Mekong Hotel (2012)

Rewatched 28th March 2025

Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Screenplay: Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Cast: Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda Kaewbuadee, Chai Bhatana and Maiyatan Techaparn

 

Damn, I forgot my own tune.

A film I've wanted to see for a long time, and not readily available, Mekong Hotel had a disadvantage of being less than an hour long, and that this was the follow up to Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010). The hype after Uncle Boonmee... won at the Cannes Film Festival its most prestigious award, the Palme D'or, may have been a disadvantage when this premiered at the festival in 2012, a work less structured on plot.

There's a weight knowing how the Mekong River in the north-east of Thailand, where this is set, has a lot of meaning for its director-writer. Set at a hotel by a river that is the border between Thailand and Laos, in real life his father's ashes were scattered there, gaining a greater significance for him¹. You could argue Mekong Hotel is a very opaque film even for its creator, as with everything by Weerasethakul, defying expectations even for those who would've grasped his style previously. It starts from the get-go, opening with a conversation between two men without the first images seen, one a classical guitarist, Chai Bhatana, who provides the score. The first images seen are the titular hotel on the Mekong River, with the lush acoustic guitar music setting up the tropical atmosphere, guiding us through a series of conversations with the local denizens occupying the hotel.

Among them is the other idiosyncratic touch, with regular collaborators Jenjira Pongpas and Sakda Kaewbuadee involved in the cast, where there are phi pop spirits from Thai folklore. The first is introduced undercutting the tranquillity of a debate by one man of what clothes to wear, a woman just outside the rooms consuming bloodied raw meat. Mekong Hotel has been dubbed a drama and a documentary, but as with all of Weerasethakul's films, genre tags are a vague concept especially as the phi pop spirits are very important to the content here. The first is seen having killed and eaten the viscera of someone's beloved dog, but they are also cannibalistic. The touch here that you would only get from Weerasethakul, whose take on the supernatural has always been one of his most compelling touches, is that we get to see from their side too. We are able to hear from the pop's side of things especially when one is revealed to be someone's mother, having intimate conversations, knitting and apologising to her adult daughter for who she now is. In legend, they are said to possess their victims and, when they have made them hunt for raw meat, eventually eat their own intestines before moving on; we see in this one of the male cast being possessed by the phi pop at one point only to be exorcised. They are still in the consciousness in their homeland, with adaptations of the legends in the likes of Pob Pee Fa (2009), a TV series, and it is befitting that Weerasethakul would take these figures for Mekong Hotel and deal with them in a more humane banality.

They still kill people, but we also see from their sides their regrets of their immortality mixed with the hunger. Naturally, as with Uncle Boonmee... its matter of fact as that film dealt with someone's reincarnations returning to his memory, of the moment in Tropical Malady (2004) that stayed with me of a cow accidentally being shot but its ghost happily wandering off immediately in peace. Weerasethakul views the supernatural if it exists with this casualness of the ghosts merely intermingling with the daily lives of those also at this hotel, from the lovers, the friends, those with pasts involving the history of military action in the country of Thailand, and the pervading fear of flooding. Ghosts devouring peoples' guts is one thing, which happens here, but more ominous in tone is when the characters talk of how they need to be prepared for potential flooding in the area, reflecting how as we see in the distance excavators doing their work, the landscape by human and accidental influence in modernisation may influence the natural landscape too.   

A big factor to Mekong Hotel, making it a shame it is not readily available, is that this is quite important for Apichatpong Weerasethakul as a film maker. He made a film in digital also dying for a proper available release - the co-directed comedy-spy farce The Adventure of Iron Pussy (2003) made with Michael Shaowanasai I've always wanted to see. Here however marks the point he entirely moved to digital between 16mm celluloid in Uncle Boonmee to digital cinematography in Cemetery of Splendour (2015). This is a film which Weerasethakul shot, edited, directed and produced by himself to save costs, alongside a small budget financed by UK-based production company Illuminations Films¹. Also among the producers is Keith Griffiths, one of the most important British producers to exist for me, for how much he has contributed in helping some of the most interesting filmmakers to exist. He is arguably someone I should lionise as he has helped figures I adore - stop motion animators Jan Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers, Apichatpong Weerasethakul - alongside his collaborations with the likes of Christopher Petit and Patrick Keiller, two really idiosyncratic British filmmakers, and his one-offs like Tsai Ming-liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006) and Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio (2012). He deserves so much credit for making cinema far more interesting just for these examples.

The intimacy this small budget and production explains, and adds greater reward, to Mekong Hotel's intimacy. It is an opaque film but not a difficult film in terms of plot because, arguably, there is no plot. It is a string of interactions where we get into the lives of these figures, and the ghosts too, ruminating on their lives. Slow content guitar over conversations is apparently my jam, even when it keeps playing nonchalantly over a pop ghost eating someone's entrails on a hotel bed, but you can miss without sufficient cultural knowledge of Thai history some of its more striking pieces of dialogue. One female character openly talks about being taught by the military soldiers how to use a rifle and be militarized, something viewed by her as fun and matter-of-fact of an ordinary life despite being unordinary out of context. The ghost of combat is here, and still was in-between the filming of Mekong Hotel, as between this film and Uncle Boonmee you had the 2010 military crackdown on Red Shirt protestors and the 2014 military coup transpire in Thailand. Details could be dismissed, as unfortunately might have been the case to critics at the Cannes Film Festival premiere, that ask so many questions especially if you are entirely unaware of Thai history but register this, from the detail from the same female character of having dated a US soldier stationed there, and to the nod to the Mekong River being a border to Laos of Laosian migrants entering the country. There's a sobering moment discussing this, where Laotian migrants had such difficulty in living in Thailand as documented in one scene, which becomes more meaning when migrants are still a discussion today.

