Summery for October to December 2020

Drawing plans together for the last three months of 2020, I had originally structured October to be a return of Halloween 31 for 31, themed with the idea of covering thirty one films for each day based on a film from thirty one countries. Truthfully, my plan had had to be changed somewhat as, in the grander scheme of more priority, my intentions for the last three months of 2020 is to clear through the back catalogues and To-Watch piles, entering 2021 with a clear slate, which takes priority over this initial plan and means horror films will be regardless of their country of origins.

Thankfully, this will include an eclectic selection nonetheless, and especially without a bias to know, big budget films as always. And, realising my original plan can go beyond thirty one countries, including the foggy area of international co-productions, and that countries like Germany due to 20th century history have existed in multiple forms, I can free this plan out and continue it to as long as I can sustain and locate the titles. It allows for another plan, now for a couple of months the Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) posts have returned, to get over the two hundred mark in reviews.

There will at least be thirty one reviews in October. Maybe more as, depending on practicality, there could be days with more than one review, one in the morning and one in the evening, of tangential material to television work being reviewed, all suitable for the season if even not horror.

November and December will collect together and finish off as much of my unused notes as possible, finally clearing the cobwebs. They will be planned and worked on ahead of time even if by a month. They will also be an eclectic mix, all to tie up as many loose ends not only for this blog, but 1000 Anime too, and even tidying up the blogs' presentation respectably. As much of this, to pull back the curtain, is a form of therapy, overcoming stress and anxiety at this point in my life with a greater focus on goals to improve my mental health, by refocusing and re-sharpening my interests to relieving these. Clearing the excess too, for both blogs, is a necessary anyway for this task, to relieve myself of time consuming materials and literal physical piles blocking a clear slate. It will allow DVDs left gathering dust to finally be seen, materials to be cleared out, and a sense of a new page being turned.

This will include some heavy hitters being covered as well, alongside my interest in eclectic obscurities and returning to old writing, not only possible re-posts but also very old material from before this blog to be returned to and rewriting, rewatching the films and hoping my writing style has improved considerably since I did not know have to space out text in paragraphs.

This is all written, in autumn 2020 before the leaves turn yellows to reds, with knowledge of how 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic has completed changed the world in terms of public mentality, both for positive enlightenment as much as unfortunately exposing its complacency, making the issue worse with a lot of anxiety for us all. If one person is helped through this ongoing scenario still by reading my writing, merely one, I have done something virtuous.

For me as well, I am thinking of how when the pandemic lockdown measures had ended¹ and cinemas started to open again, the pleasure of just being in a cinema, regardless of the film, would be experienced with a new found insight. At the time of writing this, sadly, the United States are still suffering the pandemic, and lockdowns are threatening to return again in other countries. And to a much lesser extent, the same problems as before for me with the theatrical experience are still there - lack of choice, lack of access, and for the more older films being shown now, you however now have less films being shown at practical times as a person who uses publish transport.

In spite of this, that sentiment has encouraged me to have an occasional, if potential indulgent, experiment in other forms of writings. Less film reviews, more diary entries taking this idea, but extending this as a regular cineaste thinking about what the moving image, not just cinema, mean to me in terms of access, how they are presented and what they are.

The first, as a non-horror piece in October, will be arriving soon. I hope you enjoy it.

 

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1) Sadly in the United Kingdom, despite them being eased back into September 2020, the threat of them coming back harshly still hangs over when this post was published.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968)

 

Director: Hajime Satô

Screenplay: Kyûzô Kobayashi and Susumu Takaku

Cast: Teruo Yoshida as Sugisaka; Tomomi Satô as Kazumi Asakura; Eizô Kitamura as Gôzô Mano; Hideo Kô as Hirofumi Teraoka; Kathy Horan as Mrs. Neal; Yûko Kusunoki as Noriko Tokuyasu; Kazuo Katô as Dr. Momotake; Hiroyuki Nishimoto as The Pilot

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #167 / An Abstract List Candidate

 

[Some Major Spoilers]

I am as surprised by the sense of disappointment I felt for Goke as much as admiration for what is an exceedingly strange film. This is in context that that immediately this Shochiku production is peculiar - your set-up has an airplane already flying through a blood red sky; birds splat against the windows violently as if in a form of avian suicide; there is a hit man on the plane, a traumatised American woman who has just lost her husband in the Vietnam War, and even a bomb invovled; and it is nine or so minutes in when the title card is shown, with Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell getting weirder as it goes along.

There is a sense I will grow in admiration of this production, which contextually we are talking about a weird horror sci-fi film, not the weirdest, which is a huge factor to consider however. It is a monster film set mostly in a very limited location, which reduces its scale and means there are scenes of a villainous figure strangling people, here to suck their blood, which is never really a good sign for me in a horror film usually. Where the intrigue is how odd the film is altogether; when the plane crashes, the cast are still alive but on a beach, but the hit man is taken over by an alien life form, set upon picking them off as humanity unravels with the tensions, something which could have just been a generic premise, but is played in odd directions here.

That it is a Shochiku production too is of note. If you think 1960s monster films from Japan, you would likely think Toho studios, which alongside the Godzilla films were making a lot in the kaiju and monster genre. Shochiku, famous the place where Yasujiro Ozu made most of his films for, invested their resources in 1967 and 1968 in four monster films, Goke arguably the most infamous. Note of well, by this time, Ozu died in 1963, and Shochiku were in financial turmoil to the end of sixties; even outside of Toho and monster films, you had Shintoho studios investing in horror films, and a studio like Nikkatsu who were (for viewers looking back decades later) in their prime from the late fifties and sixties with genre films between the "sun tribe" teen dramas to crime films. In desperation, Shochiku made a film this garish, perversely hallucinogenic. One, mind, shackled to a pulpy monster film plot, which is neglected as large portions of the film are a cast staged in a beach environment being picked off, but is still peculiar.

Where that becomes the springboard to madness can be felt immediately in the production design, including the heightened colours, with the set up of the Body Snatcher itself warning of how the film will be. Where when transfixed, the new host's forehead splits open, here with lovingly grotesque practical effects, to let blue alien slime enter against a nightmarish, bright colour lit background that burns the retinas. As much of the disappointment just comes from large portion of the film being this new entity just attacking the co-stars, not even with grotesque effect, but there is so much of the film which compensates for this.

