The Gore-Gore Girls (1972)

 

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Screenplay: Alan J. Dachman

Cast: Frank Kress as Abraham Gentry; Amy Farrell as Nancy Weston; Hedda Lubin as Marlene; Henny Youngman as Marzdone Mobilie; Russ Badger as Lt. Anderson; Ray Sager as Grout; Nora Alexis as Lola Prize

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Lt. Anderson, one of my friends seems to have run into a bit of trouble... and lost her face.

Thinking he was ending on this film in terms of his film directing career, Herschell Gordon Lewis felt he wanted to go out with a bang, with more production value and shock as he was closing the door on his exploitation film career. Starting with the image of a woman, Suzie Cream Puff, "being creamed" by having her face hit through a mirror, he wanted to deliver on that premise. Here I will say, as one of the first Lewis films I had seen, I hated this film once. Hated it to the point it was actually held as one of the worst films I had ever seen. What changed in all the time that passed?

The immediate thing is this film embraces its sense of humour. Introducing our detective lead, Abraham Gentry (Frank Kress), stroking a pet cat in his lounge only to insert it into a cupboard when someone knocks outside, he is lured by a female reporter Nancy Weston (Amy Farrell) to investigate a series of gristly go-go dancer murders. The Gore-Gore Girls is a scuzzy and nasty little production, clearly influenced by the Italian giallo from the period as the unseen killer is even wearing black gloves for the job, but it is also a film so proudly with its tongue in its cheek it has pierced through the flesh. Gentry, as played by Kress, is immediately a stand-out even in terms of characters and acting performances in a Lewis film, playing a sarcastic dick but delightfully so, apt for the tone of the production with his many quips to people who irritate him during his work. He eventually even comes to like Nancy, despite their stand-off nature at first and questionable decisions nowadays; though he does nothing and makes sure she gets safely home, getting her drunk off her face on zombie cocktails repeatedly is not something we would consider heroic nowadays even if the joke back in the early seventies.

The film is a procedural where he investigates who the killer could be. Is it Grout (Ray Sager), the man at the Go-Go club bar who draws faces on vegetables and fruits, crushing them in a mania started on corpses in his Vietnam war service, or the leader of a feminist group, whose group storms a Go-Go club halfway through? Lewis even touching upon the Italian giallo genre by accident is a curious nod to this era Lewis would bow out OF, as horror cinema changed in the seventies and diversified further. This is including the fact he might have not been able to match the gore and splatter becoming more acceptable even in mainstream cinema from the period, such as The Omen (1976) having a full decapitation by way of pane of glass shown at multiple angles. Some of this film has aged and is of the era, as Gentry has no time for any woman, even when he is condescending to everyone, and eventually going to bond and have a romance with Nancy. Coming off as a chauvinist, there are many moments, before that romance too, Gentry feels like he is clearly not interested in women at all and could be read as gay.

Thankfully, a bit has aged well. Even with the feminists involved, the film never takes pot-shots with them even when their leader is a possible suspect, their huge storming scene more of a scuffle between actors then anything that comes off as offensive. It feels like Lewis, and his screenwriter Alan J. Dachman, who has a brief scene as a young male bystander asked where a suspect is, just took notice of the world around them and put in a touch for more interest. Gentry is also inclined to screwing with the male police lieutenant, hiding info and telling him the killer is a religious fanatic stealing the victims' Bibles, which is a legitimately funny running joke especially when the cast playing the fellow officers, who Gentry likes more, play it with their senior looking like an idiot.

One of the other aspects of the film was also one of the huge reasons I hated it originally, because I was offended by it, were the gore scenes, not used to the type of films Lewis made and the splatter genre. That they all involve female victims is going to be an issue for many, though Lewis was happy to have violence against men and women; the issue is entirely that, with the plot choice, some will find this uncomfortable whilst for Lewis, wishing to leave his career at this point as the inventor of the splatter genre, he decided to leave as gruesomely as possible. This is as extreme as Lewis could get, even next to Blood Feast 2: All You Can Eat (2002), with openly absurd shock value and violent about it, where one person dies to a wooden meat tenderizer to the buttocks followed by salt and pepper being added the wounds. A lot of handling organ meat is involved, and the one scene that is the most infamous was also the one which really shocked me back in the day, still out-there in Lewis' filmography when a female victim has her nipples cut off, one producing milk and the other producing chocolate milk, among the other things that already happened. These scenes, even if played for the bleakest of humour, are going to shock and make people uncomfortable, especially because the targets are all women, which was the aspect which caught me off-guard when I first saw the film back in the day and also could not see the intentional absurdity in its grossness. Details of the film do feel of their time, like this or Gentry getting Nancy drunk continually, but what is also felt is that Lewis is not taking anything serious and being mischievous at the same time. Particularly with the look of the film, shot in Chicago, The Gore-Gore Girls was a shock for me back in the day for feeling rancid let alone looking it, and that I did not appreciate this type of cinema at all, especially when it came to its very twisted sense of humour.

