We're Going to Eat You (1980)

 

Director: Tsui Hawk

Screenplay: Roy Szeto and Hark Tsui

Cast: Norman Chu as Agent 999; Eddy Ko as the Chief; Melvin Wong as Rolex; Michelle Yim as Ah Lin; Mo-lin Cheung as Lin

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #160.

 

Don't tell me you've got to piss again.

Most horror films do not break out into martial arts fights continually. This is why Hong Kong cinema is awesome, and here in particular you have a martial arts comedy film which does not tone down the horror either - someone is sawn in half to establish the premise. This is also of note as this is a very early film by Tsui Hawk, once a Vietnam born young man who, from here, would eventually become a legendary director and producer in Chinese cinema. This is before he started playing with camera angles, editing and aesthetic style normally avoided in the martial arts genre, back when he here keeps the camera back in his fights. The premise is simple, whilst establishing though that Hawk's very idiosyncratic nature was still here however despite a drastically different tone in how is was made, where on Cannibal Island an agent is chasing after the criminal "Rolex", only to meet a community that lives off human meat picked off from outsiders.

Even the cannibals themselves are suffering inequality, as the security force lead by their leader demands more portions over the populous of half crazed people, said leader the kind with a mistress demanding not his heart but an actual one. It is a lurid spectacle, entirely a fun horror ride due to there being so many fake outs, including a trick of a cut-off hand (by tilt upwards of the camera) revealing it was an already severed one, that becomes part of the joy of how broad and over-the-top the production is. It does already show Hawk's competency in skill of Hong Kong cinema, and beside, unless you scrap the barrel, by this point you have enough people behind the camera of these Hong Kong films that it was possible to deliver a quality film even for a lurid pot-boiler.

The only detail which does jar is a questionable joke character, a very tall and broad shouldered male actor in female drag, a traditional Chinese red dress, excessive makeup and hair up. His character is viewed as a woman, rather than gay or trans or a cross dresser, but I do wander whether the joke is as much meta textual that a male actor is playing broadly effeminate or not. Thankfully, with an incredibly black sense of humour, everything else is We're Going to Eat You is great.

It is a broad premise to set up fight choreography, but this feels effortless without losing creativity. It is not remotely the most extreme Hong Kong film, as the Category III films would push barriers, but it is a fascinating hybrid found common from the region. All of it interconnects well too - the horror wraps around the action, as you have to fight off cannibals, as does the comedy which is mainly physical, and the horror is still bloody, even inventively gristly such as a self inflicted wig splitting. Even a lesser know film like this can pull out incredibly amounts of gymnastics, the hero escaping a trap which dangles him between trees with hands and feet tied a good early example, and they are as mentioned creativity, such as when roller-skates suddenly get introduced in the end weaving between the final boss fight that is also taking place in the same area.

Even the music is exceptional - a scene involving a blind man, trying to catch a character, a thief who eventually starts running around like a mischievous monkey and crawling up walls to survive, has percussion chime in at precise comic timing. I caught on, though, pieces was "borrowed" from Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977), which is not a bad thing.

Tsui Hawk would go on, becoming a veteran who influenced Hong Kong cinema even when he was the producer, and it is good to see one of his earliest projects, whilst lacking his later flair, still possessing his idiosyncratic nature. In fact, that sense of creativity even for a project like this likely helped him, cutting his teeth on a project like this where the tone itself can juggle so many pieces without collapsing. It would allow him to adapt to any production, which would benefit him in larger budget efforts and even working with Jean-Claude Van Damme, and the result here long before then also happens to be a unique horror film too.

Masters of Horror Season 2 Part 6

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The Washingtonians (2007)

Director: Peter Medak

Screenplay: Richard Chizmar and Johnathon Schaech

Based on a short story by Bentley Little

Cast: Julia Tortolano as Amy Franks; Venus Terzo as Pam Franks; Johnathon Schaech as Mike Franks; Myron Natwick as Samuel Madison III; Esme Lambert as Nancy Arnold; Abraham Jedidiah as Jared Barkish

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #28

[Spoiler Alert?]

Peter Medak qualifies for the Masters of Horror directorial chair because of The Changeling (1980), a taut and slow burn Canadian production which is underrated, a haunted house story which works as a drama and as a chilling supernatural story which uses subtlety for its impact. (I presume not for Species II (1998), the only other horror feature in his career which I saw at a young age, to be honest, alongside Species (1995) for the titillation it promised, only for schlock and H.R. Giger creature designs instead). Medak in general has one of those fascinating filmographies I would like to see more of. Hungarian born, his career includes extensive work in the British film industry during the late sixties and seventies with recognisable movies. I'm thinking in particular of The Ruling Class (1972), an epic two-and-a-half hour long satire where Peter O'Toole plays New Age Jesus much to the horror of stuffy British upper class society, a farce which has been said to including anything from musical numbers to Nigel Green as The High Voltage Messiah. One of those careers that, whilst The Changeling is one of the best horror films of its era, is worth exploring in its own right in other genres.