The nihilism is such an aspect. Firmly wedged in its time period, Goke has a lack of love for humanity. Contextually made only a decade or so from the two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, and explicitly talking of the Vietnam War, the aliens here see humankind having gone about killing each other and deciding to eliminate us all. A lot of the background details come forth in knowledge of this - the hit man who killed a British diplomat and the bomber both evoke how in the late sixties and seventies how bad terrorist and extreme left wing groups would become, and the Western character, played by American actress Kathy Horan speaking English and a regular in Japanese genre films from the period, becomes more and more traumatised with even a montage of real Vietnam War images shown to show a breaking point.

She eventually pulls a rifle to protect her and becomes like most everyone else. Humanity is not looked on well entirely as the film is about a group of (mostly) modern Japanese society, infighting when forced to survive. The army merchant and a politician he was trying to win over have mind games, also involving the merchant's wife and over a lack of water, and even the kind hearted psychologist has a glee in analysing the scenario in first person, even part of the pair who decided to sacrifice a member of the group to see how the Body Snatcher feeds. This is all enticing, all great with the style of the Japanese studio system where the production is well made. Many times the film looks closer and closer to falling off the edge into madness, and sometimes does, such as the Vietnam image montage. Again, however, all in the midst of an actor lurching at the cast to snuggle against their neck, which is rarely talked about when (rightly) praising the film, and leaves the film in an awkward dualism of interest.

When it is not this, like the alarmingly high risk of boulder crushings that transpire, or how discarded hosts hauntingly break down to dust, Goke is compelling. And thankfully, the ending is a killer. I have spoilers for a reason, and here the Earth does not leave this well, as the tone suggests. With people stood still, dead yet erect in position, on mass like statues, it was perfectly described as "if George Romero had directed Last Year at Marienbad (1961)¹", a perfect approximation of a finale for a film, with flaws, that is still a compelling oddity from Japanese cinema. Shochiku itself would not really stay in this direction. They would find instead success in Tora-san, a kind-hearted vagabond whose series of films lasted between 1969 and 1995, over forty films mostly helmed by Yōji Yamada and net them the financial stability they needed. Yes, that Yōji Yamada, whom most people in the West may know for a trio of period samurai films he made in the early 2000s like Twilight Samurai (2002).

Goke itself is a big reminder that these films, whilst some can be truly radical, were also meant to be pulpy genre stories to get patrons in. Something like Nobuo Nakagawa's Jigoku (1960), made for Shintoho, was made as a film to get patrons in but in its complex morality and weirdness is completely idiosyncratic. This in contrast is still a monster film at heart, and that is to be minded, that sometimes the films which get the notoriety or cult status are as much the little pieces or imagery which stick to the mind, rather than being radical in content. Goke has certainly made its reputation as much for the images of an infected host with a giant gap in their forehead as its content. It is also enticing to know that the other films Shochiku funded from this brief adventure of theirs - The X from Outer Space (1967), The Living Skeleton (1968) and Genocide (1968) - whilst potentially fraught with this duality are said to be just as bizarre. It entices them to me more now with mad radiance from afar because Goke, Boyd Snatcher from Hell felt like a fever dream.

 

Abstract Spectrum: Kitsch/Nihilistic/Psychedelic/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Spectrum (High/Medium/Low/None): None

 

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1) HERE

The Langoliers (1995)

 

Director: Tom Holland

Screenplay: Tom Holland

Based on the novella by Stephen King

Cast: Patricia Wettig as Laurel Stevenson; Dean Stockwell as Bob Jenkins; David Morse as Captain Brian Engle; Mark Lindsay Chapman as Nick Hopewell; Frankie Faison as Don Gaffney; Kimber Riddle as Bethany Simms; Christopher Collet as Albert "Ace" Kaussner; Kate Maberly as Dinah Catherine Bellman; Bronson Pinchot as Craig Toomy; John Griesemer as Roger Toomy

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #32 / An Abstract List Candidate

It's like a bunch of coked-up termites in a balsa wood glider.

Watching The Langoliers, a pretty infamous Stephen King adaptation for ABC, I think I know where M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening (2008) originates from, with the wonder that even for his acclaimed work like Signs (2002) whether the argument he was the new Steven Spielberg was widely off the mark, and that we should've been looking at the influence of Stephen King. And trust me, Stephen King had (and still has) a profound influence that I grew up with too, one that existed before my birth in the early eighties or even earlier and has not relented. Weirdly I barely read King's actual written work, but I have however seen through my childhood, through my parents, many of the adaptations when I was younger, even tangential ones like Kingdom Hospital (2004), an eccentric remake of Lars von Trier's The Kingdom (1994) mini-series which has King's name over it. That I haven't seen The Langoliers until now is just from the fact so many films, mini-series and other projects exist and are still growing. That early on, the special blind girl who is among the main cast is introduced saying "There's something strange in that man's head," with complete seriousness, alongside mid-nineties TV budget CGI for an airplane shows, is evidence that this two-part mini-series, which can be watched as a three hour TV movie film, is notorious for a reason.

Over three hours, split over two nights, a group of people aboard an air flight find themselves to be the only ones left from the entire plane, everyone else seemingly raptured as all their possessions, even internal medical objects, are all that are left behind. Inherently the story is strange and jars to what is a very conventionally shot TV mini-series on a minor budget, seeing shots of an almost empty airplane where everything from coins to bridge work for teeth left on seats and the carpeted floor. Only one detail, if shown rather than merely told of, showing the surgical pins and peacemakers laying around would have added a creepier edge to the film, one whose production context explains both its huge flaws but also how weirdly fascinating the mini-series is for me.

Finding themselves at an abandoned airport, what you experience is a lot of dazed character actors in a scenario whose form on a page in a book is very different onscreen, an esoteric story where characters shout aloud that they cannot "smell" anything, or that they cannot hear echoes even in rooms that would have not allowed for them anyway in the actual production. The result is strange, The Happening an apt inheritor of this mood as you have everyone with a sense of the disconnected also to be found here with the cast. Most of them are completely one note and non-existence. One character is a British assassin to redeem himself, another a pilot, but others include a man whose only trait is being hungry all the time and one character, a male music student Albert who looks like quasi-Brad Dourif, wishing Dourif (even if significantly older) was here.

