Hantsu x Trash (2015-16)

 

Director: Hisashi Saito

Screenwriter: Keiichirō Ōchi

Based on the manga by Hiyoko Kobayashi

(Voice) Cast: Maaya Uchida as Chisato Hagiwara; Yūma Uchida as Yōhei Hamaji; Kenta Matsumoto as Nakajima; Saki Yamakita as Maki Hayami; Shizuka Itou as Manami Miyoshi; Yurika Kubo as Mai Shinozaki

Ephemeral Waves

 

As an anime fan, as with other mediums and their sub-genres, you do find your coming against tropes which are not defendable. Do not expect a defense here with one of the more prominent ones in anime here, which studio Hoods Entertainment’s Hantsu x Trash really emphasizes, the type of sex comedy which includes content which would be viewed as sexually inappropriate conduct from male characters to female ones. This is however something you do not just find in Japanese animation but found in comedy from other countries, my British heritage bringing up the cases in our past in television and cinema which can be pointed to for this. The tropes in anime are those that have been commonplace - such as male characters peeking at girls in the shower, inappropriate groping and things we have rightly challenged as unacceptable in the modern day as time passed - which would be a struggle to explain to an outsider of the medium to stereotype. By the third episode of this curious straight-to-video fragment, this sadly fully falls into this type of comedy, but I also get an example where, even when I will gladly give the production a kicking for these aspects, I also find material even accidentally working in unexpected ways even if on a morbid level. In this case, like a lot of sex comedies in anime, how many no matter how tasteless feel like a young male character's sexual neurosis as a premise with that the gag to mock.

Deciding to choose this as a subject may surprise some readers, of all the titles to flag up in the non-anime reviews, except that I have always been fascinated by what I have called the "ephemeral" and strange, this an example which cannot be defended for most of its length, but is definitely a "curiosity". From the get-go, there will be the preface now to not have to repeat this, of it being very questionable content. I will also admit finding it fascinating in terms of a sex comedy that did get some morbid laughter from me, not spoken as a hypocrite but that, when it is not about objectifying its female cast, is also however a story about dumb horny men obsessed merely about the bared female breast who are the real butt of the humour. It is tame even in the 2010s when this was released next to what you could get on PornHub and other adult sites even animated, and does present this whilst the punch line is with the male characters being inadequate, pathetic and/or idiots who are punished for their behavior. The punishment is insufficient, even if one character does get a baseball bat up an intimate area, but how much of this feels swashed in the tensions of our lead becomes the central part of this.

It also presents my fascination with dragging up ultra obscure items you the reader may have never heard of, as this is obscure even for anime fandom and is likely not known of at all by many who even know some of the obscurer cult gems in film. These three episodes, two over twelve minutes, the third over fourteen, were just meant to be promotional items, part of a trend of creating tie-in anime that comes with the manga, the first bundled with the 8^th volume of the manga on October 6^th 2015¹, the second bundled with the 10^th volume of the manga in June 6^th 2016², and the third and final one bundled with the 11^th volume of the manga on November 4^th 2016³. Together, they are not politically correct, a sex comedy about the high school male water polo team who is more interested in the female water team, though I will say ahead of time that I have suffered through far more tasteless and sexist content I have unfortunately come across than this. This does feel closer to American sex comedies of the past in tone, only with the presentation of the jokes seen in anime. The issue with this is not the premise but where the humour comes from, in that spying on the female team bathing, as in the third episode, is something that in real life would rightly be challenged. The other part of the humour is more interesting, and becomes more striking in what is barely more than one whole episode of a story which never gets any semblance of a plot until near its end. What little you get here is that these male characters are figures who even find the sight of seeing a bared breast a monumental moment of their life, the kind of joke that transcends history and is not problematic to do as a joke because the target, close to the bone, is the heterosexual males themselves.

The source material was originally published Weekly Young Magazine, originally also the home of the original Akira manga which became the legendary 1988 feature film. It is also a publication that in the 2010s published the likes of Does a Hot Elf Live Next Door to You? (2019–2021) by Meguru Ueno, which just emphasizes that sex sells. Let us get the elephant out of the room that, deliberately including the review outside of the anime sphere, there is a dangerous cliché to dismiss Japanese pop culture like anime for being perverted, where in reality pop culture in many countries, not even touching their fans’ interpretations, have their layers of explicit (or implicit) eroticism or horniness to them. A lot of the dismissal of Japanese pop culture for “perversity” is a red flag for implicit racism, even if we who love anime admit so much of it you would be embarrassed to be caught watching or if more for those with a greater open mindedness to fetishes and comfortable in their sexuality. Factor in too that, in Japan, Studio Ghibli films rule the roost and their longest running animated show, still going since 1969, is Sazae-san, a work by Machiko Hasegawa that follows the titular character, the matriarch of a family, and if about family situations for comedy. These really fetishistic and erotic works in anime and manga, whilst prolific, are an undercurrent to animation, with Hantsu x Trash a real obscurity. Hoods Entertainment made their bread and butter on titles like this, which might not help the argument, but for all the stuff an outsider would raise their eyes at from their catalogue, such as The Qwaser of Stigmata (2010), infamously the animated show about breast milk powering one’s super abilities, we forget that whilst titles like this are brazen and proud to tackle subjects like this, mainstream sex comedy can be as perverse if using humour a self defense mechanism to justify the scenes. Case in point, once ago in my teen years we had American Pie (1999) as a mainstream film, where the title comes as a punch line to someone actually fornicating with a pie as a joke. That film was done with a mocking sense of shame which just differentiates the line between comedic effect and proudly over-the-top sexual fantasies, especially when you consider the most explicit sequence, with actress Shannon Elizabeth as a foreign exchange student who has the prominent nude scene, is presented in the same tone as Hantsu x Trash would have had. That it allows the viewer reveal in the nudity, but ends with a male lead being so out-of-his-depth a potential loss of virginity is as abruptly neutered for him as it could have happened, with his bruised emotional state the joke.

Episode One introduces our protagonist Yōhei Hamaji, a poor guy doomed like many male protagonists in these sex comedies to have a crush on a girl in his school but be under the confused whirlpool of his hormones. He is an archetype that transcends various story types from one country to many, from Japanese animation to US eighties sex comedies, that of a likable prat who is less problematic than his peers, far unscrupulous in their horniness, but still curious about the opposite gender. It is to the point here that if any girl or woman was to show interest to him, his cluelessness will cause him embarrassment in his attraction to them. Like characters in any adolescent romance, his true love is his senpai Chisato Hagiwara⁴, one of the committed members of her water polo team, even if like the other men in his team he has hormones, and like them really has a fixation on the female breast.  This is the fetish of the anime, and these short episodes have no qualms in the slightest in their lewdness, and drawing them in various states, but it also is not that different again from other sex comedies from other countries. In British sex comedy, even in our more tame sex humour, alongside a lot of older and younger men who got bothered by the idea of having sex, many of the jokes with them included a fixation on busty female characters. This is the tamest of things for Hantsu x Trash to have a fetish with, even next to other more extravagantly made and longer anime which, even if not further explicit, a probably more lewd even when there is no nudity. If anything, especially writing this as a heterosexual male writer who can self critique himself, it causes one to look at the obsession with cleavage size by men with a surrealism to it. When you step back, it is peculiar a part of the body of a gender is an obsession symbolically in terms of desire, even in art let alone anime like this gunning for the low hanging jokes.

