Waxworks (1924)

Director: Paul Leni

Screenplay: Henrik Galeen

Cast: Emil Jannings as Harun al-Rashid, Conrad Veidt as Ivan the Terrible, Werner Krauss as Spring-Heeled Jack, William Dieterle as The Poet / Assad the Baker / The Boyar, John Gottowt as the waxworks proprietor, Olga Belajeff as Eva / Maimune / the Boyar's bride

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Truthfully, Waxworks for most of its length is not really horror for most of its length, but is important to the canon of German Expressionist cinema. It is still a fascinating piece, an anthology story set up with moments that are purely macabre, set up around the figures of Harun al-Rashid, Ivan the Terrible and the fictional figure of Spring-Heeled Jack all co-existing as waxwork figures in an exhibition at a German carnival. The owner of the exhibit hires a man (William Dieterle) to write their exhibits' stories, building this anthology whilst falling for Eva (Olga Belajeff), the woman who works there. Its director, Paul Leni, would move to the US to make Hollywood films in the last stage of his career, tragically passing away before his time at forty four. He is also very important, alongside the figures who worked with him on and off the screen, for films which find themselves placed into the history of early horror cinema even if not their primary genre as with Waxworks.  Probably the most famous for its cultural influence is The Man Who Laughs (1928), a film which is not horror in genre, but fit into its iconography for the titular figure's iconic appearance, a known inspiration for the Batman villain The Joker.

Waxworks feels like a flex in terms of bringing together figures from the world of German cinema at its time, playing off to later horror anthologies for bringing in big names in their own stories as Harun al-Rashid is played by Emil Jannings, and the future Man Who Laughs, Conrad Veidt, playing Ivan the Terrible. Spring-Heeled Jack, played by Werner Krauss, is more an additional epilogue whilst the other two stories take up most of the film's length. This presents the issue now with Waxworks, as that means Jannings' story takes up a large part of the feature, and means you have to accept a film from a hundred years ago where German actors are playing Middle Eastern figures in brown face against an ancient Persian reality. Of an alternative reality to the actual Bagdad this is set in Harun al-Rashid, as played by Jannings as a cartoonish oaf, is a caliph eyeing the wife of a baker, learning of her when about to have the husband executed for ruining his chess games with the smoke from his work. Barring some actors playing servants, the cast is white actors, something we have to accept from an ancient film from a century ago, alongside the whole issue that some may not know that Harun al-Rashid is quite an important historical figure in terms of the Arabic world, making Jannings' take on him as a buffoonish womaniser, whilst from a great actor, not flattering at all.

It does not come off as racist in terms of mistral acting, to deliberately caricature these figures as harmful archetypes, but a now naive part of the past where the likes of the German film industry of that time, let alone Hollywood, dreamt of stories in these places considered exotic and sincerely wanted to tell the stories, but were at the time they cast actors in these roles regardless of them being white actors being made up into other ethnicities. It is a practice that happened in a few industries - like my bafflement why Rock Hudson kept being cast as Native Americans in the likes of Winchester '73 (1950) in the fifties despite it being plainly obvious he stood out like a sore thumb.  There is the difficulty to watch films like this, even great films, without rolling our eyes , when we rightly found common sense and cast characters based on the actors being of the appropriate ethnicity. Even by the late fifties, you have Fritz Lang's last films including The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb (both 1959), fun films part of one single epic story, but bizarre nowadays as sincere Indian set adventure stories with white actors playing Indian characters on staged sets, when Jean Renoir from France, when making The River (1951), shot the film in India with Indian cast for Indian characters.

Sadly, even into the Millennium you can argue cinema was still doing this, but with Waxworks, it does need to be brought up because it is the first segment you have to watch, and some might be put off finish the rest of the work because of this aspect firmly showing it as an artefact. It is still fascinating, this artificially depicted haze of Bagdad architecture through the German Expressionism, but you could have easily dropped this into medieval Germany with a German lord for Emil Jennings to play, and no one a century later would have to bat an eye. Without the issue of crashing into the shores of reality, you still have a gleefully macabre farce in its centre which still works, as the baker is convinced by his wife to steal the caliph's magical wishing ring to prove his love for her, even if it means stealing a completely severed hand. Her character could be dismissed as another questionable stereotype, a two dimensional gold digger, if the story did not deliciously, for all its issues in setting choice, feel so modern still with its sick humoured farce ending. With a fake wax figure involved, there will be a way for man and wife to still stay together, but she and the caliph will be able to have the affair closer to his palace behind the baker's back as the newly appointed staff member. It is a final sick joke I have to admit won me over as being still impactful decades later.

Ivan the Terrible's story, even if not played by a Russian, gets away from these issues of casting for exotic locations to be a more twisted tale bordering into gothic psychodrama, near the horror genre, It is helped by the fact we have Conrad Veidt a Ivan, one of the best actors of that era of any country, whether as Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) to, having to flee Germany during the Nazi era, his Hollywood era playing the likes of evil Nazi Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942). He immediately, even next to an acclaimed actor like Jannings, stands out, and in an era that can be dismissed for broad acting, gets over a bloody thirsty leader already bordering into insanity perfectly, one who even gets off, to be frank about it, about planning to have people murdered. When he believes his appointed poison maker is betraying him, the later realising his fate is doomed decides to set up a fatal hourglass to get his revenge on the leader. This was my personal favourite of the stories, a gristly tale appropriate for the horror genre even if not technically within it in terms of menace, as when not using an innocent older man as a stand in for an assassination attempt, he intends to steal the fiancée of another man as his own, who is in the midst of grieving for her father who was the stand-in. With Veidt playing the growing derangement, [Spoiler Warning] especially when the fatal hourglass does not poison him but leaves him going insane thinking he is by its sands [Spoilers End], it does feel like a great menacing piece.

