Games of the Abstract: The House of the Dead 4 (2005)

Developer: WOW Entertainment

Publisher: Sega

One to Two Players

Arcade / Playstation

 

Among Sega’s franchises which have found themselves in stasis, though I will tip my hat to Polish developer MegaPixel Studio getting the rights to remake the original game in a 2021 update, House of the Dead is among them and has its fans. The first arcade machine, from 1996, tackled zombies at a time before they became a pop culture phenomenon, knee deep into their growth in popularity by the time of part four here. Over console ports, a neo-grindhouse inspired spin-off, and even typing education games where you blast zombies’ heads off by typing on dangerous keyboards, and it is a franchise people like even if it also led to that infamous Uwe Boll film adaptation from 2003. It is a franchise which took a simple premise, light guns with zombies, and was made by a company for all their misguided business decisions that were good at making games.

This feels like the game wanted to close off this franchise with a last hurrah for those who kept up with its actual plot, even existing in-between the chronology of The House of the Dead 2 (1998), the most famous of the games, and The House of the Dead III (2002), bringing in the importance of part two in the franchise. That game is significant for this one in back story, in how this leads to a full blown zombie apocalypse which is going to stick for society, following a lead from the second game James Taylor returning with a new character, fellow agent Lisa Green, to deal with the legacy of his former enemy, former CEO of the now-defunct DBR Corporation Caleb Goldman, returning from part two too. Goldman, seemingly behind this cataclysmic reattempt which worked, now has nuclear missiles in play, and thus with Uzis in this game and grenades, James and Lisa need to save what is left of humanity.

Beyond this, there is not that much to add as this is a solid arcade machine showing Sega’s commitment to closing out this part of the story for the fourth game, though they did tease in alternative endings the possibility of a follow up which was a long time coming. There were differences from before – gone are the civilians to rescue for bonus lives/items, gone are the shotguns from part three – but this is a work which is made by people who worked on these games for a long time and knew what they were doing, in this case WOW Entertainment, who were originally named Sega AM1, and returning back to said name as one of Sega's development departments. At a time where arcades would have been fighting for interest when consoles fully held dominance, this feels like a loving finale for these games from the time, only with the irony that the seventh generation of game consoles, with the Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3, brought the possibility for lightgun games to return. Personality is really what counts here with House of the Dead 4, and it is beautifully cheesy.

Even if this presents a grim tone, where after a few levels underground you find yourself in a destroyed metropolis with one protagonist too old for this, you still find yourself in a subway train against a boss (named after a Tarot card as they all are in the franchise) armed with a dual chainsaw staff, or blasting your way through a shopping mall full of punk zombies. Even in mind this, like all these pulpy genre works, touches on serious subjects, that this follows Goldman (in-between levels) talking of how humanity has overpopulated and damaged the Earth, there is the contrast to these serious repeated themes in pop culture being interpreted in this pulpy ways, in this case a carnival ride between muck men and a giant spider boss to deal with. The only idiosyncratic touches which present differences to other fun light gun games are how there are some multiple choices in levels to choose, for which direction you wish to go, or how in certain circumstances you need to shake the plastic Uzi controller at certain events repeatedly to complete events, but this is a game which works even if the style and content is seen before. Even the potential risk this took in having a large part of its levels underground in bleak industrial areas, or a desolated metropolis painted mostly in browns, is thankfully contrasted in the little touches, like the goofy responses in the level rankings from your leads to how, for one level, you have to gun it in the best luxury car you can find, with only an hour before the nukes are set off, with zombies in cars a specific hazard to worry about.

Even in terms of an ending, fighting an ice based boss with an almost God-like and weirdly supernatural ting to them, with a bombastic tragic conclusion with multiple possible outcomes, this would have worked as a good last game for many, even if it returns to House of the Dead III for the proper finale. A game, House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn (2018), was released continuing the story but only in Japan and the USA for the arcades, emphasizing the sad sense that, for a genre which still gets immense interest in arcades which have not just embraced ticket winning machines, these games have found themselves in a limbo. Until we figure out the hardware that would allow them to re-release the lot of them, just like in the Wii and Playstation 3 era where motion controls made this possible, this genre has unfairly been maligned. Alongside a spin-off, the neo-grindhouse parody as talked about, exclusively for consoles named The House of the Dead: Overkill (2009), and Playstation 3 getting House of the Dead 4, these games can still be re-released, something which needs to be encouraged as, whilst thankfully House of the Dead 4 cabinets can still be found, as I can attest to, this genre really deserves more appreciation when even a later stage entry like this can provide so much fun.

9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (1976)

 

Director: Abel Ferrara

Screenplay: Nicholas George

Cast: Pauline LaMonde as Pauline; Dominique Santos as Gyspy; Joy Silver as Nacala

Canon Fodder

 

Yes, that title is an eyebrow raiser. Just as this hardcore film starts, there is real oral sex with a man and a woman set to pure seventies porn groove music. And this is how Abel Ferrara, the legendary and controversial director of films like Bad Lieutenant (1992), actually began his career rather than with The Driller Killer (1979). Until the work of Vinegar Syndrome, an American restoration and distribution company who alongside genre films also have persevered the Golden Age of hardcore pornography, 9 Lives... was one of the more difficult films to see in Ferrara's career, a title now for a period of films in the 2000s (Mary (2005)) caught in rights issues. This is not an absurd film to have in his career mind, as even his "respectable" films have dealt with desire and the human, body and soul, in condition, so a pornographic film about desire makes pure sense in context especially with the earlier films in his career, written by Nicholas George, were mostly genre films which had an edge to them even in purely their moods. The problem up front with 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy comes from the compromise, along one problematic sequence, that undercut this one of being a film sold as pornography, that this era allowed these film to be interesting and creative, but that they could have easily been films prioritising the sex than adding interesting touches to it.