It has a clear witty, very dark humoured tone, which helps the film so much in the modern day, but in hindsight this film should probably be a later work for a newcomer to watch from Lewis, just in case the content leaves a bad taste in the mouth without seeing Lewis' sense of humour in context. Nonetheless I have changed my tune considerably to the film, and if this had been his last film, it would have been a good one to have closed the curtains of his career on, with all his quirks, all his divisive content, and a fitting final image. One breaking the forth wall, the screen being closed by a character as a literal curtain closer, feeling closer to a touch from a forties screwball comedy than a splatter film conclusion. That was not the end, as he would return to cinema in the 2000s after a very successful career in advertising, but for the original era, this was an apt closure.

When it comes into asking why he even decided to end his career at this point as he did, some of it is the fact he was struggling to make these films and felt he could have less stress in his life, especially as his advertising career for decades after made him a very well off man. Interviewed on The Incredibly Strange Film Show, a 1988-9 Channel 4 series by Jonathan Ross where he tackled "psychotronic" or B movie figures, the episode entirely devoted to Lewis had him absolute at bliss, happy to look back on his career with mirth but also, playing tennis and well off, a man who did well as a lucrative writer and speaker on the subject of advertising, his film career a well kept secret. He came back to cinema, which was a happy thing, but there was in itself a happy end there just as well. Lewis, in spite of his notorious gore films, has something sweet to his life in that he managed to have happy conclusions to his life and career in cinema twice. It is an odd thing to consider, as his career was devoted to make the audience throw up and throwing entrails around, but he would have found that hilarious.

Swordfish (2001)

 

Director: Dominic Sena

Screenplay: Skip Woods

Cast: John Travolta as Gabriel Shear; Hugh Jackman as Stanley Jobson; Halle Berry as Ginger Knowles; Don Cheadle as Agent J.T. Roberts; Sam Shepard as Senator James Reisman; Vinnie Jones as Marco; Drea de Matteo as Melissa; Rudolf Martin as Axl Torvalds

Ephemeral Waves

 

Swordfish takes a huge risk from the first scene, one willingly waving a red flag at the film critics of the time of its release, with John Travolta speaking to the camera about how unrealistic crime films are over an espresso. He even speaks about how even Dog Day Afternoon (1975) is unrealistic despite being an acclaimed film in the genre, [Huge Spoiler for that film] all because Sidney Lumet did not let the bank robbers get away with it [Spoilers End]. Swordfish as I will get into is a ridiculous film, so the brass balls of presumption to have this opening is hilarious, probably with full knowledge of the ridiculous gubbins the film gets into. Swordfish is an absurd film, and if I had to put a finger on why I hated this film once, as one of the worst films I ever saw, it is likely that I once held a stigma against "boring" Hollywood films. This was an era, the golden era of DVD rental stores, where I saw too many when my parents used to rent everything from a Global Video here in my English town. With the one or two weird titles that came through the exceptions to many of the big promoted titles of the 2000s, such as the low budget films which were able to slip in between the big budget films and be rented by accident, I saw a glut of the 2000 to 2005, to 2003 at least in terms of Hollywood. These are the titles, the pre-HD versus Blu-Ray war era of 2006, which lead to me having an allergy to big CGI explosions and remotely any sign the score was dictating the emotional cues in a film.

