Rubber's Lover (1996)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4e/Rubber's_Lover_FilmPoster.jpeg/220px-Rubber's_Lover_FilmPoster.jpeg

Dir. Shozin Fukui

With the sense of having to blink, slumped back at the end credits, trying to get my senses back together, a secondary viewing doesn't detract from the sensitory barrage of Rubber's Lover, only add to it. Is it all brute sound and violent content only? Probably, but you can become very complacent if one merely goes about believing any art that is lurid and outright hostile is unacceptable. Sometimes you need to shoot up the experimental drug rectally, get the rubber gimp suit on and let your mind be expanded by the pulsating, audible noise being played through the speakers, as crafted as the sound torture a character in the film creates on magnetic tape for a project to expand human consciousness. To actually have an effect on a viewer, it's better to go to the extent Shozin Fukui does in audio assault then be sedate. And what a film, cyberpunk cinema, based on stories around dehumanising industry, slum based fiction whose name evokes punk rock and its D.I.Y ethics. Here, Fukui wanted to depict a theme of his of catharsis through physical pain, and it appears here in the submerged underground laboratory the film is mostly set in, depicted in stark ink black and burnt-out white monochrome photography.

From http://horrorhappyhour.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/1538997732_d2a1ac3e96.jpg

This is a prequel of sorts to his previous film 964 Pinocchio (1991), his debut, not in the same subject, but of the same vibe of psychic power and transgressions with bodily and sexual undercurrents. I would like to imagine too, if one attempted to make a giant narrative encompassing both, that film started some time before its narrative when someone found out about the aftermath of this film and cut their losses by going into the living sex cyborg business that makes part of 964 Pinocchio's story. Better to try and salvage the remnants of the scientific experiment that failed messily here and try a different area with more chance of financial reward. Here, two scientists, and a comely nurse (Mika Kunihiro) in Lolita Goth costume who molests the human guinea pigs, are attempting to bring mankind to psychic abilities like many films before it, but with two potential options for doing so of their own design, the Digital Direct Drive, a piece of technology for monitor and enhance one's mind, and a drug called Ether. The two scientists, Motomiya (Sosuke Saito) and Hitosubashi (Norimizu Ameya),  are butting heads about which is the superior method for doing so. One thing they can agree upon is that, in the final stages, their test subjects are wrapped up in an all-rubber body suit, and not just because everyone is exceptionally kinky, but for a practical reason. The rubber suffocates the skin, preventing it from breathing, causing an insulating affect that, with noise blasting your mind away and the Ether drug in your system, will make your everyday senses mindless allowing psychic powers to come to the surface. Thus the title is explained and the S&M aspect of the film is shown. And its based on real research by Fukui before preparing this film, including contacting S&M practitioners, that is explained in a filmed interview that was included with the film's US DVD release. I don't recommend the reader try any of this in an attempt at expanding the mind. The amount of finance and underground space required is steep, and as this film suggests, it would lead to someone being a mess of organs on the floor by the end.

From http://www.honekoubou.jp/en/filmo/rubbers_2.gif

The psychic project is a failure. They're wasting money and killing human test subjects, and not producing the results their benefactors want. And they're clearly going insane, Motomiya, spearheading it, is a "muscle monster", as their nurse calls him, with the muscles of a body builder, who mostly wears only a thong and a see-through raincoat, so on edge and psychopathic I'm not surprised any one would like to close his projects. That or his tendency to rape people which rightly would prevent anyone wanting to assist him in continue said project. Members have gotten addicted to the Ether drug, and the last test subject unfortunately disintegrates on the operating table in splatter fashion when their nurse puts too much Ether into their veins. A female employee of the higher ups Kiku (Nao) is sent to tell them the project is to be closed within a week, but the three remaining members of the staff refuse to finish. The fourth Shimika (Yôta Kawase), an addict to Ether, is planned to be the next test subject in a last ditch attempt to prove to themselves they can succeed, and if Kiku tries to intervene, or accidentally cause the power to go off briefly trying to use an elevator during their experiment, Motomiya has no issues with sticking her between two speakers as a test subject too and blasting her ears with mind shredding noises.

From http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y121/
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Rubber's Lover is a claustrophobic film. You are grateful it eventually gets out into the real world, to see some neon signs of Japanese streets of the time, or inside a supermarket briefly, trapped in the stark and choked world of the test labs for the most part. The actors were told not to talk to each other during takes, which would've added to the tension onscreen. Unlike the expansive, delirious tone of 964 Pinocchio, with its Andrzej Zulawski inspired moving cameras and hyper active acting, this is a complete 180 degree turn. A refined, subtler form of the hyper violent, assaulting content as Shimika ,during the experiment, does develop psychic powers but still has the will to take his revenge on his former co-workers. Not through the conventions though, blowing someone's head off Scanners-like, but with Kiku the catalyst he is linked to now, through destroying someone's brain, disintegrating their body, or flat-out cannibalism whilst in an entire different body. Add to this a moment of blistering strobe effect that distorts your retinas, and it's an intense experience, but the quietness of most of the film baring the electronic trance score that occasionally is heard creates an interesting mix. Its oppressive even before the fake gore effects are seen, or the sexual aspects seep into front of your eyes, already unnerving in its rundown, industrial locations.

Don't worry, nothing bad happens to the bunny.
(From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JIUmad51doo/UoGNg-lekVI/AAAAAAAAdcg/
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The director's theme in both films is that transition and transformation is possible through agony, the film structured around effecting the viewer where you feel like you've gone through the same procedures until a waking sensation by the ending. The monochrome images. The sound design and disturbing content, including prolonged repetition of dialogue samples in scenes of pronounced psychokinetic events taking place. It's not surprising Fukui worked on Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), the most significant film in the Japanese cyberpunk subgenre. In fact, of immense interest, you can see three trajectories' come out from that film. That of its director Shinja Tsukamoto, who would continue with the theme of the body and then develop more and more emotion to his work. Co-cinematographer and main actress Kei Fujiwara would unfortunately only make two features as a director herself, the most well known one Organ (1996) I've also reviewed online before [Viewable here], but developed her own unique spin on body horror that would baffle and alarm anyone who went into them expecting a Sushi Typhoon fest of cheesy gore. Fukui decided to concentrate on the mind and the transformation of it. Of course the three of them would have themes that would blur into each other's work, but they took their own inspirations alongside what happened in Tetsuo: The Iron Man.