9 Lives... at seventy one minutes with these extended scenes of sex struggles to flesh out enough of the "what-if" with its ideas. The little fragment is fascinating and, in mind to Ferrara's films having themes of Catholicism for a key period of time, it is as much because this is also a mystical New Age occult film as well. Gypsy (Dominique Santos) is receiving letters from a former lover named Paulette (Pauline LaMonde), a free spirits whose recounting in them of all her sexual partners is the only solace for Gypsy beyond opium fantasies of this former love. Eventually, in the little plot we get, as Gypsy narrates and explains to the viewer from her sanctum home, we learn she has supernatural powers and intends to find a way to return Paulette to her. It is a compelling idea for a film, softcore or hardcore, ennui to be found here as Paulette casually wanders through relationships, be it the perfect male sex machine who is cold elsewhere, to an attended at a gas station bathroom whilst with the former, to a Nigerian princess.

It is structured around the sex scenes, but the idea of a figure who is purely of desires, and the other woman who still thinks of her, plotting as her guardian witch, is a fascinating idea especially from Abel Ferrara, whose films evoke a certain aesthetic even with his later work, suggesting tantalising ideas of how he would deal with this subject matter. Bluntly, the film is not profound and struggles for its slightness. It could have worked, especially as this is still a time of porn cinema where, unlike the emphasis on scenes in the modern PornHub era and some films, there was an emphasis on theatrical films which had surprising amount of production design to them nonetheless. The soundtrack alone is strong too, even if one song does suggest it is going to turn into a Status Quo track, tonally inappropriate in terms of this review, and the most British reference to bring in, but impossible for me to ignore. In terms of its subject, the concept of the film as a series of erotic segments including reinterpreting a Biblical tale from the Old Testament offers a lot that is not out of place for Ferrara to tackle.

And moments do show that something very interesting was here. Even the un- Ferrara choice of jazz fusion does not undercut one scene when the film is focused, Gypsy's sexual desires for Pauline depicting envisioning the later in a space entirely nude in a blinding white light as a reality. Even a scene which would be understandably seen as unacceptable now suggests what this film could have been, which is the reinterpretation of the Old Testament, that of Lot's daughters, which is retold with Paulette's grandmother, whose she shared her face and soul with, and her sister with their father. Containing Ferrara in an onscreen role, through with a stung body double and clearly not a Swedish old man just from his accent, the segment will be uncomfortable because it is non-consensual sex and incest, but is fascinating in literalising a real Bible passage which is contentious in itself, that it is Lot's daughters getting their older father drunk and conceiving children with him, the later never explicitly talked about in this version. Due to how the film feels threadbare in content, there is no ability to make this type of scene have any meaning, with one of the more transgressive aspects being that the film has real sex for all the scene including this one, even if the film is of actors choreographing scenes which just invoke real sexual contact at the end of the day. At least with that scene, shot lacksidasical which undercuts the discomfort, the idea it is tackling dealing with Paulette's heritage, and tapping into taboo sexuality which is found even in the Bible and is a tale of rape even in that context, makes it something that, in another film, would have still been a challenging and problematic work but still to consider with pause for thought.

Not defendable in the slightest, uncomfortable and even padded out, is the rape scene of the Nigerian princess which exists only for the disquieting idea of being erotic, something which back than would have been an easy red target for an anti-porn feminist like Andrea Dworkin to show if she had been aware of this. It is part of the uncomfortable schism in seventies erotica of trying to be serious, even with this type of controversial content, but clearly made with titillation, a schism where you get films which, even if uncomfortable, were intentionally aiming for something truly challenging, and then films like this where the scene here is lacksidasical in depiction, last a while and most would not even be interesting in debating, quick to dismiss it. Baise-Moi (2001), a controversial film from two female directors, was a rape-revenge film where the sex, consensual and not, was depicted with the actors actually have real sexual contact, which can be debated in terms of whether it was justifiable for that film, but was part of a film that was meant to shock and make people uncomfortable for a reason. With 9 Lives..., I cannot really defend the film at all for this scene, because its purpose, especially as there is not a lot to the film around it in actual material that can undercut and/or change how one is meant to interpret it, especially as the character barring some relationship with Paulette leaves the film soon after never to be seen again.

Moments like this undercut the fascination 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy can have, as even his scuzzier work from later one had deeper thoughts, or were a film like Fear City (1984), which was so brazenly ridiculous (and sincere) you had to admire it. This film instead suffers from having to tick boxes for being a porn film, which alongside the moral concerns with some of the content, also reveals how much of this is really a first attempt at making a film that found it not fully becoming its creators' own take on the genre. Even The Driller Killer for all its luridness as a Video Nasty fits Abel Ferrara as an auteur in his obsessions like a glove.  A slither of interest in here, the mysticism, becomes the most enticing idea of the film, ending with Gypsy turning into a man to have sex with Paulette, in the middle of a twilight reality with a protracted shot of the moon like the pinpoint camera hole in a black screen. This idea, even if the film had been longer and had more sex scenes, offers at least the idea of something very unconventional yet befitting the type of films its creator would go on to do.

This instead is still however porn in the dismissible way for large parts of it, not one of the creative ones which managed to possess something special, or just suit the point of the genre of titillation in a way which was actually admirable in a pro-sex good way. An older Ferrara film would have tackled this subject, even in softcore, with something truly compelling, and it is with praise knowing his next film, The Driller Killer, fully cemented his trajectory fully. This feels like the first attempt, and if it had been without the rape scene, and had more time to flesh itself out, literally in content and in its ideas, I would look to 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy with more than curiosity. Even the title feels absolutely inappropriate for an Abel Ferrara directed porn film, the clumsy first film which has its intrigue undercut by the context of what the film turned out to be.

