Those That, At a Distance, Resemble Another (2019)

 

Director: Jessica Sarah Rinland

An Abstract Candidate

 

Here's where it took its first breath.

The best way to describe Jessica Sarah Rinland's feature length documentary, which will be called Those That... for abbreviation, is to compare to an older work of Rinland's, an Argentinean-British multi-media artist. Black Pond (2018), a micro-feature, is set around Elmbridge Natural History Society on a pilgrimage the south of England. Toads in the darkness establish the first shot of the film, as older individuals study the old trees of the forest, collecting moths, all whilst Black Pond is clearly shot on film by Rinland, and refers to more than its gentle tone suggests, eventually quoting Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers¹, Winstanley a Protestant religious reformer, political philosopher, and activist whose Diggers group he co-founded occupied formerly common land that had been privatised by enclosures. Black Pond is also very English in a whimsical way - examining fungi whilst carrying samples in a Tesco supermarket plastic zip tie bag - whilst adding surreality even by accident, in documenting people in work that is not commonly depicting in cinema, sniffing conifers to identity them, one even smelling like pineapple.

Alongside the sound design being of importance between the films - the clatter, chatter and noises of bats in the dark when being studied and examines in the palm of one's hands - a line of dialogue from the Elmbridge society really exemplifies what Those That, At A Distance, Resemble Another's own modus operandi is, that "If you want to see something, hold it close". With her own hands among those creating onscreen in her film, marked out deliberately with pink nail polish, Rinland's own course in the film, her face obscured and her hands as the others the focus, is to begin copying a replica of a tusk. This tusk was poached from a female elephant in Malawi, and donated to the Natural History in London, back in 1900. The film, working with Harvard’s Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, hides a lot of the information for context on all you see, all the vignettes, until the end of the film in a large text narration. Shot between multiple museums in Brazil and England, the film deliberately strips the context until the ending, focusing on the craft itself, the hands and voices of the other ceramicists and preservationists the cast alongside the work they are preserving, studying, or recreating copies of.

Creating casts for museum objects - painstakingly - has an inherently surreality to it, including going as far with her tusk for RInland's project onscreen to have its damages recreated. Even if it was a source of concern for the preservationists who did so, explained that it is obviously not their job to destroy, the replica we see onscreen, up close with its working area the backdrop, even had a significant fragment where it would connect to an elephant's mouth broken with a hammer, and then glued back on with animal based glue, for accuracy. The replication of damages, of glue jobs, has a perverse air, yet early in the film the lineage of the copy to its original, like strands of inherited DNA, are emphasised in the narration and dialogue, the copy co-existing as important as the real one. In real life, Rinland's copy sits side-by-side with the original, donated to the Natural History Museum in London².

The one moment, at the beginning of the film, where howler monkeys are introduced to the wild again, does feel contextually different, the one non-artificial environment in the Tijuca Floresta in Rio de Janeiro, a forest in Brazil conservation. However it elaborates on this idea of lineage, in the form as much as the DNA, of that which comes from the older, be it the offspring of the monkeys or the tusk's replication to the original. Likewise, the techniques within the film are both older than one would believe as newer technology as 3D printing also exists. The irony is not lost with the mould and case process done in the film, which would be appropriated and used by Europeans in the 1800s onwards, comes from Peru 2000 years earlier for making panpipes, influencing the craft in an entirely different region of the globe. It is neither lost how colonialism marks the world, as it is own historical DNA, the tusk Rinland working on having its own history. Another segment shows the still problematic issue of ivory smuggling even in the centuries after today, where a chipped game box which is painstakingly fixed, beautiful on the surface with its white and black design, used ivory confiscated by poachers for the repair before the material used was packed away¹.

The hard work is shown in close up, from the tracing of images on an Amazon funerary urn to new clay pots being crafted, but you still have the lives of these artisans and preservers depicted on screen nonetheless. Conversations are casually overheard and recorded, such as discussing a young daughter now less interested in cartoons and more into nature documentaries, including one of how elephants are like ballerinas in their ability to "hear" through their feet and walk differently as a result. With Latin music on the radio constantly, the lives of these people are experienced if rarely seeing their faces. Sound design, as in Black Pond, is a prominent piece of Those That's creation, from the intimacy of these sequences to bird calls being spliced into the scenes of work on the soundtrack.

