One eye

I have just added a new title image to this blog. It features one of the most famous eyes in all of horror cinema. This poor eye witnessed one of the weirdest, most disturbing family dinner ever. Of course you know what I am talking about... Right?
So... which one is it?

Pinocchio 964 (1991)

REVIEW #0025!

Fukui's first feature film is this confusing, hyper-kinetic account of an android's martyr. When cyber-prostitute Pinocchio 964 is thrown out in the street for impotency, he wanders into the arms of Himiko, an amnesic young woman who takes him under her wing. She offers him shelter and food, tries to teach him to speak and helps stimulate his memory. Unfortuantely, she also shares her bed with the strange character (at least that's what we're entitled to think after a freeze-frame of their tongues intertwined fades to black). This encounter seems to poison her as she starts to stagger and puke frantically (in what is perhaps the lenghtiest vomiting scene in film history!) Ill and angry, she takes it all out on Pinocchio, torturing the poor, screaming android quite nastily, and eventually selling him to the headhunters sent by his creator. The ending is pure Japanese pulp as Pinocchio and Himiko "merge" together through inflated-head-transplant.


First of all, let me just say this: if you do not fancy Japanese genre cinema, steer clear of this one altogether. It is an assault on the senses that's even nastier than 24, but without any hint of a clear, well-defined storyline. It is shot with an hyper-active hand-held camera that clings to the characters as they frantically run through the city (which they do for a large part of the film). Badly-lit, badly-framed and agressively edited, watching it is more of a (very unpleasant) sensual experience than an intellectual one. Add to that a noise/scream-heavy soundtrack, and you're right inside the demented Japanese psyche. And it works, if you're willing to go along and risk a seizure. The labyrinthine and confusing nature of Tokyo streets is perfectly captured by Fukui, including its large, anonymous crowds completely oblivious to the protagonists. It is a city where the individual is dwarfed (check out photo #2) and regimented in its movements (thus the numerous shots taken inside public transit systems). What we learn from Fukui's film is the expressive potential of the body, and of art, in the face of a more "functional" humanity. The screams, the running, the puke, the blood, the pain, the hatred, the contempt and the anger, as well as the unrestrained expression of art are all indicators of a basic humanity claimed by cyberpunk in the face of an increasingly sanitized and impersonal system of social exchanges. It is the city vs. the individual. And thus, it is a block of ciment that Pinocchio carries instead of a cross.

3/5

Rubber's Lover (1996)

Review #0024

The tagline alone should be evocative enough to help you appraise this wild cyberpunk thriller : "Psychic power is achieved when mental anguish exceeds physical pain". If that opaque statement intrigues you in any way, I'm pretty sure you are curious enough to enjoy "Rubber's Lover", Shozin Fukui's sort-of-prequel to his seminal "Pinocchio 964" (1991). The premise is quite simple, but it is the execution that makes the film truly unique. Three doctors and a cute helper dressed as a maid, all of which are neurotic to varying degrees, conduct illegal experiments on psychic development using ether and some weird headgear called D.D.D. Unfortunately for them, they have yet failed to reap any results, and so their sponsor sends his secretary to shut them down. Hellbent on keeping the project alive, two of the three doctors go renegade, capturing their partner (an ether-junkie with psychic potential) as well as the (sexy) secretary, and using them in one last attempt "to achieve psychic power". In the end, they are both killed by their creation: a super-powered ether addict linked mentally to their sponsor's secretary, which then escapes into the city. Unfortunately, the last few frames constitute less of an adequate conclusion to this film than a flimsy link wih "Pinocchio". An artificial link since the two films differ in plot, themes and characters. In my opinion, the term "prequel" shouldn't even be used to caracterize "Rubber's Lover".

