Jigsaw (2002)

 

Directors: Don Adams and Harry James Picardi

Screenplay: Don Adams and Harry James Picardi            

Cast: Barret Walz as Colin; Aimee Bravo as Tawny; Mia Zifkin as Val; Arthur Simone as Eddie; Maren Lindow as Louise; James Palmer as Todd; Mark Vollmers as Sneaky Pete  

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #230

 

I could do my jokes as cave paintings to you...

Major Spoiler Warnings

The standard definition look of a low budget genre film, circa early 2000s, is an acquired taste but one I find appealing. From an era where that title was not quickly taken by the Saw franchise, the first theatrical film in 2004 a few years later, Jigsaw is perversely something I became fixated on since youth just from seeing the DVD cover. As a result, this is an important review regardless of whether it ultimately works for me as a movie or not.

It is pretty basic if a curiously told slasher film, as whilst it begins with a couple of actors in a room, the teacher for the art class the same age as the students, how many (including those produced by Full Moon Pictures as this was) reference the Surrealist movement and the exquisite corpse game, where you give separate pieces of a body of work to one person, and their separate pieces are reconnected together afterwards with no direct influence between them. In this case, the teacher hands a limb from a mannequin he dubs Jigsaw to each student. Each of them is to take it home and refurbish it however they want, to bring to a bar one night to discuss their choices over drinks and then, when put together, to be burned on a pyre as a cleansing ritual. Trust them to make it dangerous with a saw blade and a sawn-off shotgun on its arms, as Jigsaw for reasons never raised does eventually start to move and was probably displeased being set on fire.

And yet, for what is a slasher film, it takes within an eighty minute film until the fifty minute mark for the first kill to take place, which will put fans of the genre off. It tries instead to be more character based and serious for all these fifty minutes before, getting surprisingly dark for ultimately no point. Alongside the art teacher being a sleezeball trying to seduce one of his students, and getting another, a married mother, drunk enough to sleep with when rejected, two of the female characters in the cast have really uncomfortable back stories connected to what they bring in the mannequin limbs. One is that mother, going through college to have some life, stuck with an abusive stereotype redneck trucker character who, coming to the bar meet-up himself, looks down on universities as full of "artsy-fartsy" types putting stuff in your head. He is a crass stereotype of his wage class, comically broad to a disservice, but also really more stinging knowing the next decade's growing ambivalence to learning facts before making arguments is probably as broad but actually a real personality tick for people.

The other has an even bleaker narrative incongruous to the film. Whilst she is comfortable in her sexuality, which is progressive for the film, hers involves sexual abuse from her father and a suicide pact with a younger sister with a shotgun that is tonally inappropriate. Especially as, with the actress playing her for the most part as a very openly sexual person, dressed in a very revealing costume and cowboy hat, what in another context would be legitimately progressive, especially when her boyfriend is the one uncomfortable with learning her terrible childhood, we are not dealing with a film trying to tackle this content even as a slasher film. It is merely there, with no depth, and so afterwards, after opening up on this, her character goes to doing an erotic dance in a lightly toned scene with the barkeeper able to press a button to fire bubbles around her. Again, in another context, it may work fully. Here, it does seem abrupt and is never a real importance to a film that will just lead to a body count.

This is also in mind that, whilst this spends the aforementioned fifty minutes to even become a slasher, none of this builds to nuance with these characters, still broad archetypes of the subgenre. A comedic prat is the sympathetic male, but he is yet also non-stop with his one-liners to a way it is not natural to a characterisation, beyond that and ordering cough syrup for his choice for the whole group to drink on his turn just to be different. It also says a lot that, spoiler warning, the "final girl", the person who is the designated protagonist, has no back-story, nor has her ending concluded, as she ends the film tied down. The Jigsaw monster just lops the head off someone trying to use her as bait, and the film immediately cut to the end credits after this scene, really doing no favour for the film in never resolving anything in what's left of the plot. It is a film whose decision to be this serious in moments, juxtaposed with a cast also chosen who are clearly comfortable in doing scenes in their underwear, which does not know or was not aware of how tonally at odds it actually was with each other, especially as that ending does make it completely unfinished as a work and in point completely.

The killer itself, never explained, is a man in a suit. It does evoke The Fear (1995), an obscure horror film where a creepy life sized doll carved from wood evoked the fears of its victims, including some bleak subject matter in itself, but this film is a hodgepodge which is neither fish nor fowl. It is weird to think, for this review expecting all these years a trashy low budget slasher film, this is a film with little blood, not a lot of sleaze, a bit of the charm of these very low budget films from the turn of the Millennium as expected, and a few abruptly dark moments that, if this had been focused, would have actually led to something admirable.  To be honest, with some of the more charming aspects just following the barkeeper, this film should have probably stayed in the lighter hearted direction rather than risk the serious content it was too shy to properly deal with.

Also, the thing I was not expecting from this, after all these years, was to find the biggest virtue being one of the esoteric and diverse soundtracks from its ilk. I find myself leaving this wanting to praise the music supervisors, even with the curious acoustic ballad with lyrics about watching ice skating on television and searching for the web for (sic) "interracial porn". (The later, whilst funny in context of a sombre sounding song, makes you realise how problematic that porn subgenre title really is). You will find regional music in the golden age of slashers and American exploitation cinema of yore, which makes this not that strange to find, but here you get something just as idiosyncratic between early 2000s indie rock, country music, even metalcore of the era, the most unpredictable part of a generic slasher the soundtrack. Even if the metalcore music is the most generic, and dated, of the lot, even as a heavy metal fan who grew up in that era, it is fascinating I come aware from this realising very low budget films can get their resources together to have style like this, as for all the flaws I have raised, that soundtrack's eccentricities is a huge virtue for this film.

Jigsaw, not surprisingly, did not make an impact for me. Even to its abrupt end, never resolving what happened, nor having the decency to pay off the idea of the killer wanting to create an exquisite corpse from the limbs of his victims, unlike the infamous Spanish slasher Pieces (1982) which did, Jigsaw surprises just for where it stumbles and travels. It is evidence, even in negative ways, you can still be caught off-guard by the least expected touches in spite of a film not succeeding, which is a reward in itself and why these ultra-low budget genre films will always tempt me to them.

Games of the Abstract: Fantastic Journey (1994)

 

a.k.a. Gokujo Parodius

Publisher: Konami

Developer: Konami

Two Player

Arcade/Saturn/Playstation One/Super Famicom/Mobile (Saturn Version Played)

 

At last. I've found the past glory!

Out of all the games I played in my youth, barring all the pro wrestling games, there were only a handful which were on multiple rotations. The Sega Saturn, an obscurer console to have in the family household, least had two. Sonic R (1997), a strange racing spin-off for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise when an actual sequel never came, was one of them, which with my older sister we played against how it was meant to be used, i.e. not follow the racetrack but wander about. The other has sadly become obscurer and, as a European only release for the console, more expensive to find, which is Parodius. Effectively a compilation of two of the Konami parody shooters, Parodius Da! (1990) and the English dubbed Fantastic Journey, Fantastic Journey was the one played the most, and returning to said game, I see why with ease. That is not even a mean remark against the older game, which I merely did not play enough of at all, but Fantastic Journey itself caught my attention back them with justification.

