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.

Killjoy 1 & 2: Deliverance from Evil (2000-2)

 

Director(s): Craig Ross (Killjoy) / Tammi Sutton (Killjoy 2)

Screenplay(s): Carl Washington (Killjoy) / Douglas Snaffer and ammi Sutton (Killjoy 2)

Cast(s):

Killjoy: Ángel Vargas as Killjoy The Demonic Clown; Vera Yell as Jada; Lee Marks as Jamal; D. Austin as Monique; Jamal Grimes as Michael; William L. Johnson as Lorenzo; Corey Hampton as "T-Bone"; Rani Goulant as "Baby Boy"; Napiera Groves as Kahara; Arthur Burghardt as the Homeless Man

Killjoy 2: Trent Haaga as Killjoy; Charles Austin as Nic Gordon; Logan Alexander as Lieutenant Harris Redding; Debbie Rochon as Denise Martinez; Nicole Pulliam as Cecile “Ce-Ce” Washington; Choice Skinner as Raymond “Ray-Ray” Martin; Olimpia Fernandez as Charlotte Davis; Jermaine Cheeseborough as Eddie Jasper; Tammi Sutton as Lilly; Rhonda Claerbaut as Kadja Boszo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

The original Killjoy, the only one of the franchise I had ever seen over years, was one of many low to micro-budget horror films I picked on for that reason. A lot has changed over the years with my tastes in cinema, and Killjoy is interesting, from Full Moon Pictures and Charles Band, as a film made by a black filmmaker making a horror film set around a black cast, which should not be the immediate thing to pick up from in a review on the film aside from the fact, with mostly white directors and productions making the most well known horror films at this time into the Millennium, you get here a minority voice when even the horror genre did not feel as well representated as it probably should have always been. This story opens with a young man named Michael whom, asking a woman named Jada out, gets brutalised by her boyfriend Lorenzo and his gang. They do not suspect him to practice occult arts and try to bring forth the titular Killjoy, a homicidal clown figure. Michael neither expected to be killed by Lorenzo, who takes him to the woods to scare him, only to realise too late his gun was still loaded.

Killjoy is an odd one to try to review as, over seventy minutes, you cannot really elaborate on its premise, where the ominous creepy clown arrives a year late to bump off Lorenzo and his friends in an ice cream truck with a dimensional wormhole in the back. This is insanely economical in getting to the chase in the beginning, getting through the plot with little chaff, and concluding in a short running time. Set around Jada being under threat from this spectre, despite having long split from Lorenzo, this still has a personality, just in terms of being an early digital 2000s film, such as the vaporwave Windows 95 synth score if disarming for a horror film, or how Killjoy's opening gambit, in an ice cream truck that sells bootleg Sonic the Hedgehog headed lollies, is to drive up to Lorenzo's friends and offer them special weed. Effectively, this character is inspired by Freddy Krueger if not preying on people in dreams, able to wander in real life and taking people into the ice cream truck. Said truck sends them to a scary warehouse out of dimension where he can kill you in a variety of ways with wisecracks following. It cannot really do the elaborate effects of the Elm Street franchise, though this presents the warning to never smoke a random joint you find lodged in a chain link fence, or you will be lit up in many ways than one, and at its short length, there is no time to mood building. Thankfully you do get, in its swift length, Ángel Vargas as Killjoy, someone who brings energy to the proceedings because he decided to swing for the fences with the performance, plus a subversion of a genre trope of a no bullshit elder sage who cuts past being mocked for his supernatural warning to the leads by just providing them the truth psychically.

Sadly with Killjoy 2, a lot of this established lore goes out the window, and it feels more disappointing for me because a) this is a female filmmaker, again which should not need to be pointed out barring how at the time female filmmakers even in genre cinema were more a minority voice, and as someone who has come to admire micro-budget films, I have to respect anyone who tries to make a film. This is especially the case as a film where J. R. Bookwalter, a director of this field behind the likes of The Dead Next Door (1989), helped as a co-producer. Nonetheless, I have to admit I was not taken by this sequel, which promises a more elaborate premise, a group of criminals, petty thieves alongside a few women, including a sex worker caught for soliciting and a psychologically traumatised woman who was done for pyromania, who are taken by two police under orders to help construct a house to compensate for their crimes. You can also see a semblance of a very interesting premise as one of these criminals had cocaine planted on his by two white cops, a semblance of a political critique if there ever was one.

All minor demeanour figures, regardless, find themselves stuck in the woods with just the two cops sent to keep an eye on figures who double their number, a logic gap not of concern when the guys are goofing about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and getting condoms thinking they can seduce the female officer. Things go south when, after the car breaks down, someone is shot by a local thinking they are trespassing, by the director herself playing a hillbilly stereotype with a shotgun. In the chaos afterwards, Killjoy is summoned presuming he could heal him only to cause bloodshot, despite the warning of the voodoo priestess they wander into the home of. Killjoy is abruptly introduced after said priestess introduces him for the first time in the dialogue, and it is here that the film feels very disconnected from the original, sadly as much because Ángel Vargas is not here to reprise the role.  Whilst the new actor Trent Haaga does a good chicken impression and tries, what they established with the character in the first film is lost, and the sequel in general is a significant step down from before. Barring one scene where chattering teeth are used to gruesome effect off-screen in a wooden outhouse, there is a film here which feels too restrained to fully embrace a chaotic tone, trying to tell a story which is less interesting than if it had jettisoned it.

As her first film, thankfully Tammi Sutton would continue to direct and produce after this production, which in mind to how IMDB can be challenged for accuracy, was a film shot in only eight days¹. That does not necessarily equal a film can falter, but in this case struggles there is the sense they could not get much onscreen barring the essentials, and what they were able to create was material which did not win me over. Craig Ross Jr., the director of the first film, directed other films and television, never returning to the franchise as did Angel Vargas, never returning to the Killjoy role whilst Trent Haaga would reprise the role in sequels. There is a significant gap where the franchise was put on ice by Full Moon, taking to 2010 with Killjoy 3. This leaves this as a double bill of the early version of the character, before a reboot in many ways, from the 2010s onwards. Killjoy would come dormant for those eight years before the additional sequels would fully immerse this as part of the many franchise that Full Moon Entertainment would have under their belt; truthfully, Killjoy 2, if I still had any of the venom of my younger self, would replace the first film as one I once had on a "Worst List", but I do not even feel that way inclined anymore, only disappointed it did not appeal to me whatsoever, wishing what is here over rewatches will grow on me in spite of that initial disappointment so I can be able to appreciate it. Killjoy is an economically put together film which does not have the lurid weirdness of other micro-budget films, but I can appreciate for what it does, accomplished and tries, so I find the long time to reach it with happiness.  