Some harmony is however found within Mekong Hotel. The landscape is still beautiful despite the excavation in the distance. Friendships and bonding between ghost mother and daughter transpires. There is a machine, predating what you have in Cemetery of Splendour, which lets one leave their body as a spirit explore, looking like a VR headset with the humour that the out-of-body experience is only undercut by how much battery power there is. A ghost can still live, still knit, if locked to a hotel room or so for six hundred years and needing to feed a craving for flesh. Then there is the final scene, a prologue shot of the river with jet skis in the distance which feels closer to Weerasethakul's installation projects if with the sense of tranquillity felt from sitting and contemplating the environment that is close to Apichatpong Weerasethakul for emotional weight. As well, for an underrated film in his filmography, there's also the base pleasure of just watching people having fun on jet skis, a reminder that a lot of my appreciation of his films is as much for this sense of tranquillity that permeates all of his work too.

 

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1) His Particle, Somewhere: Mekong Hotel (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2012), written by Duncan Caillard for Sense of Cinema, and published June 2021.

Venus in Eros (2012)

 

Watched Saturday 15th March

Director: Takako Imai

Screenplay: Takako Imai

Cast: Miyavi Matsunoi as Venus (as Saori Hara), Alan Vincent as David, Martin Collins as Eros, Michael Barnes as Forest Lover Michael, Kavana Crossley as Angel Kakabel, Darren Ellis as the Sculptor, Daniel Fontannaz as Angel Gabriel, Carl Harrison as Forest Lover Carl, Freddie Ingles as Angel Michael, Alex Kovas as Venus Maniac Alex, Stefan Leadbeater as Angel Sariel

 

"A hundred years ago, in a deep forest" opens a film about a status of Venus, which is also one of the obscurest films I've wanted to track down and see at least once, being a nightmare to do so despite being a British-Japanese co-production which would have made it least have a slither of availability somewhere. Honestly, probably the thing that didn't help the film is that it feels like a low budget artistically minded production which is fully committed to its niche concept, something which contrary to suggestions in image of a softcore film is very artistically minded instead.

The story begins with its director, Takako Imai, which immediately presents a layer to the production as the vision of a female artist, born in Japan and moving to London, who worked as a music journalist but would go on to make a couple of films. This theatrical length film is the last of two, the shorter production Recordare: Days of Remembrance (2009) the first, which is a prelude to Venus in Eros as a collaboration with dancers in acting roles, depicting a romance between two men involving dancers from the Matthew Bourne Company¹. Hers is absolutely a set of films belonging to this era, especially in the 2000s, of fascinating melding of cinema and other art forms, installation artists to dancer choreographers who took advantage of both the film making industry of the 2000s and, in other cases, the DVD medium when that was a popular way to make these projects available. Venus in Eros, far from an erotic film, is closest to the films on DVD I was lucky enough to see through my university library, be it the sole official release of Mathew Barney's Cremaster films, a segment of the 2003 Cremaster III dubbed The Order - Cremaster 3, and the work of Wim Vandekeybus. For the later I'm pulling from a really obscure figure from my memory, and old notes of what I've watched over the decades I've no shame I collect, especially he's the perfect comparison for Venus in Eros.

Vandekeybus, a Belgium choreographer, director and photographer made a series of dance based films over the years my university kept in a luxurious box set they acquired, and the difficulty with tracking down Venus in Eros comes with the realisation this belongs to that era of cinema, the art gallery and art installation area of moving images which, particularly in the 2000s and continuing in the early 2010s, was taking advantage of limited edition runs of DVD-only releases. The British Film Institute, even releasing a few in their early years of the DVD boom only to be more picky in the later years, have had these as well in their stores too, and whilst Venus in Eros is more sexually explicit, it fully fits into this type of artistically minded lower budget production if more likely to be lost in the cracks of cinema for the worst. Considering its initial tone, driven by its opening classical piano music over country woodlands in winter, the production from its poster and some screenshots online will jar for those expecting (or wanting) something salacious.

The most explicit thing comes from its central premise of living statues, particular a depiction of what will become the Venus de Milo, a legendary statue created in Hellenistic period which is iconic in having lost its arms in time. Because of the obscurity of this film, this review will be full spoilers to give you at least an abridged form of what Takako Imai's film is, a fantasy romance using dance to tell its tale, where Venus has her statue erected in the woodlands, there through all the seasons back to the next winter. Soon into the story having a statue of David one side to her, likely inspired by Michelangelo's legendary creation, the other of Eros the other side, the Roman counterpart of Cupid, both played by male actors body painted and erected as statues played by real people. The most explicit aspect, which makes the female titular lead a braver role, is that like many statues, their depictions of the likes of Goddesses to nymphs to leaders never shied away from natural nudity, and having seen statues in their real marble form, they are an incredible art form even from sculptors who are unknowns in their painstaking craft of human anatomy, something which this also plays too in turning real people into these living statues, blurring these lines.

