Themroc (1973)

 

Director: Claude Faraldo

Screenplay: Claude Faraldo

Cast: Michel Piccoli as Themroc, Béatrice Romand as the Sister of Themroc, Marilù Tolo as the Secretary, Francesca Romana Coluzzi as the Female Neighbour, Jeanne Herviale as the Mother, Patrick Dewaere as the Police Officer, Coluche as Male Neighbour, Miou-Miou as the Young Neighbour

An Abstract Candidate

 

Themroc has an interesting legacy in Britain, though one interlaced with a time of moral panics. Channel 4 in Britain, when it was first launched in 1982, was literally the fourth terrestrial television station in Britain. Television was dominated in my country by the BBC, who had two stations, and ITV, who was originally a series of regional stations that shared programming and had advertising unlike the BBC. Channel 4 would eventually over the decades become more conventional, but at first they were very controversial, an alternative choice even into the nineties and into the Millennium as, even when they were drawing bigger numbers creating shows which could get complaints. They had a few notorious moments over the decades, be it satirist Chris Morris' incredibly controversial Brass Eye (1997), which tackled biting topics like the fear of paedophilia in the media with a scathing surrealism, to even TFI Friday, a live music comedy show hosted by Chris Evans originally between 1996 and 2000, which had its own controversies to the point Happy Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder was not allowed on the show in live form to get around his passive habit for cursing. Even now, toning down, you still get something like Naked Attraction, started in 2016, which is a dating show where you literally first get to know someone from their naked body first before their face or personality, which got the danders up for some¹ and thankfully shows that old school side to them.

Themroc is important for them as, whilst only a series with ten films², Channel 4 showed Claude Faraldo's experimental satire as the first film for the Red Triangle series between 1986-7, a curated series of international and experimental films which were marked as after midnight broadcasts, warned in their promotion as having adult content. This was a literal red triangle promising adult material, with many of the choices having sexually explicit content even if they were cerebral works, like Michelangelo Antonioni's sexually explicit but ennui drenched Identification of a Woman (1982). Some films were not this, like the devastating Brazilian film Pixote (1981), films which have slowly been rediscovered and some, like the two from Japanese filmmaker Shūji Terayama in the line-up, in dire need of actual releases in the West still. Themroc among them is the entry from the French industry after the French New Wave, least the time after Jean-Luc Godard proclaimed the medium dead and made experimental projects in a variety of forms over the seventies, a time which could give you Jacques Rivette's Out 1 (1971), but also Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (1973), a project by the Situationist movement which took a martial arts film, and added a new dub which was a left wing political satire intermingled with the fight scenes. 

Themroc immediately stands out as entirely wordless or depicted with the cast speaking complete gibberish, a tale of art house film legend Michel Piccoli as an ordinary working Joe who ends up descending into an urban caveman after one bad day at work after being disciplined for eyeing in on his boss and his sexy secretary. The film depicts this all in his performance, the cast and the world without needing dialogue, and one of its first idiosyncratic touches tells his back story by repeating each day of this dead end job through tiny moments from days pass, the same moments but with the cast in different clothes per day of Piccoli's life. Among the things which influences this character's descent is also with the opposite gender and sex. Thankfully, this does not factor in with a way which could horribly date as this progression goes on; even if he commits to an incestuous relationship with his sister (Béatrice Romand), this feels like a perverse touch even if a discomforting one, one of the first stabs at the taboos this film is playing with than a male fantasy. It is certainly an eccentric production, where a very sick sense of humour goes a long way into appreciating this, and a sense of the weird too, witnessing the likes of the guard obsessed with sharpening pencils only to break the tips so he can sharpen them again, not that dissimilar to the man polishing his posh car over and over living in the same apartment complex as our lead when the events transpire, strange irrational behaviour between with hindsight that make Piccoli's turn, even if transgressive, more sane in comparison. Cemented together by Piccoli himself, in primal scream form in a damn good performance, he is not playing a troglodyte stereotype but this force of confidence in urban form. This is one or two aspects which may have aged, but not in the ways expected, in that he does begin to entice the women around him, including the secretary, with his charms, but it becomes more complicated. Far more likely to have aged, just in the incestuous relationship, is how Béatrice Romand is a much younger woman in various states of undress throughout the film rather than them being siblings, all because the transgression is more clearly the point but the presentation is what is closer to the reductive alternative version what could have gotten in Themroc as a bad film. A lot has surprisingly gained more as time passed for the production. The first person to follow his charge is the best example of this, as it is a  housewife played by Francesca Romana Coluzzi, a statuesque figure who escapes her doldrums and whose less dominant, small nerdy husband joins her more cautiously, with a regular hammer to break their possessions and walls down next to her with a sledgehammer.

Literally building a cave out of his apartment with a few adjustments, the production getting access to an old building complex they could literally destroy the outer walls of in real time, the police do come for Piccoli, only to become figures in a farce where tear gas is an aphrodisiac when you turn feral. Tellingly, post May 1968 and the riots which brought France to a close, it is the police who are the real monsters, a bumbling mass who for the sake of it assault a young boy out of frustration or even commit sexual assault, coming off as clueless and lost entities are mindlessness. That or as food, as authority figures become the antelopes for urban lions to barbecue for tribal bonding over a meal, with the act of cooking authority the most overtly surreal and transgressive moment, and not even hiding the meaning in subtext. There is even a hint of bisexual cavemen, or at least toying with male-male eroticism where, in an attempt to bring back human respectability by bricking the cave up with walls again, men can show sensual respect for their own beauty by stroking each other, especially to tempt them from being a mindless brick layer for authority and to join this cave person tribe.