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1) IMDB's trivia page for Killjoy 2: Deliverance from Evil.

Kekko Kamen (1991-2)

 

Directors: Kinji Yoshimoto, Koji Morimoto, Nobuhiro Kondo and Shunichi Tokunaga

Screenplay: Masashi Sogo

Based on a manga by Go Nagai

(Voice) Cast: Emi Shinohara as Kekko Kamen; Arisa Andou as Takahashi Mayumi; Jouji Yanami as Principal Toenail of Satan; Kazue Komiya as Gestapoko; Kikuko Inoue as Yuka Chigusa; Kiyoyuki Yanada as Mizutamari Tsuyokarou; Mika Kanai as Tanaka Hanako; Mitsuaki Hoshino as Teacher Ben Kyoshi; Tesshō Genda as Shuwarutsu Negataro

 

My designer is a pervert.

At Sparta Academy, a strict system of punishment is carried out by the head master, a masked jester known as Principal Toenail of Satan. Openly uninterested in any of the male students succeeding in life, and a pervert alongside his sidekick and teacher Ben, he employs bizarre punishment teachers to sexually humiliate female students who fall behind in their studies. One by the name of Mayumi Takahashi is a specific target for them, taking the constant brunt of the staff's interest. However, there is always a mysterious female figure there to protect Mayumi named Kekko Kamen, who wears a mask, a scarf, gloves and boots... and completely nothing else. As the synopsis describes, and images of either the anime, the manga or the live action films show, this is one of those franchises which could be embarrassing to talk about, and has not aged well. Go Nagai himself from the 2010s has had a renaissance around him in the West, especially since an adaptation of one of his manga Devilman Crybaby (2018), distributed by Netflix, took the world by storm. His work has gained admiration even before then, whether his giant robot anime, or characters like Cutey Honey who, even if she has had version playing into her transformations in a sexual way, is a magical girl character many love and even had adaptations made for different audiences. Here though we are reminder that, even if his work has been celebrated as subversive he has his whims and some of them are like Kekko Kamen.

It also needs to be stressed to how Kekko Kamen was actually a joke Go Nagai created to send to his manga editor at the time thinking it was be immediately be rejected¹. A parody of Gekkō Kamen, a legendary superhero figure and one of the first of Japanese superhero characters, it was meant to only get a reaction out of said editor only for that person to actually want to publish it as a continuing series. Nagai is not one to have shied away from the perverse in his work too. Between becoming a legendary figure in manga and anime, including his significance in giant robot stories, his first successful manga, Shameless School (1968-1972), was a sex comedy which made him a pariah of moral standards groups. However the fact that Kekko Kamen, this joke he created, managed to last for five volumes, had a 1991-2 anime for the video market, and eleven live action films, is probably something he is baffled about to this day as some viewers might too.

The premise, even if crass, makes sense for a sexy anime if with the notable concern in how this surrounds "punishment" and sexual humiliation, which is a contentious thing to deal with for this anime when experiencing it. There is an obsession in anime with the shame of public nudity, which is played for a joke in many cases and is still argued to be problematic, but is fascinating to scrutinise in terms of imaging anime high school being a melting pot of neurosis, hormones and these types of fears; here it is taken further than this. It is also an anime, whilst only four episodes long, under two hours altogether, which is a chore to sit through and is the worst thing to introduce as anime to someone who has never seen any, even if you were to choose one with sexually explicit content as the first. The fatal combination of how icky the premise is and how utterly lame it all becomes its downfall, as it tries to parody itself with four wall breaking gags and comedy that cannot overcome its icky subject. All four episodes follow the same template exactly. A new punishment teacher is introduced, they always torment the main female character Mayumi, and Kekko Kamen eventually steps in to save the day, usually with her nunchucks and with a finishing attack that cannot be described any more politely as nude spread legged suffocation.

Even with the Barbie Doll nudity, it is a fetish anime full of ripped underwear and titillation that is off putting because it is all at the expense of the female characters without their consent. This show was once cut for release by the British Board of Film Classification in fact because of this, only to be finally be released uncut on my shores in 2007 by ADV Films², a company that no longer exists which, even with their less edgy anime releases, definitely feel of the era with stuff that has not aged well or is cheesy to consider just in their promo trailers. The Kekko Kamen anime in its original form is not a work, even if trying for cheek and a sense of humour, you can defend, particularly as the first punishment teacher would immediately put people off the show. She is Miss Gestapoko, a BDSM queen from (sic) Auschwitz Academy and ranked by fully uniformed Nazis, as offensive as you can get but quietly buried afterwards, something which comes from the point of deliberately going for the most tasteless idea but in the modern day making the worse introduction to the premise as people will find this material even more problematic than before. After that, a bodybuilder whose muscles are the heroine's kryptonite, a female android and a stereotypical ronin samurai seem normal, but you still have to work around its modus operandi being non-consensual. There are moments which can be fished out of virtue, but this will be a huge struggling point for many, especially as the humorous tone can make this more an issue than if the show took itself seriously. Considering the lightness of the end credit songs, with lyrics penned by Go Nagai himself and sung in earnestness by the female singer, it feels disingenuous to what from the song's tone should have been a more light hearted and cheekier sex comedy about a female heroine.