The more lurid aspect of what this done, a casual eroticism but like a form of naturalism for the female lead, is the actress comfortable enough to take this lead, even if meaning being nude in full stone-grey body paint and standing still on a podium, being German-Japanese actress Miyavi Matsunoi. That is neither a criticism of her, nor her career choices in her career before this production, but central to images you find online, the immediate thing you would learn of her career before this makes this film a fascinating contrast to her previous work, when you learn of her career and that this became effectively a retirement from said turn in her early career. Miyavi Matsunoi, real name Saori Hara, whilst she would expand her career out into the live action tokusatsu, like the film Garo the Movie: Red Requiem (2010) as a villainess, and a later Garo franchise television series, started her career as a pornographic actress and model before moving into more mainstream films with the likes of Yuriko's Aroma (2010). Probably the most widely known film of this era would be Hara's role in 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (2011), a remake of the notorious 1991 film Sex and Zen but now in 3D, which marks the moment where she fully leaves the adult industry in Japan entirely for the rest of her acting career. She is the central figure of this, and this marks a fascinating conclusion as an adult film actress and erotic model. With a film that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in its market² and, through a female director's camera, her natural sensuality is used in a very humane and matter-of-fact way for its love story. Certainly, considering there are points where she has to stand still in the full statue makeup in real snow and very cold temperatures, I have to admire Saori Hara going through this shoot before leaving anything erotic in her career for good for more mainstream productions for the rest of her career.

The film, bilingual in least the form I saw it, with written English text onscreen initially for Venus' thoughts, English dialogue and Japanese text onscreen to translate said dialogue, is a simple depiction of a romance that suffers through angst before it can reach a happy ending. It involves as well a male and female caretaker for the statues as, from winter to the next one, Venus and David out of their statue forms in scenes in their own reality start to fall in love, whilst Eros the archer looks on lovesick for Venus himself but not of interesting for her at all. The film, which has some of the performances struggle a little, and long moments of contemplation of these statues and the natural landscape, got a particularly damning review back when it premiered at the 2011 Cannes festival, from Hollywood Reporter's Duane Byrge, who described that the "best venues might be side rooms in under-funded museums" and that the natural shots could be "cut and re-marketed as screensavers"². Those who could actually see the film may admittedly think the same thing, if his comments come off with cheap snark in that review, particularly as the cheap jab at museums does admittedly evoke what the film's tone clearly was as well as feels like an elitism against an area of moving images, whether good or bad, which is badly maligned in access or reporting.

The contemplative attitude of a few museum and art film DVD productions from that era I've seen if felt with this, those shot on the cameras of the era, with simple stories which are tent poles to place their contemplative moods, as it builds over the romance between Venus and David as Eros the archer looks on with a broken heart. The statues themselves are interacted with as if living people - there's a playful humour, especially in the spring section, where you've a young boy trying to get the statue of Venus to eat a vanilla ice cream cone, played off as a living statue without any sleaze involved whatsoever. There are also scenes outside of time which turn the statues in living people, alongside the caretakers, where the dance sequences come in. They are not elaborate musical number dances but symbolic choreography for the emotions of the moment, the most prominent in the summer section. Showing a more explicit version of Venus, Saori Hara plays a version closer to Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, without the giant clam and having veils instead of the longer hair in the painting. The scene involves her being dressed and helped to become human by the rest of the cast, from having make up applied to her face to being helped in learning to walk in high heels, all with the others on a white stage dressed in period costumes.

The film depicts most of the romance in choreographed dance, like the performance on a black stage between Venus and David, and applies to the conflicts too. Eros, eventually snapping unable to have Venus as she falls for another, eventually takes it out on the male caretaker, and this is the one sequence which requires a trigger warning, as this caretaker with an arrow in his back takes it out on Venus herself. The removal of her arms, with intercuts of her struggling under him as a person, in a dance choreography as a person, explicitly nods to the act as a sexual assault. The film could be criticised for how this concludes - the caretaker's cruelty, including drawing a blue tear on her cheek out of pure spite afterwards, becoming immediate remorse - but in knowledge of its female creator - Takako Imai, who is entirely on Venus' side, the depiction of her transformation into the Venus de Milo is entirely depicted with the weight of a horrible transgression of her as a being, which is treated as seriously as that should.

Some of the performances, as said, waver in quality in the line readings but suspecting the focus on casting actual dancers in these roles, it feels less meaningful to criticise and appreciate what the point was behind the choices. For me, Venus in Eros does succeed by its end, which makes Takako Imai's vanishing from filmmaking a disappointment. She had a project BBoy in a Dream, which was meant to be a documentary about breakdancing, a fascinating turn in her clear interest in dance as an art if it had ever come out. The film started shooting in 2014, but there's hope, doing an interview in closer or within 2024 about her career so far¹, one where she talks of how breakdance was added to the Paris Olympics for 2024¹, giving hope that this ten plus year project finally comes to light and Imai herself wasn't put off as a creator in the moving images field. By the time winter to winter passes in Venus in Eros, where we even get a Christmas tree, Venus in a Santa top, and a boys choir in the snow saying Merry Christmas to her, we get a small story of love, conflict around love, and its eventual success which in its scrappiness as an unconventional art piece won me over. Lightning and a downed burning tree may knock over and leave Venus a lifeless statue, but as her male lover takes her somewhere safe in the woods as spirits, a happy ending is found in the end as the credits (in Japanese) are over the tranquil landscape.

