Director: Steve
Screenplay: Steve, David Firth and Zack Fox
Cast: Iesha Coston as Missy; Oumi Zumi as Kenneth; David Firth as Royal);
The Buttress as B; Zack Fox as Manuel; Hannibal Buress as Kazo; Tim Heidecker
as Phil; Donnell Rawlings as Mazu; Diana Terranova as Pepper; George Clinton as
Doctor Clinton; Shane Carpenter as Charlie; Sandra R. Kisling as Michelle; Mali
Matsuda as Angel; Regan Farquhar as News Pirate
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #189 / An Abstract Film Candidate
[Warning: Not because everything in this film is offensive but, with
full spoiler warnings, there is stuff here even in these descriptions too weird
for some people to even picture.]
The sun cries while eating ice cream.
Around the time I first saw Kuso, I had watched Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019). Now, an introduction like this, referencing a document about the representation of African Americans in horror cinema, is always in danger of digging one's own grave. As a white Englishman, especially digging one's grave. Horror Noire was nonetheless disappointing as, with many documentaries in general, they feel slight when a book, can cover more with the vastness of their pages. Horror Noire, adapted from a non-fiction text, was disappointing in that with the chance to allow African American commentators (actors in horror cinema, directors, academics and even bloggers) it felt slight. It did touch films in need of more comment, such as Bill Gunn's Ganja & Hess (1973), but it felt like we had barely scratched the surface of a bigger idea, not digging out obscurer figures or modern day creators who might not sell such a documentary. Whilst I completely understand why you devote a huge amount of only eighty or so minutes to Jordan Peele's Get Out (2017), as that was a monumentous film out of nowhere in American horror cinema, it did raise one concern for me merely for appealing to the mainstream when it comes to depicting minority voices.
One I can feel comfortable asking, even as a white Englishman, which is a concern that since the mainstream means homogenised for myself, sanding the edges off individuality whether it can appear to everyone or not still, if the goal is just all populist mainstream voices to represent minorities in cinema, the people who are not white cis-gendered heterosexual filmmakers, the idea for all voices getting to make films will still be compromised. Horror likewise needs its idiosyncratic voices as much as more representation for all, even if the films resulting from it are like today's subject, likely to baffle and mortify even die-hard horror fans with its body liquids, perverse sexual content and freakishness. This long prologue is needed as, step forward musician and music producer Steven "Flying Lotus" Ellison making his film making debut here, he commented in an interview that he made a film as divisive, weird and bold as Kuso with mind to what film, if he got to make one, he actually wanted to make. To quote his own words than reinterpret them "I don’t want to make a fucking period drama [...] I don’t want to make a fucking hood movie. [...] I was like, ‘Lemme make something for the young ratchet-ass 16-year-old kid who like horror films and give them something to latch on to.’1”
Kicking off with a news broadcast being hijacked by a jazz rap news report about the inevitability of the new world, where the ultimate earthquake hits Los Angeles and a disease leaves everyone with pocks or boils, you immediately get the energy of something unpredictable and unique. Immediately in a film where people steal scenes, you have off-the-bat rapper Regan "Busdriver" Farquhar as someone I had never heard of until this film performs a bravado jazz rap. From here, Kuso is effectively an anthology film, where Ellison is not going to pull his punches, under the directorial name "Steve", as the first narrative we are introduced to, in a work where they tangle together in a web, has a brother and sister having a kinky incestuous relationship, kissing in bed as goo smears between their lips followed by eroticised strangulation she performs on him.
The title itself is a Japanese colloquialism for “shit,” which in itself should be a warning and an apt title for describing what is to be witnessed. When this film first premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, it got a reaction of surprise, repulsion, some walk-outs and dumbfoundedness. Rather than attempt write coherent paragraphs to a work intentionally structured with very tangled structures and whiplash turns, it is better to just write out all my notes, scribbled through the film, and elaborate on this in detail:
There are photo collage animation sequences. It is reminiscent to the 2010s era work by micro budget director Joe Castro in their grotesque nature, an obscure choice but apt as I have covered him quite a bit, but with actual photographs and illustrative sources.