Swordfish is now an old film, and it presents a transitional period in Hollywood cinema, beginning with its co-producer Joel Silver. Silver would work throughout the 2000s and 2010s onwards, but his golden era is that of the golden age of American action films, from producing Lethal Weapon (1987) to Die Hard (1988), someone who expanded the types of films he was producing in the nineties with titles like The Matrix (1999) earning him success. He was however still returning to the bread-and-butter of his earlier career with action films, the changes to how they were presented how he continued from the eighties with films like the one covered in this review. Swordfish also presents us with a director, Dominic Sena, who came from the lineage of music video directors who were especially making their voices known in the nineties, working with the likes of Janet Jackson. Then there is a screenwriter with a tiny writer career altogether, Skip Woods, who was early within his work here but with the likes of The A-Team (2010), attempting to reboot the legendary eighties TV series, to X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), a divisive spin-off in the X-Men superhero series, I can now see where the cartoonish nature of Swordfish comes from. This is not detraction to this film, as the flaws are a greater problem than the tonal choices, but the later films showing where this one was coming from in terms of its screenwriter’s voice. Swordfish has the mentality to throw anything at the wall, even if nonsensical, and it is to the point this can be held responsible for an urban myth of a man being personally executed by U.S. President Thomas Jefferson for treason, which just added a ridiculous cherry on top of this deeply flawed film. In many ways, tame in places but attempting edginess in others, this is a grindhouse exploitation film but on a Hollywood budget, if one with many issues that show blockbusters and exploitation films can share similar issues.

It has a plot, and that I had wrote that with tongue-in-cheek comes from this feeling like a pastiche of crime films, and not a detriment either. Hugh Jackman does find himself in a schism as someone who can played the washed and embittered figure of Stanley Jobson, old enough here to look like an aged renegade who went to prison, and crashed-and-burned after being a cool hot shot, but not as a hacker. It does not capsize his performance, but he feels like the Golden Age of Hollywood star who could never be this person in real life. If he as this character was anyone but a computer hacker, the image and style of performance would work in terms of verisimilitude. As a computer hacker, due to how it is portrayed here, it is up to Jackman's natural charisma to suspend disbelief. He has the virtue of the classical matinee idol, even when his big breakthrough was a 2000s plus phenomenon, the superhero becoming a more respectable casting choices as the films were making money, whose character in any other circumstances would not work if a similar actor like him was cast. Anyone else would have stuck out like a sore thumb, but he can make this matinee take on a hacker work in the same way Cary Grant would have stuck out, as we would have not minded, if dieselpunk was a concept in thirties Hollywood cinema.

The lynchpin that helps with the film to improve it, Jackson's character is a hero willing to commit a major hacking crime to steal millions from the US government, but he does so to earn the money needed to get legal custody of his daughter. In what could be an odd conservative slant, but I think is more a weird quirk of a film that is PG-13 for most of its tone, but prods at the older Joel Silver films which had more R-rated content, the ex-wife has connections in the adult film industry. The ex-wife is a troupe of action cinema anyway from John McClane, here a porn actress with her porn mogul boyfriend with a possible drama in a more complex melodrama even in a blockbuster action film left on the table. One where she is unhappy regardless of her career being porn or not, drinking all the time, in which no matter how she tries to connect to her daughter, her hatred for the husband pushes the adolescent away. Like some Hollywood films, i.e. many, that is not the case and she is an archetype that does cause one to wonder how many screenwriters accidentally showed axes to grind, and in the case of Skip Woods here, may have just taken a troop from films he had seen before. The demonization of porn was an idiosyncratic spin but is so slight it is a weird quirk among many.

More so as, whilst this has moments of adult risqué, factoring the one infamous moment of the film involving the lead actress Halle Berry, playing the femme fatale who brings Jackman into John Travolta's plan, this is a film a world away from a gristly reality. This makes the sudden moments of adult tone more surprising with hindsight, considering Jackman's test for the job is literally attempting to hack the US government's secret website whilst former soccer/football player Vinnie Jones has a gun to his head, and a woman is giving him oral under the work table, flickering of an old R-rated film here and there abrupt when it happens. Most of the film however is a broad over-the-top story; even if there are casualties, including one hostage in the opening at the heist blown up by a contraption she has on, one foot is in the nineties Hollywood mould and one in the new era means that everything is broad, of archetypes and lack of causality. Considering as well hacking is the title premise too, expect none of it to be realistic at all, with actors talking jargon and all meant to look cool in a "cinematic way". It is also less a concern than being a bank heist film, which presents in itself the sense of this film trying to match a new era, where the internet would become more prominent, only to still feel awkward.

