Mekong Hotel (2012)

Rewatched 28th March 2025

Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Screenplay: Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Cast: Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda Kaewbuadee, Chai Bhatana and Maiyatan Techaparn

 

Damn, I forgot my own tune.

A film I've wanted to see for a long time, and not readily available, Mekong Hotel had a disadvantage of being less than an hour long, and that this was the follow up to Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010). The hype after Uncle Boonmee... won at the Cannes Film Festival its most prestigious award, the Palme D'or, may have been a disadvantage when this premiered at the festival in 2012, a work less structured on plot.

There's a weight knowing how the Mekong River in the north-east of Thailand, where this is set, has a lot of meaning for its director-writer. Set at a hotel by a river that is the border between Thailand and Laos, in real life his father's ashes were scattered there, gaining a greater significance for him¹. You could argue Mekong Hotel is a very opaque film even for its creator, as with everything by Weerasethakul, defying expectations even for those who would've grasped his style previously. It starts from the get-go, opening with a conversation between two men without the first images seen, one a classical guitarist, Chai Bhatana, who provides the score. The first images seen are the titular hotel on the Mekong River, with the lush acoustic guitar music setting up the tropical atmosphere, guiding us through a series of conversations with the local denizens occupying the hotel.

Among them is the other idiosyncratic touch, with regular collaborators Jenjira Pongpas and Sakda Kaewbuadee involved in the cast, where there are phi pop spirits from Thai folklore. The first is introduced undercutting the tranquillity of a debate by one man of what clothes to wear, a woman just outside the rooms consuming bloodied raw meat. Mekong Hotel has been dubbed a drama and a documentary, but as with all of Weerasethakul's films, genre tags are a vague concept especially as the phi pop spirits are very important to the content here. The first is seen having killed and eaten the viscera of someone's beloved dog, but they are also cannibalistic. The touch here that you would only get from Weerasethakul, whose take on the supernatural has always been one of his most compelling touches, is that we get to see from their side too. We are able to hear from the pop's side of things especially when one is revealed to be someone's mother, having intimate conversations, knitting and apologising to her adult daughter for who she now is. In legend, they are said to possess their victims and, when they have made them hunt for raw meat, eventually eat their own intestines before moving on; we see in this one of the male cast being possessed by the phi pop at one point only to be exorcised. They are still in the consciousness in their homeland, with adaptations of the legends in the likes of Pob Pee Fa (2009), a TV series, and it is befitting that Weerasethakul would take these figures for Mekong Hotel and deal with them in a more humane banality.

They still kill people, but we also see from their sides their regrets of their immortality mixed with the hunger. Naturally, as with Uncle Boonmee... its matter of fact as that film dealt with someone's reincarnations returning to his memory, of the moment in Tropical Malady (2004) that stayed with me of a cow accidentally being shot but its ghost happily wandering off immediately in peace. Weerasethakul views the supernatural if it exists with this casualness of the ghosts merely intermingling with the daily lives of those also at this hotel, from the lovers, the friends, those with pasts involving the history of military action in the country of Thailand, and the pervading fear of flooding. Ghosts devouring peoples' guts is one thing, which happens here, but more ominous in tone is when the characters talk of how they need to be prepared for potential flooding in the area, reflecting how as we see in the distance excavators doing their work, the landscape by human and accidental influence in modernisation may influence the natural landscape too.   

A big factor to Mekong Hotel, making it a shame it is not readily available, is that this is quite important for Apichatpong Weerasethakul as a film maker. He made a film in digital also dying for a proper available release - the co-directed comedy-spy farce The Adventure of Iron Pussy (2003) made with Michael Shaowanasai I've always wanted to see. Here however marks the point he entirely moved to digital between 16mm celluloid in Uncle Boonmee to digital cinematography in Cemetery of Splendour (2015). This is a film which Weerasethakul shot, edited, directed and produced by himself to save costs, alongside a small budget financed by UK-based production company Illuminations Films¹. Also among the producers is Keith Griffiths, one of the most important British producers to exist for me, for how much he has contributed in helping some of the most interesting filmmakers to exist. He is arguably someone I should lionise as he has helped figures I adore - stop motion animators Jan Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers, Apichatpong Weerasethakul - alongside his collaborations with the likes of Christopher Petit and Patrick Keiller, two really idiosyncratic British filmmakers, and his one-offs like Tsai Ming-liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006) and Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio (2012). He deserves so much credit for making cinema far more interesting just for these examples.

The intimacy this small budget and production explains, and adds greater reward, to Mekong Hotel's intimacy. It is an opaque film but not a difficult film in terms of plot because, arguably, there is no plot. It is a string of interactions where we get into the lives of these figures, and the ghosts too, ruminating on their lives. Slow content guitar over conversations is apparently my jam, even when it keeps playing nonchalantly over a pop ghost eating someone's entrails on a hotel bed, but you can miss without sufficient cultural knowledge of Thai history some of its more striking pieces of dialogue. One female character openly talks about being taught by the military soldiers how to use a rifle and be militarized, something viewed by her as fun and matter-of-fact of an ordinary life despite being unordinary out of context. The ghost of combat is here, and still was in-between the filming of Mekong Hotel, as between this film and Uncle Boonmee you had the 2010 military crackdown on Red Shirt protestors and the 2014 military coup transpire in Thailand. Details could be dismissed, as unfortunately might have been the case to critics at the Cannes Film Festival premiere, that ask so many questions especially if you are entirely unaware of Thai history but register this, from the detail from the same female character of having dated a US soldier stationed there, and to the nod to the Mekong River being a border to Laos of Laosian migrants entering the country. There's a sobering moment discussing this, where Laotian migrants had such difficulty in living in Thailand as documented in one scene, which becomes more meaning when migrants are still a discussion today.

Some harmony is however found within Mekong Hotel. The landscape is still beautiful despite the excavation in the distance. Friendships and bonding between ghost mother and daughter transpires. There is a machine, predating what you have in Cemetery of Splendour, which lets one leave their body as a spirit explore, looking like a VR headset with the humour that the out-of-body experience is only undercut by how much battery power there is. A ghost can still live, still knit, if locked to a hotel room or so for six hundred years and needing to feed a craving for flesh. Then there is the final scene, a prologue shot of the river with jet skis in the distance which feels closer to Weerasethakul's installation projects if with the sense of tranquillity felt from sitting and contemplating the environment that is close to Apichatpong Weerasethakul for emotional weight. As well, for an underrated film in his filmography, there's also the base pleasure of just watching people having fun on jet skis, a reminder that a lot of my appreciation of his films is as much for this sense of tranquillity that permeates all of his work too.