Even Dean Stockwell, the most recognisable cult figure, playing the Stephen King stand-in mystery writer, is performing as if befuddled with everything and proclaiming himself able to solve the mystery because he is a mystery writer aloud. It's as if he's still in the midst of a David Lynch film whilst somewhere else, and the fact he was also in Quantum Leap (1989-1993) all the years before adds the sense he has teleported into the wrong place and is inquisitively confused by everything. If anything he at least gets one of the best parts in terms of dialogue, legitimately, where he considers a theory this is all a government psychological test, convincing in a heightened unreal reality, only to immediately dismiss it because the scenario is impractically weirder than even a government would coordinate.

Bronson Pinchot as Craig Toomy, as the obnoxious businessman, also decided to chew and devour everything even beyond the walls. At the beginning established as a yuppie banker in the midst of a psychological breakdown, he is a detestable arsehole but one developed with a reason (even sympathy) in his characterisation; from the beginning sabotaging his own company before the flight, he is taking revenge on the spectre of his abusive father who forcibly moulded him into the figure he is, the "Langoliers", in possibly the most credible aspect of the plot, named after the bogeymen he was threatened with and being attached by him to the figures we only just hear of in the distance for most of the mini-series' length. His story is the most fleshed out and elaborate but is a paradox that he is a figure of tragedy but also the villain. [Major Spoiler Warning] His death, when the blind girl keeps him alive to use him as bait to be eaten, adds to the tone of The Langoliers as being an erratic creation without conventional logic because it is as conflicting and tonally off as you could get. [Spoilers Ends]

In general a lot of the exposition at times in The Langoliers does evoke a specific David Lynch moment, whether I've misremembered it or made it up, in possibly Wild at Heart (1990) where someone approaches a bar about a missing duck only to walk off and never be seen again. This mini-series, if there was a budget and some courage, needed extensive post-production techniques for the story to have worked: a stock background image of the sky that never moves; no sound effects and only dialogue, even post-dubbed dialogue; a subliminal slowness to the film (literally slowed down subtly), even decolouration of the images. Instead, they have to make excuses for the wind being audible and try to make quiet heel sounds on tarmac seem quieter than they should be. The beer scene, which will be elaborated on later in this review, is actually the most effective in demonstrating what the world the story is set in, the past as a still entity which decays and slows down, because just a step from reversed footage you get a beer regain foam. This premise is actually an inspired one, suggesting that time travel is impossible because the past is a dead form which decays and vanishes, to be devoured by the titular Langoliers. In a world where there was some creative risk, this idea would have been startling and interest to witness, even in an entirely different story.

The story we got could have been told in less than three hours but, in mind that the production is still told in a linear narratively driven fashion, the length arguably is a pleasure in itself as the plot is deliberately stretched along in a slow pace. Maybe that might be just me, I will not deny it, nor can you get past some of the clichés having issues. Most of them are just clichés, though one of the biggest, the only ones and I feel uncomfortable bringing it up, is unfortunate that is yes, this does follow that problematic cliché in horror that the black character dies first, a concept even if accidental or by coincidence was sadly talked about even as a joke in horror with justifiable grievances. Most of the mini-series, arguably, is a true guilty pleasure for me baring the sense of guilt, where a great premise becomes something really peculiar. Where exposition becomes less its title and more the common language here, all whilst the exploration of the airport and the drama of divided figures becomes the fascinating anti-drama over the three hours, all whilst the Langoliers only appear near the end and, as can be attested to in screenshots, are early obsolete CGI.

Rather than Mick Garris, who has directed most of Stephen King's work for television, we have Tom Holland, famously of Fright Night (1985) and the first Child's Play (1988), helming the mini-series; his 1996 adaptation of Thinner, by King, is better put together but with an equally strange tone due to its plot, cursed pie and all, mixed with a very misanthropic morality tale of the pointlessness of revenge. Honestly, a lot of The Langoliers' entertainment for me in comparison is how utterly kitsch it is, even the end shot a freeze frame of characters jumping for joy as it out of a light hearted comedy conclusion. The experience itself, for me with low expectations, was actually enthralling especially as no review I have come across have ever described the utterly strange tone it possesses, The Langoliers hitting legitimate oddness in how characters puzzle themselves over scenarios. In a strange phantom realm outside time, they find even the discovery of beer redeveloping froth in the air plane surprising and that becomes a major plot development, a random beer drank viewed as the best ever drunk, spoken as if ingesting the sacred nectar of the Gods.

It is this type of work we bizarre miscreants who indulge in the bargain bins of "cult", to normal peoples' bafflement, find fascinating, legitimate UFOs from unexpected sources where they feel like they were produced accidentally, all with the sense of existing in their own "off" logic even in terms of performance. This is a much rarer thing than even a successful attempt to deliberately create this mood, and one's treasured UFO is not the same as another's, especially as you have films which develop micro-cults whether with some merit or notorious, and especially as ironic attempts exist from the 2010s onwards especially.

To accidentally create a mini-series, especially as a the script being full of exposition and one dimensional characters would be death to experience in another work, whose tone does literally feel like you've woken in a timeless state outside of reality itself, or is watch as if half-dreamt in front of a TV at night in the midst of insomnia, is something a project in this medium should hope to redeem themselves in accidentally becoming if they cannot be great. This cannot even begin to be held as a great Stephen King adaptation, but one of the strangest is as worthy a title to achieve than one which is forgettable or a waste of a production fee. I will also be brutal that, if I was to dive into more Stephen King series, I would not be surprised if there were mini-series I would argue were just dull or terrible, as King's prolificness is compounded by how much was adapted of his work, and whatever the films and television series (even from memories of youth) were all adapted well or not. This is at least interesting.

Abstract Spectrum: Anticlimactic/Hazy

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Sicilia! (1999)

Director: Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub

Based on the novel by Elio Vittorini

Cast: Gianni Buscarino as the son Silvestro; Angela Nugara as the mother; Vittorio Vigneri as the knife-grinder; Carmelo Maddio as the orange-seller; Ignazio Trombello as policeman; Simone Nucatola as policeman; Giovanni Interlandi as the traveler

Canon Fodder

Accused oranges.

One man journeys home from New York City to Sicily, encountering various people and with many conversations taking place. Thus begins the first Straub-Huillet film that won me over, as one of the only films that were ever released of theirs in the United Kingdom in the 2010s¹. Sicilia is also one film that is fully of their aesthetic, without compromise, yet you could actually show to anyone with success possible of winning them over, because instead of dense philosophical ideas being upfront, their concerns are found in a text which is vivid in its depiction of life in a universal sense. Any film which begins with the text "for the marmoset and in memory of Barnabé the cat" stands out as even gracious and relaxed even if the film will not stray away from emotional confrontation, more so striking as the original source material was more dreamlike and seen as a parable against Fascism.