It is strange to return to, least in mind that the Konami who made this, who made a variety of games including scrolling shooters being part of their bread-and-butter, are a very different group decades later. They have not done themselves well to video gamers in the late 2010s - between deciding to invest more in pachinko machines using franchises, cancelling a Silent Hill sequel with a huge group of collaborators¹, and their very messy divorce with auteur Hideo Kojima where, as he went to his own studio to make Death Stranding (2019), they really came off as villains. Parodius in general as a franchise, a parody series based on another of their sci-fi scrolling shooter franchises called Gradius, comes from a very different time and Fantastic Journey was mid-way through this franchise which started in the late eighties.

Without any context, Fantastic Journey was a deliciously strange game that fed my imagination in my youth, and it is still a deliciously strange (and eventually hard) scrolling shooter whose artistic quality, originally as an arcade game, is proudly on display to bring a smile on the viewer's face. As its designer Shujirou Hamakawa once said on record², the game was meant to make a player laugh whilst pushing coins into it in a Japanese arcade, and it succeeds completely, Parodius, just from this game, is deeply silly and a tribute to their entire back catalogue of scrolling shooters, which is established from the character roster. With two duplicates of each, for two players, you have the following: two Gradius-like ships to nod to that franchise; octopi; two ocean sunfish based from an obscure Konami obscure shooter Space Manbow (1989); two fleshed out stick people riding paper planes; angel pigs; two penguins, based on the protagonist of Antarctic Adventure (1983); two robotic figures from another shooter Twinbee (1985); and the one I used, Hikaru (or Akane), a woman in a Playboy Bunny costume riding a rocket. That might come off as crass as a character, but like another uses of that specific costume (singlet, bunny ears stockings), it is clear Japanese pop culture ran with the costumes separate to Playboy themselves as something they found likable as a costume.

Immediately, on the Saturn, Fantastic Journey is a gorgeous game to look at. A vibrant extravaganza, only slowing down in jerky frame rate once in an underwater sequence on Level 2, it is matched by the world, of an era where a dream logic sans story was more commonplace. It begins with Level 1 mashing a giant, enterable UFO catcher crossed with Las Vegas casino palace, with catcher claws dropping giant toys from above and the many reoccurring enemies appearing for the first time, from the many penguins that reappear as the real antagonists and background characters among many positions, to the flying Moai heads in various forms. If this does not make you fully aware of the absurdity of the game, when your first boss in a panda ballerina robot, with a sentiment duck head as headgear, this should cement this. The music as well is as much part of the game's personality, with referrals back to Konami's back catalogue but also existing music, such as jazz tune In the Mood by Joe Garland for Level One.

And the game hurdles on. Level 2 a nautical theme, with penguin pirates on a sentiment cat submarine, against a giant mermaid as a boss. The first two levels are simpler to get into, but whilst this is not the extremes of the later "bullet hell" scrolling shooters, where technology allowed developers to fill whole screens with coloured bullets of death, a pertinent aspect of Fantastic Journey is having to weave and negotiate around hazards as much as it is shooting, enemies baring a couple destroyable with one shot and the overpowered nature of the power ups when acquired meaning dexterity and obstacle courses are more a concern. Level 3 finally emphasises this sense, even if the Saturn version allows up to nine continues with three lives per one, Parodius a challenge as much for pattern recognition but also obstacle negotiation when the cake themed world naturally has barriers of Battenberg to shoot through that cause death on contact, matched by hazards coming in on all sizes, destroyable giant slices of kiwi and un-destroyable blocks of gems to cause the short level's negotiation to be more hazardous. This makes it almost a cakewalk, forgive the pun and if you realise the boss will once try to run into you, that you finish the level fighting spaceship which fires giant whipped cream lasers afterwards.

Power ups, as mentioned, allow you to gain more and more firepower, arguably to the point that, numerous early in the levels, losing them by losing a life poses a great handicap. Bells, of a variety of colours, add another factor to exploit. Gold is just for points, but others, provided you have not shot them into another colour (usually gold), are helpful, be they screen filling explosions, a giant mode which makes you invulnerable and damages all you smother, a trio of energy barriers, and a megaphone, allowing you to destroy on mass all under the range of your shouted words, translated in the English version for strange sentences.

How well you play does dictate moment how the game changes, the most prominent being whether a bonus level is used early on, accessed after the first three levels or so, or later on, when the game feels you have gotten cocky and decides to briefly crush you. (This can be used as a strategy even in terms of endurance if you can beat the level or sacrifice lives, as if you do lose a continue, thankfully you never have to play the level again.) Set in space against an entire spaceship commanded by Moai heads, it also does not feel out-of-place, hardcore and intense in a way appropriately over-the-top even in the remix of Ride of the Valkyries you get in the section. And this is where the game, even before getting to the later half, already has a virtue.

There are moments when the game does show its age, but only a few. If you do not get the right options set up in the European Saturn release, each life lost leads to you having to go back to the character selection, and the wrong option chosen leads to the confusion mechanic of having to store power ups to charge weapons on your choice, when Automatic and merely focusing on dodging your enemies is a challenge enough. Life saving aspects found in modern video games would have to be added if this ever got a new release, but it is never evil for the sake of it, and when it is difficult, it is still funny and entertaining.

And the challenges are as much done with a sense of humour, being forced in Level 4 to go through a giant traffic jam of chickens, not humanised but regular shape, in clothes pretending to be people, be it salary men to police, all whilst leading to a giant traffic light robot parodying a reoccurring boss in the Gradius games called a "Gun Wall". Only now, decades later, do I actually bother to move down or up depending when the giant hammer and claw move at me, but the game's barrage of strangeness, and how moving is a greater concern, including into the corner of the screen being a very effective defensive tool, is something that only can be appreciated now. Knowing I am not a great player, there is however a simplicity to the mechanics which you can learn to appreciate, especially as this is as much a challenge just to move to the right place quickly. Shooting is arguably less an issue even with the bosses, who only take a few shots as long as you hit the right spot (indicated in the game before each one), the environment and bullets being fired back the true challenges.

Even its sense of humour is more appreciated now as an adult. For example, Level 4's traffic zone with a running gag as a series of hazards based on yellow signs - danger of rock collapses, warning for deer leading to cute deer head falling from the sky, and an exclamation warning for danger leading to giant exclamation marks - jokes with more appreciation especially when they are part of the hazards themselves. Like a lot of these scrolling shooters, as I come to them more appreciative, the more inventive and strange ones (like this or Harmful Park (1997), an obscure Japanese only Playstation One release) putting animation and jokes in the background you may never see focused on staying alive but come to appreciate when noticed, such as the penguins not only the protagonists and antagonists here but everywhere onscreen among other details.