 

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1) His Particle, Somewhere: Mekong Hotel (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2012), written by Duncan Caillard for Sense of Cinema, and published June 2021.

Diary of a Secretary (2007)

Watched Tuesday 4th March 2025

Director: Francesco Fanelli

Starring: Roberta Gemma, Julie Silver, Victoria Lanz, Veronica Belli, Rossella Conti, Marco Nero, Franco Trentalance, Johnny Montoya, Dieter von Stein, Leonardo Conti and Teo Mantera

 

I decided, like a mad man, to try to rent and watch every new release in 2025 on DVD or Blu Ray from the sole postal rental service to my knowledge that still exists. I made one exception, the later seasons of long running television, but this challenge whilst not likely to be finished also raises that I'll be out of my comfort zone greatly too, as this includes genres and television series I normally would not venture into.

The decision to even break the fourth wall and admit that, whilst this review will be written and completed in March 2025, is to be made available time after is telling. Its not out of embarrassment of watching a softcore cut of an Italian 2000s hardcore porn film, but because this is not a film of any kind to start this idea off with whenever published, the kind that feels disjointed to a negative point regardless of what you were watching it for. Released on Blu Ray in 2025 among imported CGI animated films for families and a David Attenborough documentary series about animals in Asian countries, watching this deliberately distancing yourself from its intended goal of arousal is a very weird thing to do, I admit that, if as a result strangely fascinating to ever do like a bizarre visual experience. However, with this particular one, director Francesco Fanelli's utterly exposes many problems with this on many levels, even if it feels cruel to bury any film for me nowadays.

Distanced from its intentions, the film feels like a series of choreographed rituals, rather than actual erotica, and it is confounded by the very little plot it intended to have, feeling like a distracting factor. The first question to ask, about this tale of a female secretary Roberta (Roberta Gemma) being hired by a male member of the mafia to document his family's sordid behaviour, is why softcore releases are still being produced. Considering the internet exists, that this let alone is available in a high definition version is a side of physical media in the UK of curious note. "Smug without smut", to borrow the term the American Genre Film Archive coined for screening (and releasing) pornography with cut versions in the United States, is a concept of being able to excise the actual sex, which is still divisive for people, and present the story around it as entertainment. Also, the United Kingdom still has stricter rules on pornography, and whilst the internet does exist, still so do the licensed sex shops which find themselves ostracised in the wasteland of cities next to petrol stations. Even without the possible shame, or disinterest, in viewing the extended real sex scenes, there may be additional income to selling these cuts still, and what has to be factored in with this version, and the modern releases in Britain, is that they almost all come now from Salvation Group. A significant company in the history of cult British VHS and DVD cinema under their label Redemption Films, they're behind most of these releases like today's review in the current day, and there's more to releasing this than the factors suggested already.

Salvation/Redemption is a multimedia concept founded in 1993 by Nigel Wingrove, who beforehand was involved in design and is also a man who managed to get one of his short films banned under British blasphemy laws, with Visions of Ecstasy (1989), the only film to only have been in the British Isles. Alongside its promos evoking the more explicit designer work for the metal band Cradle of Filth, who Wingrove has collaborated with, Redemption Film became an arm in making European horror and genre cinema onto British VHS shelves. In the DVD era, it became a way for me to first encounter Jean Rollin and various obscure titles from countries like Italy alongside the likes of Arrow Video's earliest releases. Wingrove has also since the start been fascinated with erotic filmmaking, distributing it in the United Kingdom. Be it softcore/sexploitation cinema through the Jezebel label started in 1994, to Japanese pinku releases and edited version of hardcore filmmaking, the company through its various labels has embraced these films as much as horror and other genres since the origin point. Even including edited versions of modern 2010s-onwards American pornographic cinema, these titles are still appearing in the high street here in Britain, and with Blu Ray releases coming out in 2025, there is a view here of celebrating these types of films too clearly felt.

The delay in the review is out of hindsight that, with respect for the cultural institution, this is mean to Redemption Films as much as to the creators of Diary of a Secretary, because this particular production is neither one thing nor another as desired. Mid-2000s modernist erotica shot in middle class Italian homes, likely rented out to adult productions, could be my thing with its stark, matter-of-fact lighting. Its style would befit a crime soap opera, something that even if sparse and clichéd could've at least gotten to something compelling. Sadly it never gets to this or whatsoever having a real story, not even a low budget aesthetic to depict this premise of the sordid criminal life and the sexual relationships of mafia, which would've least been interesting in itself. Someone in a flashback making life miserable by complaining about a Japanese restaurant's food and then sleeping with the owner's wife is the most dynamic moment, but it leads nowhere. Even if there's a charm to just staging it in someone's home masquerading as a restaurant with some sushi on a plate acquired, you could've had fun, for all the additional issues a lot of pornography still has for people, with the material.

Even with a lack of budget, there's a charm for this particularly viewer in micro budgets, and the idea of pornography with its rented out homes, wondering how much of the backdrop and items around the shelves belong to someone, is a compelling aesthetic if a curious one. Even if it leads to the most uncomfortable idea of having a person's bare torso pressed into the cold steel handle of a weight lift machine, whilst I won't kink shame anyone, at least the production had the wherewithal to hire a gym. None of these locations feel like they were needed, and could be removed, which presents the huge problem here that this all feels perfunctory regardless of the reason you came to it as an audience member.

If this film had entirely embraced being pornography and rested on its visuals, we could've had something interesting, and there is another film Redemption Films released that I still owe an apology for as an example, which was Michael Ninn's Cashmere (1999). Entirely a work about staged real sex scenes, what however stood out about it, and why I completely understand Nigel Wingrove releasing this on DVD back in the day even censored, was that he used it to tackle the sixties, specifically the early sixties where he has adult actresses dressed like Jackie Kennedy and cheerleaders, and fetishises fifties era diners and the colour pink as much as the bodies of his male and female cast. Diary of a Secretary, even if the English dub nearly pushes this into an episode of an old Channel 4 series Eurotrash, could have entirely played off even its look and tone like a televised gangster pastiche even if also erotic scenes only, playing up to this aesthetic and type of characters. The lack of prop firearms on the male cast by itself adds to the perfunctory nature.