Adapted from Elio Vittorini's Conversations in Sicily, large portions of Sicilia the film are just admiring the Sicilian landscape and countryside in panning camera shots or on a moving train. It feels timeless. It does not seem paradoxical either a very political duo of filmmakers would make a film celebrating this world as, entirely around the lead Silvestro returning home, this is about the working class, the ordinary world of people who like those cast in the roles they have always had an empathy for. That it is Sicily is of note too as this is not Northern Italy - Sicily, in the South, is its own distinct culture compared to a metropolis like Rome, one which could easily be maligned in culture exported to the outside world when the image of Italy as a country usually points to the likes of Rome and Venice, not the uniquely distinct countryside of Sicily. Again, in light to this, it does not seem paradoxical either a very political duo of filmmakers would make a film celebrating this world as, entirely around the lead Silvestro as travels from New York City, almost as an amnesiac needing to remember his past.

Structurally, shot in black-and-white, Straub-Huillet continue their minimalism with still close-ups of the non-professional actors and quite, efficient editing. A lot of the pair's extensive minimalism can simply be put to the fact, even as admires of classic Hollywood cinema, someone like Straub also hated the artifice which undermined the power of the art form. This has, paradoxically, made the couple's much more difficult with some of their films then one would think, because we have adapted to cinema with quicker paces, "musical soup" for the scores when the work is not at its best, or even great production from the sets to the music being mishandled. But, until later scenes of drama, most of Sicilia is in name of universal parts of life that are more easier to digest than some of the content in their previous work, with philosophical and political content, material which due to the style, now perfectly attuned and crafted, actually resonates with connective tissue with ease as long as you are patient. Of oranges in salad with oil and bread, cooking hot pepperoni in summer and mackerel in winter, eating cicadas out of curiosity and being unable to sell or even unload all the oranges. Rejecting a bourgeois tale of glamour in favour of the rural working class and hardworking Sicilians, just these conversations you rarely see in dramas is itself political.

Notably for Sicilia, all the non professional actors are good. Everyone is distinct, such as the man on the train complimented for his baritone voice to the other before with strangely philosophical insights. This is notable as in one of their flaws depending on the film, Straub-Huillet could sometimes force their strict minimalism with a detriment where the actors performed without a complete lack of emotion with contrivance, a lack of the aimed ideal that Robert Bresson also exposed, probably (to be a heathen to the realm of art cinema attacking a sacred cow) because it will not also work just to film a non-actor reading aloud lines from a dense literary text. This has the perfect balance however, the directors opposed to the contrivances of other cinema and wishing for true verisimilitude, finding it when they strike the balance of casting non-actors and allowing them to bring gravitas to the work, greater connection as a result for this or Antigone (1992). Here, and there, you see what they had in mind and see how casting non-actors would be much more beneficial to cinema depending to the content at hand.

As a result, one of Sicilia's best aspects becomes Angela Nugara, as Silvestro's mother. The biggest sequence of Sicilia and providing its depth is when Silvestro finally reaches his mother to spend time with her. It begins softly - food and cooking conversation. It gets more complicated - talking about a grandfather who was a socialist who yet believed in St. Joseph and joined the festival procession for him, which Silvestro thinks is paradoxical but his mother fully believes made sense. Then it gets tense - exorcising conflicted views of his father, a womaniser whose flattery she considers worse than when her grandfather just slept around, he looking up to him as the idealised father. It gets emotionally visceral and vivid - her detailed explanation of giving birth to Silvestro. The sequence is exceptional, arguably one of the best in the directors' entire career, the weight of Sicilia in how, at sixty six minutes or so, there is completely no filler and every sequence means something even beyond this the best.

Such as the pleasant conclusion with the blade sharpener man who uses a contraption on his bicycle to sharpen his work. He in particular, wishing to sharpen swords and cannons, believing there is no knives and scissors in the town, shows how Sicilia is even pleasant and humorous in its own dry way. And that the point of the film, as he and Silvestro eventually conclude the film on a shared stream-of-consciousness going through things that delight them in life in general, or just the aspects that make of life give-or-take, arguably leads to a soothing moment in the directors' careers, even in mind that into the nineties they actually did make a comedy. Arguably leading too to something more symbolically profounder in how they celebrate in this final dialogue the real worth of life, rather than something contrived and forced upon us.

 

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1) We must thank New Wave Films, a distributor who is an underappreciated group, mainly because they did not release even Blu-Rays extensively until the late 2010s, let along extra heavy ones with major restorations. They did however release a two disc set with Sicilia, Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1967) and Une Visite au Louvre (2004). This alongside the interesting current world films they released, such as Long Day's Journey into Night (2018) even with a 3D Blu Ray version, or their trio of Jan Svankmajer films make them unsung heroes of avoiding the popularist choices and getting the rewarding gems out.

Bad Magic (1998)

 

Directors: John and Mark Polonia

Cast: Vincent Simmons as Renny; Bob Dennis; Maria Davis; Bruce Hardy as Tobanga; Dave Harmon

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #166 / An Abstract List Candidate

 

They were all Catholic. We're Methodist!

First of all - I wished this film was actually called Cruel Magic. All because as a heavy metal fan, with the song stuck in my head, I cannot help but think now of a track by an obscure Britain band Satan who gained a greater amount of attention with the 2018 album of the same name. It would also be more metaphorically apt for what this film's plot is about, a return to Planet Polonia, an obscure production which immediately shows how weird it will get in the opening - of voodoo objects, smoke, fake dime store skulls and sex with a monologue heard about voodoo's history, all with the opening credits even including that they apparently hired a voodoo consultant.

Premise wise, in a world of New York City footage and a green hazy sky, this is a premise you would find in a 1940s radio drama turned into a 65 minutes SOV film. A young African-American man named Renny, wishing to get revenge on the gang that brought in his younger brother Amos only to get him killed during an attempted bank robbery, sells his soul to use voodoo magic to pick the small gang off one-by-one. It is inevitable, once his work is done, his soul is to be claimed.

Bad Magic at times feels like a production partially improvised, or at least using other Polonia brothers' work for footage, such as the beginning having an entire tangent of a demon terrorising two guys in a countryside cottage, an entirely different narrative told in very little time which has its own absurdities - be it a demon, an actor in a mask and furry legs still wearing a shirt, vomiting on some poor person to death by hairdryer, or a demon being killed by having its head kept under water. To the brothers' credits, starting as young adults in the eighties before this, they found ways to add production value and even when it is ridiculous, and involves video toaster effects (including a screen being ripped from the middle four ways like paper), it became part of their own logic and is, darn it, actually charming.