 

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1) The Very Personal Reason Behind Takako Imai’s Breakdancing Documentary BBOY IN A DREAM, written for The Fan Carpet.com, and marks itself as posted in 2024 was references to the 2024 Paris Olympics.

2) Venus in Eros: Cannes 2011 Review, written by Diane Byrge for the Hollywood Reporter, and published May 31st 2011.

The Lure (2015)

 

Director: Agnieszka Smoczyńska

Screenplay: Robert Bolesto

Cast: Marta Mazurek as Silver, Michalina Olszańska as Golden, Kinga Preis as the nightclub singer, Andrzej Konopka as the drummer, Jakub Gierszał as the bass player, Zygmunt Malanowicz as the house manager, Magdalena Cielecka as Divine Furs, Marcin Kowalczyk as Triton / Daedalus

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Stories)

 

With animated illustrated opening credits, we are introduced to The Lure, a Polish horror musical which caught a lot of interest, more so as it gained distribution through Janus Films/Criterion as a rare new release from some of the biggest names in distributing and releasing classics of cinema. It opens with two mermaids, Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Gold (Michalina Olszańska), taking interest in humans singing and dancing one night on the beach, joining in the singing and catching all off guard. Obvious, in folklore, mermaids in certain forms lured men with their beautiful singing to their demises, which is something director Agnieszka Smoczyńska and screenwriter Robert Bolesto are going to subvert in terms of the gender stereotypes. We will sympathise with these ones even if they are literal man eaters, but at this point, the trio of an older female singer, her musician husband, and the young male bassist instead decide to bring them on land to work at the restaurant bar they perform at as strippers and backup singers.

Set in Poland by way of an alternative eighties, where seventies disco did not die out, the world is grounded in reality in spite of the fantastical plot, clearly reflecting a fondness to this type of world of nightclubs from the director if not hiding the environments' moments grunginess and seediness, with a place where the older man running the club has no qualms with the mermaids working for him as long as he gets them to strip first to demonstrate they are mermaids. In this world, no one bats an eye to their clear unnaturalness, the two sisters able to grow human legs and wander the land as long as they do not stay too long from water. Even if they have Barbie doll anatomy, they look identical to everyone else if seemingly more naive from the off-set, and they re-grow their tales when in contact with water, which does well for business as spectacle. It emphasised a corporal fleshy scaly take on these folklore entities which does not hide from the sexual aspects at all in their desires and humans' desires for them. It is definitely horror too as these mermaids eat people, specially Gold who will eat men, even having a tryst with an older female police officer who finds the giant tail arousing.

The Lure is absolutely a musical too, with full songs and occasional dance numbers, such as one with a full dance chorus in a shopping mall as Gold and Silver are brought into the world of showbiz. This is all in mind that, whilst also depicting these two mermaids as outsiders being exploited and trying to figure themselves out in this world on-land, the film is explicitly a reinterpretation of Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid, the story recreated as Silver falls for the young male musician. It takes a more adult dimension in that the equivalent for full proper legs, as in Anderson's tale, is to have full human anatomy beneath the waist to be as physically loved let alone romantically, but the biggest lesson to learn from the film is never to trust men who ask you to drastically change yourself for their sake, as between his place as the lover of their female manager, or how he has a wandering eye anyway, Silver's story is going to be tragic especially as this follows the story of Anderson's tale that she will lose her voice. As proclaimed by the one merman Gold has a friendship with, Triton (Marcin Kowalczyk), a punk rock singer who literally bites the heads off animals on stage, he wanrs as well that, if Gold's love is unrequited, she will turn to foam and dissipate after a certain time after the heartbreak.

The difference with The Little Mermaid to this is that you do not expect the legs to be acquired through a back alley doctor who switches lower halves between two women to complete a tail/lower waist transplant surgery in musical song. Moments like this are why The Lure does stand out, with its wayward tone in shifting along with these strange and idiosyncratic characters even among the humans in the cast. In another film, it may seem abrupt for the mermaids to just be briefly disposed off midway through, in carpets into a body of water, when they are leaving a body count, only to be brushed under the carpet and everyone getting together, by way of a cold turkey musical number where the three human characters are emotional messes. Here however, it works within the logic of the film fully. All of it works as its own idiosyncratic form, tonally able to sustain itself with its combination of seemingly out of place parts, where the musical numbers work, with the music good, where the gore when it arrives fits especially with the sick humoured tone, and that it does have an emotional finale, even if it leads to the natural idea that guys who cheat on their girlfriends should be eaten instead.

Fugue (2018) caught people off-guard including myself, as a film less easy to sell for its cult appeal, a fitting title in atmosphere where we follow a woman who lost her memory reconnecting to her old environment, whilst The Silent Twins brought Agnieszka Smoczyńska to the United Kingdom in a drama co-produced with Poland based on the lives of a real pair of female twins. This is still a filmmaker who started theatrical length films in the 2010s, with The Lure as her debut, so the question of whether Smoczyńska will ever return to the tone of this debut is to be left on the table as a what-if. Suffice to say, having taken time to digest the film over multiple watching, I finally came to appreciate this interesting and idiosyncratic production which felt like all the best parts of a first theatrical film firing with ambition.