Episode One shows the trope common in Japanese anime that, whilst still objectifying the women, the men are punished painfully for comedic effect, which has always been a curious side to Japanese anime and manga in their sex comedy in that they constantly undercut their male characters. In work targeting men audiences in their gazes, they depict their stand-ins as completely immature figures a lot of times. Even what could be seen as a gay panic running gag undercuts itself in presentation here, where Yōhei keeps imagining erotic fantasies of Hagi-chan, whilst recuperating in the nurse’s room, only to keep envisioning Nakajima, a team member who looks in his late thirties with sunglasses permanently on, at the end as the one appreciating his caresses. It is the main joke for that episode, whilst for the rest of the three the crisis for him is that, whilst Hagi-Chan is the woman he loves, Yōhei is someone clearly who has both an obsession with large breasts, and is emotionally immature. It is to the point he finds himself coxed whenever any woman, with an ounce of confidence in her desires or an accidental situation, causes the hormones to kick in and turns him into an utter dimwit. What could seen a tasteless homophobic joke in the first episode, with imagining Nakajima every time he fantasies about women in his life, comes off more like a Freudian barrier to Yōhei’s desires, the Super Ego kicking but with an added accidental tone suggesting his denied bisexualility. In a smarter, and more creative anime sex comedy, this would have been a joke that would have been something to run with, here is just due to the strange tone in presenting it without thought to its accidental layers causing my mind to leap to these conclusions. That he loves Hagi-chan for her personality, whilst burning for her physical beauty and curvaceousness, but would not mind buffing his team leader’s nipples even if he tries to deny it. It is for reasons like this I find interest in these less great sex comedy anime, with how for so many even when they come from the crass side, to always objectify the female characters, to go for the crap joke, that there is however a rife amount of psychosexual neurosis to the humour that, if weaponised properly, would be great comedy in another context. That is the one thing that I can appreciate even for something which is quite a cheap production to tie-in to a manga, which does look of its budget in the minimal use of locations, and how the second episode does look the weaker in production in comparison.

One joke from the first episode exemplifies what this could have done if it was not going for the low hanging fruit, the lead’s mind envisioning Chisato being seduced by one of her teammates Shinozaki, someone who is very physical with her friends. In a more complex show than the fragments we got, this would have been compelling, even if tasteless, for imagining the sexual id of a guy who is confused in a lot of ways about his sexuality even if there is one girl he loves dearly. In context it can be viewed as a cheap ploy at lesbianism as a fetish for men than someone’s real sexuality, but could have been a joke that worked in imagining how absurd his desires are, especially as his own superego cock-blocks him every sequence in the first episode, the joke his own disjointed and confused fantasies than at the expense of the female cast. That is as much trying to stretch out a sex gag which most would roll their eyes by excusing it through a layer of amateur interpretation, but that becomes the most interesting thing, even if by accident, through how much of this does follow this. Constantly it becomes a curious gag anime about the strangeness of the male libido, even if the work is not great. It becomes instead less that actual quality of the work which is of interest, but what it accidentally does.

This is still an anime about the male water polo team being perverts, even with episode three having them trying to spy on the female team so Yōhei learn the nipple colour of the woman he loves, which is the episode where I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. It is where the loose string salvaging this anime fully snapped, even if it does led to one male character gets punished by having that baseball bat up a painful area. One recurring joke I will defend in these episodes, because they are all at the expense at the male cast, is the idea they have, because they are all sexually naïve, that they presume just touching a woman in the right way on their breast will cause them to orgasm. Even for a virginal reader of this review, I would hope they realized this is not something that would work; even presuming touching a guy on the chest would have a similar effect should be considered to, because anyone presuming that with the instantaneous effect is being an idiot and a terrible lover. One character who could been seen as problematic nowadays is the female teacher character, neither helping in breaking teaching ethics as in episode two, she even makes a promise to let the male team touch her breasts if they won a match, three seconds only each, and has a desire for Yōhei beyond the boundaries of teacher-student relationships. That set up for episode two, and the disappointment that the entire male water polo team are this stupid to think they can be romantic gods in just touching someone once, is however the one joke even in an un-pc anime which I will defend because it is entirely about her absolute disappointment, and what utter idiots the male characters are portrayed as.

Every time it was entirely when a clear theme was up front as the joke, of how every male character here is as thick as a brick, even Yōhei, is where you see a spark here. It is the kind of premise which, for all the content here with is clichés from previous anime and not aging well, still hits close to home as a joke at mocking the male heterosexual libido. More so, as I have seen titles which have casual edged into sexual violence and far more misogynistic content, this feels more antiquated. Plus with this Super Ego slant to how the joke always punished the male characters, even if the plots here are not defendable and yet reward with their explicitly topless nudity, does make this have a sick sense of humour against the audience who would have wanted these episodes for the casual nudity. Here there is a scene of all the swim team on the floor just from touching their teacher’s breasts, or that she has beaten them all up for not following the three second rule, the exaggeration here of these male character coming off as something itself ridiculous to laugh at, that image in itself the encapsulation of what is clearly the joke but also unintentionally the theme, even a neurosis, running through this.

I have not really even described the visual appearance of this show, and that is for a reason, as it is a cheaper tie-in production, where at times you do see it is a cheaper production. It also barely covers a premise, really a tie-in to the manga for that reasons. A story is hinted at, a romance between a sex fixated Yōhei who yet wishes to be a good person for Chisato, a romantic triangle set up in the finale episode with another girl on the water polo team with a crush on him. Her story is with the added touch though it does play it for a dubious reason; that being her appearance as a physically attracted young woman to boys has caused a huge emotional crisis, undercutting her confidence in herself unless she was able to get past that she stands out physically to men and be able to be self-confident and/or dismiss them. This is another moment that in another anime would have been the right moment to challenge, even in a comedy, the uncomfortable idea of guys even at a young age sadly getting into objectifying the girls in their classes without realizing it in their own clueless hormonal problems. Not many of the cast are set up beyond this, though the premise of a sap like Yōhei trying to balance between water polo and his libido is a premise that could be good, as most could, if focused and were trying for more than clearly here. That this is not really a water polo genre story, and likely is not in the source manga, is itself disappointing because, as a genre hybrid, a sports show combined with absurd sex comedy and romance would work, or least be something really original.  Even if it had stayed perverse and lewd, in a better world, and anime has been able to do this with confidence and without shame, you can have stories which are proudly horny but also emotionally rich and good. It can be to the point they could be dismissed by outsiders to anime as showing the medium as perverted, but in their existence anime can be proudly pro-sex, positive about that and equal opportunity in progressiveness.