Production wise, it is a cheap show. As much as I reveal in this type of crackerjack, cheap anime from this period, with Kekko Kamen it has also the villain of the week structure which presents a huge issue to for anything to progress. The tone, in another production, would work but is at odds with the subject matter, be it the composer Keiju Ishikawa's score, of its time and low budgeted but still more interesting and diverse, or that the only progressive aspect is how Mayumi crushes over the girls around her, including Kekko Kamen herself. Jokes about Kekko Kamen's nudity and voluptuousness aside, this part of Mayumi's character, crushing over multiple female characters and the whole gimmick of the show could be subversive in another tale. That in itself becomes a thing to consider for this show, how even if with a gaze over young women, this sex comedy could have actually succeeded if one of its key aspects, the sexual humiliation, was removed, a trait that is clearly something more acceptable from a different time period which we look even more damningly on nowadays. A more light hearted and openly erotic tale, still about an evil school full of punishment, but where one girl's relief from it all is an older girl who is a literal superhero, who kindles your romantic longings even when she is brazenly nude all the time, would have worked. Arguably one of the punishment teachers without the content, the robot, would have worked in this tone too; the beautiful girl, the best in class, willing to help you study, only to suddenly start insulting you one night because your grades are still struggling can be one of the few serious and nightmarish aspects which could have been retained. Even the really crass joke that an off-switch is one of her breasts, because her creators were perverts, could stay, but it is when the show has to linger on a female character being restrained against her will and tormented, even if no way near as extreme as a Urotsukidôji title, where the work loses credibility. Controversially, even Urotsukidôji was meant to depict the horrors of demonic entities, and its problems were an undefendable bias to titillation than being proper ero-guro transgression, whilst Kekko Kamen should have been fluffy and silly, causes one to feel gross, and is arguably less defendable because of this attitude.

The origin of this premise does explain this adaptation's lack of legs, already burnt out by its halfway point, even though there is enough here which could have been salvaged. It is telling how Go Nagai views school for example, even with mind how he specifically named it Sparta Academy; even if you only known of the ancient city-state of Sparta through Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's 1998 graphic novel 300, or the 2006 film adaptation, it is damning even as a joke premise how the Japanese school system is viewed by Nagai as like a militaristic civilisation, where the weak perish and only warriors of education may survive. Aspects like this which make the work a little bearable and could have been good can be found, be it the parody of Gekko Kamen itself, that Toenail of Satan has nightmares of Kamen entering his bedroom while he is sleeping to give him permanent testicular pain, despite also having masochistic tendencies wishing for Kekko to be his dom, or the fourth wall breaking jokes which work, like the villains complain how Kekko is not using her theme music (which can be heard in this world), or how Mayumi's friend Chigusa Yuka can break the fourth wall, aware of the viewer and able to talk to the screen away from the rest of the cast.

The show even without its problematic centre can also be viewed as very sexist, such as the premise of Kekko being weak against a bodybuilder's physic, and that it takes her the whole episode to realise she can close her eyes to fight him, which would need to be factored in for this premise to ever work. It is juvenile, even if it was not a premise meant as a joke, and there is a sense that a lot of this comes off far more problematic nowadays than it already was as we have rightly reassessed how problematic content like this is. Coming from someone who believes that almost any idea, no matter how bad or tasteless it is, can work if the tone or point of the premise is exactly right, Kekko Kamen is completely misguided in presentation and point. It should be, even if an embarrassing anime to show others, a light hearted comedy. One without the Nazis, without the uncomfortable harassment fetish, without the awful jokey nature and something which, even if the idea of a super heroine who parades herself completely naked barring a mask and accessories is still juvenile, was fluffy and silly. A sex comedy with a farcical edge to it, even one which bordered into the pornographic area of anime, could have worked, everything that this anime never was sadly. Considering its origins as a gag, the chance of sustaining it was virtually slim from the beginning and the anime proves it, even in how that the final episode teases how, if the tapes sold well in Japan, more than what was released would be produced, something which never came to be. It is a bad work to consider Go Nagai from, but sadly for a time, this might have been one of the few adaptations, least in the United Kingdom, that existed from someone like him who is a huge name in the manga and anime mediums. Whilst examples like this in his career show his flaws, his well regarded reputation for when he created characters that could be emotionally attached to and be reinterpreted in so many ways is a far more interesting side to look at than something which is just tasteless and off-putting.

 

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1) Conférence public de Gô Nagai à Japan Expo 2008 ! (in French). Written by Gemini and published by Review Channel on July 8th 2008. Archived from the original on August 22, 2008.

2) The Melon Famers page of Kekko Kamen for BBFC Cuts K: Kb-Km

Killdozer! (1974)

 

Director: Jerry London

Screenplay: Ed MacKillop and Theodore Sturgeon

Based on the novella by Theodore Sturgeon

Cast: Clint Walker as Lloyd Kelly; Carl Betz as Dennis Holvig; Neville Brand as 'Chub' Foster; James Wainwright as Jules 'Dutch' Krasner; James A. Watson Jr. as Al Beltran; Robert Urich as 'Mack' McCarthy

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #259

 

It's too heavy to hang and it's too big to put in the gas chamber.

What is a killdozer? That sounds almost a joke, but this term has three meanings, four if you include the original novella by Theodore Sturgeon that connects to the others. One is, sadly, a real incident named after the short story, where after a series of conflicts with the local government in Granby, Colorado, a man named Marvin Heemeyer on June 4, 2004 went on a rampage. With a modified armour-plated Komatsu D355A bulldozer which even had guns fitted inside to fire, he managed to destroyed multiple buildings, including the town hall, though this thankfully led to no one being harmed baring Heemeyer's own suicide. Thankfully, the other two Killdozers are pleasanter. One, likely getting its name from the TV movie we will cover here, is a Wisconsin noise rock band behind a goofy yet catchy song called Knuckles the Dog (Who Helps People), of the era in the early 90s, thanks to grunge and Nirvana, when very unconventional areas of rock got even mainstream interest in belief they could be sold to the public. The third is the TV movie itself, infamous as a film, readapting the 1944 novella which was originally set in World War II and a Pacific Island, transporting it to the modern day and an island off the coast of the African continent.  