The film is shot in black-and-white using somber sets, making ample use of silhouettes to blur the distinction between the organic and the technological items in the scenery. The machines are framed in fetishistic close-ups as parts of one big, independant organism. They seem to have a life on their own. Human life, on the other hand, is what seeps from the body during the experiments: the blood and foam spurting from the mouths of tortured patients. It is their pain, their screams. The machines are tireless workers, while humans are the mere vessels of madness, greed and pain. And in the end, contrarily to say, "Tetsuo", the result of their unholy alliance is not a functional man-machine, but a weak drug addict, prisoner of his own tortured flesh. One shot in the film shows the demented Motomiya inventorying the different muscles in the human body as if it was nothing but the sum of its parts. As if it were a machine. But in the end, he returns to ashes, just as the simple man from the old Christian metaphor. His humanity is proven in death, as it is proven with fluids and screams. The film also features some enticing images of techno-fetish, which are sure to please the weirdly-oriented. Shimika in the rubber-suit, sporting the craziest headgear you've ever seen, could give Bianca Beauchamp a run for her money. But the scene where Akari and Kiku share a techno-orgasm while squirming around metal wires in an elevator takes the cake. It almost gave me a hard-on! This is the stuff you want to see: extreme, fetishistic images of machines, pain and pleasure, all weirdly intertwined in a cacophony of sounds and images driven by savvy rhytmic editing. This is what cyberpunk is all about! And although "Rubber's Lover" is slightly inferior to "Pinocchio 964", it constitutes quite a thrilling experience nonetheless.

3/5

Street Trash (1987)

Review #0023


Written "to democratically offend every group on the planet", this solid cult classic contains everything from melting derelicts to severed penises flying accross the screen, with a healthy dose of foul language, brutality, dumpyard sex, gang-rape and necrophilia inbetween. The premise involves a sleazy Brooklyn storekeeper selling a batch of rancid purple liquor to the local homeless which causes them to melt or explode in very graphic ways. But in the end, the killer hooch is little more than a MacGuffin, because despite obvious exploitation purposes, the film rather plays like a milieu study than a straight horror venture. The neighborhood of Greenpoint is where the film was shot, right accross the bridge from lower Manhattan, which we can see in the background, taunting the characters with its wealth and order. Many dirty derelicts populate a local dumpyard and the streets nearby, a good portion of which are Vietnam vets or other war victims (such as the two sons of a shell-shocked soldier). The shades of Buddy Giovinazzo's "Combat Shock" may be glossed over by purple goo, but the message is still the same: post-Vietnam America is hell. Dreams of Vietcong vampires disturb the night while the day is a fight for survival without dignity. Certainly not up to the level of "Taxi Driver" or "First Blood", "Street Trash" is still one of the finest example of the Post-Vietnam sub-genre.

This film is so excessive and juicy, in a darkly humorous way, that it feels right at home in the 1980s (a splatter-friendly decade of genre fun). And despite the dilapidated look of the characters (which is quite well-crafted), the film itself is not cheap-looking in any way. Its photography is surprisingly crisp, and its settings are quite elaborate. All that without mentioning the incredible special effects which, without driving the film entirely, constitute a huge part of the trashy fun we get out of the experience. That, and the irreverent attitude of the protagonists, general abundance of fluids, full-frontal female nudity, and this lovingly-framed severed penis used in a lenghty game of keep-away (talk about black humor!). The acting is uneven, but generally good with R.L. Ryan (mayor Belgoody from "The Toxic Avenger") and Tony Darrow stealing the show as the perverted owner of the dumpyard, and a small-time mobster respectively. The film also features what could be THE BEST POLICE ARREST EVER CAUGHT ON FILM. When Bill the cop puts his hands on one of Nick Duran's hitmen, he beats him up senselessly, drags him to the bathroom, pukes on him, flushes a urinal over his head, then leaves. It's just one of the many moments in the film about which to tell your friends: "You've GOT to see this!" All in all, "Street Trash" is quite a piece of anthology. A no holds barred trash film full of ever-lasting images that introduced two mammoths to the film industry, director and steadicam operator Jim Muro, who went on to become James Cameron's choice operator (he did the steadicam for such classics as "The Abyss", "T2" and "Titanic") and Tony Darrow, who later starred in five Woody Allen films and many more mobster films including "Goodfellas", "Mickey Blue Eyes", and "Analyze This". Be sure to stick around for the credits as Darrow himself interprets the hilarious closing song, "We Do Things My Way".

3.5/5

Guinea Pig 5: Android of Notre Dame (1989)

Review #0022

Make no mistake, this is the fifth entry in the series. And although it is often featured as "Guinea Pig 2", it's only because it was the second one made after the distribution deal with JHV (Japan Home Video). As the two previous entries ("He Never Dies" and "Mermaid in a Manhole"), this one features some sort of a plot, albeit a poor one. It involves a dwarf scientist experimenting with corpses in order to cure his sister suffering from some unnamed heart disease. As in most films of this kind, scientific terms are thrown around as if to magically infer legitimitacy to a pulpy, improbable script. Throughout the film, the link between the sister's disease and the dwarf's experiments with pickled body parts and alligator clips is never made quite clear. We can only watch in amazement as some fucked-up science goes down, fucked-up science being the raison d'être of this tame splatterfest. Things get even weirder once a mysterious sponsor tries to crook our crafty protagonist who manages to trap him, sever his head, and regenerate it as part of the ongoing experiments. Surprisingly, the relationship between the dwarf and his sponsor's severed head is much more involving than that with his bed-ridden sister, which is a revealing indication about the quality of the script...