Particularly returning to my childhood, and just looking at the Saturn's PAL territory catalogue, for European and Australian releases, we like the United States barely got a lot of the Japanese titles for the system, instead from the likes of an early Electronic Arts, a surprising amount of series shooters based around air planes or futuristic craft, and a lot of sports games, which made those exclusively released in the PAL territories a surprise, this among this. Finally getting to the end of the game, the creativity is not lost, and as an arcade game rather than a long play campaign, it never burns out at all. Level 5, which I once got to before as a child, is a conventional outer space level, but even here the gag is having a boss called Capsule Monster Cappuccino, magnificently named, a giant living power up who can hurt players on contact, but is useless and can only fire regular power ups at you, making an easy way to acquire firepower for Level 6, where the game's country of origin is clear.

How else do you explain going to the Moon and finding rabbits there, based on a myth originating from China and circulating around Asia of the Moon Rabbit based on the shadows on the dark side, or that your boss is Princess Kaguya, the figure of one of the oldest Japanese tales, though here a wooden cut-out when you learn the truth of her presence. The sense that this will end soon after is funnier knowing, the final level set at an intergalactic penguin disco, that for how difficult the section is, dodging moving platforms and bullets from all sides, the closest thing to a boss is actually dodging the limbs from a giant Las Vegas showgirl, a reoccurring trope of the series, and the actual one is completely harmless². An actual challenge comes in the Secret Stage you enter afterwards, but in a wonderful piece of accessibility, once you beat the game once, you can play it as an additional option, with up to eight continues in my case for a game of "my first bullet hell". So much so, the end boss to that segment, a mecha robot penguin, was a complimentary mint after the hard work of the level itself.

Fantastic Journey was in the middle of this franchise, the last being Sexy Parodius (1996), which has cheesecake but suggests less than that title actually implies, extended a little longer to the 2010s if you include the pachinko machines that tied into the franchise. Even the Gradius series, with its last non-pachinko entry in 2010 sadly, has become dusty on the shelves too. The closest thing in terms of Konami continuing, between 2007 and 2011 with three games, is the Otomedius series, where space ships from their scrolling shooters where anthropomorphized as women. The one thing that stands out about this franchise, only learning of this franchise for this review, is that alongside polygonal graphics is the appeal both to fan service in terms of referencing the companies' old games but also the sexual kind. To be blunt, the character designs alone focus more of sexualisation, where there are character costumes, to apologise to any female readers or anyone reading this, barely there to be able to support characters which large busts, without top straps physically impossible to actually cup anything if you were to look at the designs. Even in mind there is a token male character with bared chest in the first game, this is sad in terms of having to chase a trend when Parodius, alongside having its occasional titillating moment, was so much more compelling as a bonkers cartoon world.

But Konami, and frankly any publisher, had to move on, and scrolling shooters after their time in the sun are a niche, one beloved and carried on by the likes of Cave alongside other companies, who went for bullet hell sub-genre games, whilst Parodius is not as easily accessible as it should be. It is a franchise that would be exceptional to see as a compilation in the modern day even if a new game was never made. Certainly as retro arcade games have become as popular as they are, Fantastic Journey by itself, at the stage where there had been entries before in this series to work out the tone, and with the graphical qualities of the era, is a little gem. Even in mind of an old Saturn copy which may succumb to laser rot, unless the console was the go first, it was one game that in hindsight is one of my favourites just in terms of all the memories it has given me.

 

==========

1) Hideo Kojima, Oscar winner film maker Guillermo Del Toro, American actor Norman Reedus, and acclaimed Japanese manga author Junji Ito. Even if the game had turned out disappointing, and in mind its playable trailer, P.T. (2014), became a legendary piece of gaming in its own right, the death of the project lost us a huge landmark of creativity.

2) A wonderfully detailed and translated interview with key staff on this game can be found HERE, thankfully archived.

2) [Major Spoiler] Even the actual ending, a cut scene where after finding treasure, all you get is a bomb and being blown up, with the intergalactic disco destroyed, is appropriately absurd for a dark conclusion from out of nowhere. [Spoiler Ends]

Games of the Abstract Introduction

 This will be a short introduction, but to give you an idea of why I am covering video games on a blog originally for films, I have recently become interested again in them, and if the British Film Institute now includes an occasional article on the medium on their website in 2021, I feel I can on my amateur one can too.

This will cover a variety of video games, usually older titles as this desire to return to this hobby is that, despite having grown up with the medium in the nineties to mid-2000s, there is a large part of it I completely missed, sadly with some of the games most interesting to me even then missed and now rare. I will cover other areas, but do not expect new games, entirely a tangent from my usual writing that will also cover the unconventional and the misbegotten.

And it will tie into the main part of this blog for many reasons. There are many weird games, many dead ends and many curiosities. The period I have mentioned on, though I intend to move around, is a fascinating era called the "Fifth Generation of Video Games", a period of so many failed tangents in the history of video gaming as much as innovative aspects we would bring into the modern day. It was a huge era in terms of change, when polygons became more important than sprites (i.e. 3D over 2D, despite the latter today being beloved as an art form). Early attempts at innovating in areas like online play, multi-media content, and with the PC its own island, genres like first person shooters finding themselves and on their way to the genres that sell today. A lot is sadly not as readily available as it should be, lost to time or even never released in the West for the Japanese side of many consoles.

So much of it too is directly or indirectly tied into cinema and other mediums in weird and even morbidly misguided ways. This was of course the era of the full motion video (FMV) games, interactive movies, games using digitised figures, attempts at being adult and gruesome, and a lot of real filmed footage with over the top acting. This does not even take into consideration the strange void of licensed games: only in the nineties do you have an adaptation of White Men Can's Jump (1992), a video game tie-in to the basketball comedy with Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes, which was released for the Atari Jaguar, one of the many consoles doomed in this era, transitioning to polygons and many attempting to figure out where to go next, which also ended the legacy of a legendary video games companies from the eras before.

Just the nineties into the mid-2000s is full of ill-advised ideas, likely a lot of politically incorrect content, the ends of legendary companies like Sega in the hardware industry, the birth of those who succeeded even if it took the Sixth Generation (Microsoft and Sony), and a lot of oddities, gems and mistakes, even Nintendo making ill advised ideas. It is worthy, as a tangent, to cover, especially as I openly admit I was never a good "gamer", merely someone who grew up playing them, and now as I dust off old consoles, wishing to return to them and seeing a plethora of content as in my usual content. The reviews with be irregular, referring back to that fact I am not a great player and it may take a while to get through titles, but I feel it is apt to cover them. Like the regular Cinema of the Abstract, this is as much to dig into another medium and find its curiosities too.