The film does, in truth, evoke those of museum instillations. The one significant difference is that, with the craft in what is depicted onscreen and in the soundtrack as carefully considered, the form of the film is as important as the content. This comparison is also not out-of-place as, alongside the tusk itself, there was also a book connected to the film². A museum installation in itself is as much an art form, one I respect as much for their sense of being in presence of them in an environment outside of a cinema. I can see Those That, At A Distance, Resemble Another have its segments separated into installation pieces, but it is truly the virtue of Jessica Sarah Rinland's that the actual film as is also works as cinema. With its seemingly distancing effects actually focusing one on the importance of the work onscreen, it becomes cinema of the senses in feeling the intimacy and hard work on display in painstaking detail.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Contemplative

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

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1) The Earth shall be made a common treasury of livelihood to whole mankind, without respect of persons. I hate none. I love all. - Gerrard Winstanley and The Diggers, 1649. As quoted in Black Pond in its ending onscreen.

2) Taken on the MUBI article on the film Not All Objects Are Silent: "Those That, At A Distance, Resemble Another", by Madeleine Wall and published on April 6th 2021.

Another Son of Sam (1977)

 

Director: Dave Adams

Screenplay: Dave Adams

Cast: Russ Dubuc as Lt. Setzer; Cynthia Stewart as Dr. Daisy Ellis; Robert McCourt as Capt. Thompson; John Harper as Sgt. Flowers; Larry Sprinkle as Officer Mike Shuster; Bill Brown as Officer John Mills; Bonnie Schrier as Heather; Kim Saunders as Darlene Page; Pam Mullins as Tina

An Abstract Candidate

 

[Sung] The shopping list of things she was meant to buy...

As there are films which timestamp the eighties, so there are many which could only exist from the seventies. Beginning with a long list chronicling the history of serial killers and spree murderers from Jack the Ripper in England to the time of the film's release in the United States, this was not even the first time before the seventies when American cinema fixated on serial killers and spree killings. However, with Dirty Harry (1971), a mainstream Hollywood film, presenting Andrew Robinson as a stand-in to the real "Zodiac" killer plaguing the country at the time, the seventies was a time of reflecting on this subject even for exploitative movies within the States. Another Son of Sam is not exactly a treatise on the subject, neither is it actually an exploitation spin on David Berkowitz, the real Son of Sam killer. The film's quick appearance into cinemas is quite disturbing if ballsy to say the least; on its IMDB page, though I would prefer greater factual accuracy, there is a claim that this was filmed in 1975 under the title Hostages, not released until 1977¹ where, on the 10th August 1977, David Berkowitz was finally caught and arrested after a series of killings. If the trivia could be confirmed, then this is a classic case of exploitation cinema pulling directly from the headlines, or in this case, least changing the title to cash in on events. Is it morally questionable, whether this was the real story or that director/writer/producer/editor/casting director/stunt coordinator Dave Adams managed to get the film finished within a tiny little piece of time to sell under the context of the news? Yes, but this is where some of the more fascinating cultural items can be found too, more so as, whilst this is not a Son of Sam depiction, it is still of note for this. This is not like when Spike Lee adapted the real history into Summer of Sam (1999) decades later, but this still has relevance, circling the fixation on serial killer, even if exploiting real life tragedy, by what is a curious proto-slasher/police procedural with techniques accidentally borrowed from avant-garde cinema.

It takes about fourteen minutes in a seventy one minute film for the "Another" of the title to appear, named Harvey, who will escape from a mental asylum as soon as we meet him. We will never see the face of Harvey until the end of the film, baring extreme close-up of his eyes and fragments of his face. Even before then, the opening fourteen minutes are languid and long with a protracted seen on the river for the opening on a motorboat, and an extended musical number from Johnny Charro. Fully informing you this is a film of the seventies, Charro sings a lounge ballad whilst with a shirt open as far as possible to still qualify as a shirt, full with chest hair exposed. Charro, starting off in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, was starting in the seventies as a singer², openly indebted to Elvis Presley³ and, with complete lack of irony on my part but entirely sincere, is an obscure figure I find only online in old newspaper articles, and was still working into the new century, and has find himself immortalised in this oddity, giving great meaning to how these exploitation films preserve the era. The point of these fourteen minutes, to get back on track, is to set up the hero, a police officer who, wooing his doctor girlfriend, takes the case of Harvey's escape and murder spree personally when, working at that asylum, she is badly injured if surviving an escape from Harvey, who goes on to kill women and others when let loose by accident.