M.D. Geist & M.D. Geist II - Death Force (1986/1996)

 

M.D. Geist

Directors: Hayato Ikeda and Koichi Ohata

Screenplay: Riku Sanjo

(Voice) Actors: Jason Beck as M.D. Geist, Dave Couch as Colonel Kurtz, Joan Baker as Vaiya, Kip Kaplan as Marsh

 

M.D. Geist II - Death Force

Director: Koichi Ohata

Screenplay: Koichi Ohata

Based on the original script by Riku Sanjo

(Voice) Cast: Jason Beck as M.D. Geist, John Hollywood as M.D. Krauser, David Fuhrer as Eagle, Greg Stuhr as Breston, Joan Baker as Vaiya, Vincent Bagnall as the Major

 

On the futuristic planet of Jerra, a member of an experimental super soldier project, christened M.D. Geist, reappears on the lands in the midst of a full blown war between the Nexrum Army and the Regular Army, alongside the threat of a robotic doomsday weapon called the Death Force being unleashed. And this begins one of the more infamous anime for a certain generation, which is not well regarded but for its distributor, Central Park Media, was so well selling (and well regarded) it even used one of its most distinct designs, powered armour, as their "company spokes mecha". Truthfully, the head of CPM John O'Donnell LOVED M.D Geist and used his influence to push the OVA, even turning the titular Geist as the company's mascot¹. It is a sympathetic thing - we all have favourites - but O'Donnell had the virtue of owning a company which he used to fund a director's cut, fund a 1996 sequel and create the equivalent of a Criterion Collection DVD release¹. And, personally, M.D. Geist is really nihilistic and ridiculous animation from an era of "violent cartoons", which is an acquired taste and CPM itself sold itself on until they closed out in 2009, at the time when this was no longer practical marketing as anime's perception (and audience) changed over the Millennium.

Now, it has to be established that I viewed the Director's Cut, the original version from Japan the debut of Koichi Ohata, a notorious director in anime for this and Genocyber (1994), a co-director (Hayato Ikeda) arguably included to contrast the perceived inexperience of Ohata¹. The original version was haphazardly put together with screenwriter Riku Sanjo to the complaints of the animators themselves¹, and also had some notorious animation faults, all of which the Director's Cut was meant to resolve. The Director's Cut draws out an actual plot and corrects the animation mistakes, but with jarring changes in the type of animation. The existence of the production has to be taken into considering with how M.D. Geist originates from the vast production line of 80s OVAs that this among so many, where the video tape market and the Japanese economic boom at the time meant the money was there to make animation for this market of all forms. At only forty seven minutes, the story here barely covers a lot. It is instead a post apocalypse tale, openly riffing on what the Mad Max films and Fist of the North Star brought to the table earlier in the eighties, but instead bringing in as its lead a sociopathic blond figure named Geist as the badass, imprisoned originally in stasis and crossing paths with the plot when he fights over sci-fi American football gear-like armour. The murkiness of his characterisation is one of the curiosities of the production, especially when you get to the sequel, but Geist is a cipher to archetypes from this era in pop culture.

Underserved, and an unfortunate in the entire two part franchise, is Vaiya who is a female leader of a gang who becomes enamoured to Geist, trying to seduce him only for this to be the rare anime to not have a chauvinistic male character with a libido. Her character, through both parts, is one of the most trodden on in terms of how visibly useless she's made, her monologue of the idiocy of war and soldiers as hyenas not exactly touching Toshiro Mifune's rant against the samurai in Seven Samurai (1954) no matter how hard it tries, particularly as the work, like other Koichi Ohatai productions like Genocyber, are insanely nihilistic in terms of hope being non-existent and death a constant in bloody detail. The production does undercut this seriousness in how, especially with the English dub, the plot terminology, the plot itself and line readings in the English dud contrast with some curious pieces, the "Brain Palace" where the Death Squad is a great example of this. One legitimate piece of praise, however, is the music. The songs by Hironobu Kageyama, famous for the Cha-La Head-Cha-La theme from the first Dragonball series and throughout that franchise, are bombastic, especially in the one solidly entertaining scene of Geist fighting the robotic death machine equivalent of a Russian stacking doll. I did not expect in M.D. Geist interesting synth jazz in the score, other times all the wailing guitar solos to fill a rock album from the era, graphic moments of intestines being split and robots exploding set to eighties saxophone and a nicely dense, odd score.

M.D. Geist's action scenes show some talent, but they are also part of a work which is a structurally messy, especially when you get to the finale, the sole plot drive inevitably the Regular Army (sic) attempting to stop their own doomsday device of killer robots (who look like robo centaurs) from wiping out the planet. It is documented that the context came from the creators coming up with cool scenes first¹, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does in this context have a sense of not trying to tie them up together at all, particularly when the final plot twist is abrupt, when Geist turns the Death Force back on. I do not want to bother with a spoiler tag for it either; it will not rob the context for how absurd it is and an almost deadpan comedy to the scene in the English dub.

Ten years after M.D. Geist was made and became a successful release for Central Park Media in the US, head John O'Donnell helped both a Director's Cut of the original to be funded, and allowed Koichi Ohata to make a sequel, following the results of Geist, as a viscous sociopath with an erratic behaviour spectrum, setting off the Death Force of robo centaurs to destroy the world of Jerra in the prequel. Obviously everything is worse than before, as now robo centipedes which eat human beings to power themselves exist, and the survivors try to salvage what they can to survive. The last vestige of humanity is a fortress ran by M.D. Krauser, a blue skinned former super soldier whose nobility is unfortunately matched by a God-like ego. Things are already signposted to get very silly and with significant issues in the production just from the first scene - a car fleeing from robo centipedes, messily animated with the set-up exposition in the English dub a words-per-second stream of consciousness from a character we never see again, which as jarring as that sounds. This first sequence alone enforces just how this does arguably, if you want to enjoy this as a "bad anime", top the original even if you need the prequel’s context to make it work.