The result, just over thirty minutes, could have been cut into a one-off straight to video tie-in, and it feels like a pilot to a series which never came to be, only establishing what is an initial set up. In terms of a comedy, I found aspects funny but with the caveat that this is going to put off someone who, understandably, cannot get past its tone and humour choices. Hantsu x Trash has one scene of a character losing his mind to the point he gropes a female character, which in another context would be offensive even next to the other scenes, but for the most part we are dealing with a type of humour here which has just aged badly. For the rest of this, the idea of someone being so clueless about the opposite gender, males here to women, but attracted to them that they do stupid things like spy on them, is something that can be covered but you could not portray with the same attitude that you still see in some anime like this. It was also something you even saw with 2000s sex comedies I grew up with from the West, even if you played the joke still as the males being idiots, so this problem was always not of just one culture. This particular example evokes a micro-series anime named Colorful (1999), and whilst the question of whether its content is defendable means revisiting it, it’s humour was less sex humour for the sake of sexualizing the female cast, but instead vignettes about men trying to see women in their underwear, or the garments under their clothes, but the jokes entirely about how ridiculous these men were, and the punch lines making them look like morons. Whether that has aged well or not is to debate, but you look to these works which are as much the joke is a guilt reflex of the creators, and they are fascinating even if Hantsu x Trash is very conventional even in the genre.

In the perfect world, these types of sex comedies would not involve this type of sexual harassment humour, and the depictions of sexual content even when kinky would be emphasized in terms of interesting character dynamics, psychological sides even for gags, or even positive depictions of sex. Hoods Entertainment even adapted a manga that would immediately come off as gross fetish material for anyone outside of the anime fan base but had a surprising level of depth to it as a deliberate contrast to this, showing they could do this. It was a work called Mysterious Girlfriend X (2012) about a young man who finds himself in a romantic relationship with a strange girl whose salvia is addictive to him, a strange fetishistic premise turned into a work around this fetish, brazenly, but where you still have a pair who really liked each other and embraced this quirk of the relationship.

You could have expanded Hantsu x Trash away from its questionable sex comedy humour into something as interesting, even if fetishistic, in terms of a sex positive comedy with a lot of goofy humour, but this is a slight production, obscure even by anime fan standards. It managed to produce far more here in typed words than what these thirty plus minutes should have. No premise, unless just undefendable as an idea, is not possible to make into something good and also without being tasteless, and sadly whilst one wishes there was an erotic water polo sex comedy out there which was more wholesome and progressive with this tone, even if still breast fixated, this review also presents another issue found in the Japanese anime industry. That, if you dig, you find so many animated fragments, usually built as tie-ins for manga and in some cases pure one-offs, which never had a conclusion and just exist as half-finished dreams. I can envision imaginary, superior takes on the stories, but the reality is that the actual animation is not this and barely in existence as was the case here.

 

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1) Hantsu x Trash Manga Bundles Original Anime DVD, written by Karen Ressler and published by Anime News Network on August 23^rd 2015.

2) Hantsu x Trash Risque Water Polo Manga Bundles 2nd Original Anime DVD, written by Karen Ressler and published by Anime New Network on April 24^th 2016.

3) Risque Water Polo Manga Hantsu x Trash Bundles 3rd Original Anime DVD, written by Rafael Antonio Pineda and published by Anime News Network on September 9th 2016.

4) Maaya Uchida and Yūma Uchida, the voice actors for these lead characters, are siblings, which is somewhat an odd casting choice as romantic leads. That is not a slight against either of them, Maaya the older sister and both prolific in their careers. It is just an odd choice which I hope they found funny in hindsight to what happens in the show. 

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later/Halloween: Resurrection (1998/2002)

 

Director: Steve Miner [Halloween H20]/Rick Rosenthal [Halloween: Resurrection]

Screenplay: Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg [H20]/ Larry Brand and Sean Hood [Resurrection]

Cast:

Halloween H20

Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode / Keri Tate, Josh Hartnett as John Tate, Adam Arkin as Will Brennan, Michelle Williams as Molly Cartwell, Adam Hann-Byrd as Charlie Deveraux, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe as Sarah Wainthrope, Janet Leigh as Norma Watson, LL Cool J as Ronald 'Ronny' Jones, Chris Durand as Michael Myers, Lisa Gay Hamilton as Shirley 'Shirl' Jones (voice)

Halloween: Resurrection

Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, Brad Loree as Michael Myers, Busta Rhymes as Freddie Harris, Bianca Kajlich as Sara Moyer, Sean Patrick Thomas as Rudy Grimes, Daisy McCrackin as Donna Chang, Katee Sackhoff as Jennifer 'Jen' Danzig, Luke Kirby as Jim Morgan, Thomas Ian Nicholas as Bill Woodlake, Ryan Merriman as Myles 'Deckard' Barton, Tyra Banks as Nora Winston, Gus Lynch as Harold Trumble

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movie)

 

Trick or treat...motherfucker!

It might seem blasphemous to cover both of these films together, as Resurrection is considered a huge drop after H20, what was considered a great sequel/return to the iconic 1978 film, but there was always a sequel planned when H20 was filmed, so this reboot of the Halloween franchise was tragically sealed in having a sequel that undercut whatever H20 accomplished. It is the curse of any film franchise, to always try to sustain it whether it would work or not, as the three part Thorn trilogy beforehand ended as badly as it did, after The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) and its theatrical cut. Also, as much as H20 is rightly viewed as a great way to continue (and supposedly end) the franchise, Resurrection as a result of watching the previous films before, with the Thorn trilogy sadly having some of the least interesting entries, became a guiltless pleasure this time around without the burden that it ruined a great film's conclusion from before. For a film notorious for rap artist Busta Rhymes calling Michael Myers a killer shark, I accepted the absurdity and got (unintentional) joy from the proceedings.

Resetting the world, to the point that parts four to six now became their own alternative dimension, we begin with a prologue that re-establishes that we are following from Halloween II all the way back in 1981, in which Michael Myers one night in a suburb in Haddonfield killed a series of people. That first ever sequel is still canon because one of the survivors from that night, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), was made into his sister as he went for her again in the last moments of that night, and thus H20's prologue follows on from the logical conclusion that, if he cannot be stopped, he will try to find her even under witness protection. There is a sense of glibness from the dialogue provided by Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg, with the screenwriter of Scream (1996) Kevin Williamson in a producer's role on this film. Scream, also helped into existence with its director Wes Craven, was an important film to the slasher genre and its influence here cannot be ignored as for other films from after its release, as this does wink in its plotting of slasher tropes whilst still having an actual story. We can find humour in a young Jason Gordon-Levitt as a teen helping himself to a few beers secretly whilst helping a nurse whose home has been broken into, but notwithstanding someone getting an ice skate blade embedded into their face, there is still a serious story set up.