If it feels odd exasperating on fourteen minutes of a film, this perfectly shows how exploitation and independent productions from this era, like shot-on-video/straight-to-video of later decades, were a lawless place where rules of how films should be made went out the window. For many, from these fourteen minutes, Another Son of Sam is a baffling curiosity most would not sit through, for some to laugh at, for others and me a compelling cultural artefact whose quirks make it unique. The film's tone is contrasted by its schism as exploitation, only a little violent, a little gory, usually cutting away from the murders despite being sold on the Son of Sam name, with most of Harvey's work, usually hiding behind the bushes in first person prowling camera scenes, cut away from when he strikes. A little titillation is barely there, and the film, if sold at a drive-in during this more relaxed era, would definitely be more sizzle than steak. Like many of these films influenced by older Hollywood genre films, from the b-movie and poverty row era, Dave Adams was clearly influenced by crime films from a time before in his emphasis on dialogue and law enforcement doing their thing. It is all deathly serious - this killer is marked by the fact his mother, in the one aspect which does add a severity to material, molested him as a child, and eventually culminates with the police having trapped Harvey in an apartment complex on a school campus, but with hostages involved and stray police likely to meet their demise if they wander in after him. That it has passages that are absurd by accident comes from the swaying in trying to be this deathly serious, but making some choices which undercut itself, such as the son-in-law being name checked among the police after Harvey, as a result doomed to die as soon as that information is brought up.

The result, shot Charlotte in North Carolina, is regional cinema which gives you a nice snapshot of the era, all grey building designs, brown aesthetic and green parkland. Where things get weird is how it feels like Another Son of Sam was made from what footage was available in the editing room, cutting it precariously to not having enough filmed at times and there being strange pauses suddenly where the film feels like it has broken down. Whether deliberate or not, one of the oddest touches is how suddenly as well, with these pauses, scenes can stop as if they have just finished only for the still frame of the final shot to linger onscreen as more dialogue is layered on top. It is a technique from avant-garde cinema inexplicably found here, and alongside the cutting away from the violence, not showing the killer barring cuts to his eyes in close-up and fragments, and the pacing, and Another Son of Sam has a weird atmosphere. Alongside its era trappings, it is a curious film to experience.

It is an acquired taste mind, so be cautious that, if your tastes are not for the perplexing, many could find this frustrating instead. I found it weird and compelling. David Adams did not do much in his directing career - again having to rely on IMDB for accuracy, it says he may have had to wait for decades until Angel with a Kick (2005) to make one other film. His little filmography elsewhere still gives you an idea of how the exploitation/regional era of American cinema was a fascinating and prolific one, where he has a stunt gaffer credit for Whiskey Mountain (1977), from the prolific Floridian director William Grefé, and a stunts credit for Grizzly (1976), a film by William Girdler, a Kentucky born native who travelled states of his country as much as genres in his prolific career, close to the mainstream with The Manitou (1978) with Tony Curtis before his career was tragically cut short, having made nine films, at the age of thirty. Another Son of Sam is a curious footnote in this group, of many just from the seventies, but its existence paints a picture to say the least, even if the results will be a head scratcher. With most of its cast baring a couple of names, like the memorable one of Larry Sprinkle, not even going on to extra roles in other films, this their only credit, this feels intimate as much as it is, from that title, a lurid reflection of trends and obsessions of the day.

Abstract Spectrum: Dreamlike/Psychotronic

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

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1) Another Son of Sam's IMDB trivia page.

2) A 17th October 1975 article from the Lakeland Ledger newspaper on Johnny Charro.

3) A Lakeland Ledger article, from 2nd September 1977, of Johnny Charro reflecting on the death of Elvis Presley.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021)

 

Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Screenplay: Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Cast: Kotone Furukawa as Meiko; Ayumu Nakajima as Kazuaki Kubota; Hyunri as Tsugumi Konno; Kiyohiko Shibukawa as Segawa; Katsuki Mori as Nao; Shouma Kai as Sasaki; Fusako Urabe as Moka Natsuko; Aoba Kawai as Nana Aya

Canon Fodder

 

What a difference time makes - when I had first encountered Ryusuke Hamaguchi, it was with the five plus hour film Happy Hour (2015);  that was a film a few outside of Japan knew about, those able to see it finding an incredible production whose length is used for its richness. Come the 2020s, and Hamaguchi started gaining an international recognition to his work, let alone before Drive My Car (2021), an adaptation of a Haruki Murakami involving a re-adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya for theatre. Not only had the film won the 94th Academy Awards Oscar for Best International Picture, but was nominated as well for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. CODA (2021), a film casting real deaf actors in roles, and about a child of deaf adults (CODA), and the awards became shadowed not by any of the films that won or did not, instead gaining a notoriety for actor Will Smith front palm slapping comedian Chris Rock on stage and on camera. Lost in an event like this, talked about in the media circus that resulted, are these films, such as CODA's place in depicting disability in mainstream cinema, and being a film originally for Apple TV+ on streaming, and Drive My Car likewise is significant.