Land of Fire All Night Long (1981)

 

aka. E nachtlang Füürland

Directors: Clemens Klopfenstein and Remo Legnazzi

Screenplay: Alex Gfeller, Clemens Klopfenstein and Remo Legnazzi

Cast: Max Rüdlinger as Max Gfeller, Christine Lauterburg as Chrige

Ephemeral Waves

Shot and set in Switzerland, Land of Fire All Night Long does touch upon a malaise, shot as we headed into the eighties and what happened to the political radicals after the sixties and seventies in the new era. One such figure is our lead Max Gfeller (Max Rüdlinger), formerly a political radical after the late sixties, explicitly the height of 1968, now having been a news reporter for radio broadcasts for a long time. He is not a good man in many ways, but he is, however, one stuck in a humdrum life and job. Around him is both the world, set in Bern, the "federal city" of Switzerland, of the establishment, where lords and politicians are meeting in a major event, preaching the word of peace and happiness for all, contrasted by our introduction to Max, wandering past a large scale peaceful protest movement. People who know him try to get his attention, suggesting he should report on this on his radio broadcast, or least see the graffiti and protest slogans marked across the city, but he has no interest.

Land of Fire All Night Long is a very obscure film, least in the sense that outside of its homeland of Switzerland, or beyond for those able to see it both at the 1982 and 2020 Locarno International Film Festival, few may know of this. Presented as a slow burn character piece, one night different for Max will force him to question how complacent he has become in a languid, drifting plot across one night in a snow covered Bern from bar to bar, to crowded living environment to even his place of employment. It is a compelling work, especially in mind that Max is not a likable character but a clear one you can still have a form of sympathy with in understanding his scenario. Disconnected from his past, he has drifted into a new place of walking back and forth from his radio station. Most of us are in the same boat, going from our day-to-day jobs, and this becomes pertinent decades later, whether you take on the radical left wing politics of his past or not, with the same sense of disconnecting oneself from taking action many of us may have, in favour of a day-to-day job with your head to the ground.

The irony is not lost as a Swiss film, Switzerland considered an idealised place to outsiders, that even in Bern here you see disconnect from the powerful elite to the ordinary people, that there are those still disenfranchised in this nation as well. Max's journey over one night, in bad times with a former lover he has just left, and meandering through concerts and bars, eventually on an aimless path that will push him along to other voices. One of a woman rightly complaining, though she does not work, of the tedium of housewives' lives, but also another woman who he gains a connection too, someone together they will fall in love with one another and also give him the necessary boot to change himself. He is stiff and hostile at times, especially in a sequence outside a garage in the snowy night, when a third passenger in the car is secretly carrying weed in large masses with him, but she starts to crack open his shell. Not a lot happens in the film in terms of actual plot, as he has an existential crisis, culminating in only one moment of great importance. Convinced by her to write a radio report to break from his current life - of melting icebergs causing police and politicians to flee the country, a fake news piece to fling his middle finger up at the establishment - and whether he will actually say it or not on-air.

Shot around its real locations, this also makes a compelling document of its environment at the era, almost timeless with a down-to-earth atmosphere of cramped apartments and grey, frankly dull radio recording studios. It possesses far more life, paradoxically, than the point of the film of Max's sterile life suggests, but the real concern is that he himself is trapped in his own vanity streaked in real sense of loss, an ego believing he has lost his passion as a defensive shield from participating, but also a sense, nearing middle age, Max still has lost his passion of political revolution for real too. The environments, lived in and vibrant even on the stark cold winter night outside, breathe as we wander them whilst he feels awkward the moment we first met him pass a large protest crowd. Another fascinating touch, the symbols of this film's ode to passion, is the Asphalt Blues Company, a real band effectively playing themselves, as a Swiss blues band whose take on American music is idiosyncratic, even odd at first, but possesses a vibrancy as they flee from the police or complain, in their group lived-in shack, of occupants always drinking all the coffee their members have to buy themselves. As Max wanders smoke filled bars and meets individuals like this, he himself is still disconnected from these people, in his frequent bar hopping, the film contrasting its handheld camerawork with its very naturalistic tone, all with a sense of a world grounded in realism and raw energy that drastically contrasts a protagonist who is incredibly distant from everything and everyone, even the aesthetic of the film around him.

The choice of whether he proves himself, whether to broadcast the fictional radio report or not, does show what kind of film this is, one which succeeds in an honest ending which feels neither contrived nor bleak for the sake of it. [Huge Spoiler Warning]: He does not do the stunt, and loses the one woman who may have been there for him, even put up with his hostile manner when she thought he could have become a hero to her.) It does not feel politically bleak however, merely melancholic, ultimately a man pinned and trapped in his position having a chance one night. The film suggests he could get another chance, and many more, all possibly with the option that he will never make the decision to save himself when he suddenly panics as he does here, or that he could grow. [Spoilers Ends]. It is a film, whatever your response to it is open, even if the only film of this tale ever made, that he will wander bars more and things may be different another day. Befittingly, for an already obscure film, the filmmakers returned for a sequel Land of Fire 2 (1992), whose synopsis involves female protestors at the Parliament building during Switzerland's 700th birthday, Max being brought in on the crossfire for a severer challenge to his lack of political beliefs. Land of Fire All Night Long by itself however works entirely, a fascinating and compelling film, whose languidness to its advantage gives it a mood, an easygoing personality, where the one real stake and plot point, one choice and how that turns out, does have a great impact.

The Bogus Witch Project (2000)

 

Directors: Victor Kargan ("The Bogus Witch Project"); Steve Agee, Sammy Primero and Kelly Aluise ("The Griffith Witch Segment"); Susan Johnson ("The Willie Witch Project"); Alex Mebane ("The Blair Underwood Project"); Mark Mower ("The Bel Air Witch Project"); Alec Tuckman ("The Watts Bitch Project")

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #229

 

This is your brain on ham...and scallops...

From Trimark Picture, The Bogus Witch Project is a reminder that, rather than just jumping to Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000), The Blair Witch Project's legacy immediately after its success also included many parodies. The Simpsons parodied it in a Treehouse of Horrors episode, there was Da Hip Hop Witch (2000), a low budget film starring Eminem in a tiny role, even The Tony Blair Witch Project (2000), an incredibly obscure film which hit the IMDB bottom list. Stamped to a specific time as much as you could get, with its late nineties techno music, this is a compilation of micro budget Blair Witch parodies interspliced with interlinking footage called "The Woods", a first person gliding through the woods as weird things happen, such as past a bounder in the wilderness and a child's crossing.