The discrepancy in not doing more with the material is felt when this is definitely a softcore cut, as there are moments clearly reshot with clothing still worn obscuring details. Thus, literal dry humping, abstracting the content further as the amount of pouting, gurning and grunting become odd performative rituals here and are abstracting sexual desire. It is 99% of the film, the sex scenes, and without the salacious content, the issues of the film lacking spark is felt in that there is no flair or sense of idiosyncrasy to the footage. The film doesn't help when one woman is offered to mob goons as a gift, and the last line even if being jolted is a misogynistic barb, but I'd prefer women to be the ones to give the opinion on depictions of themselves, and damn specific films like this, whether it be the Andrea Dworkin anti-pornography side or the pro-sex feminists. The actresses here follow a type - all barring lead Roberta Gemma having blonde hair, and even she shares a similar body type to appeal to the targeted male audience - so there is absolutely an issue too that this is very perfunctory in how it depicts these idealised male and female erotic figures too, which I think I can criticise.

The women at least stand out more whilst the men, as is a problem for me even in regular films, are virtually interchangeable in themselves barring their hairstyles. Even if a form of objectification, even a film like this has its actresses in distinct clothes with prop jewellery, whilst the men could have their heads blurred and one would not care who was who, which raises issues for a film trying to be about gangsters and inherently meant to be of interest as cast members. It also raises an issue that porn as much objectifies men at its worse as much as it objectifies the women in the worse cases, if in different ways. Here, one guy is different because he has spiked his hair out with wax, whilst at least the actresses can have access to mesh body costumes, floral dresses, and exaggerated blue eyeliner John Waters would gush over. It is not enough to defend their generic depiction, but is at least something to cling onto, emphasising for me with the male cast in similar dark suits how limited and crap men's fashion can be in comparison.

It feels like shooting fish in a barrel, particularly as other Francesco Fanelli films have had Blu-Ray releases in 2025 and may offer works with more on their mind even in terms of titillation. However, this particular case was abrupt to witness in something which feels as blank as this. In this case, it's with a sense that, even on a purely crass level, there's a complete lack of aesthetics even on a horniness level, nor any sense of the film really revealing in its content. Roberta only starts writing in the first pages of the diary in the last act, as if an accidental metaphor the plot's lack-there-of, and if one has a mad roulette of films they want to see in a year like I want to, you really do feel gut disappointment, even on behalf of the director and cast, when the result feels like it is going through the motions in any medium and genre.

Venus in Eros (2012)

 

Watched Saturday 15th March

Director: Takako Imai

Screenplay: Takako Imai

Cast: Miyavi Matsunoi as Venus (as Saori Hara), Alan Vincent as David, Martin Collins as Eros, Michael Barnes as Forest Lover Michael, Kavana Crossley as Angel Kakabel, Darren Ellis as the Sculptor, Daniel Fontannaz as Angel Gabriel, Carl Harrison as Forest Lover Carl, Freddie Ingles as Angel Michael, Alex Kovas as Venus Maniac Alex, Stefan Leadbeater as Angel Sariel

 

"A hundred years ago, in a deep forest" opens a film about a status of Venus, which is also one of the obscurest films I've wanted to track down and see at least once, being a nightmare to do so despite being a British-Japanese co-production which would have made it least have a slither of availability somewhere. Honestly, probably the thing that didn't help the film is that it feels like a low budget artistically minded production which is fully committed to its niche concept, something which contrary to suggestions in image of a softcore film is very artistically minded instead.

The story begins with its director, Takako Imai, which immediately presents a layer to the production as the vision of a female artist, born in Japan and moving to London, who worked as a music journalist but would go on to make a couple of films. This theatrical length film is the last of two, the shorter production Recordare: Days of Remembrance (2009) the first, which is a prelude to Venus in Eros as a collaboration with dancers in acting roles, depicting a romance between two men involving dancers from the Matthew Bourne Company¹. Hers is absolutely a set of films belonging to this era, especially in the 2000s, of fascinating melding of cinema and other art forms, installation artists to dancer choreographers who took advantage of both the film making industry of the 2000s and, in other cases, the DVD medium when that was a popular way to make these projects available. Venus in Eros, far from an erotic film, is closest to the films on DVD I was lucky enough to see through my university library, be it the sole official release of Mathew Barney's Cremaster films, a segment of the 2003 Cremaster III dubbed The Order - Cremaster 3, and the work of Wim Vandekeybus. For the later I'm pulling from a really obscure figure from my memory, and old notes of what I've watched over the decades I've no shame I collect, especially he's the perfect comparison for Venus in Eros.

Vandekeybus, a Belgium choreographer, director and photographer made a series of dance based films over the years my university kept in a luxurious box set they acquired, and the difficulty with tracking down Venus in Eros comes with the realisation this belongs to that era of cinema, the art gallery and art installation area of moving images which, particularly in the 2000s and continuing in the early 2010s, was taking advantage of limited edition runs of DVD-only releases. The British Film Institute, even releasing a few in their early years of the DVD boom only to be more picky in the later years, have had these as well in their stores too, and whilst Venus in Eros is more sexually explicit, it fully fits into this type of artistically minded lower budget production if more likely to be lost in the cracks of cinema for the worst. Considering its initial tone, driven by its opening classical piano music over country woodlands in winter, the production from its poster and some screenshots online will jar for those expecting (or wanting) something salacious.

The most explicit thing comes from its central premise of living statues, particular a depiction of what will become the Venus de Milo, a legendary statue created in Hellenistic period which is iconic in having lost its arms in time. Because of the obscurity of this film, this review will be full spoilers to give you at least an abridged form of what Takako Imai's film is, a fantasy romance using dance to tell its tale, where Venus has her statue erected in the woodlands, there through all the seasons back to the next winter. Soon into the story having a statue of David one side to her, likely inspired by Michelangelo's legendary creation, the other of Eros the other side, the Roman counterpart of Cupid, both played by male actors body painted and erected as statues played by real people. The most explicit aspect, which makes the female titular lead a braver role, is that like many statues, their depictions of the likes of Goddesses to nymphs to leaders never shied away from natural nudity, and having seen statues in their real marble form, they are an incredible art form even from sculptors who are unknowns in their painstaking craft of human anatomy, something which this also plays too in turning real people into these living statues, blurring these lines.