In the past, non-English films especially in the sixties to seventies were nominated in the Best Picture category, such as Costa-Gavras' Z (1969) for the 42nd Academy Awards, but it was a significant shock suddenly a South Korean film, Bong Joon-ho's Parasite (2019), at the 92nd Academy Awards, became the first non-English language film to win Best Picture, but also Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film awards in the same night. When the Oscars showed bias to American and English language films over decades before, it was a startling, whatever your opinions on Parasite, that a wider eyeglass was being used by the Academy of cinema around the world. Now with Ryusuke Hamaguchi having an Oscar and a Best Picture nod, someone behind a five hour long film of great complexity like Happy Hour, the kind of film neglected in availability let alone appreciation, had more eyes towards him as a result of that awards ceremony success even in just nominations. The awards even beyond the Oscars won also means that the focus on his filmmaking as a director would become wider too, and beforehand, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy would be screened in British cinema from 11th February 2022¹ and still play into the same weekend as the Oscar ceremony took place on March 27th 2022, the night before in fact when I was able to see the movie.

Wheel..., in contrast to Drive My Car being a three hour narrative, Happy Hour five hours, is three short stories, like a short story collection, which have different characters and even mini-end credits for each of them. They however all tie together in their themes of accidental encounters and pure chance, the circumstances bringing people together coincidental but whose interactions bring great emotional resonance, even in one story people who realise they do not know each other and confused one another as people from their pasts in high school. The first narrative encapsulates this, Magic (or Something Less Assuring), where model Meiko (Kotone Furukawa) learns that her female friend has started a relationship with an ex-boyfriend she still has longing for. Hamaguchi's style within these three tales is minimalistic, in how the dialogue is in centre of priority, the rich and humoured script its actors brings to life onscreen. He seems to have gone to the school of Hong Sang-Soo, the famous South Korean filmmaker of dialogue, to borrow his abrupt camera zoom techniques, more in felt in how Hamaguchi's own within Wheel..., for heightened affect, has imperfectly completely zooms too instead of perfect glides.

All the stories, whilst the last two were my favourites, are exceptional, of a high quality about accidental circumstances which connect people. The first segment, returning to it, has the right tone to begin the trio, of how the lead Meiko still loves her ex Kazuaki (Ayumu Nakajima) and their initially combative reunion, in his work office, leads to a softening reflection on their pass and a new moral complexity as he is in a relationship with her friend. The conflict as the others takes place in the quieter areas of urban Japan - footways, offices - and seeing human beings within them. My inherent fascination I have with Japanese public spaces aesthetically is here, but is also contrasted, as with Hong Sang-Soo films in another culture, or Eric Rohmer in France when he depicted modern landscapes, with seeing human beings within these confines and modernity. For the most part the three narratives do not experiment in presentation, but they all possess their own distinct touches. Part one even, to follow the Hong Sang-Soo comparisons, has two alternative endings in how Meiko resolves the romantic triangle in a cafe, one clearly the true ending but the imagined an emotional wave which exposes emotional anxieties and the uncomfortable truth she realises is likely to happen is she tells the truth.

Part two, Door Wide Open, is the most complex of narratives. It envisions a young man Sasaki (Shouma Kai) bribing an older woman Nao (Katsuki Mori), a student in a friends-with-benefits relationship with him, with their sex life to set up a honey trap with French language teacher and newly successful novelist Segawa (Kiyohiko Shibukawa), a revenge act against the person who obstructed his career trajectory earlier in time at the moment Segawa has won the Akutagawa Prize, a real award which is significant in Japanese literature. The segment is my best of the trio - the most dynamic in chronology, jumping in the most timelines it is set in, the drama as it does become tragic but it is also incredibly comedic, weaving humour around a very erotic passage in Segawa's novel of tending to testicles like the broken wing of a bird. The novelist finds himself in the most curious of circumstances that would have won me over if it had stayed on an actual happy conclusion of abrupt love. One where even if drawn from a theory side still gives a woman with a little pride in just her voice, and happiness for everyone where a near-blackmail never ruins, all  as long as someone promises to masturbate to the resulting audio recordings. That it turns, due to a wrong email address, to a sadder but still complex ending, where people still have to live their lives in new circumstances after the fall out, does show Ryusuke Hamaguchi's deft hand nonetheless.