This for many is going to be one of the worse things they have seen, or an extreme struggle, a poignant reminder of how Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick's film, when it was released in 1999, became such a huge pop cultural item that in such little time its sequel came a year later as well as a whole swath of parodies. Sadly, beginning with The Watts Bitch Project, you realise too how this is from decades ago and from a very different period, immediately sounding dreadful as it follows a group of young white filmmakers go to Watts in southern Los Angeles. It is not as bad as the precise could be, but black stereotypes abound even if there are a lot of African American actors willing to be in this, and the short immediately sets up how many of the parodies are lame. Ultra low budget, that this is among many have to blur out iconography, here part of a Laundromat's sigh, the building one the cast keep returning to lost, these films are based on recognition of the original and there is a morbid fascination which what is replicated. Here it is finding shoes on mass hung everywhere rather than stick bundles, or how it awkwardly tries to replicate the original narrative of an evil witch in a problematic way by parodying it through a primarily African-American community with stereotypes referred for jokes. One or two good jokes appear - bringing a 1993 map of Los Angeles, which is useless after the 1994 earthquake changed the environment, or the reference to the use of 16mm film in the original film being replaced by something brining a film projector - but not enough to get around a lot of this, as the many here, going for cheap jokes, this one baiting race as a joke too.

This template runs throughout - the films obsess over the scene of actress Heather Donahue crying in the film, usually the joke about snot coming from someone's nose or milking it, and there are many jokes of someone farting in the camping tent or the famous final images being merely someone going urinating up a wall. Bogus' biggest aspect, that these are all parodies of one film recreating and lampooning it's narrative bears, does really get into the curious idea of seeing the source (Blair Witch) being dissected down through its replications. As much as the first viewing of this was one I suffered through, it is fascinating seeing the shorts replicating similar jokes in a variety of ways as the facsimiles also stand out in their differences together too. This is effectively pre-YouTube in nature, where once you distributed parodies by alternative methods.

The Griffith Park Project imagines if this follows a Heather stand-in called Kelly Conroy whom would easily be distracted by butterflies at first, taking anything as a clue of a witch, but is also an obnoxious adult brat with a chalkboard screaming voice. Good on Kelly Aluise for being game for this, as a co-director and the female lead, but the short is a failure for me. Throughout, and honestly with bad taste to it, a lot of the jokes are about making parodies of the female main lead of Blair Witch, with this at least softened knowing the main actress is on-board to knowing make this character, as she makes things up in a flight of whimsy at first or is deluded, picking up a random stick in the middle of a park in daytime and believing its symbolic, and becoming obnoxious when she does not get her own way to her two male followers. The Blair Underwood Project, based around the titular L.A. Law. actor, is a second parody based around out-of-work actors, here bumbling around a park in random and pointless scenarios. Meeting two random orange sellers debating films, or learning one of the cameramen has a hairy chest the shape of Texas. Again, and here this is pertinent, it does discomfort the joke has to be the sole female character being obnoxious and hateable, considering Heather Donahue as her namesake in The Blair Witch Project was a sympathetic figure clinging onto her documentary when doomed. Here the Heather stand-in is a swearing egotist in a narrative of trying to find Blair Underwood to give him a script. It is not funny, least because, even repeating the farting in a camping tent joke, there is no comic timing or creativeness here in the improvisation, regardless of the scrappy micro-budget look.

Having had to see The Bogus Witch Project more than once, which in hindsight is idiotic on my part even if there is one rewarding bright spot, the segments were less painful, but this is definitely one of those releases to be lost in time and most would gladly damn to that fate. In between The Griffith Park Project and The Blair Underwood Project you have the one selling point in terms of a star, Pauly Shore's Bogus Witch Project. Pauly Shore never translated over to the United Kingdom, my knowledge of him entirely because the animated series Futurama made an entire episode running gag about how Bio-Dome (1996), the film he became notorious for, became a legacy title in that world's narrative. Shore, if you look into him, is to be sympathised with - he suddenly became a bankable figure from a role in Encino Man (1992), getting leading films in the nineties, but Bio Dome to be a butt of joke and Shore getting the dishonourable award from the Golden Raspberries of Worst New Star of the Decade for the 1990s¹. This segment however does no favours, starting with Shore parodying Heather's crying scene, a really obnoxious barrage of jokes set within a darkened cinema. Some jokes are funny - the concession stand sells twig bungles (from the original film) with butter, and the actress they hire, a traditionally attractive blonde woman, cannot speak because the film cannot afford her speaking lines. Moments like that, throughout this entire compilation, do show some wit, but they are drowned out in obvious and unfunny material screamed out at a tone deaf rate. The target, the original 1999 film, never is really prodded in a really salient way, the obvious jokes hit and many missed. An entire segment on Shore being stuck in a camping tent, causing it to thrash about violently, as in one moment would have been significantly funnier as anti-humour.

The Bel Air Witch Project is not great either, when the one beer I had revisiting this compilation did not work. The wonder of standard digital cameras, as someone fond of no-budget cinema, does not help with another egotistical Heather stand-in, also called Heather, in another vague McGuffin of a Witch figure never really there for anything for the jokes to pad out. Struggling through the Bel Air star map, I find is strange to consider how many of these were shot in Los Angeles, as this one tragically ropes in Brande Roderick, a Playboy Playmate who looks uncomfortable doing the parody. Considering she was a prominent star in Baywatch in this same year, in one of its many seasons, this is a get that is definitely squandered. The problem with a parody is that, as the Bel Air Witch Project says itself, damning itself among many bad spoofs, is that you have to get the reference and/or actually be funny, and the surface level is missed entirely.

It says a lot that, before we get to the last segment dear readers, I need to talk about The Woods, the interconnecting tissue which is its own elaborate, scattershot beast that is not really a Blair Witch parody but a lot of random tangents, including in other horror genres and especially Scream franchise parodies. There are so many of these moments it is saner just to list them in two paragraphs as non sequiturs, barely covering how many there are but those which stood out. Zombie meeting, bigfoot executive. A legitimately funny, in a proto-2010s anti humour sketch, fake advertisement for Ted McKensey, an insurance lawyer who helps people sue for demonic miscarriages, UFO anal probing and werewolf attacks, with the added charm the actor is clearly not giving a great acting performance in the damndest but adding to the segment unintentionally in its weirdness.

"This is your brain on ham...", as referred to in the opening quotation, part of the scattershot nature of just parodying an anti-drug advert just because. A reoccurring home shopping network, again one of the funnier gags, of a woman selling a cursed twig doll or at the end a jacket with hood combo made from human flesh. Stephen Hawkins as a slasher killer in a trailer, which is one of the moments this comes from the un-pc era if tame. Then there is Horror Storytellers, another reoccurring gag, of horror villains reminiscing on their pasts; the costumes, due to copyright and budget, look terrible, but Jason Voorhees sounding like an old Southern female belle recounting her murder sprees, or the kid from Children of the Corn as a deranged man-child are suitably strange. There are quite a few, some not really funny ("America's Scariest Home Videos"), a lot reminders that in the late nineties, when horror cinema was in a strange transitional state, Scream (1996) was also a huge cultural touch stone and huge for parody, for all the gags here. It does not make up for how ramshackle this entire project is, but The Woods did help sooth through so much of the misfires the footage was meant to pad the running time through.