The more lurid aspect of what this done, a casual eroticism but like a form of naturalism for the female lead, is the actress comfortable enough to take this lead, even if meaning being nude in full stone-grey body paint and standing still on a podium, being German-Japanese actress Miyavi Matsunoi. That is neither a criticism of her, nor her career choices in her career before this production, but central to images you find online, the immediate thing you would learn of her career before this makes this film a fascinating contrast to her previous work, when you learn of her career and that this became effectively a retirement from said turn in her early career. Miyavi Matsunoi, real name Saori Hara, whilst she would expand her career out into the live action tokusatsu, like the film Garo the Movie: Red Requiem (2010) as a villainess, and a later Garo franchise television series, started her career as a pornographic actress and model before moving into more mainstream films with the likes of Yuriko's Aroma (2010). Probably the most widely known film of this era would be Hara's role in 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (2011), a remake of the notorious 1991 film Sex and Zen but now in 3D, which marks the moment where she fully leaves the adult industry in Japan entirely for the rest of her acting career. She is the central figure of this, and this marks a fascinating conclusion as an adult film actress and erotic model. With a film that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in its market² and, through a female director's camera, her natural sensuality is used in a very humane and matter-of-fact way for its love story. Certainly, considering there are points where she has to stand still in the full statue makeup in real snow and very cold temperatures, I have to admire Saori Hara going through this shoot before leaving anything erotic in her career for good for more mainstream productions for the rest of her career.

The film, bilingual in least the form I saw it, with written English text onscreen initially for Venus' thoughts, English dialogue and Japanese text onscreen to translate said dialogue, is a simple depiction of a romance that suffers through angst before it can reach a happy ending. It involves as well a male and female caretaker for the statues as, from winter to the next one, Venus and David out of their statue forms in scenes in their own reality start to fall in love, whilst Eros the archer looks on lovesick for Venus himself but not of interesting for her at all. The film, which has some of the performances struggle a little, and long moments of contemplation of these statues and the natural landscape, got a particularly damning review back when it premiered at the 2011 Cannes festival, from Hollywood Reporter's Duane Byrge, who described that the "best venues might be side rooms in under-funded museums" and that the natural shots could be "cut and re-marketed as screensavers"². Those who could actually see the film may admittedly think the same thing, if his comments come off with cheap snark in that review, particularly as the cheap jab at museums does admittedly evoke what the film's tone clearly was as well as feels like an elitism against an area of moving images, whether good or bad, which is badly maligned in access or reporting.

The contemplative attitude of a few museum and art film DVD productions from that era I've seen if felt with this, those shot on the cameras of the era, with simple stories which are tent poles to place their contemplative moods, as it builds over the romance between Venus and David as Eros the archer looks on with a broken heart. The statues themselves are interacted with as if living people - there's a playful humour, especially in the spring section, where you've a young boy trying to get the statue of Venus to eat a vanilla ice cream cone, played off as a living statue without any sleaze involved whatsoever. There are also scenes outside of time which turn the statues in living people, alongside the caretakers, where the dance sequences come in. They are not elaborate musical number dances but symbolic choreography for the emotions of the moment, the most prominent in the summer section. Showing a more explicit version of Venus, Saori Hara plays a version closer to Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, without the giant clam and having veils instead of the longer hair in the painting. The scene involves her being dressed and helped to become human by the rest of the cast, from having make up applied to her face to being helped in learning to walk in high heels, all with the others on a white stage dressed in period costumes.

The film depicts most of the romance in choreographed dance, like the performance on a black stage between Venus and David, and applies to the conflicts too. Eros, eventually snapping unable to have Venus as she falls for another, eventually takes it out on the male caretaker, and this is the one sequence which requires a trigger warning, as this caretaker with an arrow in his back takes it out on Venus herself. The removal of her arms, with intercuts of her struggling under him as a person, in a dance choreography as a person, explicitly nods to the act as a sexual assault. The film could be criticised for how this concludes - the caretaker's cruelty, including drawing a blue tear on her cheek out of pure spite afterwards, becoming immediate remorse - but in knowledge of its female creator - Takako Imai, who is entirely on Venus' side, the depiction of her transformation into the Venus de Milo is entirely depicted with the weight of a horrible transgression of her as a being, which is treated as seriously as that should.

Some of the performances, as said, waver in quality in the line readings but suspecting the focus on casting actual dancers in these roles, it feels less meaningful to criticise and appreciate what the point was behind the choices. For me, Venus in Eros does succeed by its end, which makes Takako Imai's vanishing from filmmaking a disappointment. She had a project BBoy in a Dream, which was meant to be a documentary about breakdancing, a fascinating turn in her clear interest in dance as an art if it had ever come out. The film started shooting in 2014, but there's hope, doing an interview in closer or within 2024 about her career so far¹, one where she talks of how breakdance was added to the Paris Olympics for 2024¹, giving hope that this ten plus year project finally comes to light and Imai herself wasn't put off as a creator in the moving images field. By the time winter to winter passes in Venus in Eros, where we even get a Christmas tree, Venus in a Santa top, and a boys choir in the snow saying Merry Christmas to her, we get a small story of love, conflict around love, and its eventual success which in its scrappiness as an unconventional art piece won me over. Lightning and a downed burning tree may knock over and leave Venus a lifeless statue, but as her male lover takes her somewhere safe in the woods as spirits, a happy ending is found in the end as the credits (in Japanese) are over the tranquil landscape.

 

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1) The Very Personal Reason Behind Takako Imai’s Breakdancing Documentary BBOY IN A DREAM, written for The Fan Carpet.com, and marks itself as posted in 2024 was references to the 2024 Paris Olympics.

2) Venus in Eros: Cannes 2011 Review, written by Diane Byrge for the Hollywood Reporter, and published May 31st 2011.