The ending furthers this subversive streak of how Piccoli and the others are not regressing but stripping away the horrors of modernity, contrasting their few transgressions against greater horrors as the buildings allowed to be destroyed for this film's production are later contrasted by the new apartment complexes shown at the end, white fortresses which look depressing even shot from afar. Sexuality itself is part of this as is control; there is one police officer living in the apartment complexes as this all transpires who keeps his daughter under his thumb, even striking her out of discipline, regardless of her own freedoms and passions in vicinity to these events. That or the older woman, Piccoli's mother, almost having a constant panic attack between her horror at what has happened but also, even if a taboo is involved, the attack of her social morals clashing within something primordial. That there are taboos that, in any other circumstance, would rightly be considered unacceptable is understandable to consider, but Themroc clearly has these hypothetical scenarios not to suggest they are the right way forwards, like cannibalism, but as a deliberately shock.

Whilst that might be the aspect which has aged the most, the sight of values being raged and challenged in this has not, as Piccoli and his tribe manage to live in peace baring the killed and eaten police officers. His tribe's primal screams in the finale, starting to affect others across the city, cause these figures to question themselves, to break from a repetition, break from materialism by means of destroying one's car they were obsessed with, becoming part of this hymn to a singular human form of passion and life without the trappings of mindless social structure and repression. Again, all of this is conveyed without dialogue and explicit political grandstanding, and that becomes one of the best aspects of Themroc, how pure gibberish from the cast and using performance even from the non-feral figures conveys this all perfectly. Even that it manages to move away from potentially contentious aspects, the strong macho lead who woos women with his feral charms, to become much more interesting in the turns it takes with other characters means it never becomes trite and obvious.

Hilariously, it was the government of Margaret Thatcher who are to be thanked for Channel 4; a deeply controversial figure, a scourge to many and also connected to the attempts to ban "Video Nasties" in the video tape rental stores too through members of her government, they nonetheless wanted to force competition against the BBC, creating an entrepreneurial setup allowing smaller television production companies to create programming the channel could buy off them³. This ended up creating a channel that, in this original form, was everything her conservative ideals would have been aghast with, showing a film like Themroc which rebels at everything her government's ideals would have aspired to just in terms of materialism and family values. That in itself adds a delicious layer to the story, even if this screening happened before I was born, in terms of this film with a legend just in terms of British television.

Abstract Spectrum: Transgressive

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

 

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1) Naked Attraction won’t be laid bare by Ofcom as Channel 4 show escapes investigation, written by Kirsty Bosley and published for Metro.co.uk on August 7th 2017.

2) Too hot for TV? Inside Channel 4’s doomed Red Triangle experiment, written by Stephen Armstrong and published for The Telegraph July 14th 2021.

3) I owe Margaret Thatcher a debt of thanks for creating Channel 4. Now her heirs could destroy it, written by David Olusoga and published by The Guardian on July 25th 2021.

Dream City (1973)

 

Director: Johannes Schaaf

Screenplay: Rosemarie Fendel, Alfred Kubin and Russell Parker

Cast: Per Oscarsson as Florian Sand; Rosemarie Fendel as Anna Sand; Olimpia as The Girl; Eva Maria Meineke as Mrs. Lampenbogen; Heinrich Schweiger as Mr. Gautsch; Rony Williams as Hercules Bell; Alexander May as Dr. Lampenbogen; Louis Waldon as Louis

An Abstract Candidate

 

Delving into an obscure German film, Dream City begins with an artist named Florian (Per Oscarsson) who has been stalked by a man for three days waiting outside his apartment. He offers good tidings for Florian from his old college friend Klaus Patera, who in a Middle Eastern desert has raised an entire city, the titular one, free from need for commerce, a place where all you need to do is dream, offering an artist in an artistic crisis hope. Currently having to work in photography, the ability to live in Dream City and escape the sprawl of urban German life is too tempting for Florian to ignore. However, it becomes clear this, as a 1973 film, will reflect what Hunter S. Thompson dubbed "when the tide went down" in the late sixties ideal, that moment when all the optimism keeled over as this presents the concept of the utopia which was never going to sustain itself.

Florian and his wife Anna (Rosemarie Fendel) go to Dream City, and for what is meant to be a place of no money and seemingly no rules, the issue is entirely that the place is a mess, a throwback to the 17th/18th centuries in costumes, in dress and attitude down to even horse drawn carriages, where people are aimless and where the removal of commerce leave public clerks bored, demanding complicated forms to the complete to make their lives worthwhile. Everything is unfocused, and this is not that this comes off as a damnation of the utopia, dismissing it as a fairytale concept, but that they never got to the basics written down by Thomas More in his 1516 satire on how to create one. It is instead a place where very little makes sense, Franz Kafka's The Castle (1926) and his spectre even evoked as Florian at one point, even to try to meet Klaus, has to go through former clerks requiring immense amount of identification to get an "audience card" with him, Klaus Patera a vague phantom hidden in a world where people have drifted aimlessly. There is a sense of degradation felt, and whilst using a brothel as a metaphor for this at one point has aged the film, as we thankfully have taken pro-sex worker views over the decades after this film, the time it is brought it is with a group of men trying to drag Florian to one where it is clear the ideals have gone to the dogs. It is replaced in favour of base level pleasures without the ability of even them, to booze and fornicate, to have a greater sense of worth than to pass the time but just to kill time. The intellectuals just hang out in a pub to just pontificate with no sense of real life influence, just procrastination. 

Dream City from Johannes Schaaf, who would go on to direct for theatre and opera in his home land in Germany, is part of the "surreal" side of cinema but a large portion of its tone, as a few from the sixties and seventies, is very grounded drama with realistic production values. The plot is still a focus, depicting the city as a realistic town where, despite the artificiality of the costumes, feels like a commune of a different world people can hide in. Most of this is about Florian's greater frustrations and Anna's growing anxieties, whilst the eccentricities are from the side characters for half the film, who indulge in their many curiosities in behaviour, like the female singer with many cats who wants to seduce Florian. Many of these are one-scene characters too but they all stand out, such as the man who likes randomly bricking up other peoples' windows, to the other man pontificating to an almost entirely empty library but speaking in a public orator voice to an imaginary audience.

