from that, the style of the animation is very much mundane with a desaturated, pastel-like colour palette. The mini-donkey is rendered in a notably different style from the humans and doesn’t really fit with the rest of the world – which may be part of the point, although it didn’t work very well for me. Ozaki Masaya has scripted a sweet story, but the characters are sometimes so hopeless that they risk turning off the audience. And I still have no idea what the title signifies, as there’s no sign of either marble or chocolate in the entire 60 minutes. Unless… it now occurs to me that maybe Chizuru’s gift to Yudai was intended to be marble chocolate? Hmm. They definitely could have made that clearer.

Drawer Hobs [Tansuwarashi] (2011) introduces us to Noeru (Noto Mamiko), who works in a call centre and lives in alone in a low-cost apartment. After her mother decides it’s time for her to inherit the family chest of drawers, she notices two new things: meals are being prepared and household chores completed without her involvement; and small children keep popping up around the house. These are the drawer hobs of the title, six household spirits who live in the chest of drawers (one per drawer) and serve the single female descendants of the family line. Initially freaked out and in denial, she begins to accept and then actively enjoy their company, and finally to carry out their tasks herself – at which point they have done their duty and disappear to await future generations. It’s a simple 25-minute story which offers an obvious metaphor for learning generational life skills without being overly didactic.

This one’s another directorial first. Kise Kazuchika who was an animator on the original Ghost in the Shell [Kôkaku Kidôtai] (1995). He went on to the role of chief director on the Ghost in the Shell: Arise [Kōkaku Kidōtai Araizu] OAV series before directing the concluding chapter, Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie [Kôkaku Kidôtai Shin Gekijôban] (2015) – all of which, of course, are very different from this short film. The backgrounds are beautifully textured with watercolours, providing a contrast to the solid colours on the foreground characters. The character expressions are simply conveyed through a minimal use of lines and circles which still provides scope for a wide range of emotions. It’s more subtle and more rewarding than Tokyo Marble Chocolate.