The calm, almost bloodless tone of the original John Carpenter film was gone by that first ever sequel, but co-producer Williamson, alongside the screenwriters and director Steve Miner, who came from the Friday the 13th franchise, brought back the focus onto a small chamber piece rather than the sprawl out into a higher body count that the films onwards from Carpenter's original did. The Thorn trilogy of three films before is gone, and even the additional cast to off in the 198q sequel are nowhere to be found, instead envisioning Laurie Strode under a new name has a new life, as the headmistress of a school, trying to get on with her life. It is still a brisk horror film in length, focusing on the stalking around the campus by Myers halfway through, but we establish so much characterization with a surprising level of effortlessness. We establish Laurie having nightmares from the attacks of a time before, and all the medication she has even under a new name to cope, with alcoholism to match a teaching career. A loving son played by Josh Hartnett, who is passing his seventeenth birthday, due to her over protectiveness is also starting to be at his tether with her, and only this time viewing the film did I ever consider that we never hear anything about his father. Even if the screenwriters forgot to include details of this by pure accident, the gap of the previous husband as a single mother itself raises so much potential unheard back-story to set up how she has had to deal with so much psychological damage due to her brother trying to murder her decades earlier.

On October 31st, her son rather than at a Yosemite camping trip for the whole school has some friends and his girlfriend together, planning their own secret Halloween at the school, whilst Laurie herself is also there with only a male teacher, one around her age, who she is romantically connected with and starts to opens up about the truth of her life finally to him. LL Cool J, a seminal rap artist known for the likes of Mama Said Knock You Out having started in the early eighties, has a small role too but adds a much needed side character as the school campus' guard, entirely for the detail that he is writing erotic novels in his spare moments even if his beau (Lisa Gay Hamilton, only heard by her voice) criticises his lack of decent metaphors for the female chest let alone getting anything published. Even Will (Adam Arkin), Laurie's fellow teacher and lover, gets as much for a minor character just for the fact he is a likable guy, getting time to become fully aware on this fateful night of Laurie's trauma as much as her concerns with her own protectiveness over her son, all in context of Michael Myers having found her and planning a family reunion.

This was why I appreciated the film the first time, and in context of the films that came before which struggled, this is such a breath of fresh air still to this day. Slasher films are usually fun and over-the-top as a horror subgenre, so there is less chances for moments of introspection, which this however still allows and provides an efficient slasher flick to enjoy. It was also made with clear love, Jamie Lee Curtis clearly making this with interest of the character dynamic, but also in how her real life mother Janet Leigh, of Psycho (1960), is a minor character as one of the minor school staff in a beautiful nod to Alfred Hitchcock's film and its legacy on the slasher genre, as much as one woman who defined horror herself being there in a nice interplay with her daughter, who defined horror as well as cinema in her own career. Even the self aware humour has aged well; one joke, whilst actually subversive because it is the female cast who say it, is very edgy and would not exist in a future slasher film, but the snark does not invade the tension, so actually counts as proper character layering. It is seen in how, whilst he has a tiny role, LL Cool J comes off as one of the highlights due to his easy going charisma. It is noted that, a year later in the shark film Deep Blue Sea (1999), his character with more scenes also became a huge highlight. He has a prolific career in cinema and television, beginning long before the Halloween franchise, but it is a shame we did not get any really prominent horror films beyond these two from him, as he could have been a wonderful shot in the arm for a few from the period I was getting into the genre at that time into the modern day.

H20 even when it become fully of its genre, because of all its build, really succeeds and it is noticeable too, after the film before had more gruesome deaths added in the theatrical release, this has only a tiny cast, only a few deaths, and a lot of its pace as a slow burn entirely based around Laurie Strode being forced to face her past. Barring some post-grunge yarling in the diegetic song, this does not feel as dated next to the film before (or after) even with the fashion and lack of mobile phones. The real issue, not the film's fault, is that there was always going to be a sequel. The ending is extreme, Laurie Strode breaking the law to end the horror once and for all, and there are hints that all is not as it seems where a sequel can happen, but if Halloween ended here, [Spoilers] Laurie decapitating her brother [Spoilers End], it would have ended on a high. However, they had intended the sequel from the get-go, even if it took four years to get to, and had to reverse the ending. Whilst I hinted that it could be done, the result as the back-story is explained in a convoluted way, with a newly created medical staff member involved, which gets things off to a bad start.

The huge spoiler, which cannot be dodged with a [Spoiler Warning] is that Halloween: Resurrection kills off Laurie Strode in the prologue, which is a very controversial thing to do, with her in a mental asylum for a few years waiting for Michael Myers. It feels however like a necessary curtain call to allow the series to continue, as she is allowed to be clever and only caught by her hesitance to not make the same mistakes again, if with the conundrum of how the story continues if a huge catalyst for Michael Myers' motives has vanished. It would have been fascinating to see the aimless epilogue of a horror film killer, Myers feeling emptiness, but realising that sounds like it is full of snark as a comment, what made Resurrection infamous was arguably what happened after the prologue as a whole film. Including the muffled noises Busta Rhymes makes in a pale William Shatner mask, I suspect what most people think about with this film was how the attempt to create a new chapter in a franchise, a new beginning from the grave, accidentally shut the doors so much a reboot was required.

Resurrection is trying itself with the bludgeoning trends of horror films, dealing with the new fad called the internet and also reality TV, the era of Yahoo! Chat and the first examples of Big Brother to Survivor breaking trends in television. The Blair Witch Project (1999) as the abrupt micro budget horror film which came out of nowhere, not as a Hollywood production, has to be mentioned too in having prod people and help cement the found footage genre; the idea as Resurrection has of horror as depicted in cameras found on people recording the world around them definitely feels under the shadow of that film even if not a direct influence. Three friends, including lead Sara Moyer (Bianca Kajlich), and three others are invited to an internet company named DangerTainment to star in their new reality special screening online on All Hallow's Eve, filming at Michael Myers' family home with the intention by Busta Rhymes and Tyra Banks, who run the group, to get the six to investigate his origins over one night. With credit to the film, even explicitly referencing Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) even if by accident, with a death involving a film camera with a spike on the tripod, there is an interesting idea here of Michael Myers in the reality television world. A metatextual prod at how these type of figures are fascinating to culture for their gristly crimes is inherently compelling, even in just imagining a Halloween film where the events transpire over the net including the real deaths, with a person who met Sara watching from afar at a costumed party and there to help her when the DangerTainment broadcast collapses into a real bloodbath.

Attempting to reach a new audience off the back of H20 with the new tech being exploited in the story, casting rapper Busta Rhymes in a major role, and playing out the story without the burden of previous films in a claustrophobic, there is still the issue of how you could sustain Halloween as a franchise after, but I see the logic of all this. Even in this story, there is a justification for Myers to be here if sillier - even serial killers care for their family home, and do not want people tampering with it, especially as DangerTainment are planting items in his home to distort the truth, like a baby chair with chains to lock the nipper to the seat. Where the film goes south into comedic territory, and the infamy, is even before Rhymes martial arts kicks Myers, as there are so many absurd moments between intentional humour and unintentional choices undercutting the seriousness. Once not a fan of Halloween: Resurrection, my realisation that I might fall in love with this goofy sequel began when freshly bought fennel in the Myers' spice rack is an early warning which was hilarious, especially as if Michael Myers has a spice rack, I would presume he would prefer thyme.