In context, it also shows the incredibly production value and aura of German Expressionism. Their complete sense of artificially, turning snow bound Russia in the second story into a claustrophobic series of distorted rooms, is more and more magical as time passes as an aesthetic. Its Spring Heeled Jack ending, the name a reference to the English folklore figure whilst the character could be seen as closer to Jack the Ripper, is sadly short, with one wondering about how a take on either figure would look like in this era of cinema. It is still a good punch line of actual horror however, fully taking advantage of the aesthetics and techniques of silent cinema in general, with its leads now as themselves (rather than characters in each of the tales before) being terrified by this figure stalking them around the carnival, the sequence includes using such techniques as interposing actors so they look ghost-like. It adds a nice conclusion to Waxworks, not really a horror film altogether but with all these phantasmagorical moments which are eye-catching and memorable.

The Wicker Man (2006)

Director: Neil LaBute

Screenplay: Neil LaBute

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

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Wrestlemaniac (2006)

Director: Jesse Baget

Screenplay: Jesse Baget

Cast: Rey Misterio Sr. as El Mascarado, Adam Huss as Alfonse, Jeremy Radin as Steve, Leyla Milani as Dallas, Margaret Scarborough as Debbie, Catherine Wreford as Daisy, Zack Bennett as Jimbo, Irwin Keyes as The Stranger

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

With a premise about a homicidal lucha libre wrestler, someone like me who grew up with pro wrestling as an obsession would be interested in this. Back in the day, I was so disappointed I viewed Wrestlemaniac as one of the worst films I had ever seen. Nowadays, returning to this, I would never say something like that anymore. It is instead a low budget slasher you would have to come to with lowered expectations than I had, though it does start off with real wrestling footage over the credits, which is cool. The review is actually going to be fairly positive, in that in reality, subjective opinion on whether you the reader would enjoy this or not is really the issue here. Instead I like to view this as a legitimate apology to its director/writer/editor Jesse Baget.

They got an actual figure of note to play the titular homicidal wrestler, which does befit what the premise is about, though we will need to clarify one thing. that Rey Misterio is not the figure most, like I did, grew up with in the World Wrestling Entertainment company, nor if you are older and grew up with as the legendary figure of high flying acrobatics in the late World Championship Wrestling. That is Rey Misterio Jr., the nephew of the man starring in this, Miguel Ángel López Díaz, Díaz taking the name Rey Misterio Sr. to distinguish between the two. He is an important figure in his own right, a figure with a prolific list of records and acclaim, and in mind to an aspect of this involving the villain's personal "mask" collection from defeated opponents, a strong record we will get into about how many people he won the masks (or hair) from in lucha libre bouts. He is also the start of the Rey Misterio lineage which, alongside other figures who donned the mask, also includes the aforementioned Rey Misterio Jr., whose accomplishments alone are worthy to making his uncle proud internationally.

Surprisingly he is not the only other figure with a connection to the profession, as one of the figures who stands out in the cast as well is Leyla Milani, who plays the adult film actress Dallas. Milani, an Iranian Canadian actress/host/model, was in the WWE's own Diva Search, a talent competition to find female stars for their programming which, to be brutally honest, has not aged well as a concept in terms of "Diva" was entirely about figures who could be glamorous and seductive for the male heterosexual audience. This is an issue when wrestling fans and promotions have moved to having female wrestlers as credible as their male counterparts rather than figures meant to appeal to that audience only. This is not either to dismiss women who were comfortable to play to a glamorous image as a wrestler or non wrestler, be they manager to valet, or even played up to being explicitly sexual in their personas, who deserve as much respect in what they have contributed to the history of wrestling; instead the bigger issue is that the WWE's track record of how they have portrayed women, and uncomfortable scandals we will not get into to keep this review light hearted for a review about a deliberately nasty slasher, have left a bitter taste. Even in going back to the likes of the Diva Search competitions that company had will be something, especially because of the scandals, that will have new uncomfortable light. Thankfully, Milani's career is quite a diverse one so we do not need to linger on real history that needs to be brought up in a sombre, fully detailed written piece on the WWE's history of gender politics. By the time of this film, she had already become a model on the American version of the Deal or No Deal game show, alongside roles in a variety of other television and film roles, and by the modern day she founded and runs Leyla Milani Hair¹, a luxury hair care company which is adds a nice turn for a review like this to get into. It is certainly a tangent I did not expect to include, but it is a cool one to add.

It is a befitting thing then, in the traditional of legendary wrestlers like El Santo making films in Mexican genre cinema but not taking the mask off, that Rey Misterio Senior took on this role, a slasher film where an amateur porn shoot made the ill advised decision to get lost in the Mexican back roads, and end up at an ominous and abandoned ghost town. Alfonzo the sleazy director and star, three actress (one mostly unconscious from drinking too much most of the role), the camera guy with a knowledge of lucha libre wrestling, and the stoner who lent the van should have taken the warning of the sleazy owner of an abandoned gas station, which got a pop for me as it is Irwin Keyes as the nameless figure. Instantly recognisable, of all things in his list of cameos and turns in many genre and cult films, it is an obscure horror comedy Frankenstein General Hospital (1988) which made him stand out for me since youth, as the Frankenstein's monster. That this is the film, whether its virtues nowadays, I immediately think of when Keyes appears is funny with hindsight for the brief role he gets here.