This is not an unexpected tangent for Steve in his career either, as one his album You're Dead (2014), to match its theme, explicitly dabbled with the Japanese ero-guro aesthetic by hiring manga author/illustrator Shintaro Kago to design the LP illustrations. The tone and humour can probably be explained by the fact, alongside co-writers of segments, his early career included producing much of the bumper music on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block.
For the second segment, most would presume the weird fish things that look liked defrosted chickens in a woodland river are the key plot point, especially as there is a man watching one transfixed to the point he starts getting an erection. Instead, it is about a boy (played by an actor of short stature) who feeds his own poo to a strange tongued mouth rock in the woods.
Another is a woman eating her way out through concrete to her child underground. Reminiscent of Shinya Tsukamoto's Haze (2005), where the director-writer-star is trapped underground where there are death traps. Haze did not lead to its protagonist, falling down a hole, briefly appearing in a sitcom called Socks where your legs are fused together with another person.
Even the tangents are weird, minute digressions like old game show footage remixed where a competitor has either to resuscitate a dead child or drink a jug of spit donated by farmers, an unexpectedly British moment of twisted moment of this mostly American project, a likely collaborator for this to be mentioned later on in this review.
TV faced fur people watching television with a human woman opens another segment, arguing about the quality of a film whilst smoking weed and admitting to their female roommate her parents are in another dimension as farmers (or likely dead).
Said female lead, with these transdimensional roommates, was someone I only recognised when she has a music video scene later involving male genital mutilation and I recognised her rapping voice. Then I only realised she was The Buttress, a New Jersey artist who uses horror and occult imagery for her music. Throughout Kuso, Steve's film like his music is full of distinct guest stars in front of and even behind the camera.
I will get to others as I go along, but prominently for the scripts, Steve alongside Zack Fox has David Firth write as well as have act in vocal only performances. He is of note as, born near myself in the county of Derbyshire, Firth came to prominent in the mid-2000s by the time YouTube came to be with the web animated series Salad Fingers (2005), about a green alien-like man with a fondness for licking rusty pipes, only to continue on in his animation to the current day.
Also worth noting are all the composers involved. Not surprisingly Steve himself works on his own film, but so does a few others. To my surprise, this includes Aphex Twin, the legendary British musician, and Akira Yamaoka, famously known in video gaming circles for his soundtracks to the Silent Hill franchise of horror games. The music altogether is appropriate for the film, striking in its mood building.
Also among the cast is Tim Heidecker, of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, as the Buttress' stalker turned potential love interest after a one night stand, who is introduced sticking his head out the toilet with a turd on his head expressing how that night it felt like he was with a dog corpse. Considering his willingness to do a bare arse shot later on, with what can only be described as a David Cronenberg approved sex doll monstrosity, he among many deserve credit for their willingness to be put into these situations.
Kuso's fragmentary nature, segments intercutting into each other with fragments, is a style that is distinct. Some will find this unfocused, and it is why this review has had to devolve into a lengthy list to quantify it all. It does leave a layer of unpredictability however, unsure what in God's name is going to transpire especially as by this point in terms of being the viewer, Kuso after feeling eccentric but not dumbfounding me manging to push me over that line with the "1-88-Rat-Fuck!" fake ad. It can only be described as a phone sex advertisement, shot-on-video, which actually gets into consensual tentacle porn with two very actresses writhing with a prop Cthulian horror. This was when Kuso finally started getting into territory that even surprised me.
None so much as this ad leads to another segment, an abortion clinic which also consults men for sexual dysfunction issues. By this point, there is an inherent sense (deliberate) of unpredictability and improvisation, such as a patient feeding his money into a talking blow-up doll, an absurdity to laugh at as well as feel on edge from.