To those expecting a "surreal" film of decades later, where every scene is a bizarre image or deliberately arch, Dream City surprises for how subdued it is for all its eccentric scenes. The more overtly strange side finally comes to the surface but after the build up, as the layers of the titular city are exposed to Florian and tragedy eventually comes to his life, [Spoiler] the ritualised death of Anna whilst she is still alive [Spoilers End], involving people being wrapped up in cloth cocoons and hung in a tree in the outskirts to perish when no longer needed. Outright weirdness comes from the theatre ship when we are introduced to it, a place of public expression which has images which may shock - random minstrel black face and a man in Nazi regalia being mocked crucified - as well as being a cacophony performance of primal indulgences, singing American football and baseball players, random nudity and skeletons, chefs and a singing knight with a stuffed goose under his arm. This is the kind of scene even I, a fan of this era of experimental cinema, will point to as the stereotype of surrealism in seventies cinema even if the resulting scene is memorable, as well as appropriate for the film's ideas. It can be argued to be a very conservative message in moments like this by accident, how the ideals of artistic and personal freedom have collapsed here into random nonsense, but it also comes with a sense of ennui in context of the time period this film was made within, where the ideals to escape the encroaching modernity of 24-7 working life in the West did not help despite the political strife that took place, not long before this film was made, that were to help them forwards.

Ultimately, it becomes the blatant tale of how this utopia is founded on unstable forms, under a figurehead who is elusive, may merely wander the streets up to no good feeling women up, and/or is literally hollow, with the world built around him inevitably going to collapse. The biggest opponent to Klaus Patera, who will help undermine the system, is a black man who expected revolutionary help to change the world only to be ignored by the indulgences practiced instead, the one who calls out the Emperor for being naked. Everyone is mindless without a figure to follow, and eventually a military force comes in to destroy the city, and their abrupt inclusion may be seen as a fault but befits the metaphor of the outside world kicking the doors down. Even Florian is not a guiltless bystander eventually, obsessed the moment he entered the city by the perfect female subject for a painting, one who he eventually is able to meet but whose actions to her in the final scene are distressing. The horror she will fall into as a victim by the end credits roll, a victim to his lusts without seeing the outcome, ends Dream City on a disturbing note, and it feels appropriate as an ending.

The pace and tone will catch people, as it fully belongs to an era of surrealist/experimental world cinema of still following dramatic character pieces where the drama is drawn out. This has a virtue, in being this slow burn, as when the layers are peeled away from the titular setting, all that was left of these utopian ideals is followed into inane artistic pretensions and expression, without any goal to actually create art that will last, no ideals to stand. In any other context this would seem a dismissive view of art in general, of hippie communes and lofty ideals, but one cannot help but feel reflection of the time period it was made in greatly in a cynical distress.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Surreal

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

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell (1995)

Art by Graham Humphreys

Director: Shinichi Fukazawa

Screenplay: Shinichi Fukazawa

Cast: Shinichi Fukazawa as Shinji, Asako Nosaka as Mika, Masahiro Kai the Psychic

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

A guy needs muscles after all!

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell from the get-go has the story of its director Shinichi Fukazawa. An outsider to the Japanese film industry, he was interested with bodybuilding, splatter films imported into Japan like the Evil Dead series started by Sam Raimi's 1981 independently made horror film¹, deciding to make what would become a film just over an hour in tribute. It belongs to a long history of Japanese lower budget films like this with homemade splatter effects and mid-nineties video production. The difference to others, like those made for the straight-to-video market, like Jôji Iida's Cyclops (1987), which were forty plus or so minute mini-features which got released soon after they were filmed for the video market, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell was left unfinished and unseen for fifteen years¹. It took, according to its star/writer/director/practical effects creator Fukazawa seven and a half years just to shoot the film, between re-scheduling, problems with the film stock he was forced to film on, and working around his and his cast's lives, and another seven and a half years for post-production¹. Fukazawa was finally able to complete the production in 2009 after beginning the editing process of all the 8mm film started on from 2005². Including having to take an additional two years for the original independent version of DVD¹, Fukazawa was finally able to complete the production which would become a work of international interest as well.

Those two obsessions of its lead/director Shinichi Fukazawa are very clearly visible in the film itself, and far from a critique to note the clear tributes to the Evil Dead films, as a tribute that came to us long after originally intended, by the time the Evil Dead became a pop culture institution, this really stands out again because of this. The plot is very simple, set up in a thirty years earlier prologue where a man accidently kills the girlfriend, he was about to leave, when she was trying to kill him with a knife. Burying the body in the house, this is the father of our lead Shinji (also played by Fukazawa), aptly leaving a curse for the son of a different woman he would marry that will haunt Shinji. Keeping the house as an heirloom, in real life a house the director's real father was going to scrap that was in a Tokyo suburb and his son took advantage of to film within¹, Shinji will only go back when convinced by an ex-girlfriend and journalist Mika (Asako Nosaka). With her fascination in haunted houses and wishing to write about examples like her old flame's, when learning of the strange goings-on in the premises, Mika takes him to the building.

He does not believe in ghosts, only in fitness and that smoking ruins one's beauty by sapping away the vitamin C in one's body, but the curse of his father before he met his mother now is in his lap. He goes with Mika and a male psychic (Masahiro Kai), and the later becomes the start of the hauntings as he has legitimate psychic abilities, allowing the ghost of the jilted girlfriend to possess him, thinking Shinji as his lookalike is his father and deserving punishment. It feels a homemade production, which begins because when wanting to use another 16mm or Betacam, Shinichi Fukazawa for the budget had to use 8mm, which caused as much as the problems which would cause this film to take as long as it did to be finished even in terms of digitizing the footage in the extended post-production¹.  Thankfully, with a complete film, it has the charm and atmosphere of a home movie of the time, played on a projector with actually sprockets, adding a distinct look. With hindsight, especially as its production history adds a layer like it was rediscovered and rebuilt, that helps in mood as, in mind to the homemade quality of the first Evil Dead, you see a one-man band show an incredible amount of moxy and quality to this, as well as provide a distinct tone to this film. There are visible lifts from The Evil Dead, as the psychic is possessed and even dismemberment will not stop a spurned lover who confuses son for father, but there is as much its own spin on the material even when Shinichi Fukazawa does get a moment to say "Groovy" like Bruce Campbell.