Keyes warns of an old ghost town where a wrestler who gouged his opponent's eyes out got shoved into, which gets more elaborate for what is a very short film, less than eighty minutes, and director-writer Jesse Baget clearly made with limited resources. Suffice to say, we have a masked wrestler named El Mascarado who just appeared to destroy the Russians at the Olympics in wrestling competitions, likely to have been built from the bodies of multiple luchadores by scientists, but was an ill advised figure to represent his country of Mexico as he murdered his opponents in training. Considering some actual Mexican genre films - The Batwoman (1968) by René Cardona is about luchadores being kidnapped to create a race of fish men - it is a wacky premise you can work with even in a gory slasher premise. What we get is prime example of the 2000s straight-to-DVD era of lower budget genre films, which will inevitably get their Bleeding Skull or retrospective articles to praise them and get nostalgic about. There is certainly an aesthetic to them too now enough time has passed from my younger self hating this, which stands out from the 2010s equivalent in that this visual looks like it was shot just before the clear sheen with high definition cameras of the 2010. With its mix of greyness and moments of dark shadows, it has a grungy feel as a result, and this has enough budget to find a solid location for the ghost town. Set it up well in set design at a lower budget, it is limited to a few cast members and is simplified in the structure, but we do not have a film here like in the 2010s which could have been shot in someone's house, not an insult to those films but showing there was a higher budget here as a comparison.

It is a film, by coincidence, that manages to still be strong in content but with the ironic hindsight that this not be as extreme as other films of this time period. Saw franchise films were out and about at this time, and "torture porn films" were popular enough that, with a trailer on the same British Revolver release DVD I viewed for this review appearing, even Saw found itself so popular to have a low budget film clearly inspired by them like Are You Scared? (2005) exist. Wrestlemaniac comes at an interesting point where there was a greater easing of some nasty gore in British film classification, and means that the films which got the eighteen certifications, the highest outside of porn classification, had to be much more brutal or have content which was more an issue for the classificators, a real turn of time from our notorious Video Nasties era of videotape censorship. It leads to some unintentional results out of the film's hands as, whilst there is some gruesome stuff here, it is odd to have the amateur porn premise as an initial construct as, with a film that was rated as suitable for fifteen year olds in the United Kingdom to see, it merely leads to one scene of a little female nudity. The script is more interested in vulgar one liners off the back of a sex comedy and some cursing, and does not feel sleazy for the possibility of that premise at this time, nor years later, at all. It feels less like this was a compromised part of the film, but that Wrestlemaniac found itself in a shift in horror films of that era where those Saw films, or Eli Roth's Hostel (2005), were theatrical releases that got nasty and wide distribution.

It is a slasher film, and not of the post-Scream (1996) era of self reflection, but a throwback to the older eighties ones, specifically so many which came out off the wave of Friday the 13th which got their hands on one good location as this does, and did their best with what limited production they had. A Doom Asylum (1987) came to my mind this viewing, barring the broader comedic beats, in terms of one location of the titular asylum, some actors and some gore. Slashers even the eighties had archetypes and stripped down plotting, let us not lie. They are charming for their fans, but the basic structure of them, with the acclaimed exceptions or those who deviate, have the same pace of this in setting up the archetypes and then letting the killer pick them off, this one not even needing a weapon, and more boss in using his bare hands as a result. The aesthetic differences, and how the characters are written, are obvious twenty years on from the eighties here, though even the nastier tone is not really that distinct to a time period of when the film was made.

The immediate thing to point out, that I should have not expected, is that this was an actual lucha libre slasher film even with an actual luchador in the main role. No one is killed with flying head scissors or powerbombed into a bed of spikes. Forgive the use of actual wrestling move terms for the non-fans for a moment, but the closest here is death by backbreaker and a top rope (top off a barrel) body splash, but not much else. It is a masked hulking brute in the centre just in a lucha mask, which means that this really does not play to the ideas of the medium. Wrestling in cinema is surprisingly not large, as beyond the luchador films which would include filmed bouts, usually it is real pro wrestlers in acting roles but not expecting them to bring their skills from the squared circle into the scenes. The only true nod to the medium is the concept of mask vs. mask wrestling types. Except the versions where a wrestler, non-masked, sacrifices their hair on a match, the loser would be forced to unmask if both or one put their masks on the line, a tradition especially significant in Mexican wrestling which did cross over at times over the years in other companies around the world. Here however our killer, when you do not have a mask, compensates for this by peeling his victim's faces off. This does, alongside present the idea of Achilles' mask, does mean that the film is still gory especially when it gets to the "mask" collection.