The prominence of John Travolta is notable for the tone, and another factor affecting your ability to enjoy this or not is how you gauge his character and performance, the villain Gabriel Shear already idiosyncratic before you have later era Travolta acting interpreting him. I do not mind him here, and actually found him one of the more entertaining aspects, if with a caveat that the performance does expose too much. Travolta, already by this point having played Nicolas Cage, who played him, in John Woo's Face/Off (1997), an example of strange Hollywood cinema when it is done right, can have good scenery chewing. He really was knee capped, even if you do not factor in the controversies of the Church of Scientology, when Battlefield Earth (2000) was released, an adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction novel which a) had the controversies of Scientology, from its founder's voice in the text, as an albatross, b) had a drubbing that lasted to the modern day, and c) presented John Travolta as the lead evil alien in dreadlocks, giant platforms and leather costume hamming the performance so much it could turn some vegetarian. The Face/Off reference is appropriate as Travolta could have done a Nicolas Cage, who managed to ride financial debt and mockery to be an unsung hero in terms of committing himself to acting both well and/or so far up to eleven he transcended the mockery. Travolta here, since he is the most prominent aspect of Swordfish, struggles with a sense of self seriousness here, trying to be "cool" in his suits, slicked back hair, taste in expensive coffee and high lofty musings provided by Skip Woods' script. He is meant to be the awesome real anti-hero, but if Nicolas Cage had played this role, it would have worked despite the other problems with the film, whilst there is a sense of artificiality with the performance with Travolta that does undercut this. Despite being one of the memorable aspects for the better with the film, it does accidentally expose something beyond the film to consider with any other performance of his when I encounter it.

The biggest problem with a film like this for all its mad turns, a film about hacking that eventually however leads to a bus of hostages being carried along in the air by a helicopter, entirely in the fantastical more over the top than most fantasy, is one that lead to me being ambivalent to blockbusters from youth. So many, as here, we would dismiss as "mindless" to munch popcorn to, but in truth, for all of us saying we want to have serious profound dramas all the time, most of us just want to have a fun time but with the issue always instead finding something wanting. So many of these films as here you could pluck out cast members and plot points entirely underutilized and see the problem was always that the films skimmed over their most interesting aspects. With the aspects you begin the count being underutilized, the real folly of many blockbusters I dismissed in my youth were where you had weirder, more tantalising premises never fulfilled.

Whatever you think of the acting potential of Vinnie Jones, the notorious Wimbledon F.C. soccer player who was as known for his aggressive on-pitch style as much as for the work he did as a player in a variety of team, he gets little here it is strange he was even cast. Considering the only time you see him stand out, threatening to use rocker launcher ammunition as a suppository on one of the hostages, is just near his end of a role as a generic thug, all the real issues with blockbusters was always the lesser sum of all the parts of their high budgets and casts. The example which stands out is with Halle Berry. It is tasteless to say this, but Swordfish became the film where she as an actress was comfortable going a topless nude scene sunbathing. It only becomes sleazy when reduced to the images of a celebrity as a sexualised object, rather than the actress comfortable committing to the image of eroticism, something you get from the "Mr. Skin" attitude of reducing an actress' entire career to a compilation of her nude scenes out of context, a reference to a real life website that specializes in locating, posting, and rating instances of female nudity in television and film¹. In context, the scene is not tasteless, but plays as a sex comedy bit where Berry, who did the scene to become more confident in her own body onscreen², becomes the figure in control, whilst it is Hugh Jackman who becomes the punch line to the empowered and comfortable woman, even blushing in his character in the moment. Far more insulting with time having past is simply how little Berry actually has to do. It is more egregious your sole female lead has nothing to do, a femme fatale who may be playing both sides but is a blank slate. Even a "dumb" action film could have benefited from what film noir did, the ability to give actresses in these potentially dubious roles meaty performances as compelling figures, something you could see Halle Berry do in what little she has here, but never gets.