About a bulldozer possessed by an alien life-force, mowing down a group of male construction employees on said island, Killdozer the film is fascinating as, if ever one wanted to point out what American seventies cinema was like, even this ludicrous premise is taken with all the gravitas of the New American cinema wave of the era, as if the script was penned by Paul Schrader with Sam Peckinpath directing this. It is about a group of men, some broken down and one a former alcoholic, all outsiders, isolated and facing their own morality except the fact it is a giant Caterpillar D9 bulldozer which terrorises them, even having ominous shots watching them over them burying a fallen comrade on the beach, looking over on a hill nearby. Jaws (1975) was this, released a year later, with men facing a shark, but no one would bat an eyelid, even if the legendary USS Indianapolis speech by Robert Shaw in a contest with industrial vehicles would be ridiculous. John Carpenter effectively took this film's tone with some of his films, but even Christine (1983), about a sentient car, was not this po-faced. Killdozer because of this tonal schism was compelling for me.

Killdozer is a bleak film in tone, even if this is about a bulldozer being compelled to murder due to contacting with a glowing blue meteorite. This is a film about men isolated where, when one is killed due to the shock of just the bulldozer scoop hitting the meteorite, already forces the tiny group to have to mourn their death, including Dutch (James Wainwright), a member who mourns him the most and who goes through the most compelling journey. Their foreman Kelly (Clint Walker), due to a history of alcoholism, is almost robotic in his coldness, as he tries to get them to keep working until it becomes obvious what is attacking them. Even if Dutch, losing his mind and becoming more childlike as he copes in memories, suggests there has to be a logical explanation for all this, including remote control, they realise quickly this is an inhuman circumstance. The absurdity is not even a killdozer, a giant monstrosity of a machine which can crush and destroy, but how this is depicted includes the logical gap that, whilst able to gain some speed, this cast could easily outrun it on foot.

Barring the sci-fi beeping noises it makes, the grounded production style, matter-of-fact in an era prolific of television movies, fits this film's severity in tone. A brisk film in pace, with no fat at all, this could almost work barring presentation details which helped with its infamy. The film even in a way deals with its absurd premise outright in thought, as the survivors have to contemplate with how, if they live, they explain the casualties and property damage to their superiors, even if they have to accept that telling the truth will brand them insane. There is a line which, knowing of before seeing the film, is absurd when heard of, pointing out that you cannot hang a bulldozer for murder practically, but spoken from Dennis (Carl Betz), the right hand man of Kelly, it does come with a morbid humour from this character, a figure is sardonic, accepting this dumb situation. It does not defend the film's truly haphazard tone, entirely because of what it is about, but it does ask of why a premise like this is ridiculous, helping the film get a cult reputation. Something about cursed objects in horror, certain examples, are more accepted than others but it depends on what they are. These objects like a bulldozer are banal objects, though a Caterpillar D9 is an intimidating machine even used in military service. This is not the same as a film called The Refrigerator (1991), which played to its absurd premise, where the concept of what is possessed sounds inherently ridiculous, though a giant American fridge if hit with would still kill someone. Here, presentation, with its headlights made eyes and its habit of driving around in circles like a lunatic, is where the strangeness lies.

More so as, adding to the serious tone, the cast whilst mostly of television fame are the sort of character actors of this era in American cinema which really emphasises the era this was made in. Clint Walker was the long western television series Cheyenne (1955-1962), whilst the other figure ultimately a protagonist is Carl Betz as Dennis, a prolific television actor who did dabble in cinema too. One actor who definitely cements how even the casting is of its time, and the one actor I recognised and was happy to see, is Neville Brand as 'Chub' Foster, who I know as an immediately recognisable face, of granite, from Tobe Hooper's Eaten Alive (1977), playing the owner of a hotel who keeps a man-eating crocodile in the back waters.

It does emphasis how tone and circumstance does drastically effect a story as, if made in the 2000s, a made-for-television work like this would be possible taken as serious, but not as severe in tone, likely have more than just male actors in the case, or if with the SyFy channel, possible made like their many monster movies of the era with obvious CGI and a possible ironic edge. Killdozer is, as made-for-TV horror films go, one that is iconic though for me always heard as in a notorious way. It is undeniably silly, but I found myself compelled by it taking itself so serious, and being well made, that it comes off even more compelling as a pop cultural artefact for having virtues too.

Killer Tongue (1996)

 

Director: Alberto Sciamma

Screenplay: Alberto Sciamma

Cast: Melinda Clarke as Candy; Jason Durr as Johnny; Mapi Galán as Rita; Mabel Karr as Old Nun; Robert Englund as the Prison Director; Doug Bradley as Wig; Michael Cule as Frank; David Dale as Portia; Daniel Edwards as Loca

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #219 / An Abstract List Candidate

 

Speak! Speak! Move your fuckin' lips and move them fast!

Odd films always exist, even if you have to dig for them if they have been left from public availability. Streaming, for all my issues with the format for not being reliable for preservation, has thankfully compensated as a great place to stumble over these oddities I am interested in. This one, for example, was a movie I entirely had an interest in because of lead actress Melinda Clarke -, who most will know from Brian Yuzna's Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993), had been on my radar for years. I first knew of --- however, growing up, through her reoccuring guest character in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2001-11), the original Las Vegas set version of the franchise where, staying almost entirely in television work later in her career, she has the character of Lady Heather, a professional dominatrix whose relationship with William Petersen's Dr. Gil Grissom became a potential romance that lasted over a long period of time in the show's running plots.  Her film career is not as substantial as her television work though. Spawn (1997), as a female henchman, is probably the most high profile role, but was clearly cast in mind to her physical beauty only, and is not a good film in the damndest. Return of the Living Dead 3 is in context an exceptional piece, the iconic film in her career (just for the final version of her appearance as a character), if once a divisive sequel to the original 1985 Dan O'Bannon production and one of the few films in said career at all.

Killer Tongue is obscure, a Spanish-British co-production from a Spanish director who would continue to the modern day as a filmmaker. This is also a mid-nineties film; odd films thankfully always exist, but they change as the culture does, so this is a Frank Henenlotter premise if it cross with the post-Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez era of cinema, of a heightened style and crime genre tropes matched with a sensual nineties ambient soundtrack by the director's own band Fangoria. One with a greater awareness than other films then since as I suspect it was influenced a little by Alex Cox's Repo Man (1984) and Natural Born Killers (1994), and with a bit of the history of Spanish cinema there, as I am sure Pedro Almodóvar inspired the fact that, when a meteorite with an alien lifeform provide's Melinda Clarke's Cindy with a sentiment tongue, her four poodles turn into drag queens from the same source.