It has its own atmosphere, helped by the small house the production was able to spill fake blood within and furthered by the practical methods to depict this gory splatter fest, the later entirely of Shinichi Fukazawa's own craft and in itself worthy of incredible praise. Some moments have eerieness to them, such as the father returning from the dead on a TV, and others are funny, such as the punch line to a random criticism of Mika's smoking biting the leads when trying to dispose of evil sentient corpse pieces. The practical effects, even the moments where they seemingly took still images and coloured over them, are memorable especially as it is overtly humorous and deliberately repulsive in the "slapstick" tone. As a fan of films like Evil Dead or Peter Jackson's Braindead (1992) when he wanted to make the film, Fukazawa got the right tone with what he loved from these films, in touches like the hand-feet meldings to the attempts at dynamic shots like the camera following flying projectiles taken from Raimi. His interest in body building does come into play, being able to hulk out of his shirt onscreen and use gym equipment as an improvised crossbow at one point, itself adding a distinct touch to the proceedings.

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell even in terms of its turbulent gestation history really exemplifies what entices about micro-budget cinema for me. It is about outsiders who get to make films away from industries to their personalities, putting everything including probably actual blood into the materials to get it made. Shinichi Fukazawa has yet to make another film, but he can at least be proud he completed this one, with the warm reception received even globally as the perfect introduction to this type of cinema in attitude.

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1) An Interview with Director Shinichi Fukazawa, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell, written by Ken Wynne for Attack from Planet B and published on April 28th 2017.

2) Reel Review: Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell, written for Morbidly Beautiful and published October 11th 2017.

Nothing Underneath (1985)

Director: Carlo Vanzina

Screenplay: Carlo Vanzina, Enrico Vanzina and Franco Ferrini

Cast: Renée Simonsen as Barbara, Tom Schanley as Bob Crane, Donald Pleasence as Inspector Danesi, Cyrus Elias as Giorgio Zanoni, Nicola Perring as Jessica Crane, Maria McDonald as Margot Wilson Catherine Noyes as Carrie, Anna Galiena as Diana, Sonia Raule as Cristina

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

An obscurer giallo, Nothing Underneath is a throwback to classic giallo in structure but for the mid-eighties cocaine era, and definitely is as mad as a box of frogs. It begins in Yellow Stone Park, Wyoming, following a male park ranger Bob Crane, whose twin sister Jessica Crane was the Wyoming girl who made it big as a fashion model in Italy. As twins, they have a psychic link, first witnessed when she is nearly assaulted by a guy in a bathroom who starts to try to shove cocaine up her nose, but escalates when he has a vision of a scissor welding, black gloved maniac.

The later vision forces him to go to Italy, and her location at Hotel Scala, to see if she is okay or not. Not expecting him to be there as a viewer, but delighted for his Halloween series aura to get him these types of roles, Donald Pleasance plays an Italian policeman, one who not surprisingly sees it weird that her twin brother claims to have seen the events by telepathy, but shows enough concern as Jessica is still missing. Nothing Underneath is a film offering moments of the sublime and bizarre, but flip-flops all over the place. When it is focused, it is stylish as hell, providing stark images for what is a ridiculous film, one until the final act less interested in overt violence over sex, such as the image of scissors being cleaned of freshly spilled blood in a full bath of water. A bit of this is in mind of its context, as eighties as possible in costumes and Jessica Crane's Billy Idol inspired stark white blonde short hair. Some of the musical cuts just in a single catwalk scene gives us even One Night in Bangkok for a strange pop cultural exchange; a single off Chess (1984), a musical about Cold War tensions played out through an international chess tournament, which became an album, the lyrics were written by ABBA members Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus alongside Tim Rice, making the least expected individuals to end up in a giallo. The original music, with its luscious synth, at one point nearly sounds like a prominent cut from Brian De Palma's Body Double (1984), and it comes with note that the composer is a big hitter, Pino Donaggio, a regular collaborator with De Palma.

There is a sense that this film is riffing on De Palma, and as much Dario Argento too, which is apt as a screenwriting collaborator for the later during the eighties from 1985's Phenomena onwards, Franco Ferrini, is involved. As a piece of silliness, Nothing Underneath does scratch an itch in trash, lurid giallo with nudity for the sake of nudity, a plot involving diamonds, and an ill-advised game of Russian Roulette as a party warmer. Hell, this even has a clue gained from helping with a pet hamster's anxieties, which is a first for me. You cannot help but wonder what Dario Argento or Brian De Palma could have done with this, but the kitsch does help. Donald Pleasance is a huge virtue for this, charming as an old genre guard, even when befuddled by plastic forks at a very peculiar fast food restaurant with an insane amount of salad (pasta?) at a self service counter. His performance, even post-dubbed, is that of a solid actor, which also emphasises that the later Halloween films that came after this, where Dr. Loomis seemingly lost his mind from 1988 onwards, was what was written for him in the role, which he at least committed to the role. Your taste for this is entirely going to be based on your taste for cheesy giallo. It is also bungled by its ending which has badly aged and makes no sense for the pacing, [Spoiler] that of a lesbian character who follows the stereotype of the vindictive jilted lover [Spoilers End], especially as it makes little sense to include the twist when the hilarious weirdness of the Russian Roulette scene is the obvious way to go in terms of suggesting this is a revenge plot, or follow the diamonds scattered throughout each of the murders. It still goes up to eleven, including an electric drill assault, but this is definitely a messy, peculiar entry which can work as much as stumble.

Games of the Abstract: Jumping Flash! (1995)

 

Developer: Exact, Ultra

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

One Player

Originally for: Sony Playstation One

 

For today, we are going into my childhood, and even as someone who raises the flag for the Sega Saturn, even I have to admit that the original Sony Playstation even without the Japanese exclusives is a fascinating machine of experimentation, charisma, and new borders being crossed in genres, and this particular game Jumping Flash is all three at once. A game I had in my youth, Jumping Flash was also significant as a game from 1995, in the early era of the Playstation but also before Super Mario 64 (1996) was release, making it one of the games to attempt a three dimensional platformer game before Nintendo’s flagship game created the standard to attempt to reach. I have to credit Jumping Flash, having not grown up a Nintendo 64 kid, and having gone back to some three dimensional games in multiple genres, for having stuff we could have still learn from just in terms of the camera, something we could have been spared bad examples of even into the sixth generation of consoles that came immediately afterwards.