But, in the brightest moment, one funny if imperfect parody comes at the end called The Willie Witch Project. Explicitly about three black filmmakers, with an African-American cast, and a female director Susan Johnson, this gets the tone right as, finding out the Blair Witch Project was a success, one entrepreneuring man decides to film a documentary in the woods about the Willie Witch, only for one interviewee to accused them of just wanting to go into the woods to get high, and a religious preacher to try to get them to donate money to their church. It adds another fascinating bow as the Heather stand-in is a man named Eugene. He is a very flamboyant stereotype of a gay man, introduced doing a woman's hair, and one unfortunate use of homophobic dialogue is used later on, but he turns into an absolute magnet of charisma, especially when he points out white people are stupid enough to go in haunted woods and, at the moment things get weird, he rightly wants to get out of there quickly. Aptly too as, in lieu to parodying the Blair Witch characters finding ominous twigs outside their tent, he immediately wants to leave when, unlike all the dumb stand-ins in previous segments with dog turds or food, this gets an inspired joke with white tub socks being left outside theirs giving everyone the heebie-jeebies.

Whilst not perfect, if The Bogus Witch Project has to be preserved for future children, or for anyone one reading this to see, it is for The Willies Witch Project, originally a short film released a year before but included here a year later. It is not a masterpiece, it is not great, but as a micro-budget parody of an already low budget film, even having to blur out a t-shirt insignia, this works. Someone goes at this parody from a different direction, explicitly three black characters, where the project is literally a tower block in the middle of nowhere, where the flamboyant gay character whilst a bit tasteless is actually likable and, barring one line of dialogue, none of the humour is mean. Even the farting in the camping tent joke works better because of the performers' charisma². No one dies, which is not a spoiler, nor that the characters make money whilst one poor bastard is left stuck in the woods lost, because actually watching the segment shows someone finding funnier ways to parody The Blair Witch Project with good jest, even with the characters being clever enough to left a sign telling helping them to not get lost only for it to fail.

So much of The Bogus Witch Project is some of the worst material I have seen, but its power to hurt faded and thankfully, even here there is some success. Fittingly, whilst a few women worked in the project, including a co-director, the one directed entirely by herself by a female filmmaker herself hit the target perfectly, which makes this overlong review of a forgotten film have a great ending at least. As part of the strange pop culture history of The Blair Witch Project, which few probably knew of, even here there is gold to be found in so much misjudged, a reason to sit through and end up with this ridiculously long review from a mangled mass of confusion notes.

 

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1) Perversely, the Golden Raspberries in 1999 nominated The Blair Witch Project among the worst pictures (which was won by Wild Wild West (1999)), and did give Heather Donahue the Worst Actress Award. To be un-civilised about this, rather than agree to disagree, this was frankly a dick move from an awards group who get a lot of opposition for their bandwagon riding and considering The Blair Witch Project became a horror classic in the future years.

2) Thomas Miles, who played Eugene, and John Eddins as the intrepid documentarian John, are also working to the current day prolifically, so that in itself is a good thing too.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

 

Directors: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez

Screenplay: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez

Cast: Heather Donahue as Heather Donahue; Joshua Leonard as Joshua 'Josh' Leonard; Michael C. Williams as Michael 'Mike' Williams

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #228

Includes bonus review of The Curse of the Blair Witch (1999)

 

We will prefix this review by just giving my personal opinion ahead of time. As a film with a legacy of being a great horror film in the era, it is trapped by the inherent issues that surround found footage horror films, but as a micro budget production, it is a huge success. And in terms of regional horror from the United States, shot in Maryland, basing itself off a fictitious folk legend still steeped in the country's history, this is catnip for me. The irony is that what led to the film's legacy, its appeal and the parodies, is all that is the less interesting content, including how it still has to be a scary film in the end with its cast running in the woods at night. As a premise and even the style, in spite of the structural problems of how it's depicted, it is compelling from Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez.

We need to admittedly start off by removing a myth surrounding Blair Witch - it was not the first true found footage horror film, least in mind to The Last Broadcast (1998), and back in 1985 you can make the argument that Guinea Pig 2: Flower Of Flesh And Blood, filmed as a snuff film from a killer, is the first of the genre in terms of horror cinema.  Yes, Cannibal Holocaust (1980) as well has to be mentioned, as that is in its central premise footage of an exploitative documentary crew having been recovered from jungle where cannibals lived, but that also sets it within a fictional narrative, so it is different even if legitimately innovative, in mind that the found footage films had to challenge themselves with the burden of telling a narrative entirely through footage a cast or prop (like a drone camera) could record. In mind to this, The Blair Witch Project is pretty simple if also a lot more complicated than the premise originally suggests. Three students - named after their actors Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams - go into the woods of Burkittsville, Maryland to make a documentary about the Blair Witch, the lore to be discussed later in this review but a supernatural witch whose influence in the region has also led to horrifying events. The students, in the opening text, disappeared and the footage is what was recorded by them.

This is admittedly, truthfully, where the first breakout film in this sub-genre already has issues. Simply put, you have to get around the logic of a company licensing footage for cinema release of people who likely died, something in promotional footage said to be real. If this was a television production, playing to verisimilitude, this might have been a much easier logistical route, and a subversive one, to reach around, especially if you added an additional commentary on exploitation. Instead, this is compounded by the fact that The Curse of the Blair Witch exists, a mock television documentary on the titular figure and the trio.

Presented as entirely real, the logistical issues of how this footage would be allowed to be released to cinemas without offending their families is an issue. If this just pretended to be found footage as the later films, we would just as viewers make believe the setting. The attempt at verisimilitude, including a website that became a meme before that was ever a word, and even a soundtrack of pre-existing songs created as a fake replica of a character's compilation tape, does unravel if you think very cynically of what would happen if someone actually found footage of real terrorisation of people. Likely, it would be released online, especially if someone was killed on screen within it, and there would be additional aspects which would make you have a bleak view of modern civilisation. Films would try to deal with these issues themselves. At the time, The Blair Witch Project managed to actually surf on this without anyone asking these questions, with even the main cast's IMDB profiles for the first few years marking them as missing and presumed dead¹. The strangeness of this, which was an accident during the production of Cannibal Holocaust and infamously led to its director Ruggero Deodato being taken to court, can only be compounded by testimony from the lead Heather Donahue herself:

"“Well, it doesn’t happen much anymore, but when Blair Witch first came out my Mum kept getting sympathy cards,” she said. “It was all part of their marketing scheme so, yeah, people thought I was dead.  When people found out I was alive a lot of them were kind of annoyed with me and wanted their money back.”"¹

With mind to the spectacle and hubbub this film caused in the day, the most compelling content with the film instead for me is its prologue, initial lore itself in terms of the lead trio interviewing the community of Burkittsville, Maryland about the Blair Witch. The film's entire back story is exceptional - drawing from American history of witchcraft, the concept of the Blair Witch combines witch scares of previous centuries, urban legends and conspiracies. It never becomes too broad and uncredible as the narrative includes events having transpired over the decades and centuries, including a child killer, before the events of the film, all peppered through carefully and even in the mock documentary. The faux-documentary The Curse of the Blair Witch in fact, whilst it undermines the logic of the film's existence, is exceptional as an additional context to the world. With the one hour documentary elaborating on the lore of the Blair Witch, it never stretches itself in credibility, with talking head interviewees and even a parody of a seventies New Age/paranormal television series, working exceptionally to add back story which enriches the final film with added narrative.