In the end, "Android" is yet another poorly-produced, effects-driven exploitation quickie to add to an undeservingly notorious series. Considering the vast and varied output of Japanese horror, I doubt anybody but the most hardcore completists would want to see this mild-mannered freak show. Designed to attract viewers, I would even argue that the plot risks repelling them by impairing the functionality of the film as freak show. In a way, "Android" is "less pure" than the uber-exploitative "Flower of Flesh and Blood" and "The Devil's Experiment", looking more like a toned-down version than the rightful successor of these two titles ("He Never Dies" being in the middle). With its diminutive protagonist, naked breasts, electronic gizmos and soundtrack straight out of an old computer game, it plays more like a home-made version of "Frankenstein" for Japanese nerds than a truly exportable film. And anyway, I doubt that any Western moviegoer could watch this without making at least one smart-ass remark, most of them being likely to turn it off halfway in disgust or exasperation. For a truly remarkable experiment in pain and grossness, I suggest you privilege the vastly superior "Rubber's Lover" by cyberpunk great Shozin Fukui (also available through Unearthed Films for even less than you'd pay for the out-of-print "Devil's Experiment/Android of Notre Dame" double bill).

1,5/5

The Stepfather (2009)

Review #0021

OH MY GOD! How could they? How could anybody work on this thinking it was a worthy endeavor? This "Stepfather", an eponymous remake of the semi-classic 1987 thriller, could well be the blandest horror film I ever saw. Even "Carnosaur" and "Xtro" had their moments, but this here has no redeeming value whatsoever, save for Amber Heard (the pretty blonde star of the atrocious "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane"), but we'll get to that later.

The film starts on a middle-aged man changing his looks before leaving a house full of corpses. You see, he is actually a psycho-killer hellbent on wiping out families deemed inappropriate for his fathership. But we all know that, right? And we all know that he will go on pursuing his goals with yet another unsuspecting family. Which he does. First by smooth-talking a single mother in a grocery store, then by making friends with her kids and acquaintances. Simple enough. Too simple in fact. Stepfather then goes on to bump off everybody who gets in the way of his dream (to create the "perfect" family), including an elderly woman, a lesbian real estate agent, and his bride's ex-husband. As the kill count goes, that's it. And these kills are all dry. Throughout the film, the elder son fosters suspicions about daddy #2 which he sporadically shares with his girlfriend to the same effect everytime. "It's all in your head", she repeats even as evidences of foul play keep piling up. And so, the screenplay limps from scene to scene, all of which are way too familiar and forward the plot a quarter of an inch each time. When finally stepfather and his family battle it out, we're 90 minutes too far from the beginning of the film. Our interest, alive in the fifteen minutes or so, has waned into non-existence. There never was no suspense to keep us awake since we knew from frame 1 who the killer was. There is no narrative novelty either, not even a good plot twist, and the characters are all mere archetypes.

The best way to describe "Stepfather" is with the expression "by-the-book". Unfortunately, the "book" hasn't sold one copy since the 1980s. Back then, it was still relevant to make a movie about reconstructed families, a phenomenon that peeked during that decade, and partook in the lives of many young movie-goers (and targets for the horror market). But today? Such a subject would have required a radical modernization, which the drones responsible for its execution didn't think was important. They could just as well have pissed in the audience's face! Their film is a shameless rehash made for quick bucks, a malignant tumor in Hollywood's rotting brain. Since it is a virtual copy of the original, digging for inspiration in a lackluster, moribund sub-genre, there is no reason to see it. Except of course for Heard's body, which is featured proeminently. As fellow Canuck Arrow in the Head mentioned in his review, her character's wardrobe seem to contain nothing but bikinis and undies, which are the only items of clothes she wears throughout the film. Here is a picture of her, so that you can forget about the film altogether. Enjoy!