Candy is the girlfriend of Johnny (Jason Durr), who with two other men pulled off a heist. The couple ditched their friends, but Johnny was arrested whilst she was hiding as a nun for a time among a group running a gas station. The film proper begins when, with his release imminent, she locates herself in an abandoned home with her dogs. The meteorite lands one night, projecting the alien form through the house window into her soup, strong enough upon consumption to propel her into the air from the shock and gives her a parasitic tongue that can extend and make roast chickens explode, requiring human beings for sustenance. The poodles, now human beings due to eating what was split on the floor of the soup, attempt to assist her find said food but she is trying to continually get rid of the tongue until it, with its own mind, tries to convince her otherwise. Contrasting this is that Johnny, on a chain gang in the middle of the desert, is the fixed target of a prison director (Robert Englund), who wants to keep him in jail with his ground, and the two men who were cheated out of the money trying to look for the couple. Englund, chewing scenery like a king, loves tormenting his prisoners, playing golf using Johnny's own head as a tee, and eventually requiring a white bird with a broken wing he calls "Johnny", developing a weird attachment to it as he thankfully becomes a major character in himself.

You could have left this merely as a crime film. Instead, we see a man fellating a petrol pump hose in a nun's hands as a threat. When this leads to split petrol ruining his white suit, he deliberately crashes into a random person's van in the middle of a countryside road whilst driving butt naked and, when that man smashes through his own windshield, proceeds to steal their clothes. It is similar to Raúl Ruiz's Régime sans pain (1985), where in a sci-fi future to win a competition to become the king, the protagonist steals a jacket off a man in a burning car from a random accident. That connection is not out of place, as we get an inside the mouth camera shot out to the world beyond the teeth to match Ruiz's City of Pirates (1983), all in a film where you also get the camera taking a POV from the tongue's perspective as it enters down a victim's throat and right out through the anus.

Killer Tongue's Henenlotter-lite tone does help considerably, especially when the tongue starts to talk, after many attempts to Candy to remove and even burn it off with an iron, developing three pronged fingers and helping the film in its content immensely. Sadly, this is later on in Killer Tongue but it is a pleasure, the film embracing strange tangents as a result, causing one to ask whether it is self pleasure if one's lover is your own (alien) tongue, and when this leads to the pair expecting a baby. Surrounding this is a lot of eccentric content, where even the meteorite is a curiosity, not only a mute nun from the gas station going to it after having visions, but for the fact that direct contact with the rock with water causes things to explode,  something one poor bugger learns urinating up it.  One of the highlights is Englund too by himself. Always a figure who invoked class and elegance, when he does decide to be weird and/or chew scenery, it is a blast, Killer Tongue providing at least one virtue of giving him a part which exploits both.

This is not a profound film, like many motivated by event in terms of the characters antagonising each other, desiring basic things like love and material wealth. It is adequate in terms of how it was made technically, the more prominent aspects its aesthetic style which is deliberately heightened. If you were to remove the build up to out of scenes in this film, it is the kind due to its tone which gets weirder and leads to questions, such as how Johnny ends up threatening to leave a car in the middle of the desert, one he is handcuffed to, for not providing water from the radiator for him to drink. Killer Tongue is stylish, and of the era, a film I wanted to see and was entertaining. Since the key reason I wanted to watch the film was because of her, I will admit that you could have lost Melinda Clarke in among that manic weirdness around her, the tongue itself which is pulled off well in special and practical effects, and someone like Englund stealing the film from the rest of the cast. Even the film itself does dangerously lose her into the role of the downed, villainous woman especially when Johnny shows affection for the mute nun. Thankfully Clarke, who tragically stuck to television for most of her career, had an incredible "it" factor which is not lost, even when decked out in a (symbiotic) black suit from the alien and is trying to cut an alien tongue off that has grown in size. It would have been fascinating as a career if she stayed with genre and cult cinema, but if television was a better direction, one should not complain at a working actor finding something better for their livelihoods.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Weird

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

Kuso (2017)

 

Director: Steve

Screenplay: Steve, David Firth and Zack Fox

Cast: Iesha Coston as Missy; Oumi Zumi as Kenneth; David Firth as Royal); The Buttress as B; Zack Fox as Manuel; Hannibal Buress as Kazo; Tim Heidecker as Phil; Donnell Rawlings as Mazu; Diana Terranova as Pepper; George Clinton as Doctor Clinton; Shane Carpenter as Charlie; Sandra R. Kisling as Michelle; Mali Matsuda as Angel; Regan Farquhar as News Pirate

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #189 / An Abstract Film Candidate

 

[Warning: Not because everything in this film is offensive but, with full spoiler warnings, there is stuff here even in these descriptions too weird for some people to even picture.]

 

The sun cries while eating ice cream.

Around the time I first saw Kuso, I had watched Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019). Now, an introduction like this, referencing a document about the representation of African Americans in horror cinema, is always in danger of digging one's own grave. As a white Englishman, especially digging one's grave. Horror Noire was nonetheless disappointing as, with many documentaries in general, they feel slight when a book, can cover more with the vastness of their pages. Horror Noire, adapted from a non-fiction text, was disappointing in that with the chance to allow African American commentators (actors in horror cinema, directors, academics and even bloggers) it felt slight. It did touch films in need of more comment, such as Bill Gunn's Ganja & Hess (1973), but it felt like we had barely scratched the surface of a bigger idea, not digging out obscurer figures or modern day creators who might not sell such a documentary. Whilst I completely understand why you devote a huge amount of only eighty or so minutes to Jordan Peele's Get Out (2017), as that was a monumentous film out of nowhere in American horror cinema, it did raise one concern for me merely for appealing to the mainstream when it comes to depicting minority voices.