Unlike Happy Hour, which could flesh out its content in five hours, Wheel's narratives are short stories, characters dramas which are complex in their short spaces of time. More so with part three, Once Again, where an older woman Natsuko (Fusako Urabe) going to her high school reunion, passing on an escalator, encounters an old friend from that time, complicated by the pin drop perfect realisation late on, in the other's own home, that they are complete strangers. Frank in the previous stories, in their takes on erotic and romantic desire, it is Hamaguchi taking a risk when the narrative for the third story is with LGBTQ characters, its lead Natsuko initially meets older housewife Aya (Aoba Kawai) under the presumption she is the girl from her school days she was in a romantic relationship with.

Not only does the story tactfully depict this, but also the narrative has its own complexities, realising they neither know each other, as Aya thought Natsuko was also a classmate from her own school days she felt close towards. Deciding to impersonate those missing to the other for emotional closer, the film brings a special emotional complexity contrasted by a sweet, gentle calmness which ends Wheel...perfectly. Whilst timeless too in its drama, the interest in modernity means that, like Eric Rohmer's eighties films for me, you still see these timeless aspects of people within new contexts in all three stories. Part III also presents the strangest touch of the entire trio, which is never explicitly important to the narrative but is important enough to require an entire text crawl for its backdrop, which this is set in an alternative world. It is set in a period where a mass online incident revealed everyone's private details and emails, including important business/organisation information, leaving this a world where everyone has to communicate without computers and the internet for safety.

It adds its own curiosity, as this is the one drama which depicts the act of ordering anime blu-rays in the post and the curious site of overtly sexual moé anime character models on the shelves to be pondered upon by older women, but it adds a further sense for director-screenwriter Ryusuke Hamaguchi fleshing out the world in its touches. The result for all three narratives is a really good film in its entirety. Released the same year as Drive My Car, which will be the film talked of with the larger attention for its success and how it is talked of, the festival juries of the 71st Berlin International Film Festival still awarded Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize. Whilst that should not be the only way to gauge a film's virtues, Wheel... for me personally was everything I could hope for with a deliberately smaller scaled production. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy came out at the moment Ryusuke Hamaguchi's name had grown a pronounced weight, a film here which could be in danger of being ignored, but is profound for me as it is exceptional as the deliberately little film.

 

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1) Taken from Film Dates.co.uk's entry for the film for the release date's accuracy for the British cinema release.

Labyrinth of Cinema (2019)

 

Director: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi

Screenplay: Kazuya Konaka, Tadashi Naitô and Nobuhiko Ôbayashi    

Cast: Takuro Atsuki as Mario; Yoshihiko Hosoda as Shigeru; Takahito Hosoyamada as Hosuke; Rei Yoshida as Noriko; Riko Narumi as Kazumi Saitō; Hirona Yamazaki as Kazuko Yoshiyama; Takako Tokiwa as Yuriko Tachibana; Yukihiro Takahashi as Fanta G

Canon Fodder

 

Don't we all love Tarzan?

Labyrinth of Cinema has a lot to unpack, the last film of Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, a film's whose tone is immediately set up when Hinton Battle gets a name check in the opening credits for not able to be involved with the production, the gentle heart shown already in the film's chest in name checking the veteran Tony Award winning American actor, singer, dancer, and dance instructor who was unable to even provide in-film support or assistance to the production, even if it does have musical numbers. We have not even gotten to the spaceship with floating fish floating inside, and pianos and nude people passing by outside its windows, the ship belonging to Fanta G (Yellow Magic Orchestra member and musician Yukihiro Takahashi), travelling back to Japan and explaining to the viewer how we descend into war before he reaches a small cinema in Onomichi. A city, called a shore town in film, within the Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, facing the Inland Sea, that in itself will be significant as Labyrinth of Cinema will go through Japan's military history, as is the fact (brought up in the film when establishing the setting) it was not bombed due to having a prisoner of war camp during the Pacific War¹, unchanged as a result from the forties through Fanta G's narrative. (That the location also features in Tokyo Story (1953) as a key setting, the most famous film directed by Yasujirō Ozu, is important to mention when Ozu himself makes a cameo).  On its last night, the cinema is screening a night of war films; there a film buff, a film history maniac, and a wannabe yakuza and debt collector who is a son of a monk, coming together only find themselves entering the silver screen after Noriko (Rei Yoshida), a teen girl working there is sucked in abruptly, aptly just after thunder and lightning outside mid-screening.