For example, they found a way around having their lead going to the Caribbean to find a witch doctor to teach him magic - by having him in close up against a plain wall looking off to the side, cutting this to footage of an airplane in the sky in the distance, and actual footage from the Caribbean likely taken from a vacation and spliced in, even if it does return back to a small room back home where he gets to the person he is looking for. Not a decrepit and half blind old man, but a young man, if you notice, is also wearing jeans under the costume. I will not mock this, nor belittle that the acting in general is not great, as at this point I am well aware one of the prime investments in no-budget cinema is as much attempting elaborate stories at this level of budget and the charm from it.

That and when they get weird. This film already starts off strangely before we get to the voodoo, with the fact after the initial set up the film will abruptly have sudden cuts to the leads eyes in among scenes setting up the antagonists, jarring as a result. With laughing and flashing in the audio-visual construction keeping one off guard in its charmingly quirky way, eventually the video effects kick in fully alongside how much of the film was greatly helped by thrift stores. Plastic skulls, coloured candles and textile skull masks among others do suggest a film built from cheap stores, in itself an aesthetic that would be worthy to exploit in cinema if you do not have the budget for anything more elaborate. This type of cinema has gained a cult for many due to the ingenuity of the creators, a sense of admiration between viewers to the creators that they were once viewers of horror films too but managed to find a way to make a film in their own back yards. The aeshtetic of films like this cannot also help but evoke that a lot of the resergence in interest in these films is as much nostalgia which can be set off, literally in a plasticated form of what Marcel Proust experienced, just by encountering some kitsch object used as a prop you had fond memories of having or seeing when you were younger. Besides, they even managed to acquire a real snake and probably treated it more humanely than some largely scale productions just by filming it by itself, among the many examples of how the Polonia brothers found solutions; you still witness it eating a real mouse, which will put off some, but there is probably more production value without anything more elaborate in seeing an actual snake flexing its head in inhuman ways, all alongside plastic ones being waved around in other scenes.

I have also developed a fascination with the scores for these films, as I had for horror films of a larger budget, and here, if ever there was a score that sounded like a mid nineties video game, Bad Magic had it. Lo-fi dronings; tropical New Age; MIDI rock; you have a gamut of tracks and I was compelled to them all. Even the unnervingly quaint music set to when someone is stabbed abruptly in the neck.

To be honest, Bad Magic's story is so basic, predictable to the point it is not interesting at all, that these little details and the tone is really what you should want to see this film for, as the story is so obvious that you would be bored out of your mind if it was not for how distinctly odd the presentation is on any budget. The Polonia brothers in general, from what I have seen, produced some strange creations, belying how my introduction to them, through Feeders (1996), felt not a real experience of their quality or is a film in itself worthy reinvestigation from a light of greater interest in these type of films. I admire if anything how idiosyncratic they were; even with a Mark Polonia film after his brother's passing, Bride of the Werewolf (2019), even if I was not impressed by it you have the charm of a film set in the middle of Eastern European but entirely shot in the middle of the United States, that not being an issue for him in the slightest. Here you have such examples of this from one of the them playing a john to a sex worker, or in what is clearly another film of theirs being used on a TV, has one of them gleefully looking on, bearing in mind the Polonia brothers were identical twins, as the other is feed into a wood chipper.

They, not surprisingly, were horror fans whose sense of interest comes from real love, where they manage to cram in a Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine in as bathroom reading material in one scene, showing their obsession but alongside their numerous little quirks along the way, such as toilet related trauma happening again when someone is bound by sentient toilet paper than stabbed by flying sentient knives. I still think, even in the late nineties, having voodoo as a dark power, like an old pulp story, is still problematic, especially as Wes Craven danced around this subject with greater subtlety (whether it worked or not) with The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988). Thankfully, a lot of the film is less reducing this real religious practice into anything really offensive but an almost narcoleptic and weird VHS experience. It also has a sense of humour which helps, as really how could you take seriously a film where a character calls another a "cheeselicker" abruptly.

The film is also probably not meant to be seen when exhausted from a day at work as I was the first time viewing Bad Magic, falling in and out of near sleep with no fault to the film. Then again, it is probably appropriate as, whilst the predictable plot keeps some semblance of what is going on that helps, once you get to the video effects for astral projection by way of a starry black background and video effects, the narcoleptic effects whilst being half asleep was probably how films like this got their greatest power. You find yourself, as I did, in a finale in Hell eventually where the main demon claiming Renny's soul in a cute looking puppet with big teeth, whilst cats are being stroked ominously in close up is between torture and beheadings. For many this is not cinema, which is unfair. It is a world onto its own, and by that finale, it was as befittingly strange as one would hope for like a curious dream.

Abstract Spectrum: Lo-Fi/Psychotronic/Video Toaster/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

A Moment of Innocence (1996)

 

Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Screenplay: Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Cast: Mirhadi Tayebi as The Policeman; Mohsen Makhmalbaf as The Director; Ammar Tafti as The Young Director; Ali Bakhsi as The Young Policeman; Maryam Mohamadamini as The Young Woman

An Abstract List Candidate

 

Everyone knows best how to direct one's young self.

One anecdote I have heard of Iranian cinema, which had always stuck with me though I can no longer remember the source, held that it had entirely skipped Modernism and went straight to post-modernism. Humility however is also a factor I would include, as Iranian cinema in spite of the many factors to consider, how since the 1979 Iranian Revolution the country lived under a government of sever fundamentalism and cinema being continually censored, it is empathetic. Even if A Moment of Innocence itself was banned, and he himself eventually had to make films outside his own country, Mohsen Makhmalbaf does not show any anger here. Even when dealing with a semi-autobiographical work here, about a moment in his youth during the Revolution, stabbing a young police officer as a seventeen year old fundamentalist guerrilla, he goes about it with his most well regarded film in a self reflective way that is a mending of his past.