The Phantom of the Opera (1998)

 

Rewatched Monday 10th March 2025

 

Director: Dario Argento

Screenplay: Dario Argento, Gérard Brach (and Giorgina Caspari)

Based on the novel by Gaston Leroux

Cast: Julian Sands as The Phantom of the Opera, Asia Argento as Christine Daaé, Andrea Di Stefano as Raoul, Baron de Chagny, Nadia Rinaldi as Carlotta Altieri, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni as Honorine, István Bubik as The Rat Catcher, Lucia Guzzardi as Madame Giry

 

Somehow because of Gaston Leroux, I can connect Lon Chaney Sr., Claude Rains, Dario Argento...and Andrew Lloyd Webber together among the many who've adapted or starred as the titular Phantom, Leroux's 1910 work first creating this figure terrorising the Paris. This is in mind I forgot Julian Sands was in this now taking up the role, emphasising alongside being a very idiosyncratic casting choice for Argento that this entire project was more idiosyncratic than I remembered. With the prologue suggesting Batman Returns (1992) in the origin of the Phantom as a baby Sands being floated across the waters of a cave in wicker basket, only with rats replacing the penguins, Argento's take with co-writer Gérard Brach taking its own direction with the source material. More so as I thought that Batman Return reference as a joke to myself as I re-watched the opening, only to forget a rat drags the wicker basket to safety and an animatronic rat puppet head in close-up is depicted as their friendship as human to rodent is shown.

Considering his 1987 film Opera, it makes sense for Argento to tackle this setting again, especially as he was always apparently adamant to Leroux's novel at some point. With the Budapest Opera House in Hungary used for the shooting location, designed as a copy of the Paris Opera House central to Leroux's story, alongside scouting real caves in Italy for the underbelly the Phantom looms in, this feels like a passion project and a really ambitious film even for Argento in terms of production. I'd argue the production value is great as a result, a period horror romance tragedy which is one of the few times in his career he went back in time. This also stands out considering this was made at the same time there was sadly the declining end of the Italian genre industry. Argento, even if also filming in Hungary, clearly had some influence least enough for the production values here to depict everything from the back stage areas full of props (even a huge life-size ship stage in one shot) to the washrooms for the linen to the caves below the Paris Opera.

It focuses on the Phantom fully as a romantic anti-hero, one who brutally kills people but has his own moral code, including one most would understand in dealing with an older male creeper of young girls obsessed beyond wanting to force chocolate on them. He is not physically disfigured, which is a significant change, arguably progressive in its own way, as the scarring is psychologically for good reason in being forced to like with rats. Sands is also really appropriate for a figure that compels Asia Argento's lead Christine Daaé, an aspiring opera singer, with the chemistry that would be found between them. As the film goes, the story finds itself deviating into differences such as explicit psychic powers that force a rat catcher to put his hand into a trap of his own set up, or the sense of humour which is that and deliberate.

A gorier and more sexually explicit take is found, feeling like Argento's full blown Gothic period horror which fully embraces its dramatic weight and doesn't suffer the many issues, particularly budget, that afflicted Dracula 3D (2012). The tonal changes and production style actually move this film in Argento's career closest to a wave of films from the nineties, such as those by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro like Delicatessen (1991), of tonally shifting genre films which embraced their practical production values and weren't above very strange moments of humour. This will put some off, but Argento's cinema was already getting weirder by the eighties, where Saxon randomly blares out in the middle of Opera with their heavy metal riffs, and probably the "weirdest" of his films, Phenomenon (1985), involving Jennifer Connelly being able to psychically communicate with insects and a chimpanzee with a razor blade.

It befits that era of baroque genre films with arguably its more lurid and tonal shifting moments helping the film from becoming too dry, be it the strange early CGI effects like Julian Sands seeing a mouse trap in the full of nude men writhing in pain superimposed in the full moon, or the bombast in style even for humour like a close-up of a singer's tonsils out of artistic creativity. Some of this does feel ridiculous but more often than not it feels like for deliberate humour - like a stint in an all-welcome sex bath house with, the potential second love interest for Christine, where equal opportunity nudity of all ages and sizes is contrasted by clothed men arguing philosophy violently in the pool.

There's the potential discomfort with this film's throw-in-the-kitchen-sink tone, if you connect the dots, with the more sexually frank moments knowing Asia Argento is Dario's daughter, though she has worked with him over the later decades to a film like Dark Glasses (2022), so thankfully theirs has felt more a happier familial relationship. Even if films like The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) before had a really deliberately uncomfortable thriller dealing with sexual violence, there's a feeling of greater trust between them which thankfully makes the pair comfortable in collaborating as they have as family in such films. Also she fits here as Christine - dubbed with another's singer voice, she does to Asia Argento's credit fit the role as a period horror lead who is meant to present the pure hearted singer an outcast like Sands would fall for. Including her conflict, when she starts to question if he is trying to dominate her as much as the reality that theirs is to be as much a tragic love, she thankfully feels like an appropriate casting choice. I like Julian Sands too, someone who befits this more glamorous version of the Phantom as much as someone who would also bite a person's tongue out for trying to steal his underground treasure.

In general, the film is over-the-top in a way that might put purists of the source off. It's not enough to have the famous scene of the huge chandelier being dropped mid-performance as a warning, but shirtless Sands sledge hammering its stone support to justify his warnings, and for it to bloodily maim a baker's dozen of the theatre patrons below. The completely abrupt tangent of a rat killing proto-golf kart would not be included in other adaptations, nor so much other Argento productions, but I can't help but think it feels broad on purpose, becoming a flex in Argento's career which you rarely see and with hindsight is appreciated for the heightened delirium of this particular film. The closest thing to this in Italian genre cinema I've seen in general was the directorial work of former actor Michele Soavi from this era, his tragically short filmography for this period even when it was more explicitly serious horror like The Sect (1991) deliberately cutting to a rabbit being able to operate a television remote for a humour jolt.

The curious mix of romance, horror, style and silliness of The Phantom of the Opera feels like the culmination of Argento's more absurd touches, and one thing that has made me be won over by the film is knowledge that this is still at the time before his most divisive, lower budget films came to be. Everything after The Card Player (2004) up to Dark Glasses are his most maligned works and projects where he was having to work with lower budgets. Here, there is the budget, and its sincerity in shifting between romantic tragedy to gore to absurd comedic shifts is feels less like many compromises have come to play, but are the point. As a result, I feel the film's been unfairly maligned in Dario Argento's career and have come to appreciate it.