In a sci-fi cartoon world, an evil astrophysicist named Dr. Aloha has effectively done what is a one scene joke in an episode of Futurama years later, about a mad scientist who stole all the world landmarks and put them all on a tourist beach of his own. The difference here is that Aloha has compromised the planet itself, stealing whole landmasses and leaving cheese wheel like holes in the Earth, and refuses public entry to the locations stolen. Our hero, befitting the openly cartoonish tone, is a sentient military rabbit robot named Robbit, and here is where there is still uniqueness to the game in how this figures out all the perils of the now three dimensions. It clearly has taken influence from vehicle simulations, at a time mech robot games for the PC were popular, and the engine was inspired by an earlier project by Exact called Geograph Seal (1994), a first-person mecha platform-shooter for the Sharp X68000 computer which looks like the cousin of Jumping Flash, only to have been evolved with the help of fellow developer Ultra until we got the game also released on Western Playstations. Robbit, unless you clear a level or unfortunately fall off the stage, losing a life, is seen entirely from his perspective in his cyber HUD, having to travel the first two levels for each world collecting four "EXIT" carrots in a time limit before also having to reach the exit platform. Platforming is important, and you can jump on enemies to destroy them with the advantage as a mechanical battle machine of immense weight, rather than as an Italian plumber who is just human, but you are also armed with ranged fire power. These are simple but effective, between the normal shot and collectable secondary weapons based on celebratory objects of doom like Roman Candles. Piloting Robbit is with ease, even if this is a time before dual analogue Playstation controllers and the move towards sticks as mandatory for controllers in general.

One thing we could have learnt more from, even in third person games, is how this gets around platforming. You have a triple jump, and when you reach the second and third, able to transverse higher with help from platforms in the sky, the camera is focused on your ground below with a prominent shadow to help focus on where you are to land. This is a godsend as, with three islands (levels) per world, the non-boss levels start to introduce precarious platforms floating over oblivion, including those you need to get over to reach EXIT carrots to complete the level. It becomes, even before the Extra Mode changes, a game of hunting down the carrots to unlock the exit, the enemies less a concern (as you do not get points either) than obstacles. Especially when you get to two enclosed maze levels, one within a pyramid and one underwater, it is the case especially in the Extra Mode where you are trying to use the radar and/or memory to track down the last carrot under a strict time limit, clearing out the way enemies who could drain your health quickly for the sake of practicality. Bosses are closer to the shooter genre in defeating, but as I learnt in my youth in the one example of being actually good at a game, and using your game's great mechanics to your advantage, staying as much bouncing on their head or close approximation to this, minding the few who realize to fire projectiles upwards, is the wiser path to success.

It is a short game, as a weird hybrid of this fifth generation of arcade-like games but with saving your process possible now, but I find this is a greater pleasure for not feeling pointless long for the sake of it. I was able to play the first run in just an hour, and appreciated that, more so as the Extra Mode unlocked is a recommend. It has a slight plot as a game, only a few funny animated scenes and the proper ending unlocked in the Extra Mode just being able to reach the end credits, but it changes a lot with interest. You have a lax time limit in the first run, forced to search and figure out where every Exit Carrot could be, using this as an advantage as the Extra Mode forces you to gun it in far less time, with replaced areas for the carrots to find them. The two enclosed levels get the most drastic changes which really ups the challenge, so it is a credit to the two development teams in terms of making a difficulty change actually have weight even if you are still using the same assesses. The bonus levels, unlocked in the first stage of each world in each mode, are just there for additional lives if you complete them, having to destroy all the balloons in a strict time limit, but even these change per the normal and extra mode, adding to the gameplay.

Also helping is the huge aesthetic joy of this game. For a fifth generation polygon graphic game from the nineties, for the first days of the Playstation, it still looks good as a vibrant and openly artificial work. The tone is shown in the world cut scenes when you complete them, where Mr. Aloha's beaten minions, tiny island shaped creatures, are getting drunk in an izakaya tavern, not hiding at all how this was of its country of origin. Each level likely fed into my ideas of video games having an inherent approximation of dream logic and dreams, dioramas floating in space which follows basic tropes - winter level, Egyptian level - but have their own vibrant model-like nature. The best examples are World 3, a carnival world, and World 5, a metropolis. Carnival world has sentient giraffe enemies, rainbow colored conveyor belts in the air, hot air balloons to hop on as platforms, and a general sense of whimsy where the boss is a genie materializing various limbs from a set of giant spinning tea cups of death. World 5, Level One, is literally happening through an approximation of a Japanese city, with robot construction employees built into their jackhammers, and giant roads in the sky to traverse to most of the platforms. Level 2 is the closet we may get to a kawaii depiction of Blade Runner's nocturnal metropolis; the flame jet platforms to avoid jumping on when activated and the giant pyramid in the middle of it are all what led to the comparison. Adding to this is the work of the late composer Takeo Miratsu, who also worked in anime. He had a weird start to say the least, composing music for Violence Jack: Hell's Wind (1990), one of the least problematic of an infamous trio of anime that, in their uncut formats than the censored versions with a ridiculous English dub, would make even edge lords bleach white in the face. Thankfully his career was very dynamic until his unfortunate passing in 2006, including Saikano (2002) (She: The Ultimate Weapon for its Western release), a very unconventional heartbreaker about an apocalyptic war, and a romance between a high school student and his girlfriend, who was turned into a biomechanical war machine, and he composed all the music for the Jumping Flash franchise as well. His career, working on straight-to-video anime and Playstation One games, makes him a perfect figure in terms of nineties nostalgic music to binge on, not even factoring in how he was one member of Twin AmadeuS, alongside violinist Ayumu Koshikawa, providing music for Konami's Beatmania IIDX rhythm game series. Suffice to say that his music was a huge part of my love of the game back as a child, and thankfully it is still strong stuff to this day.