It does everything it wanted to do as a film, including an abrupt choice of final girl which does change things up. Alongside a score full of drones and tense electronica which is distinct, by composer Jim Lang, this does something as well which does require a HUGE SPOILER WARNING NOW. That being that this is the rare slasher film where the villain wins. Going to find himself in the van left after this, heading outwards into the world even if involving ripping more faces off, it comes less as nihilistic but an abrupt change of pace I have to praise the film for, with SPOILERS ENDING NOW. Truthfully, Wrestlemaniac is just not my film in taste. In the right context, I could see people liking this, and it did not deserve to be buried by my younger self. Film making is hard, and as the time has passed and I have seen more of the lower budget films being made over the decades, Jesse Baget is like many from this time onwards, directors who plug away with work and went through the trends that were popular or considered practical as a director in this area of straight-to-DVD/straight-to-streaming era of cinema. Even cult figures of the eighties, the golden VHS age, like Jim Wynorski or David DeCoteau eventually did this, and that goes from making horror films to either making a Christmas film or a cute animal film by the time you enter the 2010s. In the case of Baget, he did a film in 2014 that was both at the same time, named The Three Dogateers, which meant that he did one better.

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1) Leyla Milani Hair's main website.

Wild Zero (1999)

Director: Tetsuro Takeuchi

Screenplay: Satoshi Takagi

Cast: Seiji as himself / Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf as himself, Drum Wolf as himself, Masashi Endō as Ace, Kwancharu Shitichai as Tobio, Yōko Asada as the voice of Tobio, Nakajo Haruka as Yamazaki, Kazuko Yanaga as the voice of Yamazaki, Taneko as Hanako, Yoshiyuki Morishita as Toshi, Masao as Masao, Fusamori Tawaki as Mori, Murata Akihiko as Toshio, Shiro Namiki as Kondo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Love has no borders, nationalities, or genders!

[Update: This review was written before the announcement of Wild Zero 2, which was revealed with a trailer in early 2024 to at least be a film intended to be finished and released.]

Dismissed in my youth, the older self sees how much of an idiot I was back then with my opinion on Wild Zero, though I see the aspect which likely caused such a negative reaction, that this is more of a film enjoy its wacky premise than fully executing it in an elaborate way. In Britain, you would have to have the Beatles make as weird a film like Magical Mystery Tour (1967) or Yellow Submarine (1968) because of their reputation, The Monkees in the United States making the ill-fated decision at the time to make Head (1968) to rise above their reputation as a manufactured band, and in this case, Guitar Wolf as a cult rock band having the advantage instead of the vibrant Japanese genre film industry between V-Cinema and straight-to-video productions to theatrical. That and your director Tetsuro Takeuchi being the man behind your music videos, as a figure you can trust, and shooting this film in Thailand¹.

This particular film, before they in general became a pop culture concept in the mainstream fully, is an early example of taking the legacy of George Romero's zombie films, and the concept of zombies, and returning to them even as here in a playful way of fans of the films. Already in a film like this you have characters bring up Night of the Living Dead (1968) and whether each one in the moment has seen it or wants to in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. There are probably too many characters in general in Wild Zero too, but the personality is there, set around what is actually closer to the premise of Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), where aliens only seen in gold UFOS are resurrecting the dead, leaving a motley series of characters to cope with this transpiring. Ace (Masashi Endō) is our proxy, a Guitar Wolf fan who earns the respect of their titular leader Guitar Wolf (Seiji), and can literally whistle them from a town away if in danger. Guitar Wolf the band, starting in 1987, have been continuing over the decades, even after the tragically young passing of Bass Wolf ("Billy") in 2005 at only thirty eight², and here they live the rock n roll music ideal of being outlaw enough to shot people but with a personal morality; Seiji himself is the leader who can appear, figuratively as much as in the flesh ,as the Obi-Wan Kenobi to guide Ace to act as a rock hero should whilst Bass and Drum Wolf offer back up. Tobio (Kwancharu Shitichai, with Yōko Asada as their voice) is the female lead and potential love interest for Ace, and there are also two lovable thieves who botch a convenience store robbery when we met them, male and female, and a female arms dealer whose business with the yakuza was halted by the zombies. The later, standing out as a side character physically, especially shows a moral ambivalence that, even in this silly premise, emphasises figures that can be on the fringes of society, and even in her case more interested in survival and money, but not be the villainess. The villain in this world is a shady club owner, who wears wigs and rocks stylish sets of hot pants, who has a casting car seat for female singers, deals with drugs, and wants revenge on Guitar Wolf and their lead singer in particular for fingers shot off during a standoff.

On the type of urban/country landscape, the luminal space and the wasteland, I find compelling in Japanese pop culture between cult films and anime, even factoring in that this is actually Thailand standing in for its setting, you get a pot pourri of scenes between guitar picks as throwing weapons, matching grenade launchers with said hot pants to go out on a night of the town for revenge, and the equivalent of throwing the kitchen sink in a cult film with abrupt eye lasers. There is also the least expected story of love and overcoming bias to someone you could ever see appear in a cult film, as this has a trans female lead in Tobia. Some of how it is dealt with not aged well and clearly played in the same wackiness as when the digitally added golden UFOs are spliced over famous world landmarks, but in the end, it becomes actually beautiful in how it plays out and progressive with hindsight. Of all the films to deal with this subject, the least expect where someone like Ace has the horrible reaction he initially has, only to feel remorse, realise his true love for her, and have the Guitar Wolf of the band be the one who tells him love exists beyond boundaries and nationalities, is spectacular more now time has passed. It is not something you find in cinema dealt with enough decades after this film was released, let alone dealt with, in an applaudable way, in a film where the military female character has to put on a plaid one piece due to zombies ripping her cloths up out of spite. It is as punk rock in the truest sense as a major subplot just placed within this tale with a happy conclusion.