After the Thorn trilogy, I think I grew a fondness for this after two films as a viewer I found a drag, and with The Curse of Michael Myers in its theatrical cut, and its entire production cycle, a chaotic mess in a way which did not lead to an unintentional gem of surreal but just compromises. There is something more pleasant, with its early 2000s DNA shown even in the drum and bass music in the score, to something which is this consistency ridiculous, directed by Rick Rosenthal, who made the original 1981 Halloween II where Myers boiled a nurse to death in a Jacuzzi which inexplicably was a) in the basement of a hospital, and b) has the temperature reaching up to the "Scalding" with a gauge to show this. As I said in a paragraph before, slashers tend to be more playful and silly, even if unintentional, and this is a great example of the unintentional camp. From dialogue like "Besides, screwing a music major is tantamount to lesbianism", to Myers' family home having an impromptu sex dungeon which requires a giant key from a MS-Dos point and click video game to access it, Resurrection is a goofy movie, and that was the doom sealing for this ever continuing the franchise. An entire section is dealt with Tyra Banks not even seeing something being clearly killed on a CCTV camera due to her being more busy with the portable cappuccino machine in her broadcast room, which emphasises that at times, whilst a lot of this is unintended, there are intentional moments of humour which also fan the fires of camp to all of this. Literally the haunted house version of the franchise, we had reached a time in American horror I remember where ghoulishness met an open sense of silliness even if there was gore - Dark Castle Entertainment's films like the 1999 House on Haunted Hill remake to the Friday the 13th sequel Jason X (2001) which shot Jason Voorhees into outer space - and Resurrection missed the balance for many if you wanted a film to follow H20's more respectable tone.  

Filled with stereotypes and one dimensional figures, from the sex pest who is thankfully the first character in the main crew to die to one whose character dynamic, as a cook, is believing serial killers exist due to lack of protein and bad diets, Resurrection is just as ridiculous as slasher films before that were made independent in the original waves from the eighties. However by the time Rhymes compares Myers to a killer shark in the aftermath, this was not the film to sell to a wider audience without it coming off as unintentionally camp. I found it entertaining with hindsight to previous films, and more so now that Rob Zombie's two films from afterwards, which I soften to once before, are inconsistent noble failures undercut by their attempts at severity. Because I kept finding absurd moments I missed or forgot before, even if in context to Halloween H20 and how this ruined a new chapter in the franchise, there is so much to make it consistently entertainment to find Halloween: Resurrection utterly charming in its variously dumb ways.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) [Theatrical Cut]

 

Director: Joe Chappelle

Screenplay: Daniel Farrands

Cast: Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis, Paul Rudd as Tommy Doyle, Marianne Hagan as Kara Strode, Mitch Ryan as Dr. Terence Wynn, Devin Gardner as Danny Strode, J. C. Brandy as Jamie Lloyd, Keith Bogart as Tim Strode, Mariah O'Brien as Beth, Kim Darby as Debra Strode, Bradford English as John Strode, Leo Geter as Barry Simms, George P. Wilbur as Michael Myers

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

It took six years to get a follow up to Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989), yet we finished the Thorn cult story. In an attempt to elaborate on a premise, in the killer Michael Myers terrorised one Halloween night, the previous two films had brought up a secret cabal based on sinister Druid practices who created Myers. For a story which was never designed to be an entire franchise without having to drastically elaborate on this one night's worth of story and the epilogue, they had set up a drastic change in the world beyond this being a single night of murders from a person who became a psychopath, but an entire conspiracy. They tried, bless them, with this idiosyncratic direction but they ended up finished it with a change of studio with Dimension Films, and not without infamously a drastically altered theatrical release. Director Joe Chappelle himself was left unscathed, but perversely ended up having to work on another horror sequel which faltered and needed him to film reshoots, Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), which was also from Dimension Films, which presents the ultimate irony with The Curse of Michael Myers itself. This review is not about the Producer's Cut, which got an official release eventually, which changes a lot in tone, but for a series' turn which took the risk of even bringing in supernatural details into the main franchise, not the non-Myers tangent in the third Season of the Witch film from 1982, but the original slasher film premise, the resulting Theatrical Cut even without seeing the other version is visible damaged on arrive to its theatrical release. Removing almost all the main actors from the original films barring Donald Pleasance, we ended up with an abrupt conclusion as a result of this.

Continuing from the fifth film's huge "To Be Continued" ending, we finish off the tale of Jamie, the character who was central to the previous two films, abruptly written out when she was that important to the previous two. She was kidnapped as a child and, whilst never explaining the huge age jump considering the six years are chronologically nodded to in film world time as much as between the sequels, there is the disturbing implication of a young adult Jamie having being forced to have a child with her uncle Michael Myers watching on. Whilst the Producer Cut gives this character more time, the sense of the film having this disregarding her in the first version that was released in edited form, and with what came before, is really felt, and even for those who hated this Thorn story arch, they would still have found this insulting to have even attempted to finish off in this cut. She is the catalyst for this story if cruelly removed, which sadly emphasises this - despite the fact she gave birth the night before or less, and should not be able to walk yet let alone drive, Jamie is allowed to flee (and steal a car) with the baby by a female doctor's kindness. The theatrical cut was also going for more violence, with newly filmed scenes, and nineties edginess, Jamie's end by way of farming equipment in this version, and significant emphasis on sharp cuts in the editing and grungy industrial influences. Whilst it has its grimy charm, the immediate problems come from the production slicing the story up into shreds, and not sticking it back together in a cohesive and sensible way.

One of the kids from the original films, Tommy Doyle (as played by Paul Rudd here), grew up obsessed with the idea Michael Myers will return to Haddonfield, and that in itself was an inspired idea to have, as Tommy from the original narrative crosses over into the Thorn trilogy, finding the baby, staying all night in a public bathroom cupboard unscathed, and decides to protect it. Dr. Sam Loomis as mentioned returns, in one of Donald Pleasence's last roles before his passing, now retired only for Jamie's call to a radio shock hock DJ whilst fleeing to drag him back in. Sadly, Tommy, nor Loomis, have much to do. Neither the female lead Kara Strode (Marianne Hagan), a daughter on the Strode family tree who moved into the old home of the original Strode character from the first film, who is bullied by her father as a college student who had a son named Danny in her teens. Three layers of interesting dynamic are here for a sequel to continue this franchise, of one of the survivors of the original 1978 Halloween as an adult, Loomis closing his story, and a female character with a fascinating back-story never used, and also related to the Myers' family by blood, with Danny likely cursed by their lineage and hearing creepy voices like Michael would have, none of which is found in this mangled cut.