This film origins from when, during the direction of Salaam Cinema (1995), the now former-policeman approached a drastically changed Makhmalbaf again, that meeting leading to the creation of this work. The opening belies the sense of what I had originally thought of the film, a fictional narrative around the recreation of the real incident, from the first images of a clapperboard with a female voice speaking the credits written on them, by showing that this is actually going to be a fictional tale of the production in recreating this tale, beginning with the policeman as a man in his forties trying to find the house with a green door where Makhmalbaf lives. A daughter of his answers it, saying he is not there, and I immediately wonder whether if it is Samira or Hana Makhmalbaf; tragically, whilst they never made as many films as the father has, everyone in the Makhmalbaf family has directed a film, his wife Marzieh Meshkini a couple of times, Samira sadly a rewarding director who abruptly stopped after Two-Legged Horse (2008), and Hana with three, the first a behind the scenes documentary of her older sister's film she made when she was only fourteen.

The premise is to recreate the incident, where Makhmalbaf's cousin distracted the officer for Makhmalbaf to stab him. The meta-textual game, in lieu to greater emotion empathy, is already established with a light sense of humour in the casting of the young officer and the young Makhmalbaf. Whether merely acted out, there is a charming humour, when wishing to cast a really "photogenic" version of himself who looked like a heartthrob, the officer is paired with a more realistic and awkward figure Young Officer instead, someone who he will eventually bond with as the film progresses. Helping considerably with the film is that Iranian cinema too is assisted by how unique Iran is as a country visually, here with the surprise of seeing a Middle Eastern environment snow covered, including a mosque covered in white, an evocative if subtle look for the film to have for a large portion of its small length.

And said film is charming. There will be a serious side as the narrative progresses, but you even have a digression into cinema itself, a trip to an elder male tailor, initially hostile when he is asked for a police officer uniform from the pre-Revolution era, softened immediately when the youngest Officer says it is for a film. Love for The Vikings (1958), Spartacus (1960) and Kirk Douglas in general is involved, rumours that Anthony Quinn got a face lift to marry Sophie Loren is evoked, and even love for John Wayne playing Genghis Khan in The Conqueror (1956) transpires. If there was ever any incentive for me now to see that notorious film, Mohsen Makhmalbaf is as esteemed (alongside the tailor) as you can get to recommend it.

The structure makes sense in the idea that, wishing to depict a moment in his past he regrets with a moment of innocence (i.e. recreating the moment here), Makhmalbaf may have realised the double edged sword of interpreting the past with all the issues of bias and forged memory that can be involved, with too much danger too of indulgence and/or tricking the viewer with a version of events which are even subtly distorted by the cinematic gaze even if this film has such a low key and admirable sense of honesty to it. Deconstructing the act of recreating this event, just to film what is merely one sequence in the end, leads to more reconsideration and greater depth being put on what transpired from multiple sides.

With one of the most sympathetic characters, in a film where everyone is shown kindness, being cameraman Mr. Zeinal, who has to deal with wanting to cast a more realistic young policeman at first and also having to continually get the original officer back after he keeps walking off the production, you are getting more than just a role play to exorcise the events, but a contemplation which forces the raw emotion out with said role-play and to a greater truth. This is, in truth, abstract cinematic techniques used in the most gentlest of form for the most moral reason, as nothing in the film requires reading or endurance to decode. The deconstruction is instead abstraction of a generic and complacent form of cinema. You could imagine a much less sincere form of this film is Makhmalbaf tried to recreate his past and (God forbid) he failed to capture any of the empathy I have seen in the works of his I have seen. Instead, this is clever and even playful forms of structural manipulation for a greater good.  

Some of this is time being chromatically out of order, such as an event of the young office being passed by a young woman, the young student chosen to play the cousin, being a repeated scene now from her perspective. The casting of the cousin herself is a distortion, in the dramatised form that is already a layer, of reality and fiction as Makhmalbaf cannot convince his cousin, who was involved and is never onscreen fully, to cast her own daughter as her younger self. Whilst of a friend of the actor playing the young Makhmalbaf plays the cousin, the daughter does briefly play her mother, suddenly during the visit to her mother's house, role-playing with the young Makhmalbaf some time before their plan came into action it is startling. It is abstract.

Makhmalbaf's goal in reality is not to recreate the event, as he deliberately undercuts it, such as (in this narrative where the fictional crew are filming) an actress playing a beggar with a child speaks in French rather than the language requested for the realism, part of the film's fabricated layers to show how difficult it is to even create the film. He clearly wants to reinterpret the event for a greater goal. He has the attempt breakdown on purpose twice. The young Makhmalbaf abruptly bursts into tears in the midst of the recreation, unclear on purpose if as himself the young actor or as Makhmalbaf, wishing not to have to stab an officer as if being forced to by strings, wishing now to help people with bread, used to hide his knife originally. Both Makhmalbafs have taken the route the route between them of idealism of a better world. The original police officer angry at the fact, attracted to the cousin only to be tricked and betrayed, tries to train his younger self to recreate the scene with shooting the young woman, the direction taken wishing to violently destroy the past.

The final shot grew in a new meaning for me when I considered it is not cutting the moment that is meant to be the stabbing. [Major Spoiler] The final shot is the young woman, the young officer off the left of the screen offering her a potted white flower, the young Makhmalbaf on off the right side of the screen offering out bread. [Major Spoiler Ends]. In hindsight, this is meant, at least from my perception, Makhmalbaf ending this scene from his past by turning it into one of peace, even if just cutting and pausing the film, with the end credits appearing on the image, before any violence can transpire.   

 Abstract Spectrum: Calm/Deconstructive/Empathetic/Thoughtful

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

1-Ichi (2003)

 

Director: Masato Tanno

Screenplay: Sakichi Sato

Based on a manga by Hideo Yamamoto

Cast: Nao Ohmori as Ichi / Shiroishi; Teah as Dai; Chihara Junia as Onizame; Chisato Amate as Satomi; Yuki Oikawa as Nao; Eiki Kitamura as Hiromi; Kazuhiro Mashiko as Hide

Ephemeral Waves

 

Where has the God in his fists disappeared too?

When Takeshi Miike became a popular figure in the West in the late nineties and early 2000s, one of the most notorious of the productions which cemented his reputation was Ichi the Killer (2001). I would like to return to that film, adapted from a manga by Hideo Yamamoto, but in spite of how controversial and dark that film was, it was a complex film in spite of all its horrifying violence and sexual perversity. On the surface it was one of his most extreme films, including a little bit of censorship for the British release, but it was also a film that subverted and provoked the viewer with a lot of difficult content, even deliberately disappointing the viewer's expectations in the finale for the ultimate provocation, by suddenly after all the content of before having an anti-climax and disappointment for its own characters.