If the first M.D. Geist represented the notorious anime OVAs of the eighties, then befittingly its sequel is the representative of the nineties equivalents, where it belongs to the kind of gruel and absurdity that would get replaced in the 2000s onwards by the OVA market being phased out, the few exceptions a string in the 2000s, and mainly from then on tie-in to existing series or tie-ins which allow for more sexually explicit specials of shows. The English dub arguably adds a great deal, especially as Krauser has all his lines e m o t e d as to reach the back of the theatre. In terms of structure, it is far gorier than before but scenes are truncated with gaps in the plotting, all whilst it is now jazzy sax solos in the score from Yoshiaki Ohuchi. Death Force has the convoluted plot trajectory of whatever Geist himself is meant to be, the villain destroying everything in the end yet at times presented as meant to be an anti-hero. M.D. Krauser in contrast, who has erected the last bastion of hope for humanity, a moving fortress, is doomed for the hubris of believing himself to be a God, alongside hiring a scientist who unfortunately wants to capture Geist to experiment on. Vaiya is still lost as the lead heroine too, now with amnesia and with a sense of more rudimentary existence despite having a lot more to do with her romantic relationship with Krauser than she did last time.

Death Force, with its jarring plot twists, feels the more ambitious, with a larger plot by Ohata yet absolutely unable to tell it without shorthand. More vivid characters populate the environment (such as an evil scientist or his henchmen, a mere torso who uses robotic limbs that can be attached and detached to him), and just more gruesome in lieu of Ohata's reputation, but with the compromises and struggles to get it made more notable than even the prequel. Death Force even does a Gunbuster (1988-9), its last act abruptly cutting to black-and-white animation as M.D. Geist and M.D. Krauser have their final fight. Gunbuster, a well regarded earlier work from Hideaki Anno, the director of Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) and co-director of Shin Godzilla (2016), had to use this for budget, but it worked for the drama of that story, whilst here there is some style, a little colour in the eyes, but it is contrasted by the messiness of the production. Ending in an abrupt child impalement that should not be funny were not it not for the voice performance in the English dub, followed by an even more abrupt death, the animation budget is even less existent and you see a work barely crawling out into existence. Certainly the sequel has the bright, gaudy colour of the era, not comparable in the slightest to the original's eighties production, even if the character designs and world has not changed drastically, but irony is found too in how far later the production was funded. Not because it was ten years exactly after or so, but because by the late nineties OVAs were past the boom of them during the bubble economy of eighties Japan and were about to see the righting on the wall the decade soon after.

As much of it is a sympathy for its weird history why I liked this sequel over the other original, but i appreciate the pair together as a one night double - some of it has to be derision from my part in an affectionate way, wondering how the hell the original M.D. Geist got a wider legacy than better or more schlocky OVAs, even without John O'Donnell's involvement still selling tapes. Some of it is admiring the car crash as a whole; all with a bad taste as its childish nihilism and how silly it can be. Ohata’s directorial career really came from that OVA era as, whilst he directed series and tie-in specials for other work, particularly the series Burst Angel (2004), past the early 2010s he has stayed in areas like storyboarding. His reputation does come from the notorious string of OVAs like this which came from the time, and particularly the reputation of M.D. Geist, and how it managed to become a mascot for a company which went the way of the dodo as anime fandom trends changed, is going to be the thing I will reflect upon between these two entries as, honestly, to anyone else but me showing sympathy for them, others will find them utterly absurd to watch.

 

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1) As documented Justin Sevakis - Anime News Network founder, a former employee of Central Park Media, and founder of video/DVD/Blu-ray production company MediaOCD - about M.D. Geist's relation in the company HERE.

Games of the Abstract: Strahl (1993)

 

a.k.a. Triad Stone

Developer: Data East

Publisher: Pioneer Productions / Panasonic

One Player

3DO Interactive Multiplayer / Sega Saturn / Pioneer LaserActive

 

Strahl is definitely of its time – a full motion video game in the mould of Dragon’s Lair (1983), the legendary arcade game where, using laser disc technology to play and animated by Don Bluth, you attempted to rescue a princess from a dragon’s castle by way of animated sequences and proto-quick time events, pressing the right button commands at the right times to avoid a game over. Dragon’s Lair was a seminal title from the eighties, because as much because of how ahead of its time graphically was if by way of sacrificing game play freedom, leading to a boom of FMV games by themselves connected to this idea of minimal interactivity. By the time Strahl however reaches a point when FMV games, including these specific animated ones would become less appreciated. There would still be FMV games in a variety of genres by the late nineties, such as the point and click genre, but as the likes of American Laser Games, who won favour with lightgun games like Mad Dog McCree (1990), would need to look into alternate revenue, like normal games like Mazer (1995) or targeted for a female audience with the Her Interactive line, and polygons in video games would become the popular trend, these games would be under threat as consoles 3DO and the Sega CD would be criticised for having FMV games in general.

Strahl is an odd case thought, as this was originally developed as an arcade game, and yet ended up on multiple consoles like the 3DO and the Sega Saturn in the mid-nineties. This is also distinct as this is among a small number of Japanese animated FMV games, (mostly) released in the eighties for the arcade, and getting ports to games consoles in the nineties. Time Gal (1985), ported to the Sega CD and other consoles was a Taito property and is probably the most well known of this group. Important to all of them, and Strahl, is Toei Animation, the legendary animation studio who were founded in 1948 and an institution in Japanese anime, be they with their Dragonball adaptations or One Piece or Precure etc. Among all the mediums they worked in, these FMV laserdisc games from Japan were among their projects.

Evil is creeping through a fantasy land, and you play a male hero who has to travel to remote and dangerous places to collect gems to stop this. Strahl, based on the version I played, offers you to choose which animated segment to play, where you need to press the right directional button at the right time when prompted, press the sword button when prompted, and when it is brought up, bash the last button you need as much as possible until you fill an onscreen orb blue. You have continues and as you progress in the 3DO version, thankfully you keep progress in the session you play. This is in mind that the game is short, where I was able to finish it within one session, the issue more reflexes and how, having to complete segments, having to remember what to expect can be the case with repeating scenes. You have leeway with most of the button prompts, but this does present the issue, undercutting the virtues of the animation itself, of having to repeat an entire segment from the beginning if you get a fail state. This is an issue with an FMV game in general like this.