The Gore-Gore Girls (1972)

 

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Screenplay: Alan J. Dachman

Cast: Frank Kress as Abraham Gentry; Amy Farrell as Nancy Weston; Hedda Lubin as Marlene; Henny Youngman as Marzdone Mobilie; Russ Badger as Lt. Anderson; Ray Sager as Grout; Nora Alexis as Lola Prize

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Lt. Anderson, one of my friends seems to have run into a bit of trouble... and lost her face.

Thinking he was ending on this film in terms of his film directing career, Herschell Gordon Lewis felt he wanted to go out with a bang, with more production value and shock as he was closing the door on his exploitation film career. Starting with the image of a woman, Suzie Cream Puff, "being creamed" by having her face hit through a mirror, he wanted to deliver on that premise. Here I will say, as one of the first Lewis films I had seen, I hated this film once. Hated it to the point it was actually held as one of the worst films I had ever seen. What changed in all the time that passed?

The immediate thing is this film embraces its sense of humour. Introducing our detective lead, Abraham Gentry (Frank Kress), stroking a pet cat in his lounge only to insert it into a cupboard when someone knocks outside, he is lured by a female reporter Nancy Weston (Amy Farrell) to investigate a series of gristly go-go dancer murders. The Gore-Gore Girls is a scuzzy and nasty little production, clearly influenced by the Italian giallo from the period as the unseen killer is even wearing black gloves for the job, but it is also a film so proudly with its tongue in its cheek it has pierced through the flesh. Gentry, as played by Kress, is immediately a stand-out even in terms of characters and acting performances in a Lewis film, playing a sarcastic dick but delightfully so, apt for the tone of the production with his many quips to people who irritate him during his work. He eventually even comes to like Nancy, despite their stand-off nature at first and questionable decisions nowadays; though he does nothing and makes sure she gets safely home, getting her drunk off her face on zombie cocktails repeatedly is not something we would consider heroic nowadays even if the joke back in the early seventies.

The film is a procedural where he investigates who the killer could be. Is it Grout (Ray Sager), the man at the Go-Go club bar who draws faces on vegetables and fruits, crushing them in a mania started on corpses in his Vietnam war service, or the leader of a feminist group, whose group storms a Go-Go club halfway through? Lewis even touching upon the Italian giallo genre by accident is a curious nod to this era Lewis would bow out OF, as horror cinema changed in the seventies and diversified further. This is including the fact he might have not been able to match the gore and splatter becoming more acceptable even in mainstream cinema from the period, such as The Omen (1976) having a full decapitation by way of pane of glass shown at multiple angles. Some of this film has aged and is of the era, as Gentry has no time for any woman, even when he is condescending to everyone, and eventually going to bond and have a romance with Nancy. Coming off as a chauvinist, there are many moments, before that romance too, Gentry feels like he is clearly not interested in women at all and could be read as gay.

Thankfully, a bit has aged well. Even with the feminists involved, the film never takes pot-shots with them even when their leader is a possible suspect, their huge storming scene more of a scuffle between actors then anything that comes off as offensive. It feels like Lewis, and his screenwriter Alan J. Dachman, who has a brief scene as a young male bystander asked where a suspect is, just took notice of the world around them and put in a touch for more interest. Gentry is also inclined to screwing with the male police lieutenant, hiding info and telling him the killer is a religious fanatic stealing the victims' Bibles, which is a legitimately funny running joke especially when the cast playing the fellow officers, who Gentry likes more, play it with their senior looking like an idiot.

One of the other aspects of the film was also one of the huge reasons I hated it originally, because I was offended by it, were the gore scenes, not used to the type of films Lewis made and the splatter genre. That they all involve female victims is going to be an issue for many, though Lewis was happy to have violence against men and women; the issue is entirely that, with the plot choice, some will find this uncomfortable whilst for Lewis, wishing to leave his career at this point as the inventor of the splatter genre, he decided to leave as gruesomely as possible. This is as extreme as Lewis could get, even next to Blood Feast 2: All You Can Eat (2002), with openly absurd shock value and violent about it, where one person dies to a wooden meat tenderizer to the buttocks followed by salt and pepper being added the wounds. A lot of handling organ meat is involved, and the one scene that is the most infamous was also the one which really shocked me back in the day, still out-there in Lewis' filmography when a female victim has her nipples cut off, one producing milk and the other producing chocolate milk, among the other things that already happened. These scenes, even if played for the bleakest of humour, are going to shock and make people uncomfortable, especially because the targets are all women, which was the aspect which caught me off-guard when I first saw the film back in the day and also could not see the intentional absurdity in its grossness. Details of the film do feel of their time, like this or Gentry getting Nancy drunk continually, but what is also felt is that Lewis is not taking anything serious and being mischievous at the same time. Particularly with the look of the film, shot in Chicago, The Gore-Gore Girls was a shock for me back in the day for feeling rancid let alone looking it, and that I did not appreciate this type of cinema at all, especially when it came to its very twisted sense of humour.

It has a clear witty, very dark humoured tone, which helps the film so much in the modern day, but in hindsight this film should probably be a later work for a newcomer to watch from Lewis, just in case the content leaves a bad taste in the mouth without seeing Lewis' sense of humour in context. Nonetheless I have changed my tune considerably to the film, and if this had been his last film, it would have been a good one to have closed the curtains of his career on, with all his quirks, all his divisive content, and a fitting final image. One breaking the forth wall, the screen being closed by a character as a literal curtain closer, feeling closer to a touch from a forties screwball comedy than a splatter film conclusion. That was not the end, as he would return to cinema in the 2000s after a very successful career in advertising, but for the original era, this was an apt closure.

When it comes into asking why he even decided to end his career at this point as he did, some of it is the fact he was struggling to make these films and felt he could have less stress in his life, especially as his advertising career for decades after made him a very well off man. Interviewed on The Incredibly Strange Film Show, a 1988-9 Channel 4 series by Jonathan Ross where he tackled "psychotronic" or B movie figures, the episode entirely devoted to Lewis had him absolute at bliss, happy to look back on his career with mirth but also, playing tennis and well off, a man who did well as a lucrative writer and speaker on the subject of advertising, his film career a well kept secret. He came back to cinema, which was a happy thing, but there was in itself a happy end there just as well. Lewis, in spite of his notorious gore films, has something sweet to his life in that he managed to have happy conclusions to his life and career in cinema twice. It is an odd thing to consider, as his career was devoted to make the audience throw up and throwing entrails around, but he would have found that hilarious.