Theatre of Darkness: Yamishibai Season 1 (2013)

a.k.a. Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories

Director: Tomoya Takashima

Screenplay: Hiromu Kumamoto

Voice Cast: Kanji Tsuda as the Story teller

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows)/A 1000 Anime Crossover

 

The review linked to below comes with knowledge that, starting in 2013 and with more series being produced up to 2024 itself, Yamishibai may still continue into 2025 onwards. Taking the tradition of kamishibai, a form of paper play storytelling and theatre, and amalgamating it in a "micro-series" with urban legends, ghost tales and moments of general spooky misanthropy, it won me over. tIn mind that future series will even tie into cult cinema, with Noboru Iguchi (The Machine Girl (2008)) and Takashi Shimizu (the Ju-On/the Grudge franchise) getting involved from the second series onwards, and I cannot wait to get to the future series.

 

For the full review, follow the blog link HERE.

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. 

Killjoy 3/Killjoy Goes to Hell (2010/2012)

Director: John Lechago

Screenplay: John Lechago (with Carl Washington for Killjoy 3)

Cast: Trent Haaga as Killjoy, Al Burke as Punchy, Tai Chan Ngo as Freakshow, Victoria De Mare as Batty Boop and Jessica Whitaker as Sandy

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Consider it a bonus, bozo!

When Killjoy 3 was produced by Full Moon Pictures, it was as much rebooted at the same time in 2010. The first film of eight years, it frankly ditched the existence of Killjoy 2: Deliverance from Evil (2002), following from the original 2000 film as a reset. Truthfully, the franchise will not be to everyone tastes, especially the first two, but this is an interesting case where the sequels, rather than spinning their wheels, actually begin to expand the simple template of before and become really idiosyncratic. The two sequels covered here, as more came after, are not perfect even for this context, but the step up is admirable and makes this a far more entertaining franchise at this point in its history, to the point they helped me come to enjoy this franchise.

Killjoy 3 is still a low budget film, shot in mainland China and disguised as an American location, set around only two locations, the home of a professor who trapped Killjoy, a homicidal demon clown, in a mirror, and inside the mirror itself. The almost sound-alike of Joan Jett's Bad Reputation, introducing the leads after a party needs to be cleared up at the professor's house, shows at the get-go the lovably homemade nature of these films, including the use of a Puppet Master film for the characters to watch. Aptly like the Puppet Master franchise and others from Full Moon, Killjoy got a posse from this point on, the head of minions trying to figure out how to escape, even if it means trying to figure out the magic mirror's manual, and finding it even has Chinese language translation. That reference also shows that, from this point on, there is clearly an emphasis on more humour from these films on, which helps a lot even if one or two jokes between the films have became un-PC by 2020. It certainly rejuvenates Trent Haaga, who took on the role of the evil demon clown from the second film, able to have more to work with now he can be funny and, by Killjoy Goes to Hell, even pathetic for comedy effect.

Killjoy 3 still has to follow a conventional premise where a young woman Sandy (Jessica Whitaker), at the professor's house, with her boyfriend and friends, have a mirror delivered at the door next morning with the trapped soul of a demonic clown. As a result of this, the tone is still being fleshed out for this new take on the franchises, the cronies Killjoy has in particular not getting as much as they do in the next film. But they stand out aesthetically: one is a hulking if dim-witted clown, a mime sadly underused in Killjoy 3, with a brother sticking out his side, and the most interesting of the trio, a succubus named Batty Boop played by Victoria De Mare.

It is not for the obvious reason, as her design, even for titillation, is inspired by nude body painting which the actress had done on herself for both films, but also because playing the foil to Killjoy, you get a shot in the arm for humour and charisma. Named after the animated character Betty Boop, it is very clear too she is inspired by Harley Quinn, not the version Margot Robbie would bring to life, but the original character created not from the Batman comic books, but originally a figure from Batman: The Animated Series (1992-9) who became so popular, she crossed into being a canon character for the franchise. Specifically it is the original voice actress Arleen Sorkin who was also the inspiration in appearance and personality, as De Mare plays her role as the exasperated girlfriend with a voice like an old Hollywood gangster movie moll which she fully commits too, becoming the best thing with Trent Haaga of these two films.

Killjoy 3 still struggles through issues of lower budget horror and genre films, the plot basic and recreating the original Killjoy premise, but this is a higher budget take so far in the series, and is able to flex its muscles a bit more if stuck having to play to a conventional story to reintroduce these characters. Instead, it is the characters themselves, and where the next film goes, where you see director-writer John Lechago is able to have fun between the movies, with a knowing humour of Killjoy as a sarcastic evil clown. Haaga is allowed to play for yucks as much as there is now gore, coming by the end of this entry with people being served for dinner and a head being crushed by a comedy mallet. That this bothers to nod back to the 2000 Killjoy is to be admired too, as it is not wanting to separate itself from the source, as a prominent character from that original film is important here, whilst with the humour that this story has works, as much stemming from Killjoy being stiffed as a demon of revenge by the person who conjured him.