One I can feel comfortable asking, even as a white Englishman, which is a concern that since the mainstream means homogenised for myself, sanding the edges off individuality whether it can appear to everyone or not still, if the goal is just all populist mainstream voices to represent minorities in cinema, the people who are not white cis-gendered heterosexual filmmakers, the idea for all voices getting to make films will still be compromised. Horror likewise needs its idiosyncratic voices as much as more representation for all, even if the films resulting from it are like today's subject, likely to baffle and mortify even die-hard horror fans with its body liquids, perverse sexual content and freakishness.  This long prologue is needed as, step forward musician and music producer Steven "Flying Lotus" Ellison making his film making debut here, he commented in an interview that he made a film as divisive, weird and bold as Kuso with mind to what film, if he got to make one, he actually wanted to make. To quote his own words than reinterpret them "I don’t want to make a fucking period drama [...] I don’t want to make a fucking hood movie. [...] I was like, ‘Lemme make something for the young ratchet-ass 16-year-old kid who like horror films and give them something to latch on to.’¹”

Kicking off with a news broadcast being hijacked by a jazz rap news report about the inevitability of the new world, where the ultimate earthquake hits Los Angeles and a disease leaves everyone with pocks or boils, you immediately get the energy of something unpredictable and unique. Immediately in a film where people steal scenes, you have off-the-bat rapper Regan "Busdriver" Farquhar as someone I had never heard of until this film performs a bravado jazz rap. From here, Kuso is effectively an anthology film, where Ellison is not going to pull his punches, under the directorial name "Steve", as the first narrative we are introduced to, in a work where they tangle together in a web, has a brother and sister having a kinky incestuous relationship, kissing in bed as goo smears between their lips followed by eroticised strangulation she performs on him.

The title itself is a Japanese colloquialism for “shit,” which in itself should be a warning and an apt title for describing what is to be witnessed. When this film first premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, it got a reaction of surprise, repulsion, some walk-outs and dumbfoundedness. Rather than attempt write coherent paragraphs to a work intentionally structured with very tangled structures and whiplash turns, it is better to just write out all my notes, scribbled through the film, and elaborate on this in detail:

 

There are photo collage animation sequences. It is reminiscent to the 2010s era work by micro budget director Joe Castro in their grotesque nature, an obscure choice but apt as I have covered him quite a bit, but with actual photographs and illustrative sources.

 

This is not an unexpected tangent for Steve in his career either, as one his album You're Dead (2014), to match its theme, explicitly dabbled with the Japanese ero-guro aesthetic by hiring manga author/illustrator Shintaro Kago to design the LP illustrations. The tone and humour can probably be explained by the fact, alongside co-writers of segments, his early career included producing much of the bumper music on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block.

 

For the second segment, most would presume the weird fish things that look liked defrosted chickens in a woodland river are the key plot point, especially as there is a man watching one transfixed to the point he starts getting an erection. Instead, it is about a boy (played by an actor of short stature) who feeds his own poo to a strange tongued mouth rock in the woods.

 

Another is a woman eating her way out through concrete to her child underground. Reminiscent of Shinya Tsukamoto's Haze (2005), where the director-writer-star is trapped underground where there are death traps. Haze did not lead to its protagonist, falling down a hole, briefly appearing in a sitcom called Socks where your legs are fused together with another person.

 

Even the tangents are weird, minute digressions like old game show footage remixed where a competitor has either to resuscitate a dead child or drink a jug of spit donated by farmers, an unexpectedly British moment of twisted moment of this mostly American project, a likely collaborator for this to be mentioned later on in this review.

 

TV faced fur people watching television with a human woman opens another segment, arguing about the quality of a film whilst smoking weed and admitting to their female roommate her parents are in another dimension as farmers (or likely dead).

 

Said female lead, with these transdimensional roommates, was someone I only recognised when she has a music video scene later involving male genital mutilation and I recognised her rapping voice. Then I only realised she was The Buttress, a New Jersey artist who uses horror and occult imagery for her music. Throughout Kuso, Steve's film like his music is full of distinct guest stars in front of and even behind the camera.

 

I will get to others as I go along, but prominently for the scripts, Steve alongside Zack Fox has David Firth write as well as have act in vocal only performances. He is of note as, born near myself in the county of Derbyshire, Firth came to prominent in the mid-2000s by the time YouTube came to be with the web animated series Salad Fingers (2005), about a green alien-like man with a fondness for licking rusty pipes, only to continue on in his animation to the current day.

 

Also worth noting are all the composers involved. Not surprisingly Steve himself works on his own film, but so does a few others. To my surprise, this includes Aphex Twin, the legendary British musician, and Akira Yamaoka, famously known in video gaming circles for his soundtracks to the Silent Hill franchise of horror games. The music altogether is appropriate for the film, striking in its mood building.

 

Also among the cast is Tim Heidecker, of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, as the Buttress' stalker turned potential love interest after a one night stand, who is introduced sticking his head out the toilet with a turd on his head expressing how that night it felt like he was with a dog corpse. Considering his willingness to do a bare arse shot later on, with what can only be described as a David Cronenberg approved sex doll monstrosity, he among many deserve credit for their willingness to be put into these situations.

 

Kuso's fragmentary nature, segments intercutting into each other with fragments, is a style that is distinct. Some will find this unfocused, and it is why this review has had to devolve into a lengthy list to quantify it all. It does leave a layer of unpredictability however, unsure what in God's name is going to transpire especially as by this point in terms of being the viewer, Kuso after feeling eccentric but not dumbfounding me manging to push me over that line with the "1-88-Rat-Fuck!" fake ad. It can only be described as a phone sex advertisement, shot-on-video, which actually gets into consensual tentacle porn with two very actresses writhing with a prop Cthulian horror. This was when Kuso finally started getting into territory that even surprised me.

 

None so much as this ad leads to another segment, an abortion clinic which also consults men for sexual dysfunction issues. By this point, there is an inherent sense (deliberate) of unpredictability and improvisation, such as a patient feeding his money into a talking blow-up doll, an absurdity to laugh at as well as feel on edge from.

 

Returning back to the prologue of the review, Steve in another interview talked of how difficult it was to find African American actors to star in Kuso². One figure, who is a scene stealer in his one moment, is African American adult star Lexington Steele, who is utterly charismatic as a suited man talking in surreal cryptic phrases ("His dick becomes a dog toy") and does not look embarrassed even if his attempt at a disappearing trick with a smoke bomb does not work to hide him at all. Even in a film like this which will have likely been viewed as just puerile and distasteful, I now want to see more films with Lexington Steele where he gets to act. Even the fact that he played Nick Fury in an Avengers porn parody, even if it is not a good one, is interesting now because this shows he could actually do a decent Samuel L. Jackson pastiche.