Jumping Flash was a complete success in terms of accomplishing what it set out to do, making its obscurity nowadays quite tragic. Despite unfortunately being a micro-console criticized in terms of its emulation of games and quality, the micro version of the Playstation Classic Sony released in 2018, with twenty games on the machine, included Jumping Flash even for the Western version, which showed there was a legacy to this game in terms of fondness. Jumping Flash is a game to be proud of, and to keep in release, more so as, whilst likely more successful in Japan, clearly it managed to have some interest in mind to the sequels it gained. We got the 1996 Jumping Flash 2 in the West, but not Robbit Mon Dieu (1999), which juggled more story with eccentric mini-missions around the premise that a military machine like Robbit is not always out for life threatening crises, like defending a vegetable patch. This is a game, least the first one, worth preserving as a production which still feels fresh and without some of the crippling flaws of its era of game innovation, a childhood favorite which stood tall not through mere nostalgia.

Mystery Train (1989)

 

Director: Jim Jarmusch

Screenplay: Jim Jarmusch

Cast: Masatoshi Nagase as Jun, Youki Kudoh as Mitsuko, Screamin' Jay Hawkins as the Night Clerk, Cinqué Lee as the Bellboy, Jodie Markell as Sun Studio Guide, Nicoletta Braschi as Luisa, Elizabeth Bracco as Dee Dee, Sy Richardson as the Newsvendor, Tom Noonan as the Man In Diner, Joe Strummer as Johnny "Elvis", Rick Aviles as Will Robinson, Steve Buscemi as Charlie, Vondie Curtis-Hall as Ed, Tom Waits as the Radio D.J.

Canon Fodder

 

His name is Dave.

An anthology produced with backing from JVC, the Japanese electronics company did work in multiple mediums such as video games to anime, so this is not an alien concept to them alongside their main form of business, including their legacy in televisions and videotape recorders. Thankfully, among their investments was also Jim Jarmusch's 1989 tribute to Memphis and its music, the beginning of his series of anthologies over these years such as Night on Earth (1991) to compiling the Coffee and Cigarettes films started in 1986 into one film from 2003.

Mystery Train really is not a film about a dramatic plot, instead three interconnecting mood pieces, with the first absolutely setting up this greater emphasis away from dramatic tension as there is none, only the adventures of a young man and woman from Yokohama in Japan. They do argue whether Elvis Presley or Carl Perkins was better, but are a loving couple. They are tourists out of their element, star struck by the home of their favourite music, without any cheap jokes at their expense; even the later presentations of this film through Criterion went further to fix issues in the past with the subtitles for their dialogue, mostly in Japanese, which prevented viewers from knowing everything they say. They say a lot, as loving music fans who wonder the real locations of Memphis, including a confused tour of Sun Records, with a language barrier, a leather jacket between them on her, and their large red luggage case being carried by the pair on a giant wooden pole. Both of the actors, Masatoshi Nagase as Jun and Youki Kudoh as Mitsuko, stand out with personality, both with prolific careers after this. There is also the added delight that, looking the part for a youthful rockabilly here or a Wong Kar-Wai protagonist, Masatoshi Nagase became grizzled as he got older and starred, in just one year, in Sion Sono's Suicide Club (2001), Gakuryū Ishii's Electric Dragon 80.000 V (2001), and Seijun Suzuki's Pistol Opera (2001), three of the most idiosyncratic Japanese filmmakers at their most idiosyncratic and interesting.

Their story is entirely about two people talking and bonding, some arguing and the cool trick of using a lighter with your feet being demonstrated. To be honest, Jarmusch's tone for many of his films, whether a good comparison for some or not, is closer to Quentin Tarantino's throughout his career, extensive conversation from characters about their obsessions, only with the emphasis on Jarmusch further from cinema to an entire spectrum of tangents, from Jack and Meg White of the White Stripes being obsessed over a Tesla Coil in Coffee and Cigarettes to Mystery Train having a tangent over one of the characters being named Will Robinson, after the Lost in Space television series, which he dismisses as dumb white people being stuck on an asteroid. Though Jarmusch has dabbled in more overt plots too - Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) - another factor to his career, unlike Tarantino, is a more warm and humane tone, where even when it comes to his horror film Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), it is more about bonding over awesome old LPs and character dynamics with the horror coming unexpectedly, even as a punch line for sick humoured gags. The Limits of Control (2009), his drone metal scored assassin narrative, plays like a pastiche but not in an ironic way, and with Mystery Train, though a gun is set off at two points, it feels entirely like an empathetic ode to these characters obsessed with culture of all kinds.

Thankfully, Jarmusch has always been able to make likable characters, the first act's outsiders who go along without unnecessary contrivances against their expense. They also set up the central hub to all the scenes, as they are the first to enter the hotel everyone in the three stories reach, where you have Cinqué Lee, Spike Lee's brother, as the bellhop, and legendary proto-shock rock musician and singer Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, in an incredible red suit, as the hotel manager. When not eating a Japanese plum, these two are in the centre as a Greek chorus to all the other stories. This includes a grieving Italian widow Luisa (Nicoletta Braschi), travelling to Rome with her husband's casket, in a story where she is able to overcome this in spite of this. This involves Tom Noonan, being very creepy, talking about encountering the ghost of 1956 Elvis in the night, forced to flee him but encountering another woman lost also by herself to share a hotel room with. For the third story tension does come in, but with a comedic edge, involving Joe Strummer of The Clash, the legendary punk band. By this point, Strummer had disbanded the band in 1986 after the infamous Cut the Crap (1985) album, compelling to listen to as a strange mix of football chanting, layered audio and cheap synth beats, but understandably a misfire of big proportions even as someone who found songs likable on it. It was the ill-advised decision by Strummer to have key members of the band forced out the band, replace them and attempt to return to their roots without doing so at all. He would move onto solo projects and also start a film career, such as here or with Doctor Chance (1997) by F.J. Ossang, a French film maker whose films I wish was more readily available, where he has a small cameo talking about his gonads. Strummer is Johnny, or Elvis as everyone calls him due to a passing similarity, an English ex-pat who has lost his wife and job. Drunk, and with a loaded gun, his brother-in-law as portrayed by Steve Buscemi, continuing a career here of always getting the worst luck, having to be brought in with Will Robinson (Rick Aviles) to stop him doing mischief. "Elvis", due to one racist liquor seller later, does end up firing the gun and they find themselves hiding in the hotel as a trio, stuck talking in one of the rooms about the fact there should be a Malcolm X suite instead of Elvis photos everywhere.