Swordfish is okay, where really the issue is of how so many of these films have everything but feel like disparate parts. This is more so the case as, for a film released a few months before the 9/11 Twin Towers tragedy and the start of the second Gulf War, one of the more compelling loose ends is the knowledge that Travolta's character is actually a black ops agent, a thief who is stealing his own country's money to fund protecting the country from terrorist threats. This kind of subversive touch, lost in the ballyhoo, could have been something to let breathe and allow this a knowing air of subversion and weirdness. This is more so now, as mentioned in the review, it is likely due to this film, from one glib comment in this film from Travolta about U.S. President Thomas Jefferson personally seeing to a treasonous person, that people thought this actually happened despite the fact the screenwriter clearly added that into the dialogue as a fictitious flourish^{3a & 3b}. This perverse afterlife to the film is weirder than fiction, making one wonder what this series of fragments, proudly as over-the-top as possible, could have been if playing more to these crime tropes fully committed to a mad edge. Far from the worst film ever made nowadays, Swordfish however from my teen years, like many of those films, could have been lodged fully into the memory if it had the courage to go up to eleven than just come off as silly. Face/Off, brought up earlier in this review, was a silly film I first saw in my teenage years, but it is remembered for good reasons, which is not surprising as director John Woo, able to fully unleash his style from his eighties Hong Kong films, came from a style of filmmaking that never let the stranger or even kitsch aspects undercut taking their dramas seriously nor not making the action scenes as inventive as possible. If this got sillier and Travolta got to pontificate more on movies over espressos, Swordfish could have been something more even if it had become a favourite “so-bad-it’s-good” movie for people to talk of on podcasts, but instead what it is cautious as too many of these films are.

 

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1) The nadir of this, which I am amazed was allowed to go forth, is of course when Seth MacFarlane hosted the 2013 Oscars and performed the song We Saw Your Boobs, which came off as a demeaning when, to be honest, a song called "We Saw Your Butt" about male nude scenes might have avoided this by playing to a jovial glee without the gender bias.

2) Halle Berry bares her soul, written by Bruce Kirkland for Canoe.ca, archived from the original published July 11^th 2012, originally published July 20^th 2009.

3a) Execution on the White House Lawn, taken from Monticell.org.

3b) Jefferson still survives, unlike the other guy, written by Anna Berkes for Jefferson Library.wordpress, published November 5th 2008.

Versus (2000)

Director: Ryuhei Kitamura

Screenplay: Ryuhei Kitamura and Yūdai Yamaguchi

Cast: Tak Sakaguchi as Prisoner KSC2-303, Hideo Sakaki as The Man, Chieko Misaka as The Girl, Kenji Matsuda as Yakuza Leader with butterfly knife, Yuichiro Arai as Motorcycle-riding yakuza with revolver, Minoru Matsumoto as Crazy yakuza with amulet, Kazuhito Ohba as Yakuza with glasses, Takehiro Katayama as Red-haired assassin, Ayumi Yoshihara as Long-haired female assassin, Shōichirō Masumoto as One-handed cop, Toshiro Kamiaka as Samurai warrior, Yukihito Tanikado as Cop with Barrett

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Why did I hate a film once made with hard work and independent grit, a two hour epic combining martial arts, splatter horror and post-Matrix cool? Apparently, because a younger self could not appreciate such good aspects, thus providing evidence youth does not mean good taste. There is unfortunately details I came to learn in regards to this production, which is not the fault of Versus but the inherent problem with any work with people involved who can reveal through themselves the ugly side of human beings, that I had to begin this review with and will have to talk of, as these came like sudden thunderbolts to learn at the worse time, when coming finally around the Versus as a film. As a film itself, this tragic detail is a shame as I can at least appreciate now that Ryuhei Kitamura put his time and effort into this project, one which was a difficult production just from the decision to make it an outdoor shot in the woodlands, liable to constant issues of weather conditions and practicality in getting through the shots with expected strain. Based on a mid-length film before, a lower budgeted project Down to Hell (1997), he took the idea from that of woodlands where those killed within its unholy grounds immediately return undead, and expanded upon it in a film which spun away from a sequel to its own concept. One evoking Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (1981), and its lore of gates directly to Hell, but specifying that there are 666 of them confirmed in Kitamura's world, and at the Forest of Resurrection where this film is set, this has the 444th.