This is beautiful to look at, a fun game to play in mind its structure is an artefact of a different time. The scenarios vary between more traditional scenes from a fantasy but also be very inventive, such as escaping a haunted field which references Gulliver’s Travels with tiny people trying to attack you, before you become small and they giant, or the final level you unlock facing mirror images of yourself in duels. Compression is obvious an issue with full motion video, be it for the 3DO or the Saturn, but the animation is incredibly good. Strahl however comes with the knowledge that, even back when it was released, it would have become part of the backlash against these games, as longer and more interactive genres were becoming more appreciated and wanted. It comes with the sense that, by this point, this type of game originally meant for the eighties post-Dragon’s Lair was out of time. Its obscurity now neither helps, a shame as it is a work that should be preserved and, for me, was entertaining. These are the kind of obscurities which fascinate, and once you get used to this, Strahl for those who could play it would find reward even for a shorter gaming experience.

Trans-Europ-Express (1966)

 

Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet

Screenplay: Alain Robbe-Grillet

Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant as Elias; Marie-France Pisier as Eva; Christian Barbier as Lorentz; Charles Millot as Franck; Daniel Emilfork as policeman; Henri Lambert as police inspector; Alain Robbe-Grillet as Jean, the film director; Catherine Robbe-Grillet as Lucette

An Abstract Candidate

 

Assassins can be funny too.

Trans-Europ-Express is a meta-film, introducing three individuals - including director-writer Alain Robbe-Grillet himself and his life partner Catherine Robbe-Grillet - on the titular train line in France, imaging a film about drug smuggling which is the film we will be seeing playing out. Immediately a lark is had in imagining first a cartoonish version of this tale, with fake beards and a cartoon smoking bomb on board, but the production breaks the fourth wall constantly, alongside introducing Jean-Louis Trintignant as Elias, already in the midst of a drug smuggling plot when he briefly enters their car. Around him a story is set up, beginning with Elias getting on board with cocaine in a secret compartment in his suitcase and a book cut out to hold a pistol.

The film, more so than others from Alain Robbe-Grillet, is a flex in storytelling as a concept itself, a pulpy crime story which just happens to makes its artificiality know to the viewer throughout. Revisions to the story, trying to figure out what the tale is, happen and are usually caused by Catherine Robbe-Grillet's character making sure, as the secretary keeping audio recorded notes, that plot continuity is kept alongside the three questioning new ideas, such as considering (and rejecting) the idea to change to diamond smuggling. Plot holes are explained and they remove the cocaine on Elias' person, even completely ditching a plot thread and whole character by asking between each other why a young woman introduced onscreen would steal his suitcase in the first case for one considered twist.

It plays this narrative straight, but this game-within-a-game is compelling in itself. There is also how Elias has a fetish for bondage, seen when he hides a magazine, between a more respectable one, of female models posing tied up or wrapped in chains. This connects to Robbe-Grillet's own taste for this, but it is also part of the simulacra here too, the faking and constructing of scenarios, as he is introduced to a prominent character of Eva (Marie-France Pisier), a sex worker who he pays for a staged scenario of forced restraint and rape. That scene is going to make some viewers understandably uncomfortable, but it is all acted out as a consenting act by her and Elias, part of the games of the film as fiction as he will return to her to play out this bondage scenario.

She will play out a potential femme fatale role, as her connection to the criminal group Elias is trying to ingratiate himself within becomes more noticeable. The gang itself, playing to Alain Robbe-Grillet's films being about their stories being games or shifting in how they are staged, set out constant tests for Elias to react to, from the entire fake like of Father Petitjean the mythical drunk priest used for coding messages, to even staging fake cops apprehending him. Trans-Europ-Express is arguably one of the more accessible works for Alain Robbe-Grillet because it is a genre pastiche, which unlike Eden and After (1970) is more focused on the plot it is still undercutting. Elias' journey in the game, as it is being connected and made sense of by its creators, still becomes a crime story at heart even if the film knows it is all staged and plays to this. Even its style, the sleek cinematography by Willy Kurant, befits a pastiche of films like this from this era. Only its BDSM content really takes this to another tone, in mind to Robbe-Grillet's real life obsessions, but even this within the movie plays to the whole constructed nature. Even when this gets serious in the end, with everything closing in on Elias after he actually kills someone, the film openly undercuts this with a wink and a happy ending, reminding everyone viewing this elaborate and perfectly made film it is still a story.

 

Abstract Spectrum: Metatextual

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

Egomania: Island without Hope (1986)

 

Director: Christoph Schlingensief

Screenplay: Christoph Schlingensief

Cast: Udo Kier as Baron Tante Teufel; Tilda Swinton as Sally; Uwe Fellensiek as William; Anna Fechter as Ria; Anastasia Kudelka as Annastasia; Sergej Gleitmann as Anatol; Dietrich Kuhlbrodt as the Notary

An Abstract Candidate

 

I’m the devil’s aunt!

A Christoph Schlingensief film I am glad to catch up to, it is set on an isolated island where a few people speaking different languages live. One is Tilda Swinton, playing Sally, enforcing how the London born actress is one of cinema’s true travelers in terms of her filmography. Even when she is in mainstream blockbusters it raises an interest for me, and her obsession with collaborating with some of cinema’s most idiosyncratic filmmakers surpasses anyone else, whether it is Bela Tarr (The Man From London (2007)), Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Memoria (2021)) or even her long standing collaboration with Derek Jarman in her early career, all these figures alien to each other and representing different types of cinema in themselves she has yet travelled within like a space traveler. Among them, Christoph Schlingensief is another really idiosyncratic figure to have collaborated with too, and it also means we can be Swinton onscreen with Udo Kier, another of the great journey actors, opening with Swinton among other witch-like women carrying a man seemingly like Christ across icy tundra.