There is still the problem with a lot of exposition, as much to bring viewers up to date on the previous films, which were bare bones but they may have not seen, and also an issue with genre films in general in being unneeded. However, you are seeing this franchise really attempt to expand this character. And it pays dividends with John Lechago returning as editor-screenwriter-director for Killjoy Goes to Hell, a very unconventional sequel to any horror franchise and the best of all the four that came from the first quartet of this series. A huge reason for this is the premise, making Killjoy himself the actual protagonist, an evil clown demon who is now sympathetic as an anti-hero. Now he has been resurrected in Hell by a witch and unfortunately now has Satan himself putting him on trial for being crap at his job as an evil homicidal clown. With all his demonic names stricken permanently off from existence, he will become nothing unless he can defend himself as being legitimately evil.

This continues the resolution of Killjoy 3 where, huge spoiler, Sandie was committed in an asylum. Here, connecting this to that last film, is the issue of closure, detectives still trying to figure out what happened, especially as she is now permanently in a laughter based psychosis. Even if it is slight next to the main plot, it helps adds more to the plot of what is still a horror comedy, especially as there is some logic to this like the main detective and her psychiatrist, not believing the Killjoy legend, still taking it seriously as a concept that might have influenced the scenario psychologically. Even if with obvious CGI too, this is a really idiosyncratic film in ideas, where Hell is literally a skull faced spaceship with parts of a castle and a factory built on a meteorite, cruising in outer space. The joke of the main character being on trial for incompetence really works, with one of his spurned former lovers the prosecutor, and a former human turned new demon named Skid Mark his bumbling defence attorney with interior motives. There are some jokes and dialogue which has not aged as well, trying to be edgy, but for the most part even with its profane amount of language, this was actually funny for me, over-the-top and with gags like needing a translator of a mime translating a clown speaking carny which did win me. This alongside such sights like custard pie-ing a person so hard their head is crushed to goo on the wall, and this is what I want in my lower budget horror films and horror sequels in general, an attempt at creative imagination.

It still struggles with the limits of the budget, still limited in sets and with an ending involving a demonic clown rebellion involving a group of extras tussling in a room with careful editing, but I have to admire the production. This is a work which is a lot more ambitious with being a sequel than trying to repeat the previous films, something not learnt from far more known horror franchises in general. When jokes land, they are funny, and there is even an abruptly sombre scene as, with an inspired take on Hell being a cosmos in space, Satan shows that the ninth lower circles of Hell is literally a place of nothingness. I see this as an admirable way to try to expand a sequel to any horror film into something idiosyncratic and, more importantly with the exception of the second film, actually make sitting through the others necessary and able to be more appreciated. The franchise continues after this, John Lechago returning for Killjoy's Psycho Circus (2016) with Charles Band having produced all the films beforehand or in a co-producing them. Band is not there for Bunker of Blood 07: Killjoy's Carnage Caravan (2019), with an entirely different director and screenwriter on that production. John Lechago himself, just for the fact I was not expecting Killjoy Goes to Hell to turn out as it did, has gained a respect for me as, honestly, watching the franchise beforehand, they are films I admire for the fact any film production is a challenge to complete, making me sympathetic on any level, but by his involvement in the series, I was enjoying these films regardless of their production values.

Eldorado (2012)

 

Director: Richard Driscoll

Screenplay: Richard Driscoll

Cast: Darren Morgan as Stan Rosenblum, Richard Driscoll as Ollie Rosenblum, Daryl Hannah as The Stranger, David Carradine as The Spirit Guide, Peter O'Toole as The Narrator, Jeff Fahey as "Doc" Martin, Michael Madsen as Ted, Patrick Bergin as Roy, Brigitte Nielsen as Angel, Steve Guttenberg as J.J., Kerry Washington as Tamara, Rik Mayall as Chef Mario, Sylvester McCoy as General Zwick, Caroline Munro as Lilly, Robin Askwith as Mick, Tyrese Gibson as David, Bill Moseley as Lemma, Robert Llewellyn as "Meat", Buster Bloodvessel as the Sheriff

Ephemeral Waves

 

Opening Eldorado, the late Peter O'Toole literally has to appear onscreen, as the narrator, to explain that he is hired to clarify the events of the film we will be seeing, which will be a first for me to witness in any production. Eldorado is not very well known, and my prior knowledge of British filmmaker Richard Driscoll is entirely based on The Comic (1985), his very odd little debut which got dug up by Arrow Films for Blu Ray restoration and release, the kind of cool trait of theirs to rediscover some oddball films like that particular one. His career at some point beyond this transformed into what Eldorado became, the curious results of when known actors from Hollywood and British television, when older and stepped out of the limelight, are offered some work, the era of 2010s cinema where production design like computer effects are more freely available, and a true sense of this particular film entirely existing because this is what Richard Driscoll wanted to make for himself, with absolutely not a wink of cutting any of the tangents out of this. It is also, infamously, one of his films used as evidence for his arrest and jail sentence for a £1.5m VAT fraud, when investigators from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) investigated the production and found he had falsified invoices¹. This included how a purported production and promotion budget of £12 million was around about £750,000 instead², or the fees for the stars in this film, including late comedian Rik Mayall's supposed £44,350 for four days’ filming was revealed as 6,000 for two days².