Especially when, boiling The Blair Witch Project down, sticking to the original film only, it is pretty basic. It is not dissimilar to a fault to other found footage work of later years, that of three people getting lost in the woods, and with the structure of the movie informing you the viewer of the outcome of them, the reason why is the crux of the narrative instead. Credit where it is do, the film is helped by its leads, who keep the appropriate verisimilitude of three people slowly losing their sanity, and breaking down, when large portions of the film are not scares but ill ease or them becoming lost in the woods. The little touches to the sinister forces, by way of creepy stick symbols or stone piles, is appropriately realistic and ominous, and it is meaningful that, even if for budgetary reasons or on purpose, you never see the Blair Witch.

That there emphasises many of the virtues of this film, and arguably why many others that followed from it in the future subgenre, from those I have seen, do not work. This is surprisingly subtle in spite of its narrative having its cast shouting and slowly breaking down, a slow burn of character development which does mean many hysterics but built to in subtle ebbs and flows. It is credible how they get lost, three people carrying a heavy bulk of equipment and tents in obscure woods, and even how the map is lost comes from a credible moment of insanity. What you do not realise too unless you read into the back story, and is explicitly in The Curse of the Blair Witch, is that this is also set in the early nineties, so concerns like access to mobile phones and equipment are not a factor either. The film's does also have the curious touch, as a lost film being presented to us the audience, of being presented in two formats, video for the incident moments, and celluloid film in black and white for the documentary, which adds an addition to the narrative if you try to explain how we see this.

This also has to overcome the issue which plagues so many of these films, the logic of why certain footage is filmed continually, which The Blair Witch Project is not really able to deal with. It tries dramatically, with some success, with Heather's inability to stop recording footage becoming a psychologically barrier to prevent the full extent of their horror from crushing her, but this in truth is still a puncture to the reality that has to be excepted. The film in spite of aspects like this still won me over, that in spite of the many moments which have been parodied - Heather's tearful confession at night with snot on her face, the final in the basement of a house - it has a lot that returning to is compelling. It is not the masterpiece its reputation suggests for me, least returning to the film now after all this time, but recognising a film which caught lightning in a bottle, there was a lot that worked. A lot that we could have transported to the found footage horror sub-genre when it finally came a mainstream concept over the years after, a lot of the virtues of the film missed as always happens with trendsetters and found when entries did remembers to include this.

 

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1) This quote is part of a discussion, upon how the film managed to actually succeed in its marketing, HERE.

The Twentieth Century (2019)

 

Director: Matthew Rankin

Screenplay: Matthew Rankin

Cast: Dan Beirne as Mackenzie King; Sarianne Cormier as Nurse Lapointe; Catherine St-Laurent as Ruby Eliott; Mikhaïl Ahooja as Bert Harper; Brent Skagford as Arthur Meighen; Seán Cullen as Lord Muto; Louis Negin as Mother; Kee Chan as Dr. Milton Wakefield; Trevor Anderson as Mr. Justice Richardson; Emmanuel Schwartz as Lady Violet; Richard Jutrasas Father; Satine Scarlett Montaz as Little Charlotte

An Abstract List Candidate

 

Canada is just one failed orgasm after another...

The tale of Mackenzie King - the 10th Prime Minister of Canada - has to be pointed out ahead of time to been authentic. King was a real Prime Minister of Canada. Whilst this film comes with aspects clearly lost to me originally on the first viewing, being neither Canadian nor as clear on the history of these "disappointed" people as their land is called in this world of the film, this is still set in real history if imagined aesthetically between Guy Maddin, an Myst-like nineties PC game, Canada if interpreted by Walter Ruttmann experimental films about shape and form, and least one obscure British game show as I will get into later. Inspired by King's diaries, Canadian filmmaker Matthew Rankin on his theatrical length debut threw down a gauntlet for himself, which I feel he succeeded in, to adapt them into an anxious fever dream.

You can spot he grew up with Maddin, his fellow Canadian, but far from redundant to replicate Maddin's style of the Careful (1992) era with his own flourishes, Rankin's work is beautiful to witness and as it goes on, including moody synthwave from his composers Christophe Lamarche-Ledoux and Peter Venne in the climax, Rankin comes to this with his own ideas. Building from the template of his forefather, Rankin comes with his own work, and also has Louis Negin of Maddin's The Forbidden Room (2015), as King's domineering mother, so the Maddin circle embraces -- as one of their own.

Thankfully like Maddin, Rankin decided to embrace the forefather's same eccentricities like maple walnut ice cream and zoos to pet pelicans, all in the first lines of dialogue as King befriends a young girl with tuberculosis in a scene which is both sentimental but incredibly dark humoured. I would argue Canadian cinema, when it is allowed, can be truly peculiar to rival their neighbours south, which is significant to bring up with The Twentieth Century. Set in around 1899, when the second Boer War transpires and exists in the film, a war Canada was involved with as part of the British Empire against two independent states of Dutch speaking rebels in the southern African lands, this film is distressed throughout with national heritage and what it means to be decent and Canadian. It is material which might seem odd to look at, of the Victorian era, when Canada has moved on passed the twentieth century with its own new identities and clichés, such as their decentness, but here is of angst, having to look good as a person especially in politics, and absolutely no sexual fetishes like huffing shoes as King is immediately established to have early in this film.  

King is determined to be his namesake, or at least the new Prime Minister of Canada, his father a henpecked man shut out from his wife's sanctum, said mother having controlled King so long even dreams of hers are prophecies. To become Prime Minister is itself a challenge, of such elaborate challenges such as ribbon cutting, leg wrestling, urinating one's name in perfect font on a urinal, and baby seal clubbing as a bloody Whack-a-Mole game where they are thankfully depicted with puppets. The point of the film Rankin admits was that he wanted to implode the biopic genre, believing it inherently fictional¹, which I absolutely admire as someone who finds the biopic one of the most unrewarding film genres for me personally to ever exist. Exceptions that have won me really show where I stand, when Paul Schrader's Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) is considered a high bar. This is not a weird film to bring up, as that film as an actual biopic was an aesthetically dense and delirious work, involving adapting the novels of Yukio Mishima in little narratives, and being as dense in terms of psychosexual content in a more serious tone when dealing with Mishima's blend of nationalism, homosexuality, and obsession with physical beauty (bodybuilding to Saint Sebastian, the saint killed tied to a tree with arrows shot at him) against his fear and fixation with death. Whilst I do not know whether King liked to masturbate sniffing shoes, or had a cactus given to him by the sinister Dr. Milton Wakefield (Kee Chan) that ejaculates when he slips off the trail of being a respectable Canadian, but against even such broad humoured perversity, that this deals with the anxieties of King by way of these delirious tangents is not that blasphemous when seen as metaphors.   