Nobuhiko Ôbayashi managed to have two last films. He was diagnosed with stage-four terminal cancer² before he set about directing Hanagatami (2017), based on a 1937 novel by Kazuo Dan, a war drama set in the dawn of World War II about a group of youths in a seaside town at the period. On Hanagatami, Ôbayashi was a veteran director, famous in the West for the delirious House (1977) but prolific in his home country, who was making the film aware he had a terminal illness. Including its ending, cutting to Ôbayashi himself talking to the viewer, he had the perfect last film in Hanagatami. How befitting he managed to live long enough to have a second film as good as an ending instead, and before the film's plot even properly starts, Labyrinth of Dreams burns in style. Title cards, coloured borders, repetition of previous fragments of scenes, even the obvious CGI and super imposition of modern 2010s cinema aesthetic clearly deliberate as tools for a man whose used artificiality as back in House, showing he never shied away from this.

Subtitled "A movie - To explore cinematic literature", the film when it begins properly suggests a wholesome farce with a musical, only for this type of cinema in Japan to have originated for propaganda reasons at the time, or was a film made after Japan lost the Pacific War, made during the period in occupied Japan where the US army would have censored content, which they did. Underscored with poetry by Chūya Nakahara, whose poem calling modernism a new form of barbarism is the most evoked, Labyrinth of Cinema over nearly three hours does not hide with how Ôbayashi, especially in his later films, was a man born in 1938 coming to terms with the horrible destruction of the Pacific War and World War II caused. He is not hiding either his view Japan's own government was as responsible for this and taking the side of humanity over the blind militarisation that led to this history. The film, truthfully, refers to content that may not be as widely known overseas unless you have a lot of knowledge of Japanese cinema or its culture, Labyrinth of Cinema a history lesson on its nation's path and its cinema in a dense yet playful form, the history of Japan intermingled with their history of movies and art, such as the silent film naturally having intertitles, even with dialogue, when the leads end up within one.

Japan here is a history of civil war, strafes of radicals against the establishment, samurai made obsolete by foreign imported guns, nationalism, and Japan's relationship to other countries. Everyone is explained even if a figure a Japanese viewer would know of. Sakamoto Ryōma, for example, was a samurai and is one of the many who wanted to interact with the likes of North America but died too young when assassinated. Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary swordsman Toshiro Mifune played in film over a trilogy between 1954-56, is here as an old man, and cinema is evoked in Yasujirō Ozu, the legendary auteur, making a cameo alongside Sadao Yamanaka, the director whose Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937) was tragically one of the only works from a creator whose life was cut short before his time in the Imperial Japanese Army when drafted. Yamanaka's tale is more tragic as his work has been mostly lost in cinema due to this time period - the Japanese government burned many of his more provocative films and then years later Douglas MacArthur, the general of the American Army during the Pacific War, and the US army during the occupying era destroyed others among other filmmakers that were considered anti-democratic in view, leaving only three of Yamanaka's films left in existence³. Even John Ford makes a cameo, played by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi himself who also plays the mysterious pianist we cut to through the film, the American director famous especially for his westerns held in admiration as he admires Japan's spirit here. With Frank Capra held up too, dubbed "Franz Kafra" and It's A Wonderful Life (1946) admired as the failed production that nonetheless became legendary, this is a work championing humanity over the brutality of war, aptly so when Sadao Yamanaka was a cineaste who admired American films from the period of his life including Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934)⁴.