He is definitely one of those one-offs in cinema, whatever you think of the films, certainly a man gifted with the gab as, not including other films before and after, only here is where you can get a credit list including O'Toole, Daryl Hannah, Mayall, Michael Madsen, Brigitte Nielsen, Steve Guttenberg, former Doctor Who Sylvester McCoy and others, including David Carradine even if likely here in outtakes. He also really wanted to remake The Blues Brothers (1980), which ultimate sets up why I really could not even appreciate the film in terms of a piece of delirium, that being for all its parts, its tantalising strange juxtaposing of actors from American cinema against British pop culture, its desire to indulge in areas I find not that interesting to see as a viewer instead transpired. There are aspects to the film which raise uncomfortable parts of Driscoll himself, but most of my experience of this comes from the one viewer who would have defended this for all the cheapest of CGI, the most random of tangents and the sense of self-indulgence, only to feel instead it did not progress to anything even if really an interesting form of self-indulgence. Remaking the John Landis film and paying tribute to others, in his own curious way, dragged Richard Driscoll's film down when one was envisioning stranger and more interesting ways to connect the disparate pieces altogether. This managed to get an article, written by Chris Bell and published in The Telegraph called Eldorado: the bizarre story of the worst movie ever made³, but I cannot even say my disinterest in the film is a vehement hate, but a long period of attrition where it loses me.

The set up is The Blue Brothers, only now following the Jews Brothers (director-writer Driscoll  and Darren Morgan), two Jewish musicians who are introduced having made the ill advised decision to perform for Neo-Nazis, leading to a tribute to the car chase from the John Landis movie with former Dr. Who Sylvester McCoy as a substitute Henry Gibson. Their name is an obvious if tasteless joke, but a pastiche to the original Saturday Night Live characters by way of musical numbers dubbed over the actors would have least been something, especially if this played to the lo-fi remake energy or even touched upon Yiddish music by way of local pub karaoke night. Their manager J.J. (Steve Guttenberg), in a room full of CGI flies in one of his only scenes, sets them up with a new gig, unfortunately this time for cannibals, explicitly getting into the premise of Two Thousand Maniacs by Herschell Gordon Lewis, of a group of people accidentally setting forth in a group of Southern Confederate ghosts. I suspect, rather than the original 1964, the version of the story nodded to is the 2005 remake as cult actor Bill Moseley is among these ones too as a cannibal southerner. It also shows how disquietingly easy it was, even in the early 2010s, to find Southern Confederate flags in the United Kingdom, as portions of the film were shot in Cornwall³, but cinema as well as other medium has referenced and even crossed paths with other productions and works from the past. The most obvious example to me, whilst not one of Wim Wenders' widely praised works in the slightest, is Palermo Shooting (2008), in which an acclaimed German director of highly regarded films effectively paid tribute to the filmmakers Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, when they passed away, by crossing Blow-Up (1966) with The Seventh Seal (1957), and if an art house director as Wenders will pay tribute like this whilst creating new stories, there is nothing wrong in a lurid genre film here for Driscoll to do the same. Quentin Tarantino, he who is paid tribute to and recreated in Eldorado a lot, has done this himself so many times, but notable, even when overtly referencing images and dialogue from other films, he placed them in different contexts, which begins a concern with Eldorado itself.

This begins remaking the Blues Brothers with same songs used and lip synched by the cast throughout, as this is also a musical. This is then bolted onto 2001 Maniacs, as a horror-musical pastiche which is blasphemous to the former film but tantalising as a perverse crossover within itself, alongside the fact this was originally supposed to be seen in 3D as well at a time when the format returned in mainstream cinema into the early 2010s. Then there are all the other tributes which instead come off as if they are meant to be laughed at for getting the references, but not sewn into the context so they work without this in-joke. The opening of Reservoir Dogs (1992), with the George Baker Selection song Little Green Bag, is recreated with southern cannibals, there is a briefcase with glowing contents like Pulp Fiction (1994), and the Jew Brothers are confused as the Soggy Bottom Boys in reference to O, Brother Where Art Thou (2000). There is even an actor cast to play Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, just to have an actor who clearly plays Captain Jack Sparrow in his regular career as an impersonator there, in a random back story involving a lower budget CGI kraken. It all amounts to the film focuses on referencing and recreating other films other than its own ideas. Or, if to continue this, to subvert them as one would presume.

It is also very English, attempting to hide itself as an American set film despite actors who are wavering in accents, and literally a Las Vegas set diner scene which is shot in someone's kitchen. The later however offered something beautiful as a film, a remake or tribute to these films with this literal homemade look, with the waitress having the exact accent for an American diner, and the kind of ornaments I would find in a Hollywood themed cafe for a seaside. This idea of recreating the US films in English rooms and kitchens on a low budget is something I could get into for a surreal spin on proceedings, imagining the way this could go in pastiching films in a curious hybrid and allowing the odd crossovers this has. Where I find myself as a film viewer feeling exhausted and disinterested one hour into a two hour film is that the things that interest Richard Driscoll do not match anything of this in context, as we get the Aretha Franklin scene from Blues Brothers in that cafe among others recreated with no sense of interesting for this particular viewer, only bemusement as they feel not properly tethered into the world. You can be pretentious and/or random in your films, but as long as they feel they match the beats of the moment, they least make sense even if it is up to the individual viewer to either appreciate or hate the moments as a whole, but Eldorado's biggest problem is that the scenes are fragments which do not seem to even connect together in their own logic.