The premise is very simple, and with hindsight, one can envision Versus, as a true independent production, as being the equivalent of a lot of micro-budgeted films from the West, usually shot in VHS in the past, which showed its creators wanting to make the films they grew up watching. The only difference with this was how it was able to put together production to create something very elaborate, one which managed to breakout to a wider audience through film festivals and distributors, in the case of the United Kingdom riding the wave of interest in Asian cinema into the 2000s that distributor Tartan Films made a huge part of their DVD era, with the Tartan Asian Extreme line this belonged to. Like a micro-budget film, the premise is simple, that two convicts have escaped the law, one of our lead and the closest with an actual name as Prisoner KSC2-303, played by future actor star Tak Sakaguchi in a breakout role. The set up is that these two convicts where to met a group of yakuza, only for this to immediately go south when they argue and the leader of the yakuza is killed, immediately bringing to their concern the forest they have chosen to meet at having rejuvenating properties. They have a woman they have kidnapped, played by Chieko Misaka, in tow, and there will be more goons, and two cops, one not impressed his severed hand was still connected to KSC2-303 by handcuffs, the other a braggart who yet has access to a cannon masquerading a long distance rifle. A big bad, set up in a chambara period prologue, is pulling the strings with intentions to unlock the powers of Hell's 444th gate for himself. Neither helping anyone but this villain is that this forest was where the yakuza were dumping their victims quietly in, leading now to there being undead who still had their firearms on them when buried and attempt to still use them.

Sadly this is where what was a celebratory review, with a sense of humour, has to nose dive into reality. It can sadly be confirmed that said villain is played by Hideo Sakaki, a prolific actor and director after this for film and television, who was arrested for accusations of sexual assault in 2024, part of a series of accusations Shukan Bunshun weekly magazine reported in March 2022 about him coercing actresses in sexual situations under the pretence of helping their careers¹. Sadly lead Tak Sakaguchi is connected to another scandal, all connected to a huge MeToo movement which began in the Japanese cinema industry in the late 2010s, where he was directly connected to allegations connected to Sion Sono. Unfortunately, this is a director I had immense fascination in for films like Love Exposure (2008), Sono having allegations of sexual harassment published by a Shukan Josei PRIME article from April 4th, Tak Sakaguchi apologising for his part in luring a woman to Sono in one incident². Details like this unfortunately make it difficult to engage with any production, worse in this case as this is your two lead actors, but this is sadly what happens with hindsight, a film left stranded in the past in knowledge that those involved can be alleged, or in the case of Hideo Sakaki arrested, for undefendable crimes, squandering artistic creativity in favour of absolutely indefensible actions if proven true. I could not consciously ignore this, even if this leaves a bitter taste to the review from onwards, which is a shame as everything else in context to this film is fun and entertaining, and do deserve their place in the sun as someone originally not a fan of Versus, only with this happy ending having a bitter undercurrent too running side-by-side.

Versus itself, back to the film itself and its virtues, was made with overt interest in international cinema as Ryuhei Kitamura, trained in filmmaking whilst living in Australia, wanted to make the films he liked, not only the older action films from Japan itself which he felt had died out, but also with proud influence from international cinema. This is from action films from the West, martial arts films from other countries, and also the splatter horror of the likes of Peter Jackson's early work like Bad Taste (1987), another homemade low budget breakout hit, to Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films. You can see this was a work of love having to deal with what resources they could access - they had a limited time with certain camera equipment at one point, hence why there are abrupt moments of spinning the camera around with close-ups in style - but this was thankfully the case where the crew and cast were committed to the project. This is not surprising considering the individuals involved in this project that would go on to shape a lot of pop culture into the 2000s. Thankfully, there are individuals in this production without accusations published who have contributed a lot to Japanese pop culture, especially its face in international fandoms. Co-writer Yūdai Yamaguchi is among that trend, that the likes of Sushi Typhoon started to lean into, of unconventional genre mash-ups which were more focused for Western audiences, becoming a director in his own right with the likes of Meatball Machine (2005). Composer Nobuhiko Morino, bring some nineties drum n bass to the proceedings, became a frequent collaborator with Yamaguchi and Ryuhei Kitamura. There is also the figure of Yûji Shimomura, the action director, someone who would become a huge name not necessarily in cinema, but in terms of video games, as the director the cinematic and action scenes for the likes of the Devil May Cry and Bayonetta franchises, a figure in that field who brought a level of spectacle into cut scenes and helped pave their cult statuses for memorable sequences as much as the acclaim of their gameplay.