Labyrinth of Cinema under the weight of its own subject, trying to deal with the 20th century by way of Japan's history, dances a very precarious line between the severity of the material and a lighter touch, the film able to get away with fart sounds for humour even in serious moments. The three leads, following Noriko, witness the battle of Wakamatsu Castle in 1868, when a troupe of women and children had to fight to defend the grounds, or appearing among the Sakura trope, an almost all-female acting group, in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped. The film takes a more universal approach to the causes of war, as you follow people who served in the Japanese army in the Pacific War, and for everyone who joined under the desire to invade, and one sadist notwithstanding, others are stuck in other countries and trying their hardest to help the locals. Even if Noriko's actress is Japanese, it is poignant when she plays a Chinese girl, in a Japanese invaded Manchuria with the horrors of this explored, one which is a controversial subject still in Japan to discuss.

The film as well, if it does demonise an entity, shows the horror of war and blind nationalism in general, evoking an entire sequence in Okinawa when even Japan's own civilians were murdered by their own army in their ever closing defeat. With his last film, Ôbayashi's playfulness from the years before comes with a jest for humanity, for Doctor Muddlehead the empathetic animated character, or for a macabre turn on a famous scene in House when "bullets are playing the piano". When it cuts to a story of how, when Chopin's music was banned in Japan under nationalist laws, deemed enemy music, a school of young teenager girls protected a C. Bechstein piano that the Japanese army was to dispose of. (That the film subtly references the term "enemy language" throughout the dialogue for certain non-Japanese terms emphasises this sense of Japan entirely isolating itself during the war). The call for humanity over the evil force of war and might is felt for Ôbayashi's own call. In the Sakura trope's segment, before the tragedy of horrors of the atomic bomb, this is evoked in how their play is Ricksaw Man, a work censored by the Japanese army in the narrative; this went as far in real life for Hiroshi Inagaki's 1943 cinematic version of the story to be censored, severe censorship cuts by both the wartime Japanese government and post-war US occupation forces, a story he remade in 1958 with Toshiro Mifune⁵. The mindlessness of war, to conqueror and devour rather than create and inspire, is Ôbayashi's real enemy here.

As his own final film, the actual final film, Nobuhiko Ôbayashi went perfectly. As his career is slowly growing reputation in the West, becoming more complex as we learn he went from spectacles based on manga, from Kazuo Umezu to even Osamu Tezuka's Blackjack manga, to more intimate dramas over the decades, the films slowly being made available in the West. As much of this, to be honest, is from them being bootlegged by people just wishing to see the director of House's entire career, but as the official releases are being released and are appreciated into the 2020s, the promise was so much in mind to this that Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's reputation will grow and grow over the decades. This film lightly ends with a song, one made post-war by a comedian criticising the point of military might whilst you could have funded places for him to cuddle with his girlfriend, at a point Japan was rebuilding itself and would become affluent again; even in just that, Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's choices for how to criticise the worse in humanity with the most tender of touches is perfect.

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1) For reference, Onomichi site serves as POW memorial, published on the 15th April 2013 on the DVIDS (Defense Visual Information Distribution Service) website, written by Cpl. Kenneth Trotter Jr.

2) Tokyo Film Festival: Nobuhiko Obayashi Re-enters ‘Labyrinth of Cinema’ by Mark Schilling, published on Variety on the 27th October 2019.

3) Director Profile: Sadao Yamanaka (1909-1938) by Andrew Bacon. Posted on the 8th April 2016 for The Projection Booth website.

4) Fleeting Glimpses: The three-film universe of Sadao Yamanaka by Chris Fujiwara. Posted the 11th September 2009 on the Museum of the Moving Image.  

5) A documentary short Wheels of Fate: The Story of the Rickshaw Man (2020) even exists in regards to this, as Masahiro Miyajima, the camera assistant for cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, made it his mission to restore The Rickshaw Man even if it was his last task in life.

Where To? (1957)

 

Director: Georges Nasser

Screenplay: Youssef Habchi Achkar, Halim Fares and Georges Nasser

Cast: Laura Azar as The Mother; Tannous Dik as The Doctor; Shakib Khouri as The Brother; Mounir Nader as The Notary; Raouf Rawi as Farid

Ephemeral Waves

 

But our cow is happier than I am.

This is one of the few films I have seen from Lebanon; for me, experiencing the world through its cinematic history is vital, for their virtues as films and the stories their existence tell, their cultural contexts and what they show onscreen (or if a genre film how its told) adding even greater layers. With Where To, the story begins with its director/co-writer Georges Nasser. Born in Tripoli, Lebanon in 1927, Nasser was one of the first Arab filmmakers to study cinema in the United States¹, obtaining a degree from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) before returning to Lebanon in the mid-50s. His first film was Where To, which would become the first Lebanese picture to be selected for the Cannes Film Festival in 1957¹.