There is also an uncomfortable streak of violence, in language and gore, against female characters which cannot be ignored, one of the moments where the indulgences of the film do reveal something negative in the director-writer. The risk of any personal creation is that it reveals your worse side if you yourself are guilty of anything in your thoughts that should be rightly damned, which is more prominent as a danger both in auteurs and even in micro-to-lower budget genre cinema where the creators have more leeway to create how they want, but can shoot themselves in the foot metaphorically by opening up their worldviews far more to the public in letting them see their neuroses, obsessions and/or their worse sides. Here, if by accident or an uncomfortable axe to grind, Richard Driscoll does end up with horror scenes having this misogynistic streak, or even dialogue between male characters arguing that they should date strippers but never marry them, and other such moments which feel pointedly spiteful for no reason. This is content which should be warned of for any viewer who is still morbidly curious about the film. Everything else beyond this, where these moments jut out with distaste, is entirely tame with their issues. Even when they involve prurient nudity and blood, the issue becomes that, even in terms of unconventional cinema, it really does not qualify in terms of "weird" accept for me in terms of awkward. For me a film like this should be the world where Robert Llewellyn, the actor I grew up with as Kryten in the cult sci-fi comedy TV series Red Dwarf, should have crossed paths onscreen with Moseley from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) even if Driscoll had only a day's time with one of them, just to see how two actors from wildly different spectrums could have interacted and contrasted in performances, something sadly though we were never going to get in the presentation of the film we got.

This is where Daryl Hannah, even if she is still playing the ancillary angelic figure reciting Edgar Allen Poe poetry, where the Eldorado reference comes from, intervenes in a story which brings us Moseley and Jeff Fahey attempting to recreate the trailer battle she herself was in for Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004). What we get is like when the bean eating scene from Blazing Saddles (1974) is recreated in this film; what in the original context was undercutting a classical Western shot with fart gags, this nods to it without the set up to the punch line, which is felt with a lot of the moments here, punch lines without the set up to really make the film something which, on paper, should have been one of the most gleefully strange and ambitious genre films to exist even just in terms of cast.

David Carradine is in footage recorded at another time in a random ghost fight with a woman with no context to the story, with no ties to the entire production as an actor who passed at the time it was being made, and one actress, a stripper accidentally sent the Bar Mitzvah the musical brothers were meant to in the opening, is immediately never seen again despite being established in a long topless conversation scene over the phone with Steve Guttenberg, an entire segment lost because the actress never returned. The director was even dating the main female lead, Rebecca Linley, only to break up mid-production and force him to re-cut the entire film³, which is a case of unfortunate bad luck out of his hands, but there are times where this neither works as a full story, as pieces are undercutting into each other, or even as a symbolic and/or random piece of filmic brain fever because it still wants to try to be regularly plotted film. It has the cannibals and the musical leads, but also the cheated-on wife of a strip club owner stealing a glowing briefcase, prompting him and Michael Madsen after her, yet it undercuts itself by having characters quietly disposed of messily or off-screen, and even the ending is abruptly ended, not with an ironic middle finger against expectations but a sense the film just hastily ended without thinking how to.

Within this, you find yourself stumbling over moments that, in another context, would be memorable for whether emotional response, an abrupt scene of Brigitte Nielsen in a sing-along of the song Respect with strippers, or Jeff Fahey's random Vietnam War flashback with green screen. Sometimes there were moments which did actually win me over, showing how the film could have been special, Rik Mayall as Chef Mario, as a cannibal cook, briefly appearing lip-synching gamely to a rock guitar version of Verdi’s La Traviata, or Fahey himself as a dentist without a license working on teeth in his trailer to a reggae version of Groove Me. However, most of the film does not stick in the mind, or is drowning in all the material this has over nearly two hours length. For all this film's odd cameos, luridness, and unexpected musical choices (like a cover of Born to Be Wild by Steppenwolf), nothing here ever reaches anything I myself as a viewer would find intentionally or unintentionally memorable. It feels not even with a real sense of the dreamlike or strange in the surreal sense. Despite everything about its production being shot between Cornwall and the United States, including the Wild West tourist attraction near Padstow The Spirit of the West for the cannibal's hometown of Eldorado, which could have really played this homemade tone to its advantage, it never wants this either. Even when it presents the bizarre sight of Michael Madsen lip-synching So Glad We Made It by Steve Winwood next to pole dancers, naked expect for Mexican lucha libre masks, it slipped out of the mind in the time after because the film continues on and on aimlessly. By the time of Fahey's Vietnam flashback, that was the moment too I learnt it had been fifty one minutes into Eldorado, and it already felt like I had wondered on for far too long. Eventually the film literally ends, without closure, with Daryl Hannah having her one single direct interaction with the main story, and even when Heaven is involved, which always symbolises a grand conclusion even if merely depicted with clouds here, there is not even the sense of a real conclusion. I write this review with no sense I am out to get Richard Driscoll but merely shrugging my shoulders wanting to know why the film, with all its interesting pieces, never got anywhere. All it feels like we got was, unfortunately, a group of what-ifs and jail time.

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1) Film producer Richard Driscoll jailed for three years for VAT fraud, written for BBC News and published on July 1st 2013.

2) How the ‘worst film-maker in the UK’ used Hollywood stars in huge Cornwall tax fraud, written by Lee Trewhela and published for the Cornwall Live on February 3rd 2019.

3) Eldorado: the bizarre story of the worst movie ever made, written by Chris Bell and published by The Telegraph on January 23rd 2017.