Games of the Abstract: Jack Bros. (1995)

 

Developer: Atlus

Publisher: Atlus

One Player

Originally for: Nintendo Virtual Boy

 

The Virtual Boy was one of Nintendo's biggest failures. Released in July 1995, the attempt to bring three dimensional virtual realities to the home only lasted for a year before the machine was discontinued. There was an attempt three dimensional Tetris, a Mario game, a Wario game, even a licensed title based on the notorious Kevin Costner film Waterworld (1995), but there were only twenty two games released altogether including the Japanese only releases. Among them, one of the games held in high regard, but sadly becoming one of the most expensive in the retro retail market, is one by Atlus. Atlus is famous for the Megami Tensei series, which spun off into the Persona series which became huge in the West, both franchises of the role playing game genre. They are another case of a developer, like FromSoftware, who understandably focused their minds on the ideas and gameplay styles which were the most successful; like FromSoftware though, who are famous for anything spun off from the DNA of Demon's Souls (2009) and the Dark Souls franchise, I find myself more fascinated by the experiments and one-offs that came along in the past, whether it was FromSoftware during the PS1 and PS2 era of Sony game consoles, or in the case of Jack Bros., a game from Atlus to take advantage of a next "pocket" console even if attempting to lug it around with the head visor on a stand would be ridiculous.

It is not the most adventurous game I can think of from them - making a first person sword battle game for the Sega Dreamcast, Maken X (1999), is very out-there and enticing to play even if there is potential jank involved. Jack Bros. is however very idiosyncratic as a Halloween appropriate twin stick shooter, one which could have been fleshed out if allowed to continue as its own franchise. It is tied to the Megami Tensei franchise too, which could have lead to some interesting future crossovers, and the Halloween reference is apt. Set in that world, it follows a trio of supernatural brothers who on All Hallows' Eve stay out for too long in the human realm and have a severe time limit before the door back to their world closes. Thankfully, a friendly fairy named Pixie shows them a quick shortcut, if with a warning that the route is very treacherous and full of nasties.

The game itself, on the original machine, uses its two sets of directional buttons for its twin stick mechanics, to be able to shot in all directions (as well as in front of where you are) regardless of which direction you are wandering, a style which was codified as far back as Robotron: 2084 (1982) in the classic era of eighties arcade games. This one has a time limit to complete each stage, split into literal floors you fall between downwards, with simple puzzles later on and each stage having a boss battle to conclude them. The game play is very simple, in which with one of the three brothers to choose from, you are dropped in the mazes where you need to collect keys, whilst shooting/avoiding enemies, to unlock the gate that lets you drop down to the next floor. Sometimes shooting the enemies is encouraged as, alongside the power-ups or time boosts they can provide, sometimes they are carrying the keys as moving targets. Instead of health, your time limit is depleted when you are hit, and when you reach zero, you have to restart the whole stage again. You will need to consider this later on as more traps appear in the stages onwards - tiki heads which spit fire, spike floors, wheeled turrets firing lasers - and you eventually have to deal with the puzzles, like randomised teleporters, before eventually facing the boss battles with what time you still have.

It is a really fun concept. I would say later on, the stages do get long, but it is factoring in that this is a short game, for what was meant to be a potential next stage for the popular Game Boy. That means, thankfully, whilst with no save function, this game has unlimited continues and a password system, meaning with time, getting better is practical to actually do. Honestly, barring the weird couple of moments where I could not drop down to the next floor for some reason, the game has a fairer level of difficult that what could be expected from this era, Atlus providing fairness for a short, challenging game. Due to the circumstances with the hardware, you are playing a game whose aesthetic is entirely in red and black. The Virtual Boy however was a pretty advanced system though, and produced some gorgeous machine in terms of the visuals, seeing as well the potential this could have had if it was not a clearly doomed piece of hardware stuck with its two colour palette. This is something you also see with the only other horror themed game, the Japanese only Innsmouth no Yakata (1995), and whilst the selling point of the machine was its ability to have fully three dimensional images, Jack Bros. is more interesting even with its simple level designs, all simple mazes floating space, for its illustrative design style. It has a morbid cuteness to the proceedings, between cat girls running about, earthquake generating trolls, and angels, who Pixie point out are just hanging about being dicks, swinging spike maces on chains from outside the floor platforms you can thankfully shot back to hoist their petards. The animation and character designs, in vast contrast to the minimal dungeons themselves, are really good.

As a twin stick shooter, it fully works as a really ghoulish and fun arcade game. The bosses ramp up the tension the stages already have, such as Dracula with his floor of moving conveyor belts and bats, the most evil of combinations, but alongside the ability to fire in four directions without needing to face enemies, each of your three choices (and a fourth unlockable character, Pixie herself) have their own special attack you can horde power ups for. One has a room clearing bomb, one freezes everyone and one really likes knives, and alongside hoping to get one of the few power-ups if not more time for your clock, like a four piece shield of floating orbs or the brief invincibility dash, you are given help to accomplish these floors and the mazes before time slips away.

The rarity of the game does cement how, whilst a good title, it was as doomed as the console not long for the world it was released on. Sadly Nintendo, with their questionable moments in terms of preserving video game history, shoved the Virtual Boy in a drawer out of embarrassment, not even revisiting these titles when they released the 3DS in 2011, the hand held which had great advancements in terms of stereoscopic 3D without needing the Virtual Boy's infamous visor on a stand. Sadly, Jack Bros. is among the twenty two releases, all casualties, which were locked in the cupboard with the machine.