Two follow ups, prequels exist. Ichi the Killer was about a sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer Kakihara (Tadanobu Asano) who, with his gang being targeted by an unknown assailant, learnt that the figure was Ichi (played by Nao Ohmori), a young man brainwashed to have his sexual desires intermingle with his penchant for violence, in a way that even his controller (played by cult filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto) showed a moment where he was scared of his own creation, part of that film's lasting sense of immense dramatic complexity for me. The prequels were stories of Ichi and how he came to be. One was an animated prequel Ichi the Killer: Episode 0 (2002), which is not good and definitely fits the perception of a nasty, difficult-to-defend piece of violence including sexualised forms with female characters. The other, a straight-to-video production I have wanted to see for years, is 1-Ichi, helmed by the second assistant director on the original film and assistant director on a couple of Miike's films from the period like Gozu (2003). A prequel which, baring one poor tonal choice, is a much more interesting film as a very low budget but unconventional piece of pulp which does not really fit any genre but its own.

This is definitely another example of why I am fascinated and continually returning back to low budget Japanese pulp cinema, especially the period from the nineties into the 2000s, when digital cameras would have been brought it, and this is as much in knowledge that I came to these films as I got into cult cinema in the late 2000s and may have a bias. It is very much an era of Japanese genre cinema, before irony and Western funding did mar it into the late 2000s, which is insanely vast even with what did get a DVD release, usually in the United States, back then. Why I find these films fascinating is that, set here in the average world of a small town between the arcades and back alleys, they are films where the fantastical and dark are never separated off in their own unreal worlds, but happening in ordinary everyday Japanese streets, as does happen here.

In this prequel, one of the students at the school is Dai (Teah), a boxer who becomes aware of Ichi when he was once just Shiroishi, played again by Nao Ohmori, an awkward student who is beaten up even by children in a judo class but is still going to become the future figure, an extremely dangerous figure whose libido is fixated around violence, something that from Miike's film was depicted as horrifying and part of that film's insanely dense emotional rollercoaster.

This is the lo-fi, miniature version of this idea, in which most of the film is Dai being antagonised by Shiroishi's existence, not actually doing anything himself beyond occasionally watching, whilst eventually plot events will lead to him slowly being transformed into the future figure. Most of the film instead has a broadly comedic edge, notable because whilst Dai himself is a dour serious figure with a boxing background, his two friends provide comedy. One rocks up to a fight with what is called a "granny perm"; the other, in the funniest touch, is obsessed with only watching the part threes of film franchises thinking they are inherently the best, whether The Godfather III (1990) or even Let's Ride the Pervert Train 3. Surrounded by these two, this film is a comedy with dark moments of violence, partially as much a slow burn psychological drama of young males being aggressive and trying to be tough by fighting each other, most of the film Dai trying to goad Shiroishi into trying to fight him out of a sense of needing to prove himself despite his toughness and capability in a brawl.

I have talked about my love for low budget Japanese genre cinema before. If I have not, (forgive the slip in memory), there is something about the ordinary environments of Japan even in animation, as recreations of environments is comment, which are inherently photogenic even at their most banal. Especially like micro budget films in the States, these slightly bigger budget productions allow you to see real world Japanese urban environments being invaded by weird genre films. 1-Ichi is a stark looking film - one which is not effeted by what is clearly a lower budget to Miike's, which had to work around its production value as much, and it arguably helps this film and its tale of pent up, frustrated young men being violent they are in bland environments, where the most idiosyncratic details are two female classmates dolled up in exaggerated fashion and everything else is so bland baring them or the arcade that punching each other in spats makes sense.

Notably as well, when it comes to the sexual aspects of this frustration, the perversity is much slower burn as a result than Miike's film, which got the spilt semen in the opening credits. Here, most of the film could be seen as a dark high school drama of young men, then suddenly someone is tied up at a baseball diamond, and being hit by baseballs thrown at them until something snaps and, after a scene away, all there is the aftermath of carnage and split semen dripping onto the ground. That sentence, even using that term twice in one paragraph, could raise a reader's eyebrow, but especially if you did not know about the original Ichi the Killer film or its source material, the sudden turn due to the low budget nature of this movie works in its favour in having this subject aspect suddenly appear like this violently. And this uncomfortable metaphor of sex and violence entirely from male characters, with only talk of women and watching lewd films, makes this sudden burst into this material actually more provocative in an interesting if creepy way.

There is one moment in the escalation that does become uncomfortable in an inappropriate way, unlike Miike's film which, whilst far more extreme, had the tonal shifts carefully structured. Here the tonal issue is the problem, jarring in how there is a scene of non-consensual sex, whilst not explicit, in a sports hall closet which involves strangulation that is meant to be disturbing if played in an absurd way. It involves the character of Onizame, a transfer student who is insane and evil from the get-go, breaking a male student's arm with ease and brutalising him, so he is deliberately seen as a horrible figure. Tonally however it jars for a film that was entirely a curious tale of all-male obsession, where fighting has an eroticised edge and a very dark humour, only to suddenly include this scene of rape against a side female character and then try to go back to comedy, in a hospital with the male victim recovering and talk of third parts of film franchises again.

Beyond this one bad creative decision, 1-Ichi works as a strange story. Ohmori being cast again is important for the film from when it was made, but this can work without any of the original context, that it is all about something in Dai becoming obsessed with Shiroishi in spite of the fact, following the original film's inspired goal to deflate expectations, he is just a bystander who would never be able to beat him or even survive a fight if Shiroishi ever found his killing instinct. Though Shiroishi stays extremely timid and way of fights to the point of being mocked, when the turn comes not one would win against him when he turns into the future Ichi, strong enough to bend a metal baseball bat with one of his kicks. Baring that one ill-advised choice early on, as a dark comedy it was compelling, particularly as much due to its look and tone providing a strange energy.

Maniacal (2003)

 

Director: Joe Castro

Screenplay: Eric Spudic

Cast: Perrine Moore as Janet Gill; Lee Webb as Gilbert Gill; Carl Darchuk as Garrett Gill; Brannon Gould as Lance; Heather Ashley Chase as D.J. Spiegel; Jon Prutow as Josh; David Ortega as Dane; Carol Rose Carver as Brooke; Deborah Huber as Nancy Gill; Mike Nyman as Officer Spiegel

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #165

 

No love for Gilbert! [Throws hammer]

Another Joe Castro film, and at this point, I am used to his work to the point that, for this slasher film with a lot of self reflection of the genre, it actually became a humorous experience even if the movie is meant to be taken seriously. Whether time does for all these reviews, this one comes at the point I have covered all the films of his which were released in the United Kingdom in the early days of DVD, which is important for me as, symbolically, the point of the watching experience was to cover these films and ascertain any thoughts. Baring if I can track down other films of his, the point was to assess a filmmaker normally never marathoned like this. I think this as much added to giddiness to a film, honestly, which is not great but I did find fun in.