The slightness of the film in plot, a simple tale of someone who wishes to open the door to the realm beyond death, is contrasted by the sense of personality to the film. The influences are seen, between a sword being held in the air like the Highlander films, to a Peter Jackson Brain Dead (1992) era joke of someone having their head punched through, with the camera showing us the shot between the elaborately designed (and impressive) special effect. But the sense of humour and playfulness is the film's, even when making jokes of that era of cinema when the first Matrix film was a huge global hit and this is making jokes about the lead not finding any of the sunglasses he finds being cool enough to wear, or that he needs to steal the leather jacket among other clothes of a dead man who stayed so. Versus arguably has a virtue that, even if tragically marked by the sins of those who made it, so many people were involved, and everyone onscreen, even if they do not even have proper names for the characters, has a personality and can heal with issues of watching the film with hindsight to real life. This can vary from the short yakuza, the runt, who constantly has additional firearms on his person even one piece is stolen, and is going full method in acting like a caffeinated ferret, to the cops, one with the issue his primary hand for punching was taken, and the "Expert" who claims to have trained with the FBI, and learnt to be an expert of woodland tracking living in Yellowstone Park in the USA. A personal favourite of mine in the cast, actor Kenji Matsuda, thankfully got a career in the likes of Kamen Rider series and other tokusatsu work, the flamboyant figure as vivid in his performance as the character's suave dress sense, eventually turning into a literal cat-goblin when characters join the necromancer heavy's side. Even what was something I was not a fan of in my youth, the ongoing joke the lead has to knock the female lead out to keep her safe, is contrasted with hindsight with two women in the cast who get to play as tough as the male cast and take part in the fight scenes. These characters may not have as much screen time as hoped, but they all get a scene to stand out in.

 It is a spectacle film, the logical conclusion to every film fan who wanted to make a film in the woods, where everything is based on what is cool. It is not enough to punch a man's heart out, you need to take a bite from the freshly produced object. Swords can have laser sights regardless of their practical use, and everyone manages to find new armaments regardless of how and where they are stored. Even in terms of an actual plot, it is ambitious to cut to a chambara setting for the back-story, and the ending, which is more of a twist for the sake of it, does feel unpredictable. [Huge Spoilers] Considering how it is built up KSC2-303 is not exactly a true pure hero, but an amoral figure with some virtues, it is built up that one day he could just become an amoral figure in another reincarnation who wants to destroy everything, and the villain was at least moral evil. [Spoilers End] Like a few micro budget films, there was an alternative cut, an Ultimate Cut, where Ryuhei Kitamura wanted to improve aspects with some new footage. There is nothing drastic thankfully barring CGI planets in space in the opening with an emphasis over the lead as more amoral than presumed; instead, this version adds some additional scenes which do not jar explicitly new content, some improvements in the practical effects and just a general tweak in places. It is telling though I am happy, now on the film's wavelength, that I am happy with the original theatrical version as is, even if you do get a blood spurt for a decapitation in the original version that is a mere trickle among moments changed.

It also was a happy conclusion as, whilst sadly spoilt be the horrible tales in real life beyond films, it did lead to Ryuhei Kitamura becoming a director for a Godzilla sequel, and even getting to work in Hollywood, the same journey that Peter Jackson would have. That is enough to place a better opinion on Versus, even without the entertainment I found from this with a fresh perspective, as this was the case of one of these home spun films which became a true calling card, and because of this, I cannot hold anything but a positive bias for this film.

 

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1) Japanese film director arrested over sexual assault allegations, published by Kyodo News on February 21st 2024.

2) Sono Sion Accused of Sexual Harassment, published by Arama Japan in 2023.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

 

Director: Kerry Conran

Screenplay: Kerry Conran

Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow as Polly Perkins; Jude Law as Sky Captain; Giovanni Ribisi as Dex; Michael Gambon as Editor Paley; Bai Ling as Mysterious Woman; Omid Djalili as Kaji; Laurence Olivier as Dr. Totenkopf; Angelina Jolie as Franky

Ephemeral Waves

 

Why did I hate this once? Likely, I was not gelling with its tone, and big budget Hollywood films from this when my family used to rent them constantly eventually started to put me off by the 2010s. In the time having past with a wider and more open taste in cinema returning to titles, this particular one also has an underdog nature to it I have to admire to, as this was literally a passion project for its creator-director-writer Kerry Conran, who grew up loving the pulp work this was inspired by, wanted to make a film like it, and managed with nothing else in his resume beforehand to get the production off the ground as a Hollywood film.