Sadly I can't say The Washingtonians was great despite that introduction. It's premise is utterly silly but could've made an interesting farce - imagining whether the founder of the United States of America, George Washington, was a cannibal. It's a heavy handed idea but one with potential, that the history one hold as idealised is likely to soften the real historical events, even completely go against them for the sake of myth, "printing the legend" to quote The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Particularly with individuals like Abraham Lincoln, an idealised hero who represents his country's people centuries later contrasts the more complicated version who actually lived. However I'd argue, even though it's been ten years or more since I saw the episode, that The Simpsons episode (guest starring Donald Sunderland) about the founder of Springfield  actually being an arsehole and Lisa Simpson having to deal with this issue was a far more interesting depiction of this issue.

The Washingtonians instead is pretty obvious. A lot of the problems with these lesser episodes of Season 2 are the bland families you're meant to sympathise with in the leads, presuming that a mere happy family is enough to connect to when, in reality, they should have more to them than merely an innocent kid in potential peril and their parents being generically wholesome. Said family are pitted against creepy older locals in a small town who are clearly weird in their first scene, behaving so at the start during a funeral. It's kind of obvious they're in on something from the start, and there's an absurdity unused of lunatics in powdered wigs and wooden teeth trying to get into a house and threatening to eat the occupants inside. A lot feels missing as  result A whole level of satire that could've been crammed into less than fifty five minutes. A twist from the original short story that isn't used for a dated joke from the period the episode was made, which misses out another satirical spike.  A whole level that could've happened, thinking about it mid-viewing, if there was a plot twist that George Washington was actually innocent and the Washingtonians had based their flesh eating cult on a fringe delusion. That Ravenous (1999) is a more rewarding take on pioneer era American cannibalism when this was an episode that's not got a lot to say about.

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The Damned Thing (2006)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Screenplay: Richard Christian Matheson

Based on a short story by Ambrose Bierce

Cast: Sean Patrick Flanery as Sheriff Kevin Reddle; Marisa Coughlan as Dina; Brendan Fletcher as Deputy Strauss; Alex Ferris as Mikey Reddle; Brent Stait as John Reddle; Georgia Craig as Jodi Reddle; Ted Raimi as Father Tulli

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #29

[Major spoiler warnings]

The attempt with The Damned Thing was admirable. But I don't know what to say about Tobe Hooper's second contribution to the Masters of Horror series. The most noticeable thing is that it drastically alters an Ambrose Bierce's story and turns it into a curious mix between an environmental story and an apocalypse narrative. Sheriff Kevin Reddle (Sean Patrick Flanery), the central character, suffered trauma when his father on his birthday suddenly snapped for no explainable reason, killing his wife and trying to kill Kevin as a child before he was ripped to shreds by an invisible force. This force is a curse on the men in the family, one when it goes after the males over generations brings an evil influence on everyone surrounding them, local communities turned towards irrational insanity and violence, both self harm and aggression to others, that leads to destruction and mass death.

While its subtle in back-story, the "damned thing" accidentally woken up by oil drilling and a force which has hexed the generations of people in one family, it's vague without reward. There's too many pieces missing that could've added a greater impact to the material. Especially when the monster is revealed as a CGI oil slick creature, there's a sense of too many plot points being unfocused and lacking, a misbegotten narrative as a result which should've been feature length. It also feels pointless for this to have even adapted the Bierce story as whilst that tale has enough material of interest in itself, an invisible creature and the fall out of a death its caused, it feels utterly pointless to have kept this potentially evolved predator in this episode when it's trying to be more of a literal evil from the Earth.

I cannot argue that Hooper, an older man at this time, showed so much energy with his frenzied production style here, the violent editing and intensity much more controlled and effective here than in his season one episode Dance of the Dead (2005).  There's an aggressive mood which suits a director whose famous work always had a sense of the mad and dangerous to it, heightened still here after three decades of it before. Particularly as it means Ted Raimi, he of permanent cameos in his brothers films for me, plays a priest who eventually starts howling like a madman, I can appreciate the energy.The issue is that the plot is a jumble which doesn't gel, something I have to wonder is the fault of screenwriter Richard Christian Matheson, as he also wrote Dance of the Dead which was also failed in this area. The Damned Thing because of this is a disappointment. 