From http://s3.amazonaws.com/quietus_production/images
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In contrast to the first film, Rubber's Lover has a darker conclusion as the dependency on the Ether drug and lost memories leads to an end. The climax involving a discovery of a dark past continually referenced to including a film, on celluloid, in Motomiya's collection. It also involves the sudden appearance of snow falling inside a room, a moment of elegant grace before the closest moment to a Scanners scene taking place. The end is tragic but continues with someone sat against a pillar inside a subway. They have been through torture, until becoming more then they were, leaving them drastically changed. Fukui would not make another feature film for over ten years after Rubber's Lover, returning back with films and shorts that look impossible to see. If it was the last time he made a film, it certainly ends with the right statement, leaving this viewer fried mentally gripping with the content again. The beginning of something new, back to the idea of catharsis through physical violence.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5KMMfm12ybQ/UoGNlplyXyI/
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Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None) - High

There's an entire wing of this site that's going to be devoted to Japanese cinema let alone their cyberpunk movies, such imaginative but also stark work. The borderline between alternative, underground art - theatre, punk and experimental music etc. - matched by giant drill penises, pig people and in this film's case leather frog man suit fetish and a prolonged scene of the two actresses writhing in a white lit elevator being pleasured by a pocket machine that blatantly stimulates your orgamically. A person's torso being ripped open while they're still awake and a very muscled man, able to make sound with them just through flexing, wearing only a transparent raincoat, repeated again in this review by how bizarre that particular image is to me. In fact you can add the almost nude muscle men in Tsukamoto's Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) and paint this image of large biceped men in underground lairs involved in evolving mankind that's impossible to shake out of your head. But Rubber's Lover isn't pointlessly lurid. Disturbing, yes, and definitely a film that has divided people, but one that at least contains a distinct and provocative point of view. Rubber's Lover is merciless in its abrasive content but for the means for what is felt rather than direct ideas. It is worth mentioning Fukui's background in noise rock about now, the sense of the embracing of the messiness and oppressiveness of noise fitting the style of the content in this film. The result, like a Tetsuo: The Iron Man is completely unique and unrelenting.

Personal Opinion:

It's difficult to choose between this and 964 Pinocchio in which is the best film. Fukui's other work, barring two shorts that came with each film on US DVD, are to my knowledge unavailable to see. Here you get a very idiosyncratic style of filmmaking that feels like putting your head in a vice, not necessarily a horrible situation to be in when the calm final shot is shown and the whole viewing was worth it. They are part of a filmmaking style, like Tsukamoto's work or Organ, which is unconventional even for the extremes of all the violent Japanese cinema I've viewed, and not just because their created worked together, but also in an area of underground filmmaking which is willing to step outside of good taste but also have a clear idea for something a lot deeper. Maybe represented in brutality and fake gore being splattered about, but still an idea or mood. Like a pressure cooker, Rubber's Lover keeps going from one extreme to the next one, tightening and becoming more disturbing as it goes along. The result is impossible not to feel a reaction to.

Sexy Killer (2008)

From http://lytherus.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/35097.jpg

Dir. Miguel Martí

Meet Bárbara (Macarena Gómez). She's sexy as the title suggest, glamorous, likes both the cute and pink alongside the dark and macabre, desires to be famous as a celebrity, likes fashion, and just happens to be the mysterious Campus Killer at her university, bumping off anyone she despises or irritates her in gruesome ways. Directly talking to us the viewer, or an invisible camera to be the bafflement of one of her lecturers in one of her anatomy classes, she is perfectly content to enjoy the hottest trends while keeping a man's severed head she's claimed in the fridge. With the police investigators on the Campus Killer's trail, she also falls madly in love with morgue coroner/student Álex (Alejo Sauras), who she mistakes as a serial killer like her and is the one whose performing autopsies on her victims. Add his work in his spare time, a machine that can see into one's mind and can show the last images before a person died, and it's going to be hectic for her. Sexy Killer is definitely a film of the 2000s or so. You can see - when it uses flashy editing, bright candy colours, a parody of an infomercial demonstrating the tools required to suffocate someone with graphics onscreen - that this is a type of film that was birthed to in the late nineties onwards and is frequent now in genre cinema. It runs into sub-genres like grindhouse throwbacks and parodies, and can be said to be the zeitgeist of most cinema now baring the art house branch. It can be seen in blockbusters too. The influences can vary - music videos, Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas (1990), (although its Taxi Driver (1976) that is referenced in this film), Quentin Tarantino and many more. It's a peculiar concoction of self referential, movie geek zaniness. We follow Bárbara in her days, starting at the end of the film with her telling her tale to a man stupid enough to run over her dog, with his fingers broken and a knife in his hand already as she does. It's an oversaturated, hyperactive film. It starts off referencing slasher films, with naked female co-eds in the locker room, than immediately goes to Scream (1996), one of the first films to be a box office hit for its self-referential narcissism, then goes on to quote anything from the 'You're talkin' to me?' speech of Taxi Driver to the Teletubbies. It's bouncing off the walls from the beginning with its lurid and intentionally ridiculous gore that can yet be brutal, constant dropping of plot points and broad humour.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixQGI5vqIRSSGYIAEoI7GXxjDcZW4PMetVUCzbrlPDB0GAInlbAmU9YOJgsTZHKObeKm0MdxWxEmwMx8cAOo6V5Yr1oJwwA7oUvcgfBJetLP7_VhEhTWBy3jo-D93KnS60skP1Ugl4Npo/s1600/Sexy.Killer.2008.DVDRip.XviD.AC3-ViSiON.avi_snapshot_00.05.15_%5B2013.11.13_22.05.39%5D.jpg