Returning back to the prologue of the review, Steve in another interview talked of how difficult it was to find African American actors to star in Kuso2. One figure, who is a scene stealer in his one moment, is African American adult star Lexington Steele, who is utterly charismatic as a suited man talking in surreal cryptic phrases ("His dick becomes a dog toy") and does not look embarrassed even if his attempt at a disappearing trick with a smoke bomb does not work to hide him at all. Even in a film like this which will have likely been viewed as just puerile and distasteful, I now want to see more films with Lexington Steele where he gets to act. Even the fact that he played Nick Fury in an Avengers porn parody, even if it is not a good one, is interesting now because this shows he could actually do a decent Samuel L. Jackson pastiche.
Said patient is the "man who is scared of tits", and speaking of fascinating casting choices, the man he is meeting to cure him is George Clinton, the founder of the legendary funk bands Parliament and Funkadelic. It is meaningful that this legend is here...even if he is the host to the real doctor, a giant insect living in Clinton's anus called Mr. Quiggle tempted out by electronic beats, distributing hallucinatory juice to said patient in a moment William S. Burroughs might have written about in his heroine influenced Naked Lunch typing.
Contrasting this, as a result of the hallucinogenic juice, is a Vaporwave Hell, an equivalent of the necropolis of spirals that end Junji Ito's manga Uzumaki only not made from spirals here but from breasts, of early 2000s CGI, breast towers, floating breast whales, multi-headed figures and God knows what else. This moment did break me on both viewings even if I admired it.
At this point, just listing all the content, alongside even watching the film, took me by surprise but it is easy to just dismiss this as a mass of perverse hallucination as a film. All of the film is exceptionally well made, which adds to this film being as striking and twisted as it is. At one point, with motifs of video games, sound effects from the Mortal Kombat videogames are used for a foetus being pulled out, which might be the most offensive scene for some. Yet it is here for me on the first viewing, felt further earlier in the film on the second viewing, how much of the film for its dark comedy is also exceedingly sombre and ill-at-ease too. It is surprisingly melancholic at times, beginning with the first animated sequence being a man recounting helping his father remove an "owie" from his mother in DIY surgery, a darkness pervading the material.
A lot of the film also is about family and absence of it. The segment which feeding poo into a hole is still about an absent father, likely one killed and being fed to the son. There are also continuous shots to family photographs around the characters' home, even if deformed. Of how this taps into the fear of the ultimate earthquake that hits LA but also California, leading to Arizona Bay. Of Steve himself, taking a role, as a police officer, an authority figure that for him is one who just elicits ill-ease for African-Americans. Many curious undercurrents are to be found even in this perverse film, and that intrigues.
So much so that the final sequence has a weirdly emotional and even happy ending to it. Said scene is still one of the fucking weirdest threesome sequence I have ever witnessed, between brother and sister and a talking boil on her neck which happens to have a British accent (David Firth again on vocal duties). That they go as far as involving a prop fake penis shown on screen going into a mouthed orifice just cements Kuso wanting to push the bar so high few films could ever leap high enough now to reach it.
But...returning to that initial paragraph to start this review, seeing African-American music producer Steven Ellison deciding, of all the films he could have made, to instead push for this unique creation is itself a true statement of one's individual voice. He made it not as Flying Lotus either, which is meaningful, as is the fact he was in film school before he even turned to music, deciding with Kuso, even if you the viewer were to find the film without merit, with the desire to deliberately break from the teachings to make something entirely of his own without lack of confidence or concern whether this was the right way to make the film or not3. Even if he never made another film, the speech here is uncensored, inventive and truly idiosyncratic. Neither does this feel gross for the sake of it, for it is too artistically distinct and weird to be, a lot of itself instead very sickly funny and artistically inspired. It is, in its nature, something I have to write this comically long, profane detailed review for as a way to salute him for even making the film.
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1) Full interview HERE.
2) Interview for The Guardian.
3) From the No Film School interview.
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