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Halloween 31 For 31: Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977)

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Director: Joe D'Amato

Screenplay: Romano Scandariato and Joe D'Amato

Cast: Laura Gemser (as Emanuelle); Gabriele Tinti (as Professor Mark Lester); Nieves Navarro (as Maggie Mackenzie); Donald O'Brien (as Donald McKenzie); Percy Hogan (as Salvadore)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #27

Returning to the Italian Emanuelle films, this is far more a horror movie than Emanuelle in America (1977) was in terms of the packaging, following on in the same world as Laura Gemser's titular character goes into the deepest of South American jungle to report on a presumably lost tribe of cannibals. It's also unfortunate however that this film is clear evidence to Joe D'Amato's less than impressive critical evaluation to some viewers. He's capable as a working director of solid, lurid B-movies but alongside a danger of merely showing empty filth, his work here is perfunctory to a lazy extreme.

Once the story is set up and Emanuelle is trekking through the jungle sets with a small band of fodder around her, it's a lot of utterly bland characters stood around under the tree canopies. Whilst many Italian genre films can have one dimensional figures, the best use them as pieces part of an elaborate or gruesome moment which startle and fascinate the viewer. No such thing happens here, hampered by a snail's pace and only redeemed by an atmospheric score by Nico Fidenco, a new voice for me as a composer who now stands out as a potential creator of gems, bringing a greater depth to a pretty tawdry softcore cannibal film that doesn't deserve the quality. Particularly with the unintelligible mutterings that appear in the score, signposting cannibalistic natives watching in the bushes at unsuspecting victims, it's a quality audibly greater in every way to the drab results visually onscreen.

Drab but also distasteful even for a schlock film meant to sicken. Emanuelle in America had troubling content - including real horse wanking (for a lack of a polite metaphor) thankfully censored from every UK cut and the jarring shift from softcore sex to a snuff film subplot - but it felt like a fictitional mondo documentary which intended to provoke viewers. The Last Cannibals, not surprisingly, was a desperate attempt to rejuvenate the Black Emunuelle franchise by latching onto the growing cannibal sub-genre in Italy, becoming merely crass as a result. Having only seen only a handful, I confess that whilst I'm still curious about them I will likely view the Italian cannibal films as being very unappealing. Barring the obvious xenophobic content in their premises, the other issue with this and Sergio Martino's The Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978) is that they're average turn-of-the-century jungle adventure plots in dire need of better plot twists than more guts being shown being munched. When seeing the footage shown to characters within this film of an African tribe punishing adulterers, including a full on rubber prosthetic castration, it feels like D'Amato merely showing shocking content without the kitsch transgression of Emanuelle in America or the atmosphere of Anthropophagus (1980). As a result the film merely leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, scenes of a nun merely existing in the cast to be butchered, sexual related mutilation of both genders, and a ritual gang rape arbitrary, idiotic schlock scenes next to incredibly dumb characters standing around like prats doing nothing in a forest for an infinite amount of time.

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That this is also a softcore sex film mixed with the cannibal subgenre actually comes off as a worse tonal shift than for Emanuelle in America; the later at least felt like an unintentional kicking of the titillated viewer in the groin, especially as it was erotic in the beginning, whilst this is an utter failure in both camps. The horror is something Eli Roth managed to do better in his tribute to films like this, regardless of modern day practical effects in The Green Inferno (2013) because of its characterisation, and of course Cannibal Holocaust (1980), whilst morally problematic for its killing of real animals, is a cut above that was both a vomiting of utter nihilism with the likelihood that director Ruggero Deodato lost his mind during the jungle shoot. As softcore, it's not titillating and, horribly, Gemser is reduced to a cipher with none of the sex appeal or charisma she had before, the red haired busty vamp that is Maggie (Nieves Navarro) having far more sexual chemistry, able to get away with openly sleeping with a native guide in front of her impotent husband due to their ability to talk about it and their greater lust for treasure lost in the jungle.

This doesn't mean I'll damn D'Amato. He's capable of good work and producing Michele Soavi's debut Stage Fright (1987) is automatically applauded, but there's a clear Jekyll and Hyde scenario at hand. At one side, I'm gnashing my teeth for the up-coming UK release of Beyond the Darkness (1979) just for the hypnotic Goblin score; hell, even The Blade Master (1984) looks fun even in spite of its negative reputation. On the other side Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1980), mixing porn with zombies, looks like D'Amato creating empty grim without even any of the technical competence he's clearly capable of. Because of this he's going to be both an interesting and painful individual to shift through the filmography of...

...oh, and I nearly forgot that you see a chimpanzee smoke a cigarette for real onscreen. Something you wouldn't be able to get away with now but it spins memories of old PG Tips tea commercials with monkeys playing human beings into a strange cavity of my mind now. 

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