Like the other films of this ilk, the problems immediately raise their heads, more so when I immediately thought of three films I've seen over the years like this one - in chronological order, Gen Sekiguchi's Survive Style +5 (2004), Greg Arak's Kaboom (2010) and Joseph Kahn's Detention (2011). They may reference other works but they sustain themselves on their own energies and weird plots, as candy coloured, hyperactive and zany as a Sexy Killer or a Manborg (2011) but superior. With the exception of Araki, the other directors worked in commercials and/or music videos previously, another trend with these films. All are gaudy, at times glib and as manic as a film like Sexy Killer. But Kaboom has a heart and a controlled, knowing sense of humour in its pastiche. The humour in Sexy Killer is merely broad, and really has no emotions for its characters baring generic drama and romance between Bárbara and Álex. Detention intentionally pushes the use of onscreen graphics, pop culture references and genre mash up pastiches to an extreme, which Sexy Killer is too timid to do, willing to have someone crucified on a cave ceiling, a Christian worship shrine, in blasphemous fashion at one point but never letting such twisted images sink in. Survive Style 5+ has the background that surrealism and pop art was embraced fully in Japanese popular culture, its tendrils even reaching their pop music and adverts. Sexy Killer, a Spanish entry to these sorts of films, could've been interesting. A female killer as the protagonist, who at one point bemoans the sexism of presuming all film killers are male, a goofball horror comedy made in a pan-gender era, post meta-horror and after the existence of Pedro Almodovar's brand of camp black comedies like Kika (1993). The problems becomes obvious when the only real laugh is realising a cover of Aqua's Barbie Dolls is played over one of Bárbara fantasies, of a fake 50s Technicolor gloss of idyllic life, raised to want to be always pretty by her vain mother, not because it adds a point to the scene even out of amusement, but just because a song I was young enough to hear on the radio when it was first released is being covered.

From http://www.cultreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/sexy-killer-bathcr.jpg

Most of these films are vacuous. Horror cinema now is atrocious in a smugness especially that is transparent. Happy to merely be gory and make an Evil Dead reference, little else after that. Constant film references, but always the same type of films, and with a Taxi Driver, referencing it without any real reason too or learning the craft of such a film, content with the apparent coolness of Robert De Niro talking to himself in front of the mirror but not interested why his character is doing that. Far from being a miserable sourpuss, I find myself with films that cannot string together a barest of narrative threads let alone a charm and charisma, discombobulating quickly into self-fellatio of fandom that's a detriment to the creativity and inspiration you find in fandom too. The virtue of a Greg Araki's Kaboom is that, even if that film ends on an intentional anti-climax, is a consistency to be able to wrap any random, strange ideas into a distinct form that can make them work together, an inventiveness with a real humanity even if it's weird. A Detention was a mess of plot strands but it went so far that it becomes a parody that cannot be loved by the crowd its mocking, like most parodies now, smug with themselves, its extreme hyperactivity divisive to many who see it. Sexy Killer, strung together by random kills, vapid glossy scenes, and plot strands that don't go anywhere and are not random on purpose, is just dull. Moments do stand out with some good things - Álex convincing a person to borrow his suit by having a bonding moment of how they were nerds in college who were virgins, Star Trek fans and awkward with the opposite sex - but most of it fails.

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It becomes obnoxious. A potential subplot of someone else who is killing people quickly mentioned and quickly after dropped, and the film devolves into the most conventional of stories. Inexplicably it turns into a zombie film by the end. Yes, it turns into a zombie film. I'm not kidding, suddenly the undead are introduced for the climax. Why? Probably because the director likes George A. Romero films but with no consistent reason to make the switch work at all, or to be so out-there, like Takashi Miike's The Happiness of the Katakuris (2004) that it flummoxes you in its tonal shift. It's vapid in its tributes to films it likes and never becomes its own distinct creation with a real depth of black humour or dares to truly piss off the viewer. The promise for a film here to take an interesting spin on the tropes, a fun one, is lost as soon as it starts. It's not really going to be subversive in its celebration of this female killer, slowly becoming trite as it introduces the Scorpion and the Frog story and suddenly becomes serious in the final moment. Neither is it camp enough or really feminist. The latter is complicated - Bárbara is charismatic, and the actress Gómez is absolutely game for her role, but the character is vapid and only obsessed with shopping and fashion magazines; not inherently a negative, as it's clear in real life glamour and goth/alternative culture are bedfellows for both genders, but her character development is miniscule.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/
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The zombies break out and randomly attack the party Bárbara is at in a poor script contrivance. Her lover Álex and her are ready to have the cliché dramatic scene about her real self that kills the film further, as a home invasion takes place that reminds me why I'd rather be watching Peter Jackson's Brain Dead (1992) again then it. This is worse when, baring a few film references, that film is not close to this smug horror comedy cinema of now, more concerned with the horror being horror, the comedy being real jokes, characters being actually likable, and ripping into fifties New Zealand culture to give itself its own unique personality separate from other horror films like it, things all these genres really need and many lack as if it's a badge of honour.  When a blatant CGI explosion burns down the house, the film is completely dead for me. Nothing is really good and it's part of a long line of these films, from Casa di mi Padre (2012) to Die You Zombie Bastards! (2005), the mainstream to the obscure, from the 2000s onward to now, that are as empty as each other. Films thatmerely pat themselves on the back as they believe that they are affectionate tributes to the love of movies and things that are fun. And it's more of an issue since their influences are rarely to blame because they've avoided making the same mistakes. Some - like George Lucas and Troma films - need to be viewed before I can make a judgement, but the others aren't guilty. Steven Spielberg and the movie brat generation vary between the serious and Indiana Jones films. Music videos, and music in general, is varied, and commercials perish quickly. Videogames, before now when they all look the same, are more idiosyncratic to each other then people credit them for. Video and video rental stores could lead to the discovery of truly unique films as well as your per usual schlock.  Scorsese varies his work beyond Goodfellas, and Tarantino has actually grown up, won't you believe it, making very peculiar and bold experiments even if he's still obsessed with grindhouse films. So why do films like Sexy Killer exist that fail this badly from their influence? Simply a horrible tendency that surface coolness is enough, which is why most of these similar films of now are as bad.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/
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Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

This is one of those 'zany' films I mentioned in the guidelines for this blog - shown here - those that throw everything they  think is weird onscreen but aren't actually weird, not abstract and just tiring. It's a conventional, if shambolic, narrative and isn't brave enough to do something actually strange or daring.