Sky Captain is also a work where you see a prototype of the digital green screen use in later Hollywood films, Conran in his own way having been ahead of the curve in terms of productions using CGI, something which was new and being experimented upon the 2000s with films like Sin City (2004), Casshern (2004) from Japan, or Immortel (ad vitam) (2004) from France among others. These films were ahead of their time, but also of them alongside their storytelling need you to been on their wavelengths to get a lot out of. Sky Captain in particular is pure spectacle as an action film built from its then-innovative special effects, which for my younger self was clearly a slog. It is a  work with a very basic plot entirely surrounding its then-radical "digital backlot" production, where barring the actors the sets are entirely in computer effects, something which was relatively new and being experimented upon in the 2000s but has wider implications decades on when even costume and hair design can be digitally altered on actors.

Set in an alternative 1939, this is pulp thirties to forties pulp storytelling brought together - some noir trappings, giant robots flying over New York City emphasising the science fiction and adventure - surrounding missing scientists and a doomsday scenario involving reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) and the Sky Captain Joe Sullivan (Jude Law), the later an independent pilot and his mercenary team brought in when global thefts of resources by giant robots happen. The limitations are now visible on a film which was ahead of its time but also working around some limitations, that this cast is (almost) entirely on green screen and that barring extras, there is a noticeably small cast here, trying to work around an elaborate pulp story in terms of bringing it to screen in a then-unheard of process unless you had seen world films like Casshern. Even next to CGI in the later 2000s, this has obviously aged, but it has a style even with the heavy emphasis on muting most colour and grey which is distinct. What it feels like, even as a passion project, is a film which, if elaborate in tone already, could have blossomed into a wider franchise if it had been successful. It's tone taken from old pulp work which had sequels is found in the few titbits we see - that Sky Captain is a figure all nations calls to, and the small cast, including Angelina Jolie as Franky, --, the captain of a flying airbase, and surprisingly for me comedian Omid Djalili as Kaji, a comedic sidekick but one who is never a butt of jokes. As a one off it tells enough, but without wanting to get into the potentially credulous world of movie franchises, there was enough here to expand out into a more grander world if it had been be a hit even if the original film is dealing with the potential apocalypse. Future stories, especially as other influences such as forties cinema and the touch stones of fifties sci-fi could have easily slid into this.

It has the tone you would find in a pulp paperback, and that in itself does entice, and I grow to admire this barring how, truly, this does feel a film still playing it very safe. This is one of the more notable things in how, whilst elaborate, there is not a lot of risk in the story telling. Even as a work based on old pulp, that does mostly soak away to become like the action films from the time, only with the fact that, as our sole main characters, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law are clearly tapping into screwball comedy love-hate bickering in-between those scenes (and within them) to flesh them out. Like many titles from these films, and even animated films like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001), whether good or bad, their greatest flaws is how the plots are quite conventional, likely to be able to get them off the ground as productions when their budgets were focused on getting the technology off the ground; Casshern and Immortal are stranger films, and Sin City comes with the knowledge Robert Rodriguez, its helmer, made his name making films as independently as possible. The passion is here, before anyone thinks I want to dismiss Kerry Conran's hard work, but barring some quirks, like a cameo of a tiny elephant or a brief trip to Shangri-La, a lot of Sky Captain could have been remade with traditional Hollywood production from the time, the innovation in the flair for its time period aesthetic. One thing which does feel like it was ahead of its time, and complete missed when this subject is more a topic of great discussion, is the casting of Sir Lawrence Olivier in a key role. Olivier had passed in 1989, so this in his use, a hologram in the film, is ahead of its time in terms of depicting and casting a passed actor in a film, something which became more a controversial subject into the 2010s. Be it Peter Cushing returning for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), or the attempt to include James Dean (replicated onscreen digitally) in a Vietnam War film that was seen as a taboo¹, this is a contentious subject in terms of memento mori. Olivier's appearance does show how ahead of the time this was, when Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow itself has become more of a cult film in time for what it was attempting to do, and people merely batted an eyelid to this inclusion.

Reading into how this was a project Kerry Conran wanted to make before he even gotten into Hollywood has made me soften to this, and truth be told, it is a fun film. My older self's absolutely hostility to it comes connected entirely to how these type of films once were like a white noise once, which has changed entirely now in the modern day. Tragically, this was not a box office success, and Conran has not helmed another theatrical film; thankfully he at least got to make a film in a way he clearly wished it to turn out, and returning to Sky Captain, I have nothing but respect for its existence now.

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1) Filmmakers Say James Dean’s Family is ‘Fully Supportive’ of Bringing Back Actor for Vietnam War Drama, written by Dave McNary for Variety, and published November 8th 2019.