Considering its director, this will become his heightened cinema by the ending, but for a large part this is a distinct turn for him for having an oppressive mood early on like horror cinema, the sound design and music – the later by Tom Dokoupil, Ella Johnson, Christoph Schlingensief himself and Helge Schneider -  leaving one on edge before anything happens. Udo, playing Baron Tante Teufel, is a man caught between being a man of privilege and a demon, definitely with a satanic edge to himself which he fights and loses too, fixated on Sally who he had a previous relationship with. Driven insane by this force within him, Kier’s debonair figure with a push by an older woman named Ria, who just wanted him to kill her, decides to punish her for becoming pregnant from another man named William (Uwe Fellensiek). If it means taking his love from her and the child it will suffice.

It is a mood piece, part theatre in tone, and definitely becomes its director’s trademarks when Udo Kier, game as in his other collaborations with his fellow German collaborator movies, does dress up in women’s clothes like a Satanic female relative who has a book reading club, mad eyed and aiming beyond wall chewing. Egomania unlike the others, which could be deliberately offensive and manic, is however more subdued in tone, something of its own. Separated into multiple chapters, and with a very unexpected and inspired touch of old jazz standards scoring this throughout, Egomania feels like a bleak fairy tale in tone, with the Devil in Kier (with his servant Anatol (Sergej Gleitmann)) going out to punish Sally, from giving William forced forgetfulness, to stealing the child on behalf of a notary figure who argues crime is entirely justifiable. It is an interesting entry point for Schlingensief’s cinema, and arguably the best way to come to his work, even if there will be some uncomfortable with the ending, Kier menacing a fake baby in a boiler room-like space. Unlike other work which is more notably cult in tone, this is easier to get to then the really challenging films like United Trash (1996) which get into slapstick transgression, instead leaving one on edge.

It is a testament to Kier as an actor, absolutely on fire in his entire run with Christoph Schlingensief, and a reminder that his journey in b-movies contrasts a man who, always comfortable in any role, was working here or with Rainer Werner Fassbinder or with Lars von Trier among others; even Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974), the infamous Andy Warhol sponsored and Paul Morrissey directed horror films, where Kier is notably struggling with speaking in English, not his native language, was giving it his all regardless. The same is for Swinton, even if this might disappoint some for how small and subdued her role is next to others in her career, standing out as the one person speaking English in the cast, standing out for how the young Swinton, here and with the Derek Jarman films, is virtually different from the acclaimed veteran she became. She was always a chameleon in terms of acting, and the Jarman references feel apt for Egomania, less comparable to other Schlingensief films like The German Chainsaw Massacre (1990) but one of Jarman’s like The Last of England (1987). One scene, merely interacting with the young child playing hers on the beach in what is out-of-character b-footage, but being used still in film, does feel like a Jarman-like touch from a director very notorious for how confrontation he would get in his career in his own trademarks, mo re a whimsical improvisation you normally do not get with Schlingensief.

Schlingensief himself is a director who does deserve an even bigger reputation, and I hope one day, as the brief access to his work on streaming and other methods give him more notability, we will eventually get the big physical media release of his work. His only aspect is that he was confrontational which will challenge a lot of people. Some was deliberately shocking for his political satire, such as attacking fascist politics and xenophobia in a 2000 staged project, Foreigners out! Schlingensiefs Container, by envisioning a reality TV show scenario where the audience could vote asylum seekers out of the country per voting period. Other things, like United Trash having Udo Kier in black face which, even in a film condemning of the United Nations in post-colonial Africa and their influence over them, will not go over still even if Schlingensief is entirely there to attack the white foreigners. Aspects which will challenge viewers even in good taste would make his work more likely to win over cult film fans, but again, his work can be very unconventional even in this scenario, even with The German Chainsaw Massacre playing as a horror film but reflecting the post Iron Curtain when East and West Germany reconnected. His work though, blurring genre to art house, really compels me and this, one of the less grandstanding and confrontational, is still brimming with an intensity to admire.

Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric

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

Brand Upon the Brain! (2006)

 

Director: Guy Maddin

Screenplay: Guy Maddin and George Toles

Cast: Gretchen Krich as Mother; Cathleen O'Malley as Young Mother; Susan Corzatte as Old Mother; Sullivan Brown as Young Guy Maddin; Erik Steffen Maahs as Older Guy Maddin; Maya Lawson as Sis; Jake Morgan-Scharhon as Chance Hale/Wendy Hale; Todd Moore as Father; Clayton Corzatte as Old Father; Andrew Loviska as Savage Tom; Kellan Larson as Neddie

An Abstract Candidate

 

A womb opening up like a window!

Arguably this, a remembrance in twelve chapters, was a holy grail to finally reach for me, able to finally witness what was originally a Guy Maddin production screened with on stage narrators and live to the images on the silver screen, and became available in its Criterion Collection release form with numerous narrators to choose from. The opening already sets up what to expect by linking the erotic to stabbing knives and violence, and you can tell this is a Guy Maddin film eventually, if it did not click before, when an older mother figure is chewing the side off a boy in the finale. This is notwithstanding his trademark of naming leads after himself, this Guy Maddin (Erik Steffen Maahs in the bookends, Sullivan Brown through his childhood memories) with his own neurosis to unpack as he returns to the family lighthouse after thirty years. He returns to Black Notch to repaint to the home for his ailing mother, only for “spurts of memories” to return to Guy of his childhood, one which is a calamity of neurosis to unpick for countless reasons.