Personal Opinion:

Most cinema that I grew up with, from the early 2000s to now, is rubbish to be honest, because films like this delude themselves into thinking that a fan attitude can make aesthetically sound judgements on art. That's dangerous ground for me, he who only writes amateur reviews, to pose, but with my little inexperienced soapbox out, there is a pronounced difference between someone, regardless if they're a movie fan or started filming music videos etc., who can make fleshed out, engaging art even if its wacky and silly. See Greg Araki. Michel Gondry. Look at what place Quentin Tarantino has gone to now from before, and see why people are getting very tired of the grindhouse revival very quickly. No matter how many pop culture references they have, glib violence and farcical attitudes to meaning, the good artists have more on their mind and have read at least read one book in their lives. They do, for the risk of failure, try to be serious and earnest, or at least give their fan base a kick in the nuts when required. Something like Sexy Killer is middling, a retroactive work that makes the notion of being film fan very uninspired and easy to distract, excess without meaning to it. The result, willing to watch as many films like it as I can even though I should've learnt by now, is painfully drab. 

The Immortal One (1963)

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Nz39U4iRLqs
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Dir. Alain Robbe-Grillet

It's always an exciting movement, intentional choice of words, when a film director is resurrected or given their first introduction in this age of DVD and Blu-ray. The potential of a new landscape connected to cinema's vast Chinese puzzle box form. Even if the director has had DVD releases before, a grand scale celebration and restoration could have volcanic impact on film viewers - we await Walerian Borowczyk's day in the sun, not that far from when I'm writing this, in Britain. You come to a film like The Immortal One, the debut cinematic work of an acclaimed author and writer of Last Year In Marienbad (1961), and the already rich symbolism, such as our lost protagonist N (Jacques Doniol-Valcroze) finding discarded calendar pages in the woods, no transition between picking them up, just cut to different dates in his hands, and an entirely new room in what cinema means is kicked open for me.

From http://filmint.nu/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Two.jpg

N, a foreigner to Istanbul, encountering the beautiful woman L (Françoise Brion), sparking an intimate relationship. When she seemingly vanishes however, everything is up to question, he knowing little about her. Her name she gives him may be fake, she may be married, may be part of a white slavery practice, a total mystery woman elusive to him. The recent release of six of Robbe-Grillet's films for the first time in Britain, including The Immortal One, allows not only for the films to be viewable, but also as a box set for the UK releases, for the themes and ideas to intertwine, an introduction to the director. A person who the greater concern is for the enigmatic nature of his films, the truths held by his characters vaguer and questionable as they go further along. His characters travel in worlds that multiply and distort themselves as they go. When it doesn't, as in the case of Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974), the last film in the set, it's because the protagonist is the one undermining the truth to every other character with their words. N in Robbe-Grillet's first film is left wandering the city of Istanbul, viewed by the mystery woman as a fake city of his dreams, eventually the fabric of reality against dreams being pierced. To those who have never seen one of Robbe-Grillet's films, this one is comparable to David Lynch. In a paradox worthy of his ideals, the director's work can be compared to various other films - Jean-Luc Godard with Trans-Europ-Express (1966), Czeck cinema (shot in Czechoslovakia) with The Man Who Lies (1968), pop art and the French New Wave with Eden and After (1970), and Jess Franco and softcore with Successive Slidings of Pleasure. Yet he is uniquely his own voice in that what undercuts the realities - lies, conspiracies, himself and a producer and a continuity girl scrapping plot points in favour of others film-within-a-film for Trans-Europ-Express - between intellectual deconstruction and a obsession with the fetishishtic that connects to his well know proclivities for bondage and S&M.

From http://i59.fastpic.ru/big/2014/0330/06/f132002ac8b2954cc8ee477944ef0b06.png

In his debut its clearly established where he would go and that, having gone backwards in viewing the released box set chronologically, this film and Successive Slidings Of Pleasure inherit the same mind behind them even if their tones are different. Bold use of cinematography from a man known for his letters and words in novels, rich black-and-white cinematography depicting the Turkish environments. Time is disrupted continually, scenes in the past, future or never having happened spliced between a moment taking place. The disorientating ability of dreams to be able to look at all these sides, inwards and outwards, of a reality, interlocking scenes taking place. A funeral procession is on a white stone courtyard, at the bottom of the screen going upwards, and not an edit later, creating an almost empty space baring one vague figure at the top. Human statues, like Last Year of  Marienbad, of people, stuck in time, strangely reminiscent of the graveyard, frequented onscreen, of the pillar shaped gravestones, a place long gone from practical use, as the supernatural nature of the film's title is emphasised from a car accident that takes place onward.

From http://theleastpictureshow.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/alain-robbe-grillet-16.jpg

A conspiracy is seemingly taking place around N as he becomes more and more at a loss as he moves along. A fisherman outside his hotel is continually nearby, maybe the mystery woman's husband. Maybe it's the blind man with two Doberman pinchers who develop into nocturnal creatures of fate. Are they involved in a conspiracy in another way or is it mere illusion? More so as the film keeps cutting back to a woman lying on a beach, waking up and saying to someone stood over her she has been dreaming. Like Last Year At Marienbad, the sense of reality is suspect, the chique aesthetics of exotic Turkey, of glamorous women in states of undress and suave men in suits, is undercut as more people look at N suspiciously and the facts are for question. The desire for the mystery woman leads to him even having a scene of self reflection as time seemingly stands still, as he can reflect on his own reflection in front of an antique store window in that moment. By the end, the film repeats itself, sending him into a fate beyond him.