0,5/5

Saw VI (2009)

Review #0020


"Is it shit?" First thing I wrote in my notepad. But overall, I was happily surprised by this juicy Halloween treat. Happily surprised because I was expecting shit. After the first two entries in the series (the second of which was atrocious, with choppy editing, an hyperactive camera, boring characters, formulaic plotline, lame sets...), I had decided to steer clear of "Saw" altogether. Then #3 and #4 reared their heads. When #4 was first publicized, I prophecized a series of ten. Up to now, I am right: one each year, it's starting to look like "Friday" (11 films total including "Freddy vs Jason"). Unlike for "Friday", however, each "Saw" film is not stand-alone. It is merely an episode in one lenghty soap opera featuring some of the most unsymphatetic characters this side of "The Young and the Restless". Because of it's fast pace and how plot points are thrown around out of context, the film sins by narrative opacity. For the unintitiated, it seems nightmarish (and pointless) to try and put the pieces together.

From what I understand, the main plot involves a "police detective" named Hoffman (I'll get to him later...) who became Jigsaw's new successor following the demise of one "Strahm" from whom he retrieved the severed hand that he uses to spread fingerprints in order to cover his trail. Unfortunately for charisma man Hoffman, two detectives are hot on Jigsaw's trail, one of which he thought had died, the other whom we discover had covered her death. But Hoffman is not alone a Jigsaw follower, because there is also ex-wife Jill who's involved as well, and another girl named Amanda (the penitent junkie from #2), who we now learn, has caused Jill's miscarriage. Amanda is only shown through flashbacks (presumably because she was killed in a previous entry), as is dead John Kramer, the original Jigsaw Killer whose master-plan is now revealed through a series of envelopes bequeathed to Jill.

The film showcases the intricate relationships of these obscure characters as if they were close friends of everyone in the audience! I mean, as an average moviegoer who has skipped the last three installments of the series, why should I care if some wooden, grade-F Stallone clone who would never pass as a police detective in a million years gets caught by two under-developed characters whom I am supposed to know from films I haven't seen? And why should I care about Jigsaw's master plan? Granted, John Kramer is the most interesting character in the series, and Tobin Bell fleshes him out quite nicely. Yet his message his stale. "You must stare death in the face in order to truly appreciate life..." Yeah, yeah, yeah... It was a good gimmick originally, but it can hardly become the leitmotive for an entire series. And besides, including dead characters in an intricate series of flash-backs overlapping all kind of obscure events going on at present only adds to the confusion. The result is that we are forced to stare at what is essentially a pulsating mass of narrative tentacles flailing around to no avail. Accessibility, people! That's the only way to draw new moviegoers to the series whereas relying solely on returning fans might be a fatal mistake.


Fortunately, the film features a great sub-plot involving characters only slighly related to Hoffman and Kramer's story, whom the audience can recognize and react to. They're a bunch of money sharks from a health insurance company, caught in Jigsaw's game, and thus forced to face the consequences of the death penalties they impose every day on poor Americans. If "Saw VI" lacks a brain, it certainly doesn't lack balls, tackling the health care issue head-on as it does. It is a blue-collar film, like all horror should be. It tackles blue-collar issues and reflects onscreen the desires of a blue-collar audience, namely the trial and torture of our century's wickedest criminals: insurance people. Although I personally have access to free health care (through the sublime RAMQ which pumps tax dollars like a mad vacuum), I can understand the tragedy of the sick American poor, of cancer victims, for example, robbed of everything they own by a crooked system that values corporate profit alone. And I can see how these people deserve justice. And justice is served, in a sublimated form at least, with "Saw VI". "Healthcare decisions should be made by doctors and their patients, not the insurance company", quips a suddenly political Jigsaw before sentencing four "application denyers" to death. Personally, I was thrilled by the ordeal imposed on the evil vice-president of the company (the man who incidentally denied coverage to Kramer). My heart pounded at the sight of his suffering. It made my day to witness his struggle, seeing how much his victimization is righteous compared to that of the junkies and cigarette-smokers from previous films.

All in all, "Saw VI" hits home mainly as a meditation on the evils of the health care system, benefiting from an hyper-kinetic treatment that works well with the trial sequences, but very poorly with the contrived, uninteresting main plot featuring too many irrelevant characters and situations. Just like a Halloween candy, the film is tasty enough for a lick, but in the end, it will leave you unfulfilled.

2,5/5