At a lighthouse which was an orphanage and Dad was a scientist always working, when this childhood involves the orphan boys’ leader Savage Tom conducting black masses you see how Guy's life was one full of said neurosis, especially as there is a mother complex from one who is overprotective, traumatizing her children with guilt, threatening to sell the lighthouse to keep Guy in line, and badgers her eldest daughter for being an older sister, interesting in the opposite sex and secretly smoking. It is clear Guy had enough neurosis to unpack already, but as with other Maddin films, this cannot be enough, as it turns out however his parents are up to no good experiments using the orphans, which brings Wendy Hale (Jake Morgan-Scharhon), the celebrity sister of a brother-and-sister team of teen detectives to the island to investigate this.

To those with no prior knowledge on Guy Maddin, his career has taken various influences from older cinema technique, but a key period post The Heart of the World (2000), a short which won him acclaim, was silent cinema in its various guises, from Soviet montage to Gothic German Expressionism. His career is more diverse than this, and he still can have sound here, but his fascination at this point with monochrome films, with using visuals and intertitles for emphasis, and creating intertitles you would never get in older films from the twenties, was his own distinct take on them. With the addition of the narrator, who (depending on what version you watch) varies from Isabelle Rossellini to even Crispin Glover, the tapestry of his filmmaking style is just as eclectic as the strange melodramas he makes, here the corrupt lighthouse orphanage, and the mother and father’s obsession with collecting “nectar” even from their own children, rivaled by the amount of queer and heterosexual sexual tension in the midst of this. This is especially as Wendy Hale decides to pose as her own brother to investigate this case, falling in love with Guy’s older sister (Maya Lawson) after a secret game of spin the bottle, and Guy having a crush with Wendy Hale in her normal clothes which will become complicated in terms of his and others’ sexuality.

As with all Guy Maddin films, this is not the end of this. The unconventional rituals are here, with the "kissing gloves" that allow one's wearer to kiss and touch someone, alongside the fact that the nectar conspiracy involves the mother's desire to use it to become young again, even down to a baby, with further contentious psychosexual content involved. Sexual anxiety is rife, and as with other Guy Maddin films, this is within its own distinct logic and tone. The style is entirely of his own and, using the silent cinema techniques to add an energy to the proceedings one minute, using it to add to the ghosts literally haunting the lighthouse in the present the next, Brand Upon the Brain shows his skill at this point, a style he would eventually move from into new ones with digital technology into the 2010s. Again, to see a key piece of his cinema, missing for me, was rewarded with a film that is as deliciously weird and yet still imaginative as this.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Weird

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

Address Unknown (2001)

 

Director: Kim Ki-duk

Screenplay: Kim Ki-duk

Cast: Dong-kun Yang as Chang-Guk; Young-min Kim as Ji-Hum; Ban Min-Jung as Eun-Ok; Jae Hyun Cho as Dog-Eye; Pang Eun-Jin as Chang-Guk's Mother; Myung Kye-Nam as Ji-Hum's Father

Ephemeral Waves

 

Rotting corpses are supposed to add flavour.

[For obvious reasons, due to the figure who directed-wrote this film, some readers may be best served to skip this review, effectively an entire Trigger Warning for a self published blog review. This will be completely understandable.]

An ill advised creation of a pop gun made from wood and elastic, but with a small explosive the equivalent of a bullet, alongside an even more ill advised game of William Tell leaves the female lead since childhood with damage to one eye, and thus begins this film from a South Korean filmmaker who is now a contentious one. Kim Ki-duk, whose passing in 2020 due to COVID-19 went by with barely a whimper in most press, was marked in 2018 when allegations of rape and sexual molestation were raised. Considering this involved PD Notebook, the South Korean investigative news show, broadcasting an episode with anonymous testimonials from women who made claims of being victims whilst working with him¹ poses a real problem for me if confirmed fully. The lawsuit and allegations against him were part of a momentous #MeToo shake up in South Korean filmmaking², and confirmation of any of them would present an uncomfortable image as someone who came at the right time to his films. For all their potential concerns with their extremity in the literalisation of the emotions, I found something within them of worth. It undercuts them with the painful reminder even if the art can be profound the human artist behind them can be beneath them and fail the art, hence why we cancel these people.

Address Unknown, one of the earlier films distributed in the United Kingdom, is set by 1970s, a considerable time after the Korean War which divided the country into North and South, in a rural community where a US military base is nearby. Among those central to the story are three leads: one Chang-Guk (Dong-kun Yang) is mixed race, his father one of the US soldiers who came over, Eun-Ok (Ban Min-Jung) the girl whose eye was damaged by her older brother as a child, and Ji-Hum (Young-min Kim), an introverted figure whose crush on Eun-Ok, working with an artist who specialises in portraits and photos of the US soldiers with their Korean wives, is contrasted by a voyeuristic nature, not helped because he does spy on her changing at her house, nor his bullying by two other young men which will force him to drastic measures for revenge. To say bleak for Address Unknown is an understatement, one of the issues with Kim Ki-Duk, even for this one of his more subdued works, being an obsession with internal angst externalised, masochism and sadism, and a nihilistic worldview for the most part. Post Korean War here, for him, is literally the dog eat dog metaphor taken to the point heavy handed is absurd to suggest. Dogs are literally being killed and sold as a food source by Dog-Eye (Jae Hyun Cho), a "dog catcher" who is dating Chang-Guk's mother (Pang Eun-Jin), and having him work with him; even if the idea of eating a domesticated dog, depending on your country of origin, is not as perverse as others may think and a naturally accepted food source, Dog-Eye's method of hanging a dog and beating it up with a baseball bat is naturally quite nasty.