 

Said patient is the "man who is scared of tits", and speaking of fascinating casting choices, the man he is meeting to cure him is George Clinton, the founder of the legendary funk bands Parliament and Funkadelic. It is meaningful that this legend is here...even if he is the host to the real doctor, a giant insect living in Clinton's anus called Mr. Quiggle tempted out by electronic beats, distributing hallucinatory juice to said patient in a moment William S. Burroughs might have written about in his heroine influenced Naked Lunch typing.

 

Contrasting this, as a result of the hallucinogenic juice, is a Vaporwave Hell, an equivalent of the necropolis of spirals that end Junji Ito's manga Uzumaki only not made from spirals here but from breasts, of early 2000s CGI, breast towers, floating breast whales, multi-headed figures and God knows what else. This moment did break me on both viewings even if I admired it.

 

At this point, just listing all the content, alongside even watching the film, took me by surprise but it is easy to just dismiss this as a mass of perverse hallucination as a film. All of the film is exceptionally well made, which adds to this film being as striking and twisted as it is. At one point, with motifs of video games, sound effects from the Mortal Kombat videogames are used for a foetus being pulled out, which might be the most offensive scene for some. Yet it is here for me on the first viewing, felt further earlier in the film on the second viewing, how much of the film for its dark comedy is also exceedingly sombre and ill-at-ease too. It is surprisingly melancholic at times, beginning with the first animated sequence being a man recounting helping his father remove an "owie" from his mother in DIY surgery, a darkness pervading the material.

 

A lot of the film also is about family and absence of it. The segment which feeding poo into a hole is still about an absent father, likely one killed and being fed to the son. There are also continuous shots to family photographs around the characters' home, even if deformed. Of how this taps into the fear of the ultimate earthquake that hits LA but also California, leading to Arizona Bay. Of Steve himself, taking a role, as a police officer, an authority figure that for him is one who just elicits ill-ease for African-Americans. Many curious undercurrents are to be found even in this perverse film, and that intrigues.

So much so that the final sequence has a weirdly emotional and even happy ending to it. Said scene is still one of the fucking weirdest threesome sequence I have ever witnessed, between brother and sister and a talking boil on her neck which happens to have a British accent (David Firth again on vocal duties). That they go as far as involving a prop fake penis shown on screen going into a mouthed orifice just cements Kuso wanting to push the bar so high few films could ever leap high enough now to reach it.

But...returning to that initial paragraph to start this review, seeing African-American music producer Steven Ellison deciding, of all the films he could have made, to instead push for this unique creation is itself a true statement of one's individual voice. He made it not as Flying Lotus either, which is meaningful, as is the fact he was in film school before he even turned to music, deciding with Kuso, even if you the viewer were to find the film without merit, with the desire to deliberately break from the teachings to make something entirely of his own without lack of confidence or concern whether this was the right way to make the film or not³. Even if he never made another film, the speech here is uncensored, inventive and truly idiosyncratic. Neither does this feel gross for the sake of it, for it is too artistically distinct and weird to be, a lot of itself instead very sickly funny and artistically inspired. It is, in its nature, something I have to write this comically long, profane detailed review for as a way to salute him for even making the film.  

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Non-Linear/Surreal/Weird

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

======

1) Full interview HERE.

2) Interview for The Guardian.

3) From the No Film School interview.

The Kingdom I & II (1994-7)

Directors: Lars von Trier and Morten Arnfred

Screenplay: Tómas Gislason, Niels Vørsel and Lars von Trier

Cast: Ernst-Hugo Järegård as Stig Helmer; Kirsten Rolffes as Sigrid Drusse; Holger Juul Hansen as Einar Moesgaard; Søren Pilmark as Jørgen 'Hook' Krogshøj; Ghita Nørby as Rigmor Mortensen; Jens Okking as Bulder Harly Drusse; Otto Brandenburg as Hansen; Annevig Schelde Ebbe as Mary Krüger; Baard Owe as Palle Bondo; Birgitte Raaberg as Judith Petersen; Peter Mygind as Morten 'Mogge' Moesgaard; Vita Jensen as Female dishwasher; Morten Rotne Leffers as Male dishwasher; Solbjørg Højfeldt – Camilla; Udo Kier as Åge Krüger

Abstract Spectrum/A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #32

 

It's going to be a busy night.

It is so strange that I grew up with Kingdom Hospital (2004), the Stephen King Americanised version of The Kingdom, a Danish two season mini-series co-created by Lars von Trier. If there ever was a great way to show cultural differences, comparing Kingdom Hospital to The Kingdom is the marathon to try to see this in action. As well as not being able to imagine the American version of characters like Dr. Hook as they are played here by Søren Pilmark next to his American version, sympathetic but even before turning into a darker figure of Season 2 distributing cocaine to the staff made from distilled left over eye drops, I cannot imagine how King would have reinterpreted the second season even if he himself, as an author, has covered very dark material in his literature and might have been game to.

Both versions have flaws. Kingdom Hospital, originally a mini-series but then shifted into being a first season which never got a follow-on, deviates way too much at times, to the point of rushing its conclusion. The Kingdom is tragically flawed entirely out of its hand, an exceptional piece of work over two seasons but with the knowledge that it needed a third season to actually finish the narrative. One which it never get as Ernst-Hugo Järegård, who played Stig Helmer the egotistic Swedish doctor who hates "Danish scum", passed and left the production without a key character and a lot of loose threads as a result.

In context, when the first series came to be in 1994, this was after Europa (1991), von Trier's ambitiously stylised World War II drama, and before his drastic shift to the Dogme 95 manifesto, championing a radical alternative of stripping away artifice, with Breaking the Waves (1996) coming in between the two series with a notable change in his style and tone. Von Trier's really divisive reputation even separate to his films does not have to be considered with The Kingdom, even when he walks out at the end credits of every episode to make thoughtful comments on the programme, instead here a pure genre hybrid where he can still sneak in satire. Namely, that this is a medical soap opera interlaced with supernatural drama that eventually turns into pure horror by season two.