There is a nasty, fun film to have been found in the theatrical cut if it had not been such a pig's ear in presentation - a man does explode from electrocution, and that cannot be ignored - and because of the clear problems with this more initially available cut, there is a sense midway this franchise was not going to get off the ground from this turn into a lucrative franchise into the late nineties. The drastic reinterpretation which ditched three films' worth of lore with hindsight makes little sense, and even the decision to have more gore was an attempt to sell a film which feels a mess in this cut. It also really does not stand out, which is worse. Baring the morbid image of a girl twirling under red, warm rain from a tree at one point, there is the sense the Halloween name is not helped by this, even if you reinterpret the iconic tension stinger in the score with an edgy industrial guitar solo, and the film should have been its own original and be allowed to breathe. It could have been its own Halloween tribute, about a town celebrating the season and getting an edgy Howard Stern-like radio host, one which felt its era of the mid-nineties when Stern was popular, rather than making details like that party and this obnoxious DJ figure barely existent subplots. Even very important plot points, like a conspiracy to cultivate the perfect lineage of Michael Myers-like killers, with a scene in a medical room full of foetuses from possible failed attempts, feels barely detailed in the slightest, making no sense of the plot progression this film's titular "Curse" is meant to be about. I am aware that the Producer's Cut had more idiosyncratic traits, playing more to the Samhain folklore even in how Myers is defeated, but focusing on this version, with its nineties mood lighting and an ending involving green neon toxic needles for the win, as toxic neon green was also very nineties, it would have been a future weirdo cult nineties slasher people would admit a guilty pleasure for if this never had to worry about being a Halloween film or be the mess it came.

As it is, a Frankenstein's cobble of the negative, I can see why Scream (1996) was such an important resurrection for the slasher franchise a year later in the mainstream, a much needed kick in the ribs to shake the subgenre up. It was not just the self-referential tone with hindsight that was important, but arguably more important was updating the template to how people dressed and talked like the new audience for horror even if the idealised version, with the type of male and female characters they would like to see onscreen, like casting Courteney Cox in mind to her success on the Friends television series or Neve Campbell as the lead, who were close to their target audience in having their emotions and dramas as much as now having some self aware snark and irony on the tropes. We cannot even get a logical plot to the theatrical cut of The Curse of Michael Myers, let along real characterisation or even unintentional mangled humour to the proceedings. Thankfully Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998) got Scream's snark, alongside both sympathetic characters and also paying respect to the source in a way which allowed a sequel to work. Halloween 6 in this original theatrical version, even in how abrupt in ends and ends Dr. Loomis in the final, is a deflated mess to the whole Thorn trilogy. All three films have their pleasures, but from Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) to here, we sadly ended this era with this flat conclusion which felt like the two previous films were a nuisance but ends up sabotaging the entire rebooting of the series, requiring another one three years to fix this issue.

BloodRayne I and II: Deliverance (2005/2007)

 

Director: Uwe Boll

Screenplay: Guinevere Turner (BloodRayne); Christopher Donaldson and Neil Every (BloodRayne II)

Cast:

BloodRayne: Kristanna Loken as Rayne; Michael Madsen as Vladimir; Ben Kingsley as Kagan; Michelle Rodriguez as Katarin; Matthew Davis as Sebastian; Meat Loaf as Leonid; Billy Zane as Elrich

BloodRayne II: Natassia Malthe as Rayne; Zack Ward as Billy "The Kid"; Michael Paré as Pat Garrett; Chris Coppola as Newton Pyles; Chris Spencer as Bob, The Bartender; Brendan Fletcher as Muller; Sarah-Jane Redmond as Martha; Michael Teigen as "Slime Bag" Franson; Michael Eklund as The Preacher

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

People reading this will immediately think, if this is first review of mine they have read, that this will be a burial. With hindsight, I held these two as among two of the worst films I had ever seen once, so I was in that camp, but alongside the fact I liked the second film Deliverance, the tale I want to write specifically with BloodRayne is what happens when you can have all the resources at your hands but, if rushed, leads to something that gained the notoriety it did rather than present the entertaining film we would have all rather had. I would want to know what happened with the first BloodRayne specifically, and how it came as it did considering its resources include its cast - Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriguez, Sir Ben Kinsley, Kristanna Loken, even a cameo by Meatloaf - in its writer Guinevere Turner, who will stand out for many as the one who adapted Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho to the screen, and enough of the budget here to have gotten something as a video game film. Especially as I would be one of the first to defend the Street Fighter (1994) film with Raul Julia, and even find Super Mario Bros. (1993) a compellingly weird adaptation, videogame adaptations even if they are ridiculous are not something I will dismiss. Even in terms of hardcore, cult cinema niche, among the multiple roles he had in the production including the special effects team is Olaf Ittenbach, a German splatter film director I am aware of, as others may be, for the truly twisted pieced of no-budget gore cinema known as The Burning Moon (1992), and even if he barely contributed onscreen you can even see in BloodRayne splatter film influences in some of the gnarlier moments. There was enough here to adapt this videogame into something distinct.

BloodRayne was originally developed by Terminal Reality, who started in 1994 and worked through the computer era of the nineties videogames until the point the original 2002 game allowed them to spread their wings onto multiple consoles, and the game was clearly made under the shadow of Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider series of the attractive female lead who could actually be a pinup in magazines with real models. This comes to mind that, yes, Rayne appeared in a Playboy magazine as a fictional character, the first videogame character in October 2004, and that, published by Majesco Entertainment, they focused grouped the character to explicitly attract a young male audience at the time. Liz Buckley, product manager for Majesco from this time, had her designers learning what boys and young men in focus groups prefered¹, which drastically revised how the character originally was from initial design², all in mind to a time now washing away in the past as we have had sexually appealing female videogame characters become more of a contentious concept, even to the point Mortal Kombat, which was sexualising its characters in the 2000s games, have back peddled from this, and even Dead or Alive, a beat-em-up franchise infamous for this, had to include measures least in the costume choices suitable for videogame fighting tournaments.

After BloodRayne 2 (2004) however, the games also leaning on Terminal Reality having worked on horror games beforehand among other genres, there was a huge period of silence for this franchise, lost to the original Xbox/Playstation 2 era of games as a franchise. Alongside the original games being having remasters in the 2020s, there was then BloodRayne: Betrayal (2011), which showed how much changed in trends including with its 2021 enhanced version BloodRayne: Betrayal - Fresh Bites. Gone were the three dimensional levels, now a 2D side-scrolling platform game befitting the growing interesting in two dimensional and "retro" games of the past, and even a significant change in Rayne the dhampir. Whilst still the attractive vampire, gone is the voluptuous pin-up of Playboy, evoked in the two film adaptations by Uwe Boll too, but a version influenced by comic books and even Japanese animation and manga in appearance who is less explicitly sexualised.

This is worth bringing up as, with how Uwe Boll was making these films, he picked up upon not the biggest licenses but ones even from Sega (House of the Dead) which were cult hits, this review finding itself in his most controversial era between 2003 to 2008 when he was making these videogame adaptations, where Far Cry (2008) was adapting a game from its origins and not when it became the ultra-expensive Triple A franchise that would have been out of Boll's franchise nowadays to adapt. His infamous run, which barely covers a long career, is of this era, and taking an immediate change of pace from the first game, where Rayne is hunting Nazis, and starting in 18th-century Romania, he came to this clearly without heart for the material, not even the dangerous (but inventive) spinning camera scenes or Clint Howard from House of the Dead, and made a film which was not carefully through in its creation.