From http://i59.fastpic.ru/big/2014/0330/43/9b9e3ff23227765122b9bbdc40840143.png

Aesthetically bold - ancient Byzantium ruins against modern ruins of a ship in the harbour, carpets hanging everywhere and bustle of city streets rife - it doesn't feel like Robbe-Grillet made any amateur mistakes here with his debut, but already knew where to go. The use of environments, as Robbe-Grillet would continue five movies on, adds to the layers that multiply as you watch along. Underground tunnels, mosques but also ordinary places fleshed out into new dimensions, such as the metaphor for the isolation of a hotel room being ran with as N is complete alien within it to the rest of the world, something returned to for The Man Who Lies. It would continue further from this with the other films - Trans-Europ-Express with the titular train and cityscapes, The Man Who Lies with its rooms and woodland, Eden And After with its mazes of industrial land, Tunisian village squares and a cafe crossed with a pop art installation, and Successive Slidings of Pleasure with its extremely restriction aesthetic and its fetishisation of bare walls and cramped underpass stairs, literal with the former with body paint printed onto it. Again this can be compared to other directors, but this is from the perspective of a cerebral writer who likes mysteries, and realises the power of  using the environments for this with the assistances of the cinematographers, camera operators and set designers who worked with him.

From http://i2.imageban.ru/out/2014/03/27/c3de446df0d9660b9427c7a8711fe791.png

And it's a mystery that entices. His more abstract work onwards from this has a playful, even lurid, quality to them that can help a viewer not used to going through meta and self commentating deconstructions. This is why, interestingly, Robbe-Grillet can be placed with the aforementioned Jess Franco, and got y DVD/Blu-Ray combo releases in the United States from the same company that did the same for Franco's work. Robbe-Grillet, the man of letters who is clearly obsessed with pulp as you get to films like Trans-Europ-Express, would've been pleased to  be housed with both such a genre luminary unfairly dismissed and also be released by the British Film Institute alongside Akira Kurosawa and Carl Theodor Dreyer in a different country. The protagonist is sent through a mystery as seen in many films, the same question asked - who is this woman? - but Robbe-Grillet is much more precise in the telling of the question than others. The film, no matter how further it reaches the abstract, is always going to an event or moment that has a reason to be included, just to displace the viewer to a momentous shift in tone. Utterances about people, individuals going silent and cautious, brief glimpses if someone out in the corner of the eye, all is precise even if the first viewing for me is a dream that baffled trying to absorb it all in. And it turns into a displacement of the scenario as it wraps up. The protagonist N who, bearing in mind Robbe-Grillet's continual obsession with archetypes, is vague himself, a little weak and displaced as a figure. His mystery woman, made of smoke, a belly dancer to only his (and our gaze) at one point, first scene in snap shots divided by blinds of his hotel window, as  if he's made her up, has more complexity than him. The scenario that Istanbul is a place of seedy conspiracy, common in pulp about foreign countries, the exotic as the other, is also undercut by how much it's mentioned N's view of the city is a mere illusion. The locals could be staring at him because he's weird to them, continually asking odd questions about a woman to the shopkeepers and maids he had never even learnt to name of. From there - his own delusions, real conspiracy, or a siren beckoning him to doom - a tiny Möbius strip takes places in the film, time repeating but with significant changes. A Doberman, black fur, peering out in the illuminated darkness of a car lights on a road. It's what one would wish debut to be, more so when learning how difficult it was to get this film made, Robbe-Grillet able to work much, much (for emphasis) quicker as he went on. The obvious questions to ask now is how his novels as an acclaimed writer in French literature, out there for me to find and read, set this film up and was a continuation of it, and how he went on after the last disc of my acquired box set as the filmmaker, almost all of which needing its own box set some day. It is a cinema that can link to others I can recognise already, but is clearly its own, unique one. Vibrant while being very intellectual, possibly in dangers of pretensions in the later works, which become more sexually explicit and divisive in their deconstructive games, but with so much to provide still. Apparently The Immortal One is a weak Robbe-Grillet film, at least according to the booklet in the DVD set; directors would kill for this as a debut considering how colourless, forgive the pun on the film's monochrome look, or compromised some can be.

From https://celluloidwickerman.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/imm_banner02.jpg

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

It would be Low if Robbe-Grillet never made another film or went on to be more conventional. It's a mystery with leanings towards rearranging your protagonist's perceptions encountered in many films of the sixties. It's a Medium having fed myself on five other films by him, and how noticeably more unconventional it is having seen what came after. He was one step away from Jorge Luis Borges' The Garden of Forking Paths, a character dying in one chapter, alive in the next, as what happens in The Man Who Lies. For all I know, that does happen in The Immortal One too.

Personal Opinion

It's a great moment when films, or any work, are finally allowed to be seen by the general public, not as a retrospective, but on a purchasable material, even data file. True, this is likely a niche only people like me knew of being made available, but it's now possible to have six films, one a reinterpretation of Eden and After called N. Took The Dice (1971), a fitting connection, in circulation. It's adding a new colour to the spectrum when it's films by an idiosyncratic voice, no matter how divisive they are. New games to use what Robbe-Grillet was playing watching these films. An entire new wing of my cinema, with five films that can be added to the blog later down the line, and others just out of reach.   

Smoke and Flesh (1968)

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Dir. Joseph Mangine

Ah, to dig further into an area of cinema that you truly know little of. Full of surprises, films that you don't know the basics of fully let alone the true obscurities like Smoke and Flesh. This film nicely connects itself between counter culture, sexploitation and softcore, drug films and American underground cinema of the time. What I wasn't expecting was how good this film is technically and altogether knowing that these films are usually scrappier, the reason many are loved. Usually these films are campy fun, but this knocked my socks off in what I got and for what it is. The first few images included freeze frames of urban city bustle, a female voiceover describing how life stops in the day in work hours, a clock heard ticking away, already setting up a veneer of gloss and boldness unexpected for the film as I started viewing it. Night comes, and you are hit by sumptuous black-and-white photography as a masked motorbiker travels on the inner city streets of New York City. It intercuts with an old, balding man and his younger, sexy wife planning about a party. Then the film is set-up - a night at said party held by the youth of the day, with liberal pot smoking and lots of intermingling between the genders. The motorbiker is the friend of the house owner/party planner whose brought the weed with him. The old man is actually a professor who with his wife go to these sorts of parties frequently to bask in the lifestyle. From here, this is less of a plot driven film but almost a slice of life drama that is as sexploitation as you can get.