It has a melodramatic opening - with some Dutch tilts, we have the home of a nasty alcoholic father, a step mother (the actress notably younger and with a greying wig or hair die on), a younger sister who will be the lead, and Gilbert, meant to be nineteen and in this film's ethos not really a considered depiction of learning disabilities and mental health. He is slow, he likes to mangle and melt dolls in his bedroom listening to horrorcore rap, and eventually one night snaps, trying to kill his father with a hammer, managing to with his stepmother with excessive hammer to rubber head trauma, the first in a lot of head related injuries and demolition throughout.

Sent to a mental asylum that would make Samuel Fuller's symbolic one in Shock Corridor (1963) more well run, with deeply unprofessional staff who joke about the cliché in horror films of mental institution inmates going on rampages, Gilbert is left in there for a year until someone made a fatal error to give a man with a history of violence a metal fork. By this point was where the humour was to be found, the tone not as dark and nasty as has been the case for Joe Castro for me thankfully. This has been a side of his, over multiple films, which has been a clear trademark of his which can be appropriate, sometimes black humoured, but also off-putting; here thankfully there was a sense of absurdity and, honestly, charm in that to create this asylum for mental health they just found a blank white walled building and had extras play inmates who wander about, including one female actress to play a nymphomaniac. That detail, an admittedly up-PC term and depiction nowadays, was where the comparison to Shock Corridor actually made sense. The music is so over-the-top and unintentionally amusing too, but not in a mean reaction to the film, just that it lightened the tone considerably.

Worth mentioning is that this was a film I had seen of Castro's a long time back, like Terror Toons but without remember a single thing baring the fact, finding a second hand disc in a charity store, that I hated it. Instead it feels like a film having to come from after both the original eighties slasher boom of the eighties and the late nineties return of the trend in self reflective (or just teen drama centric) films. Castro still has a misanthropic edge, as everyone at times baring the lead female cast can be arseholes, even a group of young children who play the trope of taunting people with chants about Gilbert coming back to get them. At the same time though, the self reflective nature is there as this is a world where everyone can refer to slasher film trivia, and even some deep cuts I have never seen and were not quoted in Scream (1996) either, like Dolly Dearest (1991) and Happy Hell Night (1992).

It does lead to the best moment for me for the film - Eddie Brandt's Saturday Matinee Horror Shop, a real film store in Los Angeles¹, which here in this time capsule has walls of VHS up to the rafters on display, even though a nearby sign indicates that, at this time period, DVD was already here and ready to kill off the medium outside of avid collectors and a retro trend that would bring the format back as a luxury in the 2010s onwards. The nature of the film is that, in sincerity, some of it is clearly exaggerated too, such as Gilbert being able with his bare hands to rip hearts out, and hopefully for someone even calling their lead character Gilbert in the first place. Jokes like the "Last aisle on the left" pun or Gilbert creating a weapon by duck taping all the kitchen knives to a stick, and only using it once near the end, have a comedy to it that, for moments it feels accidentally silly, I sincerely hope was humoured here. From writer Eric Spudic, who is mostly known as an actor but also wrote a few low budget horror films in the early 2000s, this film is still immensely silly, but is thankfully a nice balm for me in comparison to The Hazing (a.k.a. Butchered) (2003) which was tedious to say the least.

The self reflective nature is the difference between the two films and such a huge improvement. Most of the film is openly riffling on Halloween (1978) for its plot structure anyway in references - Gilbert wearing a clown mask, the lead's best friend DJ (Heather Ashley Chase) being a stand in for P.J. Soles' enthusiast best friend character, that there are three female students as the leads in the first place - so it makes sense just to reference slasher films with a knowing nod. It is Halloween if with more hip hop, all original music created for the film, and with the children being so knowledgeable of horror they say Gilbert is scarier than Pinhead from the Hellraiser series.

In complete honesty, beyond this point it is just the many tropes of slasher films playing out, as Gilbert eventually terrorise the female leads (and three guys) at a slumber party starting in the afternoon. The father, now sobered, who is after his son is like many characters in these films doggedly pursuing the killer. The gratuitous shower scene has probably existed in another slasher film, or horror films which lingered on the actress soaping her chest clearly for a male viewership, and surprisingly has restrain not to just refer to Psycho (1960) either as others have. It does effectively remake a death in Halloween of someone being choked out from the passenger seat of a car, only with exaggeration as strangulation literally turns someone's head purple. The head trauma - squashed, blown off, crushed - is gross and absurd, and in one of Castro's best trademarks, that of his knack of special effects which have impressed me on low budgets, some of them are one takes, where with a little editing technique he can have the actor in shot only to jump to them sans head, which is legitimately impressive as a tiny little editing technique which catches you off guard as they managed to make the transition seamless.

It is cheap and cheerful. Baring an ending which is bleak in context - [Major Spoiler] how many have the killer kill themselves by drinking drain cleaner? [Spoiler Ends] - Maniacal is at this point, in my history with ultra low budget films let alone Castro's, harmless for me personally. It feels, thankfully, a befitting end to the run of films which were released and, through the "Hardgore" DVD sub-label, films I might have spotted on shelves of Poundland in my home place of England even in my neck of the woods. Not a lot of Castro's directorial work, baring a few that popped up on Amazon Prime, have ever come to the UK even among the glut of horror that is released straight to DVD every week at this point.  As a director, I will admit I have struggled with his films at times, but it says a lot about him that I kept to this cycle of reviews. It is also ironic that, if you know of him, it is likely for the Terror Toons franchise, which he is still making films for and has been the project he clearly held a lot of love for. Films like this or The Jackhammer Massacre (2004) have become obscurities, truthfully, although there is that question, as physical media labels have even minded the SOV releases of the eighties, whether one day when I am older Castro's going to have restored releases of his work as people dug up the straight-to-video/DVD films of the early 2000s as I have done. It would be intriguing if it did.

 

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1) The store still lives. As of May 2020 at least, it unfortunately had to move from its original premise, sad especially as one of the most distinct touches it the wall mural of the store name which you see in the film.