Immediately problems arise with the film in how there is no stop to the exposition and events, charging along without pace. There is the anecdote Guinevere Turner has talked of that, with her script late by two weeks, Uwe Boll had been angered by this and that, even when she still sent him a first draft after this moment, he worked from that version and even let the story deviate entirely from her work³. Honestly, so much more feels amiss with the film, even when one realises that most b-movies have little time to be produced and are rushed. The plot can be written on a napkin - evil vampire lord (Kingsley) clashes with the dhampir he sired (as played here by Kristanna Loken) over ancient artefacts which would allow him greater power, whilst vampire hunters led by Michael Madsen take her in as a potential ally - but it is amazing to feel and heard this film not take time to breath and coordinate itself.

It feels like a production which suffers at the hands of juggling all its variables, not just in terms of the screenplay anecdote, but also with the cast a great example of seeing this in a variety of ways. Billy Zane, who is on screen in only a few moments and has no ties to the end despite being a vampire, feels at ease, one of the more rewarding figures whilst others are hustled through scenes awkwardly, Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriquez and Kristanna Loken among the noticeable examples. Geraldine Chaplin, daughter of that Charlie Chaplin, is a tarot reader for one scene, all her lines exposition, but feels at ease too, as does Udo Kier, who is also comfortable onscreen, whilst it feels like there is both the script and the lack of pause which forces the acting along with many of the bigger stars, who feel the most struggling with the scenario. With no time to step back and see how the mood is, as it hurtles along, and you cannot really gather yourself in both the content and the performances.

Which sucks as you can see the production design was trying. This is a rich world even on a budget where there is enough to stand out. Even in mind to its practical effects team, there is grotesqueness too, such as the monstrous helper of a monastery's secret, mallet in hand, or when we get to the Meatloaf scene and the best moment of the entire prequel. Meatloaf's hall of orgies and splatter film approved horrors, prosthetic effects and nudity crossing in ways normally not found in a more mainstream film, sticks out alongside the fact that Meatloaf, surrounded by naked actresses when introduced, came correct for the role and steals the entire production eating the scenery. Even this is rushed however, and there is a sense that Boll was forced to churn out a film against the right intentions he should have done. Some of this could not be helped, as it is clear they only had Ben Kinsley for a day or so, filming all his scenes in the same two rooms, but you see so much more to the production not being appreciated as a film has to be quickly put together within it. You can see this is in how the film skips past its plot points, skips through fight scenes, even when they have hired actors who have martial arts skills too, or the sex scene. Sold entirely on Kristanna Loken herself, after her role in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), and sold off titillation, it does make little sense, beginning a romance with a male vampire hunter which is abrupt, and feels so cynically shoved in whether it made to or not, both in Loken's comfortableness to do the scene, and Rayne being sold as a sexual videogame hero back in that era.

In vast contrast, made after the BloodRayne games would go on their hiatus, BloodRayne 2: Deliverance is a film with none of the recognisable names, barring Michael Paré as Pat Garrett, but is actually an entertaining movie with a pace and reward. Set later in history in the Wild West, westerns are a genre cheap to make but that is not an insult in the slightest, as whilst they no longer exist as a mainstream genre, they are still being made straight to DVD and other mediums from this period on when this one was produced. Following the idea of what outlaw Billy the Kid would be like as a vampire, this with Norwegian actress Natassia Malthe now Rayne has also recast the pace with one which allows this film to breathe, with care to take in its plot.

It is a b-movie horror western, which not everyone will enjoy, but in contrast to the first film, I enjoyed a film immensely which was not heavily compromised, even if I miss the practical effects team from the first production. I can be happy to see Uwe Boll here make a genre film which is entertaining like this, which no expectations but the execution accomplished, working around its limited production and retelling western clichés only with significantly cruder dialogue at points. Even the slow-mo he uses was not that bad to experience, and the aspects which could have been fleshed out, such as a band of vampire hunters consisting of Pat Garret and a corrupt preacher conman, still crackle with personality. Even how Rayne herself is no longer the figure of the first film, but just a strong female lead, feels like a considerable change in pace, and whilst there is a third film, BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2011), that feels its own review to consider, particularly as that is also in a different time period for Boll as a filmmaker to these two. Set in World War II, made in mind to the original game having its lead fighting Nazis, that film deserves its own focus as three films came from one production - The Third Reich itself, Blubberella (2011), which is a terrible parody film I will say Boll should not have made, and Auschwitz (2011), which was a serious and grim depiction of the Nazis, all based around the locations built for the time period.

The only thing more interesting than this director making a watchable genre film was whenever Uwe Boll made "serious" films, the heavy handedness of a film like Hearts of America (2002), tackling school shootings, yet contrasting with material which do have interesting things to examine within them. By the point of the first BllodRayne, a German tax law, where the German Tax Fund makes film production costs immediately tax-deductible, was dashed from existence in 2006^4&5, and whilst it did not end his productivity, it was something he had clearly used and it makes for the unfortunate argument that, as with the first BloodRayne, he focused on a string of films, videogame adaptations, which were not made with as much interest from him as a creative figure. This was the  time when he was notorious as a bad filmmaker for many, not as a filmmaker to dissect, and in 2006 came the "Raging Boll" publicity stunt, competing with critics of his films in boxing matches which would be compiled into a 2010 documentary of the same name. It became less the Boll behind films like Seed (2007), which at least presented things of interest even if the viewer hated them, but this period would make his infamy rather than these more interesting films, entirely focused on video game adaptations in the mid-2000s which feels like a compromise. The irony is that his notoriety is based really on 2003 to 2005 films, not the video game films from the years after - House of the Dead (2003), Alone in the Dark (2005) and BloodRayne - whilst by the time of BloodRayne II, I am watching a film that, regardless of its video game license, is more a working director juggling genre films and dramas in the straight-to-video era. The worst part is that the later is far more interesting and arguably more focused, but not what we talk about with this German filmmaker. What made Boll's infamy, stepping away from filmmaking by the mid-2010s as things changed, with the streaming industry coming into being, is frankly the less rewarding side to him if the first BloodRayne is to be considered.  

 

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1) Fighting Women Enter the Arena, No Holds Barred, written by Michel Marriott and published for the New York Times on May 15th 2003.

2) Getting the Girl: The myths, misconceptions, and misdemeanors of females in games, written by Zoe Flower and published for 1UP.com on 18th December 2007. Retrieved 12th July 2009 by Web Archive.

3) Bloodrayne screenwriter explains the perils of working with Uwe Boll, written by Ben Gilbert for Engadget and published October 26th 2011.

4) Uwe Boll and the German Tax Code, written by Allen Varney and published by The Escapist on January 23rd 2007.

5) Tax changes threaten German film, written for the Guardian on November 9th 2005.