A lot of this message fits the entire ethos the film has in terms of rock n roll music. Ace's introduction in his room shows the history of music, including Western bands, on posters on his wall, and it goes back to the likes of Burst City (1982) by Gakuryū "Sogo" Ishii in films showing the underdogs in their own world, in these bands or their fans. This ethos is one you can even find in other mediums within Japanese pop culture, such as with Daisuke Ishiwatari, the mind behind the Guilty Gear video game franchise. A creator of a fighting game franchise which references rock and heavy metal even in character names, he has also went out of his way to point out a character he created named Bridget was always meant to be a transgender female character, regardless of fans' attitudes and previous translations of the games in the past³, and depicting characters who straddle moral ambivalences who are still heroic or just badasses.

That Wild Zero itself is merely playing at its premise with humour will be something that will annoy some, as I found when I was younger, but that in itself befits this ethos. Considering you have a soundtrack where inexplicably Bikini Kill's Rebel Girl blasts in out of nowhere, you should see Wild Zero as a film made by fans of this type of music and movie making what they think is cool, and managing to actually make it stand out in many great ways such as its moments of showing this music truly meaning its progressive, anti-authoritarian nature even when being goofy. Even a joke about lovers meeting again as zombies and having their own happy ending, played off as actually sweet as much as funny, fits this tone perfectly. The plot becomes less a priority, the zombies merely cannon fodder and your aliens only depicted as those UFOs, and instead it is the ride that stands out. Sadly its director Tetsuro Takeuchi, barring work with Guitar Wolf and musical groups, has not directed much in terms of cinema, whilst Wild Zero itself feels like it is ready for a proper revival as a cult film, i.e. not on old DVDs being the way to see this, and allowed to be seen in a pristine restoration with the possibility of learning how the film came to be. Even if learnt to be a fun improvisation throwing caution to the wind, it would be a pleasure in itself to learn how this ride came to be.

 

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1) Wild Zero review by Ken Eisner, published for Variety on November 5th 2000. [Some of this has aged of the past even if slight.]

2) Guitar Wolf Biography by Mark Deming for All Music.com.

3) Guilty Gear Creator Clarifies Once Again That, Yes, Bridget is Trans by Kenneth Shepard, published for Fanbyte on September 14th 2022.

Wrong (2012)

Director: Quentin Dupieux

Screenplay: Quentin Dupieux

Cast: Jack Plotnick as Dolph Springer, Éric Judor as Victor, Alexis Dziena as Emma, Steve Little as Detective Ronnie, William Fichtner as Master Chang, Regan Burns as Mike

An Abstract Candidate

 

Sir, I took it upon myself to paint your van blue.

A fireman taking a dump in the middle of the road, reading a newspaper in front of colleagues, pretty much sets up the tone of Wrong perfectly from the first scene. Its director-writer Quentin Dupieux caught the attention of people in the wider world, as a French musician who became interested in cinema, as a filmmaker with Rubber (2010), his absurdist take on horror, with a fourth wall breaking aspect dealing with the fictional nature of cinema where anything can happen for “no reason”. Wrong premiered at 2012 Sundance Film Festival, and as a French-US co-production, it presents an absurd story befitting its “no reason” obsessed predecessor. Our lead Dolph (Jack Plotnick) wakes up one day and cannot find his dog Paul, starting a series of non-sequiturs as he tries to locate his beloved pet. Even if it has its moments of absurd abruptness from the get-go - the neighbor, on his way out of town forever, gets angry and denies he jogs in the morning, and thinks Dolph’s sleeping robe is filthy and disgusting - there is a progression to Wrong which, in its own logic, befits the tone later Luis Buñuel lent into for his last act of his career. The difference is that, Buñuel subverted religion and bourgeois culture in the likes of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). Here, we have to consider the leanings to more deliberately ironic comedy, expressed as one of the characters set up in the story, pizza staff member Emma (Alexis Dziena), is introduced over the phone to Jesus’ Organic Pizza when Dolph, trying to cope with the initial loss of Paul, ends up in a lengthy discussion about a logo of a rabbit on a motorcycle not making sense.

His story is the well worn one of a lonely man who struggles in life. Yes, it is absurd that at his work place it is raining indoors, but the more absurd detail is that he has been fired from the place for three months prior, and still goes to work for some semblance of connection to life. It is a bleak absurd humour to all this, as the world is conspiring against him in a variety of ways. Paul’s disappearance is revealed to be by a company lead by Master Chang (William Fichtner), revealed to be an organization that deliberately kidnaps pets, than returns them after time to create a sharper bond between randomly chosen owners, only for a mishap to cause Paul to become lost even if the driver of the van involved was killed instantly. As tragic for Dolph is the abrupt discovery, as his hired gardener Victor (Éric Judor), that his beloved palm tree has turned into a pine tree for reasons neither can explain. And for what could be seemingly a nihilistic story, as nothing makes sense for Dolph in his plight, what you also get is a work that manages perfectly to get the littlest deadpan joke to work without elaborate effects or a cartoonish pratfall. Even when things are stated they become funny.