Truthfully, I prefer Season Two. The original season is more highly regarded, and with a few loose threads notwithstanding, it can work as one giant story with a great twist ending. Truthfully, it is a very generic supernatural story of a ghost girl haunting the elevator at the hospital, the plot recreated by Kingdom Hospital with a far more elaborate scope including time travel and a talking anteater. What elevates The Kingdom's first season is that, looped around this, is the medical show and its idiosyncratic characters. In one of the best openings of a TV show, The Kingdom always starts with the point that the past of the hospital, when it was once bleaching pools and the supernatural, will break through the foundations rather than scepticism. It also immediately cuts to television show opening credits, suggesting a regular medical soap opera, with also one of the best TV themes, an evocative choral chant over nineties synth.

A large portion of the series is also comedy, which is some of the best material, one of the best aspects that was transported to the American remake and became its best aspect, and one of the underappreciated aspects of Lars von Trier. Whilst something his attempts at jokes have even lead to him being kicked out of film festivals, it is a reminder that for all his bleak and confrontational work he has a sense of humour, which is outstanding here. Certainly, he came to this with a lot of satire on medical science, everything not stable in this hospital before you ever have to deal with the supernatural. Your head of the hospital is more interesting in his "Good Morning Air" project than running an actual hospital; medical malpractice has transpired, as Stig has left a young girl brain damaged; the Masonic group of doctors who secretly run everything is a boy's club who are against occultism, but still indulge in it (including the blasphemy of drinking camomile tea) and are a frat house who use an initiation ceremony that can led to your nose being cut open; even characters who are sympathetic like Dr. Hook has his secret network of trade, and using blackmail even if for noble circumstances, more ethically shaky than how it is depicted for the character in the American version.

This is before the second season where characters nearly die, and end up crueller as a result, or when you discover a secret cabal of Satan worshippers in the staff roster. Or are an actual demon revealed due to a game of word association. The first series, in its best virtue, builds as a very black humoured comedy. A lot of the better aspects came from this for the American version but becoming more openly wackier - such as the Good Morning Air project, or how a young staff member (son of the head), in his attraction to an older nurse, steals a corpse's head for a sick prank. There are aspects which are much better here. In both versions, a Greek chorus of two kitchen staff, played by actors with Down's Syndrome, are there but in von Trier's their dialogue is even more meaningful despite never interacting with the cast, a poetry to their speech of greater meaning then their remake versions. The other is that, whilst Bruce Davison was great as "Dr. Stegman", Järegård's performance as Stig is exceptional. His character is utterly detestable, but he is strangely admirable because of Järegård's acting, making his passing a worse blow for producing season three.

The production's other distinction is a potentially divisive one, but not alien to von Trier's habit of very radical aesthetic choices. The visual look is deliberately grimy, one that could put people off, even with night shots occasionally having a murkiness with streaks from the light sources; there is also a saturated brown aesthetic to the first series, followed by an emphasis on green when series two introduced a Satanic evil eye looming over the hospital. If you can accept this, the aesthetic works, as paradoxically even when he stripped away all artifice, or said to have done with an actual manifesto created for this change in attitude, von Trier has always had distinct aesthetics even when he claims to have removed them. Certainly, he was perfect for a project like this, co directed and designed for Danish television, in which he was prepared to take a huge leap away from his trademarks from before and work on a TV budget. Baring Epidemic (1987), which felt like a prototype for von Trier's minimalistic era, this was a considerable step in a different direction even if it is pure pulp with supernatural elements.

The strength of the mini-series is really from the performances and the scripts by von Trier and his collaborators. For me, the plot of the first Kingdom is more of an introduction to a greater narrative, where you learn of all the characters over four hour long episodes. The Kingdom II is where the show ramps up for me, in the absurdity and horror, and the strengths grow. It takes a lot more risks, a dangerous tightrope between the more serious content and some deeply silly jokes, where a thread from the last season of Stig wanting to use Haitian zombification techniques to stop Hook blackmailing him contrasts against the serious implications found after Season One, that the ghosts of the hospital are worst things to worry about with demons involved.

As the characters have been established, they can now have more plots, such as the head's existential crisis leading him to a New Age therapist working in the under passages of the hospital, or even a minor character, a student doctor, getting involved with illegal bets with staff driving headlong into traffic in an ambulance, both to woo a female colleague he is in love with but also from remorse when a previous drive lead to a bystander being injured and on death's door. The second series eventually gained my love for it due to how it can have two diametrically different sides hit crescendos. On one side is the humour - when you have a dream scenario involving an inexplicable cameo by a penguin, or the slowest chase possible in the medical archive, a security camera and one of the characters, due to circumstances, being in a wheelchair, showing von Trier's legitimate light side without cynicism.  The other is how much heart he could have for all the darkness he has depicted, the subplot with cult star Udo Kier.

Kier's role in season one is both a figure from the hospital's dark past, and probably the most famous moment of the first season, a shocking final birthing sequence that is as ridiculous as it is startling. In season two, having to follow this, Kier has two roles, the figure of the past now openly demonic, the other a pure innocent, noble but left in a monstrously deformed body, Cronenbergian in its elaborateness. The scenes between Kier and another character, [Major Spoiler] his mother [Spoiler Ends], are bittersweet and haunting, a reminder that Trier for all his horrors and nihilism sometimes has touches of the humane which appears from under the surface. For him especially, the "innocent", wise or pure hearted, who appear a lot in his work are people to admire, be it Kier's character here to even Emma Watson's in Breaking the Waves, making the fact they are still hurt (or here suffering to show virtue rather than succumb to evil) more tragic. The tragedy that we never got a third series was felt harder for me as a result. The show already escalates to an entirely different plain when demons are introduced and a priest is killed, but when we get to the final episode, Pandæmonium, all the plot threads build to an even greater crescendo from Season One. One which is grim and unsettling, the kind that leads to the darkest of third series, even Death making an appearance as an onlooker as he had a busy night on his hands. It would have lead to a season that, alas, never came. Thankfully, the show ends on Stig staring down at a toilet cam showing his usual hatred to everyone else, a playful reminder of the emotional gymnastics which both series took a risk on and, in spite of being unfinished, make them still gems.

Abstract Spectrum: Dark/Eccentric

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