Certainly when you get to the narrative, it is a conflict between the militaristic might of the real ruler of Canada, Governor-General Lord Muto (Seán Cullen), and a French-Canadian politician Joseph Israël Tarte who leads for peace into the new century, including a greater independence for French Canada. Tarte, as played by actress Annie St-Pierre, was a real politician of liberal leanings, including opposition to Canada's involvement in the second Boer War, seen in this film as propaganda where the Boers are merely depicted as baby killing half-elephant people by Muto, so The Twentieth Century for all its sick humour and perverseness is dealing with real history, causing it to distort to peck at the truths and madness of it. King is ultimately the spineless protagonist forced to become the figure between both political sides, a fascinating figure to have as a central character. It is also befitting, was probably the truth of the real King, alongside accusations of corruption², fitting as more truthful than a biopic which would have to remove real context to be narrative driven. One detail that would have been fascinating to see, though comes later in his life, and you would also see in a Guy Maddin film was his secret fascinating with spiritualism and mediums to contact the dead. He also unfortunately developed an idolised, frankly obsessive, high viewpoint of Adolf Hitler, viewing him as a mystical figure of saintliness³ which adds a dark coda to the fictionalised version here, an apt one in regards to the malleability and obsession with destiny his fictional counterpart here has.

I once rolled my eyes at "a lament for 21st century nihilism", from the introduction Matthew Rankin also wrote for the 2021 MUBI introduction¹, but that was only because it might have presumed a worldview, as many have in the 21st century, that nothing matters truly after what the 20th century led to. But here seeing this film, not only is there the paradox that for all my anti-nihilism I have a very sick sense of humour, so I found so much of Rankin's film hilarious as with Guy Maddin's work, but that that phrase from the introduction takes on different perspective for me. That here, into this world's new century, there is passion to be had, no numbness, only a fin de siecle frenzy between two sides, love or hate, with the putz in the middle still a sympathetic figure we admire. One who is torn as much in love, between the ideal proclaimed to him, Muto's daughter Ruby Eliott (Catherine St-Laurent), the blonde haired soldier and perfect angelic figure, and French-Canadian Nurse Lapointe (Sarianne Cormier), a wholesome and sweet figure actually in love with King originally too.

It does seem poignant, even in this openly silly film where King's shoe huffing masturbation obsession becomes a soul destroying when he loses the presidency competition, that Rankin viewed the real King as a man who "gingerly walked a very cautious line right down the middle"¹, political centrism compelling in a time of fanatical binaries in modern politics. It could be seen as compromising at the worse as what King did in real life, "sitting on the fence" as we call it in Britain, but even this film touches on something poignant in this aspect, passion still in King to want to help people here even as a broad caricature actor Dan Beirne brings to like very well. That the real man is far more complicated and problematic, such as his apparent admiration for Hitler, does not ruin this but adds so much to the film's tone intertextually.

This is externalised when King is caught between the real power of Muto, a man who brainwashes Canada with true Canadianess and a war with a Germanic half-elephant half-human group the Boers are turned into, and Tarte, demanding individuality, a character alongside being one of the many gender reversing casting choices who comes off in contest like a communist freethinker in how conservative Muto hates him. Literally born from the yoke of tenderness, i.e. from an actual human sized egg, Tarte here is clearly in mind to modern day liberal thinkers, but in context sitting a time when Karl Marx was on ideal and not sullied by the Soviet Union's eventual history. So many contexts are lost not being born Canadian myself, but dealing with "the vivifying froth of man", Rankin explicitly has King an easily manipulated figure stuck between both sides. Redemption is offered by Lapointe as a true love, but he is fixated on Ruby as the idealised image of Canadianess. King is noble if a little dumb in himself, offering a ribbon for his campaign to the young girl dying of tuberculosis, but wide eyed and trying. His chance at redemption, to walk between the sides, is to be found in an ice maze, if evoking the obscure ITV show Ice Warriors (1998), an ice skating themed Gladiator show, if only you had to fight Canadian presidency by raising your sides flag in a maze and with the risk of unexpected Narwhale impalement involved. 

Rankin also decided to push the artistry of his film to a wonderful extreme, showing larger budgeted films off badly by having this unique world onscreen. Not attempting to be period accurate at all, his Maddin influence is matched by others too, a dash of neo-eighties aesthetic (the colours and synthwave score), and specifically Karen Zeman, the Czeck animator/filmmaker who used two dimensional paper craft and sets with real actors, here in The Twentieth Century an almost abstract world. Locations like Winnipeg look like realms on an open world map for old videogames where you would have to load screens to solve puzzles, and Ruttmann, the Germany cinematographer and avant-garde filmmaker, is very notable to bring up in how alongside the paper craft of Zeman, the minimalism where the land is depicted in paths and esoteric shapes evokes watching the likes of Lichtspiel: Opus I (1921) if actors were abruptly planted into the middle of them, let along something obvious influences like German Expressionist cinema and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).

The sets' streamlined, almost abstract natures are contrasted by the craft, barring Winnipeg, which is depicted as a hellhole of impoliteness, swearing and a shoe fetish related fantasy club known as The Heel. Alongside men playing women, women playing men, you have so many idiosyncratic figures onscreen who stick out. The likes of Dr. Wakefield, the head of a psychological asylum to prevent crimes against national dignity with tools like an alarm chastity belt for men that is set off by erections; Mr Schultz the money lender with a cactus hand, with a willingness to even kill puppet parrots named Giggles as a warning for unpaid loans; or even the aforementioned cactus Wakefield provides to King, which does inde3ed explodes in ejaculation during King's depression based shoe fetish and even rots in a truly grotesque, and frankly disgusting way, when a mere kink unfortunately becomes a destructive vice, foul yellowed semen stand-in everywhere as a result. It is over-the-top but, wanting to depict a person's psycho dramatic anxieties from diary sources, the extremity itself does feel aptly a fever dream.

The Twentieth Century is exceptional in context, a great debut for a director to have begun with, but with mind that there were short films which honed his style before, it feels like a project visibly planned out as carefully as possible alongside allowing his imagination to gallop. It can even be argued, whilst not a dismissal of Guy Maddin at all, it feels more confident and precise in style and ideas than his idol's own debut Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988), which should be held as a real compliment. Definitely the levels to the film, beyond its twisted humour, in distorting history means this has a weight that, if more people can see the film, would raise it as one of the more rewarding films from the 2010s.

Abstract Spectrum: Bizarre/Eccentric/Expressionist/Grotesque/Weird

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

 

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1) The MUBI introduction can be read HERE.

2) Such as the Beauharnois Scandal, when Beauharnois Light, Heat and Power Co were discovered having made substantial contributions to the Liberal Party of Canada.

3) Examples of this can be read of HERE.