The Luis Buñuel comparison is much more befitting, rather than a figure like David Lynch who Dupieux is not a fan of being compared to¹. One joke even feels like something a beloved filmmaker of mine, the Chilean legend Raul Ruiz, would be proud of, where a character abruptly dies of a stroke, only to appear again without anyone asking about his passing and seemingly miraculous resurrection. Buñuel is the right choice in himself anyway, as between the pair you see staged dramatic scenes, as this follows Dolph’s journey to locate Paul, being undercut by the surreal invading the scenes. This is not particularly the same as David Lynch at all as many of his most bizarre and unsettling scenes are always set up with something very amiss. Shot in California, with a starkness from being set entirely in the day, conversations in Wrong follow logic only for an absurd touch to come in, plot threads layering into each other. Emma the pizza store employee falls for Dolph over the phone, only to think Victor is him, and vice-versa when they met in the flesh, and the attempts to track down Paul include both the potential to learn telepathic communication with dogs through Master Chang’s writings, and a dog detective so precise to track his missing pets, he has figured out a way to take dog feces and access its memories of when it was inside a canine.  

Honestly the closest thing to a Lynchian moment is when Dolph is offered an adopted dog whilst Paul is being located, only to be offered a small child as if nothing is amiss. Most of this, however, is more ridiculous deliberately, but I would not necessarily say either it is ironic for the sake of wackiness either. Neither would I say it is nihilistic for the sake of it despite having used that term earlier. As a viewer born on the autistic spectrum, there has always been a sense, in adapting to society in general, a greater acute awareness of the aspects seemed to be normal actually making no sense and becoming nonsensical in my day to day. This is something which is felt in how Quentin Dupieux with this film definitely is playing to the idea nothing makes sense for Dolph whatsoever. There is a happy ending to this story, which actually proves the more rewarding choice to have gone with, as this presents us the right mix between the anxious and the intentionally silly, finding a right balance in even having the missing object of love being a dog in the first place, something that he chose rather than a love story between a man and a woman which would have been disturbing with this scenario instead².

With his wife Joan Le Boru as the production designer, the first with her as a prominent artistic director on her husband's films afterwards, Wrong as a distinct aesthetic, an American movie but with a sense of disconnect. Everything is sunny and picturesque, but contrasted by the back alleys and dog kennel locations which felt out of time. Even in the opening with the neighbor, who for reasons he cannot explains has to leave his home and drive off the end of the world, the scene between him and Dolph is noticeable, over just the road between their houses, in how they are shot with a sense they are so far away the neighbor cannot hear Dolph, and with them shot together the close ups feeling claustrophobic. White is a predominant colour but that is not a pleasant one, more disconcerting as Dolph himself is wandering along without a real grasp of control. Even that aforementioned happy ending is entirely out of his hands, a destiny as dreamt by another in precognition, as throughout too seemingly everyone else can be possessed by an unknown force to remind him to visit Master Chang at a specific time mid-conversation. The subplot with Emma even becomes overtly surrealistic, in the true classical art movement sense of this idea, in how it involves backwards footage being used, a child born on a beach who cannot tell the difference between a broken wine bottle neck and a sea urchin, and aptly for the Luis Buñuel comparison, someone waking up being buried alive in a casket without any context. What this means really is less a concern; surrealism was meant to shock one out of complacency, and as I have mentioned earlier, if there has to be a meaning to all this, just to experience a day in a life of an everyman who struggles to comprehend the world around him is justifiable as a meaning for an entire feature length story.

Wrong was a pleasure to witness, in mind that the earlier films like Wrong only really starting to be released in the USA when the interest in Quentin Dupieux started to exist. Thankfully over time that has started to change, but Wrong is still obscurer as a result of this. In mind that Rubber could have been a one-off, and no one would take interest in him if he suddenly showed none of the originality he had, thankfully Dupieux would become an auteur for the 2010s off the back of titles like this.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Surrealist

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

 

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1) Quentin Dupieux Explains Why He Doesn’t Like Being Compared to David Lynch, written by Greg Cwik for IndieWire, and published on May 4th 2015.

2) Writer-Director Quentin Dupieux Talks WRONG, Balancing Comedy and Anxiety, Links Between Random Elements, WRONG COPS, and More, written by Christina Radish for Collider, and published March 29th 2013.

Wittgenstein (1993)

Director: Derek Jarman

Screenplay: Derek Jarman, Terry Eagleton and Ken Butler

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

An Abstract Candidate

 

How many toes do philosophers have?

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

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

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

Abstract Spectrum: Whimsical

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

Wrath of the Skunkape (1997)

 

Director: Mike C. Hartman

Screenplay: Mike C. Hartman

Cast: Mike C. Hartman as Clause; John M. Morgan as Johan Von Smith; Jason Severson as Stinky Thumbs

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Skunky won’t you sing this song, Skunky, Skunky…

Wrath of the Skunkape is a film I would recommend to many. A micro budget, micro-length film from a director-writer Mike C. Hartman, he would go on with Silver Bullet Pictures to continue making other films, and this feels like the first attempts at making a movie with all the issues that you could imagine in his position, and things which have no aged well in throwing whatever wacky premise onto the walls to see what sticks too. I openly admit the reason I got some pleasure from this film, aside from only being forty minutes long, is that this has a lead that least makes those forty minutes compelling every time he is onscreen, even if he is improvising. That would be Jason Severson as Stinky Thumbs Arbuckle, out to revenge his brother Billy-Bob-Joe-Jr., and with Severson swinging for the fences, and his character pursuing the skunkape responsible over decades, he represents the pleasures one can find even in films which struggle in the micro-budget genre in their creation, in this case some of the content here, technically and in presentation, struggle like the first attempts of any person attempting to make a movie.