From http://www.dvddrive-in.com/images/a-d/aliceacid8.jpg

Plot strands do take place. The professor, sexually impotent, allows his wife to sleep with any man she wants as long as he can watch and take photos, spotting an appropriate hunk at the party. People hook up and mingle. The closest to a dramatic plot twist happens in the last quarter when the party thrower Turk's girlfriend is followed home by a group of hoodlums, one who feels she cock-blocked him from her and leads to the potential for a fight taking place at the party. Aside from this, the film just follows various characters partying. Almost plotless, but for seventy minutes, it's enjoyable to merely follow the characters get high and become intimate. It's certainly softcore for the large amount of sex and female nudity, which won't disappoint most, but its casual, realistic, aimless tone adding a greater amount of entertainment in how it nearly veers into the experimental "talky" dramas of the time. A matter-of-fact breeziness, far more legitimately respectable in content because of it while being much more erotic and fun at the same time. For one of the first, and maybe only times, someone can write that they've seen a game of strip Scalextric, and I can add that it never comes off as one of the embarrassing examples of these modified versions that exists in films - I've been reminded of Strip Ouija board of Terror Toons (2002) the same day I was writing this review for example. The romance between a white guy and a black girl, the later probably the most beautiful of the female cast and charismatic, starts with them having the munchies for a giant, and I mean giant, tub of ice cream, and ends with kinky shenanigans with whipped cream, probably one of the most sexually arousing scenes I've seen to be completely honest, something to applaud when usually you piss yourself in laughter at the stereotypical  tackiness of softcore cinema and its abuse of saxophones. While made to titillate, the film is easy going from every perspective seen, adding a great deal.

From http://pics.imcdb.org/290/smokeflesh53.jpg

Also despite being a counter culture film of its time, it never comes off as dated, naive hippy/hipster preaching of a better life. Little is made of anyone having fun like this, and even the plot with the old professor, while getting a little weird with the extreme close-ups of his teeth, is seen as bringing him and his wife closer, the third person getting as much out of it too. The marijuana smoking is not languished over, never celebrated or criticised, only the waste of an entire roll of  kitchen paper, as its thrown in the bin for the cardboard tub to be used as the inhaler, being offensive. There is an LSD freakout, done with visual manipulation and extreme close-ups of eyes, that's closer to typical drug films, with the actor shouting maniacally as it fully kicks in, spiked into their drink in case the worse happens as a semblance of a plot takes place, but aside from it this is far from Reefer Madness (1936) as you can get.  That plot transition, where the hoodlums introduced separately very early on end up in the house, takes on more of the vibe of an exploitation film, threat to the girlfriend of Turk and to anyone else involved. Aside from it though, the film is so laid back it never mattered that it hadn't the narrative of most sexploitation films, the right length to avoid dragging and too interesting to dwindle. And the content in it, minor details are inherently memorable. Perspectives from inside a fish tank. Shots on a motorbike in a tunnel. The strip Scalextric scene where the loser of each race has to take off a piece of clothing.

From http://www.dvddrive-in.com/images/a-d/aliceacid11.jpg

The film's great visual quality, such a jaw dropping surprise to see in an exploitation film like it with a limited budget, furthers the virtues of it, alongside the late sixties psychedelic rock score that gets you in the mood. It never takes itself seriously, nor makes excuses for itself existing. The result is just cool in tone. Unfortunately its director only made one other film. Surprisingly its Neon Maniacs (1986), one of the odder creations from the eighties horror boom, far from the best but still a hell of a lot of entertainment. Together with this, its shows someone in Joseph Mangine who would've contributed some very entertaining and different films to cult cinema if he had done more work as a director. The end of Smoke and Flesh finishes with returning back to daytime, back to work and the clock back up and running, ticking away. A snapshot of an interesting night that just happened to be part of an exploitation film. A memorable viewing experience.

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

Very little in the film gets close to being unconventional in tone. Even the LSD freakout, while great, stays in the conventions of freaky strobing effects.

Personal Opinion

Again, another dip into American grindhouse cinema for this month that has been rewarding. For any flaws this might have, it nonetheless makes up for them, providing a snapshot of a very alternative slice of American cinema waiting to be scrutinised. It was a joy just to have my expectations surpassed from a b-movie like this.

From http://www.imcdb.org/i529509.jpg

Bad Girls Go To Hell (1965)

From http://images.moviepostershop.com/bad-girls-go-to-hell-movie-poster-1965-1020199011.jpg

Dir. Doris Wishman

I've seen a few grindhouse films, but this one enforces the fact that concepts of political correctness, good taste and conventional strands of filmmaking are jettisoned in their desire to exploit. The fact that these original films have not really been made available over here in the UK - not the irony or throwback of Grindhouse (2007) which plays within modern day attitudes and aesthetics, or those easy to market to this mindset - made viewing this one, despite being very chaste, very shocking in its content. Once I explain the plot, it's up to you whether you'll see the film. A young wife goes out of her flat to dispose of the garbage, only to be raped by the predatory janitor in the corridor stairway and blackmailed by him for more sexual favours. This doesn't last long as she kills him with an ashtray to the head, fleeing to New York to avoid murder charges under a false name, going door to door for places to live. Unfortunately every male she encounters is a sexual predator. Belts hit flesh, and in a film meant to titillate as well as be nasty, the result lingers on these tribulations like a voyeur. This is my first encounter with a "roughie", softcore American b-films with an added domination theme over women, literally, being roughed up. Immediately, this is not something you get around our British waters on DVD, and is something that, unless you've already dived into the muddy waters of exploitation cinema, is still surprising to see even if you've seen some of the most violent and nasty films of now. And what adds to this surprise is how such a film is: a) very chaste baring this lurid content, with no actual nudity baring tease and occasionally female buttocks, and b) is one of the most well know, by title at least, films of a female director.