Thirst (2009)

Director: Park Chan-Wook

Screenplay: Park Chan-wook and Jeong Seo-kyeong

Inspired by Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola

Cast: Song Kang-ho as Fr. Sang-hyun, Kim Ok-bin as Tae-ju, Kim Hae-sook as Mrs. Ra, Shin Ha-kyun as Kang-woo, Park In-hwan as Fr. Roh, Song Young-chang as Seung-dae, Oh Dal-su as Young-du

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

When I think about what helped me become a huge cineaste, the 2009 Cannes Film Festival was a huge turning point for this among other factors, a strong line up in terms of just the competition when I took interest in reading the coverage. That festival had the infamous Lars von Trier film Antichrist, and Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void, had acclaimed films likes Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Jacques Audiard's A Prophet and the eventual Palme D'or winner for that year, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. There are also the other fascinating films in the official selection, not even factoring in the other screening categories for awards or not, such as Hong Kong film maker Johnnie To collaborating with French actor/singer Johnny Hallyday on Vengeance, or Thirst, Park Chan-Wook making his way from the acclaimed Oldboy (2004), part of a trilogy on vengeance which premiered at Cannes, into a vampire film.

Chan-Wook, a decade later, has had a strong career, The Handmaiden (2016) another huge film alongside a career with a divisive American production (Stoker (2013)) that are mandatory, but also something I would have never had predicted on the bingo card when I first saw films like Thirst, a BBC mini-series called The Little Drummer Girl (2018) based on a John le Carré novel. Thirst comes from a time before this where I vividly remember Western audiences asking themselves what he would do next now the then-completed Vengeance trilogy had ended. Chan-Wook was helped considerably by the wave of interest in Asian cinema, including South Korean, that came in the early 2000s, and whilst the middle film of this eventual trilogy, Oldboy was the film which caught attention and could have won the Palme D'Or in 2004, the unofficial Vengeance trilogy as a whole was what was on peoples' minds especially when he finished it, starting with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and ending with Lady Vengeance (2005). Before Thirst was I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK (2006), a divisive but necessary move into a comedy with melancholic edges about a young woman in a mental hospital because she thinks she is a cyborg. Thirst took a further direction in being a horror film whose erotic and violent love plot centers on a Catholic priest Fr. Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho) being turned into a vampire. It was a step confidently forwards, whilst absolutely staying as idiosyncratic as I remembered it even in terms of its sudden switches to comedy.

Kang-ho's priest Sang-hyun goes to a research lab tackling a near-if-not-fully fatal disease, and is the one man who survives as a willing test subject. He finds himself meeting a childhood friend as a result of his miraculous recovery, one whose adopted member and wife of this male friend, Tae-ju (Kim Ok-bin), is treated like trash by the mother. This is all in mind his survival comes due to a blood transfer of his involving vampiric blood and that he has fallen in love with Tae-ju; when he changes fully into his new form, alongside the taste for blood, so does the subtext of a man who lived his faith only to be drawn to earthly pleasures. It feels less like an anti-religious film, before one asks, but explicitly riffing on the French novel Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola, his fight against his own Catholicism part of the psychodrama that this film has, one which just happens to involve vampirism, where it becomes the catalyst for both power but an unquenchable thirst.

The title is perfect for its themes where we sympathetic with our two leads who fall in love but see them slip into a downward spiral confusing between sensual pleasure and needing to murder the son, all amongst the reasons for a growing body count. It is a tangled web where Tae-ju was treated terribly by the mother, overprotective of her hypochondriac adult son, tormented to the point that, when power comes to her in her romance with Sang-hyun, simply running at night to avoid contemplating the son's murder is not enough. Even if she does love Sang-hyun, the tragedy is still there are the film escalates, and here I also have to credit co-writer Jeong Seo-kyeong who became a frequent collaborator from his final Vengeance film onwards, Lady Vengeance (2005). She is arguably a huge factor for the turn of his films from then on, as she worked with him on films like The Handmaiden to Decision To Leave (2022),. She could been seen as a huge catalyst for where his career would go in-between projects with other writers, alongside how she became acclaimed in South Korea for her work as a screenwriter not only his films.

The complexity has grown in this film when having returned to it. Faith exists but if you struggle with your emotions, you will suffer the infernal war, and that is not helped when you've been turned into a vampire that ramps up this war. Song Kang-ho plays his character as a priest that even to the end, when he has killed in horrible ways, is struggling with his real morals as a good person, neither helped that people close to him turn around him at his lowest. Even the priest who raised him spiritually, who willingly slices a wrist to feed him and listens with concern for his vampiric issues, just wants to be turned into one due to a life blinded in the eyes. Tae-ju too, whilst loving him dearly, has been twisted by her situation to effectively use him to get power in her household. It is a great performance from Kang-ho, but that it isn't a surprise, whilst Kim Ok-bin goes between sympathetic, disturbing and, when she becomes a vampire with the makeup and costume upgrade to match, devilish in a compelling way.

Reading the synopsis to Zola's Thérèse Raquin, a surprising amount of the narrative was transferred, a film like Zola's story about studying temperaments of its cast, even when it is reinterpreted in humorous ways here like the dead refusing to leave their murderers' lives even when it comes to the coital bed. Sensuality here is a vibrant, explosive act even in the joys of kissing bruises from self flagellation for sinful thoughts to toe and armpit sucking, the eroticism on display here something that would return significantly with The Handmaiden. The tonal flip-flops make sense in mind to this presentation of these complicated characters in terms of morals and their emotions, a melodrama between comedy and extreme violence for a film that was a huge hit back in its native South Korea. The emotional mind field here is what is central to the story, whilst the horror premise becomes itself the stylization, yet to the production's credit, how this is depicted still stands out. The plasticity of the special effects, in terms of depicting Sang-hyun being able to leap tall buildings and even crawl on walls, is great because it doesn't try to ground the unnatural power he now has. It has a major part to the emotions, like punching a lamppost in half in anger, or the least expected and abrupt neck break in the final act, and the tone of scenes alongside the bloodshed itself befits this hyper-stylized tone to the drama.

Winning the Jury Prize at that Cannes Film Festival where the film premiered, Park Chan-Wook didn't really have to worry in regards to his career after this, and from the strong acclaim he got from his earlier films in 2000s, he has continued on with a healthy career. Thirst itself would have stood out of interest for me just for the fact it was a director not known for horror tackling the subject, catnip for me for what he would bring differently to this area of cinema. Revisiting it this year again, a lot of that different and the surprise in the best of ways is what makes Thrist still a strong film, of tawdry, explosive passion and violence by way of its horror theming.