Skunkapes belong to a type of ape-like creature catalogued by cryptozoologists to inhabit forests and swamps in the southeastern United States, though alongside way too high a potassium build up for all the bananas it eats, this particular one is a monkey costume where the lack of usable mouth prevents the actor from eating them onscreen. Said to be really smelly, Skunkape as a film is split between a) an insanely cheesy no budget film which struggles with its lack of production, b) a very silly film, for the better, when Stinky Thumbs Arbuckle is on screen and, c) the one idea that, whilst tamer than it is presented, does add an unfortunate trait of scuzziness many may not be comfortable with about cryptoid apes being interested in human women, to paint that as politely as possible and needing to be dealt with later on in the review.

Not a lot happens, despite three other male characters being introduced, alongside there being an antagonist played by the director, a crazed German scientist who wants to capture the skunk ape to breed an army of them under him, barring some dialogue scenes and some “horror” scenes of the ape attacking people. Baring one strange tangent involving a seemingly English accented vagrant wanting cheese, this feels mostly improvised, with moments where this does show how it was shot on the fly. It has a production many may not be able to sit through, such as a camp fire scene at night where you cannot see anything baring a screen of orange-red from the fire. It also has licensed music, which would prevent it from getting an official release, such as Johnny Cash; one example was removed in the version I saw, as you hear the opening of Aerosmith’s Sweet Emotion before hastily cutting it off for banjo music.

As mentioned, this is another film with cyroptozoological ape people sexually interested in human women, and if that may raise an eyebrow in the word “another” being there, it is a slight list but there are a few films obsessed with this. There is a hardcore film called The Geek (1971) about this idea, released by Something Weird Video among their vast catalogue of weird titles where you could probably discover any subject like this got a low budget film back in the day, and there is the Video Nasty Night of the Demon (1980) which makes this a key plot point. Here, whilst it is ridiculous, and eventually involved actresses in bikinis tied to a tree, it is creepy and understandably will put people off. The film does feel like the silly ideas of a younger guy making a film, but this one with hindsight unfortunately went into something which becomes more an issue in the decades past, and when female characters are introduced, they are literally there for wearing bikinis. Whilst it is thankfully done with clothes on, this does get into content no matter haphazardly done, when the skunkape interferes with the male and female cast getting intimate, which is going to be unacceptable to many. Thankfully the film never goes further with this, as much because the film only gets to some dramatic stakes by the last ten minutes, but when even the end credit bloopers have the female cast being instructed by the men working on the film to pose the right way for these scenes, confused and little uncomfortable themselves, it is at least distasteful if not offensive. Even some of the dialogue about “perfect breeding hips” earlier on is going to offend some viewers, with the banter between male characters, only for me as a male viewer just glancing by in how absurd it is especially, even with that distasteful plot thread, with the inane silliness of a character with a mock German accent obsessed with an army of skunkapes being a creditable weapon, where the silliness of the production thankfully undermines questionable content for the better.

Stinky Thumbs/Severson is a godsend in comparison to all this, and thankfully he gets most of the film. Some viewers will not appreciate what is clearly a non-actor going for the most ridiculous southern accent and even repeating himself, but there is something which worked for me with his obsession in skunkapes not being able to see food unless its green, or just shouting nonsense about wanting to catch the skunkape and being impatient about it. He is the kind of thing, if you are able to appreciate micro-budget genre films even when they fail, you come to appreciate the more of them you watch, for the levity, bordering between the intentional and unintentional, where you see the fictionality of what a film is as a construct being blurred, by what is undercutting the craft but is charming and entertaining in itself. Also Severson’s way of saying his lines is so over-the-top, on a gut level, it is just funny for me as a viewer. When you feel uncomfortable with the entire treatment of women in the film, no matter if the amateurish nature undercuts it, or the film is a series of prolonged scenes of dialogue, Stinky Thumbs emphasizes something in his dialogue to a comedic affect or when he ends up in a slap fight with the skunkape by the final scene. Alongside the surprisingly good country music on the soundtrack, these are the things that help get through even a film like this. Silver Bullet Pictures made this available on their YouTube page on the 18th May 2012, which I am glad of as all films deserve to be preserved and seen, but this is a film I cannot recommend to a viewer unless you can find that sense of fun within it. Mike C. Hartman would go on to make more films, and in comparison, including the concerns of the content with is questionable, it is truly one of those early films someone makes over a few weekends, for good and for bad.

War (2002)

 

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

Screenplay: Aleksey Balabanov

Cast: Aleksey Chadov as Ivan; Ian Kelly as John; Ingeborga Dapkunaite as Margaret; Sergey Bodrov as Captain Medvedev; Evklid Kyurdzidis as Ruslan; Giorgi Gurgulia as Aslan

Canon Fodder

 

[Full Plot Spoilers Throughout]

Out of all his films, Aleksey Balabanov's War is pretty accessible as a film, in which this will turn into a war rescue film about freeing the fiancée of a British couple from a Chechen warlord's military group. In mind to this however, the pre-credits sequence, involving a group of people (including the British couple, a man and a woman) being dragged into the camp as prisoners, you do however have Balabanov make an exclamation point of this being his type of cinema, not something easily digestible, when one of the prisoners has their head cut off and presented to their captors.