From http://366weirdmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/bad_girls_go_to_hell.jpg

A cheapie production, nice looking, from the mid-sixties, but the name Doris Wishman holds a lot of significance in the area of American exploitation cinema. The Queen of American Sexploitation in fact, worshipped by John Waters, one of the few women in this morally dubious field to have a large, prolific career, and someone, despite the expectations of the content, was adding her own idiosyncrasies to films like this because she was self taught, produced many of her own films, and likely had the personality to get these films made. (I have only seen this and the infamous A Night to Dismember (1983), but the later showed how determined she was as a person, making a film regardless when most of the original footage shot was destroyed by a disgruntled lab technician even if it meant creating a strange, collaged and post-synched oddity). Bad Girls Go To Hell is the sort of film that would make feminists uncomfortable, and for a male like me who likes exploitation cinema but is concerned with progressive attitudes to feel a moral quandary, regardless of what one thinks of the technical quality of the film. Yet the fact that Wishman, a woman, made this film inherently complicates the issue of what gender is,  what "Political correctness" in films is to actual, real life attitudes one may have. It puts a spanner in the arguments, and surprisingly, causes one to ask more serious questions about gender and sexual politics than a morose, serious drama on the subject. Not bad considering, were it not for my concerns in these areas, the film is in the end complete and utter camp, juggling an unbelievably nihilistic view of life, even if it's meant to titillate, with a naive kitsch.

From http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lgw2toQABV1qc42blo1_500.jpg

Only over sixty minutes long, shot in stark black and white, its set around cramped rooms and brief glimpses of the streets of New York, against shop windows, taxis, from the ground looking at peoples' feet. Scored to soft jazz, rooms decorated in chique objects and furniture, the layering of a silly, fun film. Were it not for the fact I've only seen my first of the "roughies" in this, that silliness would've been more pronounced from the beginning. As an exploitation film, its narratively simple, fragments tentatively put together actually, the morals against scuzzy thrills, cutting to the chase with its content rather than tease it out. For its low budget, its well made and has a tone to it more realistic than other films in that it feels lived it, and shot in real buildings and exteriors. Editing occasionally becomes very jagged for moments of chaos and nastiness. The dialogue is also post-synched, an eeriness matched by the charmingly wooden acting of some of the cast. The cast itself is far removed for the Barbie dolls and Ken dolls of softcore, women who look like women, real figure, people who'd meet on the street, even compared to now, and men who look grizzled and drink whiskey all night.

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If there is a defence for the morality of the film, it's the fact that the men, including married ones, are not seen in a good light for the most part at all, lust filled potential rapists with no redeeming value to them whatsoever. There is a stereotypical predatory lesbian character, but the resolution of that segment has the problem being the protagonist not being able to want to continue the relationship and leaving despite the comfortable living in the room, where love and doing handstands in her underwear claiming she's an acrobat would be how she'd spend her time with the older, body stocking wearing haired woman. If it wasn't for the scenes of undressing that are tantalising, the scuzzy thrills aren't actually sexual, the roughie aspects just sordid.  Everything surrounding this content, while not of good taste, is pretty inexplicit and tame compared to the films of now. It's just the roughie content is probably a greater taboo now because of how the complicate history of gender politics have developed over the many decades. The film eventually takes on an (intentional/unintentional?) meaning in that our protagonist, completely innocent, murdering the janitor by accident in self defence, is stuck in a continuing nightmare where no one is on her side. A cyclical one where it continues with no escape. It's an odd mix, this nihilistic tone with very lurid, jarring content that would've been innocuous and naive to anyone else but me who've viewed more of these films and been desensitized. As a film being viewed from a view of abstract cinema, it certainly qualifies. The contrasting tonal differences between it all, mixing the camp with material that would be scorned over, although the contrast is as much the result of me, as a person, being wrapped up in cotton wool from these sleazy genre movies. Distant acting, drifting along the scenes aimlessly as hot jazz plays over the images. A goofiness that is met with a very negative view of humanity that somehow exists in a low budget film like this. It perfectly sums up what an American grindhouse film is as I watch more of them from this era.

From http://cinenthusiast.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/bad-girls-go-to-hell.png

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/Non): Low

The shock of seeing a film with material that is more controversial now adds a personal effect on it, an oddity, in complete honesty, from a very different time because of how it's made and acts. It's shocking in ideas, but there's not a single bared breast in the film, adding a peculiar paradoxical air to it. The obvious kitsch, the suave furniture choices particularly, adds to this. It's from an era a company, Something Weird, entirely devoted themselves to, the transition between the fifties b-movies to the trangressions of the seventies, trashy cinema on scratched celluloid that yet feels innocent at the same time.

Personal Rating

Is there virtue in the film or something to defend? Possibly if one avoids lapsing into hypocrisy. To know the difference between a lurid film and misogyny taking place in real life. Baring in mind the campiness of the whole work.  And that a woman who controlled most of her career, in an area few women were involved with, made this film. The result makes it much more complicated morally, fascinating as a cult film. The film as entertainment? Rough, no clear direction in the way it's going, utterly compelling as scrappy exploitation. The Queen of American Sexploitation making an enticing offer to view her other films after this one, and somehow managing to bring out real questions about my social politics rather than an apparently serious work. That's a great way to get further interest in Doris Wishman if any.