Mystery Train is not a dramatic, plot driven film even by this point, and this is factoring in that the real ghost of Elvis Presley accidentally appears in a hotel room for a cameo. Mystery Train is about the characters in place, not forced to move for the sake of drama but allowed to breathe, Jarmusch liking to write extensive dialogue between them hanging out. His cinema is not as overt as Tarantino's in being post-modern or self-reflective either, instead name checking his favourite things but Jarmusch still emphasising the characters existing in the pretence of narrative structures. They are characters with suggested lives, unlike early Pulp Fiction era Tarantino where they were absolutely archetypes. Set around one specific time period, with Tom Waits as the radio announcer's voice heard through all this, Memphis itself and the cultural heritage is as much the subject, the title of the film itself a song heard in both versions by Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins. A warm film, it nonetheless does also tackle some serious topics in this mood; the two covers of Mystery Train in itself two also name checks the issue of Elvis being placed as a white musician seen as appropriating black musicians' work and being easier to sell to white audiences, which is a subject of discussion alongside tensions of race occasionally raised in the film. Elvis himself is not demonised, but for a fond film, which is charming and sweet, it still nods to complexities which Jim Jarmusch has shown throughout his career, as it is using these three stories to create a work about Memphis as a place with its rich history just in terms of music, let alone the actual urban landscape as shown throughout.

Mystery Train has always been a film I admired, in mind that it is a film literally about nothing if you take a simple view of it - no consequences, even of firing a gun into someone, or two, are shown at all with an open ending to the third story. Nonetheless it does feel like an experience, lived in, enjoyed, with a few one liners which are hilarious, and it wins me over repeatedly every time I return to this film.

Zombie Rampage (1989)

 

Director: Todd Sheets

Screenplay: Erin Kehr & Todd Sheets

Cast: Dave Byerly as Tommy / Mime, Erin Kehr as Dave, Stanna Bippus as Sheila, Beth Belanti as Sherry, Brian Everad as Pusshead, Deric Bernier as Hammerspike, Lisa Cottoner as Fox, Laura Young as Tracy, Larry Hodges as Piggy, Danon Park as George, Jason Ayers as Roger, John Welch as Jason, Ed Dill as Brian

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Kicking off with a metal cover of Norman Greenbaum's Spirit in the Sky as rival gangs of punks, one in a suit, beat each other up, it is for Todd Sheet's feature length debut, after a series of shorts, a good opening to a career which lasted for decades. Whether the original cut or the Director's Cut I had watched, I do think however, with sincerely, even he might view this as a mess. As a veteran micro budget director who visually showed improvements over time from this first film, even if it has the perfect (and goofy) opening to a career, it is an acquired taste to witness despite the fact this actually has some higher production value, and at least locations in use, than some of the films he made later on. It is an erratic film to say the least.

Premise wise a gang leader, looking like a white collar middle manager in a tie and grey suit, but with a prominent left ear ring, acquired a book to be able to resurrect a recently slain member from the graveyard, even if it cost the group their beer money. The other gang they were against, with another copy of the book, make the mistake instead to use the text, this accidently causing an undead epidemic. Even though this is set up, Zombie Rampage does not properly established the undead hordes appearing until abruptly into itself part of the way through, and does feel like huge chunks of the plot are missing. My younger self would have called this one of the worst films ever made, and even now able to appreciate this and micro budget cinema in its flaws, this one definitely requires a patience to be able to appreciate this as it feels like a mass of ideas and fragments placed together.  Clearly, Sheets had some production value it hand with this, with extensive scenes in a variety of buildings and streets, unlike ones in the few years after confined to one location, but it also feels like a stream of consciousness. The loose nature of micro budget cinema, when allowed to drift, is felt at an extreme here when even the zombie outbreak central to the film is abruptly introduced, instead focusing on a side character we will never see again go on a deranged tangent about his dog named Butthead.

I will be more sympathetic to Sheets’ debut than most, unlike the first time I saw this, as much because I have seen him over his career climb in terms of craft with these films, and also because, with no expectations, there is a joy I can now have watching a film like this which is literally a collage of pieces which jut and stick out from each other. This feels like it had to be improvised over weekends, and was a mad editing nightmare, with audibly noticeable voice over added for dialogue and harsh edits which feel, even in a battered VHS copy, as if the tape was failing. The cool Italian horror inspired synth in the score notwithstanding, it feels like a half remembered film, half dreamt, in ways I have to honestly say in the negative if I am still going to say positively I still enjoyed this. A lot of this is because, despite the zombies being the centre of the film, this feels like a disconnected take on its own premise, even in mind that zombies are an easy premise for any low budget film to work with. It was ambitious beyond its means, and thus becomes a barely cohesive form, where it will be a struggle for those who would appreciate later Todd Sheets work like Moonchild (1994) where the technical quality and pacing, still with the homemade quality, are noticeably improved. This debut’s ambition goes as far as even taking advantage of the public domains status of Night of the Living Dead (1968) to borrow its radio announcer, but in wanting to recreate the ending of Return of the Living Dead (1985) without access to stock explosion footage, you also see the flaws when you have the most abrupt conclusion possible too.