The Wicker Man (2006)

Director: Neil LaBute

Screenplay: Neil LaBute

Cast: Nicolas Cage as Edward Malus, Ellen Burstyn as Sister Summersisle, Kate Beahan as Sister Willow Woodward, Leelee Sobieski as Sister Honey, Frances Conroy as Dr. T.H. Moss, Molly Parker as Sister Rose / Sister Thorn, Diane Delano as Sister Beech, Mary Black as Sister Oak, Christine Willes as Sister Violet, Erika Shaye Gair as Rowan Woodward

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

OH, NO, NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES!

The perfect introduction to this remake is stating I had wanted to revisit the original 1973 directly to make comparisons, but decided against this as that would put Neil LaBute's film under an unfair shadow cast over it, let alone with the problems this has even if it had been an original premise. Contrary to popular belief though, I am going to argue no matter how ridiculous Nicolas Cage in a bear suit punching people out is, the real folly for this was how generic a lot of this film actually was for me to revisit, a slight horror film which missed out much of its loaded premise of a male cop Edward Malus, played by Cage, going to the island of Summersisle of the USA coast to track down a missing girl in a matriarchal commune.

The original Robin Hardy directed film has to be talked of in some form, and in context, that was the tale of a very Christian police office played by Edward Woodward, sent over to Summersisle off Scotland to a pagan community lead by Christopher Lee, a tale of the conflict of Judeo-Christian values and pagan heritage at a time past the sixties of re-evaluating mortality and spirituality. It was not always a canonical masterpiece, maligned as the b-side to a double feature bill and infamously with excised footage buried in a road under construction. Rebuilt to its intended form, it has lasted, and the issue the 2006 film had, with all remakes and sequels attempting to re-adapt these horror classics, is as with adaptations of classic horror literature, that they should be more what you can bring to them, something that needs to be more a concern then being "faithful". Screw remaking a film exactly, Neil LaBute could have really made his own weird folk horror film from an American's perspective, but instead you probably know how this (and laugh as I admit too) at Nicolas Cage screaming about the bees. Even as a huge fan of Cage who says he is one of the better parts of this production, this film became notorious for his career too.

Even without the shadow of the original Wicker Man over this, a lot of the issue I have is how LaBute made a pretty conventional horror film from the mid-2000s, which I sat through many from that time and was put off by their entire storytelling template even now. LaBute was from the American independent boom with films like Your Friends & Neighbours (1998), which suggested the potential for something very idiosyncratic with this film when it was being produced. These were also films however which lead to accusations that he was a misogynist for content in them, starring the likes of Aaron Eckhart as less than morally white male figures. LaBute, in mind to this, positioned himself in a loaded premise of Cage as the lone male in a world of women, where they are manufacturers of honey with any men he encounters mindless drones. Tellingly though, with Nicolas Cage reflecting on how he originally wanted the ending of the film more gruesomely absurd than it became, with him keeping the bear suit on even for the denouement¹, there was a sense that, in another context, this could have been more intentionally ridiculous than unintentionally as it became. The issue of gender politics part of the tonic whiplash this could have used for a point becomes less interesting, or one would hope would be for LaBute as he was the screenwriter as well as the director, because Cage plays his role as increasingly more dubious as he goes on. Considering Cage's character progresses from a heroic figure to become a questionable loose cannon, you see there was a misanthropic edge to all this. The original film had this, where Edward Woodward would be the hero to some, but with others in the cinema likely cheering on the pro-sex, musically vibrant pagans to roast him alive. Even if I became a mindless drone, a man like me would still cheer on the matriarchal cult here, led by Ellen Burstyn, over a man who pulls a gun on a woman to steal her bicycle, even if to rescue his daughter from a sinister cult she belongs.

The issue with the film instead becomes how standard this is, in that you have to wade through a lot of stock scenes of suspense which were the reason I once viewed this as one of the worst I had seen. Cage's character offers a potentially interesting figure, scarred by seemingly seeing a mother and daughter die as a highway patrolman, and reconnecting to an old flame (Kate Beahan) who left his life and whose daughter he is trying to find is likely his too. Cage plays this as a neurotic, as this nods to the question whether this community, said to sacrifice someone for replenishing their harvest, really believe that would happen and would attempt to try it out. Unfortunately nothing is made of Cage's mind in context of this, buying positivity self help tapes and someone with clear emotional issues, a type of character Cage would work with well, as he is very good at playing neurotic and morally unstable figures. I admit a bias to him, but his performances makes sense, already someone who hallucinates and is anxiety ridden, only to become more deranged and eventually expose himself with misogynistic comments. Even before the end, he shows as Woodward a sense of superiority that makes him a literal phallus, and that sense our hero, even if the mission is a noble one, is the wrong person for this. In another work this moral ambiguity, as the first version of this film, would be compelling.

This film was not helped by when it was made, absorbing a lot of the trademarks of horror films coming from Hollywood I grew up with at the time in the mid-200s, including coming at a time when a theatrical cut and an uncensored "mature" cut existed to sell the HD discs. For what could potentially be a problematic film in subject, it becomes not really about "evil feminists", but one where the feminist cult could be replaced with a vague one with any genders in power. Nowadays Cage's increasingly notorious line readings feels on point, even if he was the only one to read the tone right, to someone losing his mind as he goes, whilst my problems are from that everything else, that did not become on online meme, plays it too safe as a horror film. This leaves the middle acts to the bad habit in horror films I saw from this decade, minus jump scares, of pulling the carpet under your viewers over and over until it loses all weight to them. Be it false attempts to put Cage in peril to the many times he thinks he is seeing his daughter, only to realise he is dreaming, it is the tone of an action film in an inappropriate position, causing one to react as for an action film when we should only accept this pacing tone for a horror action film or a really good haunted house equivalent. This is the problem here as we never really get more about Cage, barely touching his character, or Ellen Burstyn as the leader of this commune of women and how they exist as more than just a sinister entity that may burn children, something explicitly part of the virtues of the original 1973 film even if they had not had the inspired decision to cast Christopher Lee who could provide sympathetic gravitas.

The thing about the original 1973 Wicker Man too, why it likely did not succeed back in the day but has its legacy, is that it is an unconventional and eccentric film. The plot is far less important in the original to its themes, its sensuality, and how it is technically a musical, as famous for its folk music and traditional songs as the performances and shocking conclusion. None of this is to be found in equivalence in the 2006 Wicker Man, and it is telling Cage became the iconic figure here because everything else is safe and/or not standing out at all. [Spoilers] Yes, it is pointlessly lurid, to a sick humoured level, to break his legs and sting him with bees, before putting him in the Wicker Man, but Cage screaming “Killing me won’t bring back your goddamn honey!” is among the few moments of personality, even if I laughed, because it has an energy to it. [Spoilers End] The notoriety of the film does feel over the top with hindsight, especially as whilst Nicolas Cage was able to ride the wave of this, Neil LaBute whilst still thankfully working after this probably took a shot in the chest with this as a big studio film for him, an albatross he would be stuck with. In the end, it is bad, but not infamous, just generic.

 

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1) Nicolas Cage on his legacy, his philosophy of acting and his metaphorical — and literal — search for the Holy Grail, written by David Marchese and published for the New York Times on August 7th 2019.