Ivan (Aleksey Chadov), a Russian soldier who starts the film as a prisoner here, narrates the film in the future of how, in the midst of the Second Chechen War, Ivan will help John (Ian Kelly) rescue his fiancée Margaret (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) from this group ran by Aslan (Giorgi Gurgulia). The immediate concern with the film, a more pulpy war film in the end, is how this treats this history, especially as the depiction of the Chechens within this film at first is very one-dimensional, capable of murder, death and a threat of sexual violence over Margaret. Balabanov was entirely interested in the issue, over how prisoners were treated and killed during this turbulent conflict¹, yet also has the Chechens played by actual Chechens, as the federals are actual soldiers and officials, and with scenes partially filmed in Chechen lands¹. Including the First Chechen War of 1994 to 1996, this is a history which feels it requires an entire text to go through, rather than try to sum real life conflict and death for a film review, but in mind to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, one would come to a production like War with a lot more caution of the message it wishes to tell, something which does have to be considered with not just a film like this, but also North American films or any from countries which paint a war with a likelihood of a simplistic black-white morality and jingoistic undercurrents. Aleksey Balabanov even if this was to be argued was the case here does however undercut this potential factor with an aspect that soaks through his films, even if unintentionally, that War is thankfully more complicated due to how cynical his worldview is. For all the concerns I have had with how Balabanov has included content and sentences spoken by his characters which are discomforting, a film which could be very nationalistic like War is a lot more cynical as it goes along even when it gets to the tropes of an action war film in the second half's rescue mission.

For starters bureaucracy procrastinates here even to help free Margaret or the prisonsers. This can be read with a very right wing, conservative message, this a Rambo film of two men, Ivan mainly, being a one-man army against Aslan's group, but War complicates itself, including the sense that any government body including Russia's is not reliable in the slightest for this mission imposed upon two people. At the same time, the negotiations John and Ivan, who is later brought in as a paid mercenary, to even begin this missions has to involve a Russian gangster trading heroine with Chechens. Aspects like this in the plot does mark to War's favour that this film, even if it plays as a pulpy war film, has a very misanthropic take on conflict, that this quest to rescue someone is marked by a lot of dirty business, by a lot of sides playing off each other, and Ivan not necessary a good person, just a young soldier who decides to go into this as a paid mercenary.

Ivan is not even hailing directly from Russia itself but from Tobolsk in Siberia, from an environment away from the central urban cities like Moscow, with its boats to travel about and small community in what we briefly see. Ivan is disconnected from civilian life, and for him, this mission he ends up with is part of what he can be, rather than pretending who he is not. Alongside the ending ultimately a cynical one, where he is talking of this mission from a prison cell charged for war crimes, he will continually tell John, who follows with him, that war is not heroic and even shooting bystanders, even by accident, is part of it. Considering bystanders, including women, accidentally are killed, once the rescue mission starts in Chechnya, emphasises Aleksey Balabanov not taking a noble viewpoint but something closer to his gangster films.

Not even John is noble either. Alongside the fact, off-screen, Margaret will have fallen in love with a wounded soldier she will be stuck with in a pit at Aslan's base, but John does not go into this mission with a nobility either. Channel 4, the British free-to-air public service television network, get a kicking as John is paid by them to film the rescue of his fiancée, strapping a camera to his head eventually and trivialising the life of Margaret. His act, which he films purposely as he goes along, is as much making this significant journey to save Margaret one for his financial benefit, eventually even getting a film adaptation in the epilogue to really dig in the lack of honour here.

Even if the Chechen characters are one dimensional, which is a critique worth having, Aleksey Balabanov also introduces Ruslan (Evklid Kyurdzidis) halfway through. A shepherd Ivan takes hostage, Ruslan is a begrudging ally even if forced to at gunpoint, and eventually even he complicates the black-white morality in that, due to tribal differences, even he is against Aslan and becomes a willing participant even if Ivan has been pretending he has soldiers threatening his family. This undercuts a simplistic take of painting the Chechen characters by having one who is likable and reveals Ivan's ruthlessness, arguably being more progressive even against what Balabanov may have intended because of his clear pessimistic ideals of human beings in general.  

It is a hell of a lot more worthwhile for Aleksey Balabanov to have this pessimism, because it at least means that, any concern one could have with the film, or a lot of content I have seen in his films, he yet was constantly undercutting it with a world weariness suggesting we were stuck with these figures trying to survive in a hostile society. He still has to be taken to task for the moments he had crossed a line into glamorising problematic characters, including ones spouting racist and homophobia ideas, but his nihilism even paints potentially glamorous characters with the same grimy brush, even Ivan here, more likable, stuck having to be a ruthless soldier to kill because he is stuck with no options aside from this. Far from self defeating and accepting it, it feels begrudging, especially as War is an action film eventually, one with the beats and energy of one that is exhilarating, but contrasts this with the punch line of the bookending narrative. That being that Ivan will not be celebrated, and even if not a good character, his role is proclaimed fully criminal by lies as much as what actually happened, with someone taking the fame from the moment. In many ways, whilst it can be read as a problematic message, a pro-lone wolf mentality, it feels instead like sod's law instead, befitting Aleksey Balabanov's worldview from the films before and only streaked with greater melancholy after this. War is, personally, not as meaningful a production in his career, clearly the biggest film in scope in his career, especially next to some of the smaller productions from this time, but it still has a lot to say.

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1) Aleksey Balabanov's film "War" is released in Russian cinemas, published on newsru.com on March 14th 2002.