It is quite obvious what Ki-duk though of the Korean War, this aftermath where those left, trying to get on and especially the children of those who served in the war, wander off adrift in their own obsessions, with the weight of another country in the United States on them. Even the Americans over in the country, as represented by one soldier (Mitch Malem), are struggling with the angst of being stuck in a place away from home themselves, his trajectory starting with wanting to court Eun-Ok as a "comfort" girlfriend, even with the bargaining of being able to fix her eye. The leads' families are spectres of this war:  Eun-Ok's family is reliant on the pension for a father who has never returned and was presumed to be a war hero, changed when the government suggest he willingly fled to North Korea; Chang-Guk's mother, bordering into psychologically unstable, pines for his father, the "Address Unknown" from letters she has sent out to try to find him returning, whilst he has the pressures of racism against his heritage; and Ji-Hum's father (Myung Kye-Nam), proud of killing three soldiers, pines for his proclaimed right to be a hero, all a folly with his complete disregard for people over status and the delight he had in having killed with a gun. Literally, as they find a corpse of a North Korean soldier under his house, the bones left, the photo of their family ignored, and the bones quietly thrown in a river without the consequences of the human life lost. There is no virtue in a war, never seen onscreen, which not only left North and South Korea permanently divided, but is depicted at the time of this film as having left this rural community in such a impoverished state that, with the selling of dog meat, that will include family pets if people need the money. Men are still missing this late on, after the war ended in 1953, dead on old battlefields, and the world has changed as the veterans are practicing the ancient art of archery, reminiscing of this past, some with false legs, whilst even a looked down upon seller of dog meat is allowed to stand on the archery field with them.

Ki-duk's filmmaking, even before his ultra-low budget films of the later era, were grounded, their moments of unnaturalness (like the unfortunate death of someone here falling head first from a motorcycle into a muddy field up to their waist) part of the heightened tone of his work, like the violence, exaggerated on purpose. Hindsight, with the controversies around him, do make me wary now, but Address Unknown without subtlety required does paint a pretty blunt view on what a community would be like after something as drastic as the Korean War. It does almost have the mentality to its depiction as Shōhei Imamura depicted Japan post-World War II, those in the gutter and those who have survived, though Ki-duk's transgressive streak is that even the least expected person, the one innocent here, does however encourage their dog to perform sexual acts on them to try and find pleasure in the world that is entirely dysfunctional.

The only thing which undercuts the tone of the film at all is that the American performances in English are awkward, which is an issue as the soldier Eun-Ok is dating, which her mother eventually approves, is a dysfunctional figure of importance. There is clearly a negative view of the United States, but also awareness with his character, coping high on LSD and obsessed with Eun-Ok eventually to cruel ways, is like other Ki-duk characters. Only that he is the English speaking equivalent of many others from the director's career, a drifter whose desperation reaches breaking point as he finds his place outside his homeland, is different, the endless military drills eventually becoming unbearable until he snaps. Dogs among them are a heavy handed but apt metaphor for the whole film, everyone be they owned or wandering the countryside on the rural tracks. They befit the world's rundown nature and even the eroticism, when an awakening for one person is from seeing a pair copulating in serenity, perverse as it befits sexuality throughout the director's career at times.

The hindsight of Kim Ki-duk, if his career is now confirmed to be tainted by his crimes, does cause problems with all his films, still left after him and not something you can just make invisible. They are now stuck, like paintings and songs of those who have been alleged or confirmed to have committed horrible crimes, left with the questions of how much they were influence by their creators' sins and that they exist connected to the men even after their deaths. Address Unknown is still a film which, even without this, might not be the type of film to easily win people over, due to its bleakness and complete disregard to defend itself. There are also scenes involving rape and violence which are now going to have uncomfortable connections to the allegations of the director-writer even if you can separate them in your mind as a piece of art. Another factor I would suggest is that, even if Ki-duk was not this figure now tainted with the likelihood of what he has committed, he even with winning the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice International Film Festival for Pietà (2012) among his many rewards was never going to change his films, and that his style even when it won awards could lead to films which would alienate people and cause a period of obscurity, especially as in his case ultra-low budget films, as by the end of his career, was something which he continually returned too, the type of films which are viewed as easily "sellable". His career could be too volatile in making a film too violence, too strange and liable to alienate people, but in his case, accusations of legitimate crimes undercut him, rightly if proven true.

He was never a Park Chan-wook who, for the violence in his films, his eventually became acceptable and he stretched his filmmaking from the initial "vengeance" trilogy of films which introduced him to the West and the idea violence was commonplace in his work. Ki-duk's reputation comes in the United Kingdom because Tartan Films released his films at the time they pushed forwards an "Asian Extreme" sub label. To their credit, whilst the title suggests a certain type of release, they are to be thanked for helping Takashi Miike and South Korean cinema in general, such as Park Chan-wok, gain credible footholds in Britain, and clearly Kim Ki-duk was held by a prominent member of the company, or had some name recognition, for Tartan Films to constantly bring out his films from between the 2001 to 2005 era of his career. His films after their closure were entirely dependent on whether they would be of interest for an international market, and even with his successes, he was though an acquired taste. In reality, with a posthumous final film Call of God (2022) premiered at the Venice Film Festival with further controversy and outcry³, real life has made this no longer a concern as now a more important issue casts its shadow on even accessing his films. His films will be difficult to come back to, and re-releasing them in itself is going to be an issue as in South Korea, his reputation is entirely tarnished by these deeply serious claims, as it will be for even fans of his films. I find myself in that same place too, Address Unknown still to be admired, but the man behind the film now to be scrutinised any time I watch these works of his.

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1) South Korean Filmmaker Kim Ki-duk Accused of Rape, written by Lee Hyo-Won, published by the Hollywood Reporter on March 6th 2018.

2) Berlin: How South Korea Is Embracing the #MeToo Movement, written by Lee Hyo-Won and published for the Hollywood Reporter on February 18th 2018.

3) Korean Film Figures Condemn Venice for Honoring Kim Ki-duk Despite Sexual Abuse Allegations, written by Soomee Park and Patrick Brzeski, and published by the Hollywood Reporter on August 29th 2022.