The Mansion of Madness (1973)

From http://images.moviepostershop.com/
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Dir. Juan López Moctezuma

"The lunatics have taken over the asylum..." sung Fun Boys Three, in an entirely different context, but still appropriate for this Mexican film inspired by the work of Edgar Allen Poe. Far from spoiling the twist of the narrative, where the patients of a mental hospital overturn the doctors and become dominant, it's very obvious something will be amiss just from the title, or the alternative one Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon, and that when the protagonist, a journalist sent to research the innovative techniques of a psychological hospital, arrives, along with his travelling friends, he's met by armed guards in period French military uniform aiming muskets at them. When Dr. Maillard (Claudio Brook), who runs the hospital, appears, he looks like Napoleon in his choice of dress, vaguely looking like Peter O'Toole and with his English voice dubbing reminiscent of Criswell. From there the journalist is taken on a tour of the asylum, of patients building shrines to the "Electric Sphinx", a chicken man, and the dungeon deep below, increasingly clear this Dr. Maillard is insane. The friends, a woman and another doctor, find themselves jumped upon by inmates while trying to leave.

From http://goregirl.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/mansion-of-madness2.png

If there's an immense flaw with The Mansion of Madness, it's that the film is too dependent on a generic plot structure and narrative despite moments that live up to the madness of the title. The narrative could be found in any horror film, baring occasional details, and really doesn't more into interesting tangents with it. Some of the asylum is seen in tantalising detail, then the truth is revealed and the film immediately jumps to its final act without more to linger on. It's briefly discussed that the inmates have invented a new religion represented by a spiral, and that they've developed an isolated society from the rest of the world, to live freely and create machines that don't work but keep minds occupied, something that would've been great to see more up close than it was. It evokes Horrors of Malformed Men (1969), the infamous Terou Ishii film that culminates in the island of the titular individuals, a film which is head and shoulders above this one in terms of the delirious content and how vast it is within it. An alternative take on the same story is found in Jan Svankmajer's Lunacy (2005), which makes the ending of The Mansion of Madness, where good wins out, very conservative and flat, Svankmajer's adding a more subversive and questioning tone to his. In The Mansion of Madness's flaws is that it sticks to conventions for how it turns out to be too much. A shame, because chunks of it are vastly more interesting than my review may paint the whole film as.

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On the plus side, this film is what happens when a work is directed by a person with considerable talent visually. Depth of field, front and background, is something you'll notice in this film, in terms of content onscreen, when Dr. Maillard takes the journalist around many parts of the hospital. Large expansive sets with many extras, and despite the crippling nature of the plot structure, the content can break past it, as suggested in a flash-forward into the narrative, shown in the opening credits, done in bleeding, psychedelic reds. A naked woman riding a horse. People huddled up in glass boxes in perfect rows. The chicken man, who acts like a chicken, living in a room full of poultry. Extras in the background or the middle of the screen acting out in exaggerated frenzies. Plainly surreal images are depicted, such as a female character, naked, laid on an alter outside in the wilderness covered in grapes and various fruits surrounding her form. There is a giddy, unhinged nature to the entire proceedings, everything immediately off-centre of normality from the beginning, fed by the heightened voice acting in the English dub. The result is entertaining.

From http://deeperintomovies.net/journal/image12/madmansion2.jpg

The regret is that this content is not supported by an interesting narrative through line. Still entertaining, but far from the reputation the director is said to have with a film called Alucarda (1977), a movie that is even more enticing now because it suggests director Moctezuma had less compromise in that one instead of here. That is not to say The Mansion of Madness has no virtue. It looks interesting, is rewarding for what it is, but there was more that could've been done and its left to be somewhat standard as a cult film goes. Sticking to a conventional structure like it does tends to make it very difficult to say a lot about it because convention lacks real interest for me as entertainment or art. I would have to write about the entire narrative progression, which is not appropriate to avoid spoilers, because there's more after the obvious twist that takes place, but also because narrative cinema should be about the effects of the narratives, not the mere mechanics of said narrative. Moments suggest what could've been. The niece of the apparent doctor performing an ancient dance in a trance only for something to arise that gives the truth away. The centrepiece of the dark, underground dungeon, with direct Christian imagery and stark use of shadows over the central image that shows the atmosphere and effect this film could've had in a better form. The hordes of extras acting in elaborate pockets of insanity, or pulling along railed carts or, in one case, merely passing by with sheep following her, character being built of the denizens as a mass. Giving the journalist a heart attack by moving a rope ladder while he's still on it or banding together for a debauched celebration scored by distinct, off-kilter salon music on string instruments. The regret is furthered in that this isn't made a backbone to the film, but like a Hammer film, merely a outside threat to normality while time passes in the film length that should've been used better. It was good while it lasted, but I can't write as enthusiastically as I hoped for. It's worse when, viewing it, Horrors of Malformed Men and Lunacy came to mind, not helping its case either.  It feels merely like an interesting time waster.

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

Ultimately the dependence on a conventional narrative arch can effect a film in terms of tone and content. Very few, and rare, films can be very conventional in story arch but be utterly strange in what you see. Usually, despite the conventions of the script its moving to, films that are strange or unwordly in tone have cracks in the veneer of conventions, a metaphor apt in the concept of a haunted house which looks like any other but has pockets, no matter how small, that look out of place from anything else. It's obvious that if a film is not going to stray, even a little, from convention, such pockets won't be found, and in many cases, which The Mansion of Madness thankfully avoids, the results are unbelievable dull and morose to sit through. The mansion itself however has been cleaned of most of its alien underbelly sadly baring a few cobwebs and naked men in glass boxes.

Personal Opinion:

Fun while it lasted. Memorable? I'll see if it comes to mind in the months that past. In a year. Many years. The difficult in given a final opinion is the problem of how unreliable first viewings can be and how the viewer's mind, even if not writing amateur blog reviews, can be fickly to an extreme and jump between opinions like they're lovesick. I did expect more from The Mansion of Madness, seeing eye widening clips of it in an awesome YouTube compilation of surreal films from the birth of cinema to now, a guide to what to see if ever there was one, those brief glimpses at something spectacular stuck with aspects that were merely derivative. From the films that have been officially released to English speaking film fans, it leaves Alucada, the director's more famous film, the female film to this male one, to give Juan López Moctezuma another shot at impressing me. It would be great to add a Mexican entry or two to this blog catalogue, so I really don't want my encounter(s) with Moctezuma, depending on what happens, to be damp disappointments.

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