A random serial killer of women is among the cast, random figures will talk about their arguments with family about inheritance whilst in fear of their lives from zombies in a basement, and grandpa will be talked of having chewed on grandma, all whilst this begins Todd Sheets’ use of organ meat from butchers, combined with the fake blood to the point here it would permanently stain wash denim bloody red. Random abrupt nudity, when an older female patron offers herself to a bar keep to pay the tap, who has no interest, and Todd Sheets gets to rock out his metal hair as a rival gang leader despite his gang disappearing from the film entirely. There is one moment which is pretty striking, in which a mother with her baby in a pram are got by zombies, which is pretty extreme even for this type of cinema, but tonally the rest of Zombie Rampage is goofier, intentionally and not, for its length. There are also plenty of things which are pretty random, such as the mime faced guy in a baseball cap, possible based on the baseball furies from The Warriors (1979), which just emphasises the chaotic mix of the resulting product. Zombie Rampage is not a film I would recommended unless you were used to Todd Sheets’ work, as I am, and prepared for its messy nature. Sheets would return to this theme of zombies in other films, so he was able to rework this as his skills would improve. This is just a curiosity which proves that everyone begins somewhere, and your first attempt can sometimes show this.

Wittgenstein (1993)

Director: Derek Jarman

Screenplay: Derek Jarman, Terry Eagleton and Ken Butler

Cast: Clancy Chassay as young Wittgenstein, Karl Johnson as adult Wittgenstein, Nabil Shaban as Martian, Michael Gough as Bertrand Russell, Tilda Swinton as Lady Ottoline Morrell, John Quentin as Maynard Keynes, Kevin Collins as Johnny, Lynn Seymour as Lydia Lopokova

An Abstract Candidate

 

How many toes do philosophers have?

Ludwig Wittgenstein fascinates me as a philosopher, which is as apt as an amateur writer on abstract films who will openly state his lack of philosophical prowess but is aware of how his work, in attempting to deal with what he felt were huge issues about philosophy even in terms of language betraying it, is inherently dealing with the abstract in itself. His premise is simple even - that our misuse of language needed to be dealt with and cleared away to be able to attempt philosophical ideas - but it is with truth that, going out of my way to try to read Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), it is an abstract and difficult little novella of philosophy. Claimed to be the ladder to climb up to a newer enlightenment through, and to be then discarded afterwards, it was, however, a difficult text for me to even begin with let alone for me to understand. Wittgenstein the film, a biography by Derek Jarman, is very simple in contrast as a telling of the Austrian philosopher's life to his death, in telling a cohesive glance of his views and personality, but tells it in an unconventional way. Particularly as we are still dealing with the author of the likes of the Philosophical Investigations (1952), Wittegenstein trying to show the limitations of language, and that to resolve this issue involved dealing with the resulting "language games", it is not something visually dynamic as a biopic subject immediately, but just as fascinating in the right hands here especially as the production itself plays with presentation.

Even as a pure non- sequitur, when actor Michael Gough, making his first appearance as philosopher Bernard Russell, a champion of Wittegenstein, is shouting about there being no rhinoceros under a table, is showing us this will be an unconventional "biopic" but playing with this issue important to its subject work. In this film which is artificial in its black stages, the subject nature of words and their symbolism that became the concern of its subject is naturally within a film playing with the contract of cinema itself. The life of Wittgenstein, with a young child version, future war reporter and journalist Clancy Chassay, and Karl Johnson as the adult Wittgenstein sharing roles as their own narrator, is told as straightforward as an autobiography can. But we are dealing with a philosopher, which inherently provides an issue for a mainstream adaptation that their achievements, unless they had very dramatic lives, were dealing with very cerebral and internal issues of human existence, which sadly many mainstream biopics do not think are "cinematic" enough. Jarman proves this wrong, even if this is a work where the drama is dealing with this existential concern of the subject, from Wittgenstein's concerns from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to the post-humorously published Philosophical Investigations, including the fact he felt later (in the film depiction) his first work was deeply flawed and led to him drastically changing his ideas to perfect them. Refocusing philosophical theories in mind to this and avoiding starting as a lonely philosopher based on their own internal thoughts, he wished for them to be pushed into a sociological version through humanity as a whole interlocking together, legendary filmmaker Jarman making this his central conflict whilst both dealing with the man himself, from his personality to being a gay man in a different time period, and also having a gleefully quirky tone on purpose.

This is a very playful film, one of Jarman's last before his tragic passing due to illness connected to HIV, Blue (1993) the film after a sobering work dealing with this, and his emotions, entirely by a blue image and just narration, one of the most powerful works from the nineties and British cinema in general. Wittgenstein still is serious, but it is for a film about a philosopher where such deep concerns are contrasted by being deliberately a comedy, fully embracing its artificiality too as it has a vivid aesthetic of elaborate costumes, including on Jarman collaborate Tilda Swinton here, and in precise set design. The green Martian alone, played by Nabil Shaban, who I first encountered in the fascinating horror film Born of Fire (1986), is one of the more overt undercuttings of pretence, an abrupt inclusion even for a Jarman film in itself in how we have this figure, with an xylophone, yet again apt for this particular subject as the figure is just as philosophical in dealing with perception of reality with the younger Wittgenstein. As much as this factors into Ludwig Wittgenstein the man himself, a figure who struggles even to grasp a derisive V sign gesture at his direction, a figure who in another film would be an exaggerated curiosity in his thought patterns. It brings into this, through these sides, a deliberate sense of camp. Jarman as an LGBTQ filmmaker, both for serious political art an campaigning throughout his life, and also in its joyous and transgressive depictions, shows both Wittgenstein's romantic life with a male student he has a relationship with through for his whole life, and for upturning conventions of this genre with the tone. It is seen as simple in how, with one of Ludwig's sisters being a painter, historical accuracy is thrown out the window with a female figure as the nude model with very short hair, tattoos and piercings, deliberately stamping the film with choices like this. Whilst with a film like Sebastiane (1976), the challenge came from proudly depicting the nude male body in a constant rush of its entirely film length, Wittgenstein even when it skips to something serious and meaningful in its subject, empathy for him and trying to grasp his ideas, has its tongue in its cheek and a twisted sense of humour most of its length.

Abstract Spectrum: Whimsical

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