The film's main narrative is also significant as it reflects real history, where the patriarch of a farming family, leaving his wife and two sons, migrates to Brazil for wealth alongside many men. This was commonplace, with Brazil's population includes an extensive number of Lebanese Brazilians stemming from this influx of migration from one side to the world to the other. From 1860 to 1914, between a third and a half of the population of Mount Lebanon, a mountain range is the country, is believed to have emigrated, ninety percent of all emigrants from the Lebanese territory thought to have been Christian². Over the century, including Muslin Lebanese migration, more would emigrate at various time periods such as during World War II, and the Lebanese Civil War of 1975–90 among others. Even as late as Israel's 1982–2000 occupation of southern Lebanon, and the war surrounding this, led to more to migrate, especially with individuals from the Shia population moving for economic reasons². These many times show, yes, Lebanese migration to Brazil has been a common historical connection between the two countries.

The history is significant to the point, with the first examples from 1860 to 1914, it even ties in with Brazil's last emperor Dom Pedro II, whose trips to the Middle East in the 1870s included an extensive tour of Lebanon. Gaining a reputation in Lebanon, seen as man of virtue and enlightenment, legends of this tour included stopping at the side of a road, to the ruins of Baalbeck, a city in Lebanon, and talking to peasants, suggesting to them to abandon their current lot to migrate to Latin America². The reality is likely more complicated than this over the centuries on, especially as Lebanese migrants had to find their way in their new homeland, living as "mascates" (peddlers) once they actually reached Brazil if need be until they could find a foothold economically to live in their adopted homeland. Nonetheless, a sizable population of Lebanese-Brazilian culture exists as a result of these migrations, where "the Lebanese community is now highly mixed into society, intermarriage is incredibly common, while few speak even the basics of Arabic." if a 2014 Executive Magazine web article on this history, "How the Lebanese conquered Brazil", is completely accurate². The story of Where To however offers the other side of the picture, of those left home in Lebanon, the world of the families left abandoned.

The father joins those migrating to Brazil, the fictional form of the many who attempted to find their luck and success in a country. \w\here ultimately many would migrate and successfully integrate within their new land, Where To's patriarch however is the tragic side of this, as his is a tale of the failure and the emotional wreckage as a result of this decision many took. The film is naturalistic, in context to fifties cinema I have seen as it takes its place among the many influenced by this direction, famous from Italian neo-realism. That of also casting non-actors but still with a sense of glamour to tone of the film which is unlike what realism in modern cinema looks like, stripping more back over time in how we make "realistic" films now. For its time, this is stripped back in how having non-actors presents a lack of visages to obscure the emotions, to obscure its subject in unnecessary artifice to the material. The contemplative tone to its drama, whilst arguably melodrama in places and in the use of the score for heightened dramatic effect, is still strong and still in mind to the era (and now) radically different in tackling this type of material.

Thus, when the father leaves, the wife has to work harder by herself, to maintain their land alongside raising their sons. But, in a perfectly executed time slip, by way of a circle of the cattle driven plough, the boys start to grow up, as kids still having to help on the land too, and the pair changing in their desires as they grow up. The oldest eventually wishes to stay the farmer, to help his mother, also because as a child the first blossom of romance with a neighbourhood girl were there, a girl he was already friends with which begins to become more as they mature. The youngest, boosting of wanting vast numbers of cattle, shepherds and landmass as a kid, gets a knack of farm management but also becomes restless, also becomes one of the many men, trying to find work in then-modern Lebanon and cannot, who wants to get a passport and go to Brazil. It is an obvious story, but a compelling one, and history even beyond Lebanon's of migration of its population is resonant in how many in other countries have done for the same reasons characters within this film do. Where To documents those who wished for a better life and moved regardless of their actual nationality.

The drama is simple, the melodrama subtler but there, the mother getting sick from overwork, but melodrama heightens what is still unfortunately relevant too still. As the older son becomes the farmer to care for his mother, the youngest gains an education but cannot find work. Here as well though, without letting comments trivialise this film's concerns which at a national scale, this is also set within a family who scrape past from poverty, as workers on the land, trying their best to survive in an entirely different economic and practical context, one for director Georges Nasser telling this story for his fellow countrymen and women. He is aware of drama's use for this, as twenty years later, the father will eventually return a broken man, and his remorse as his life was not successful as other (real) Lebanese migrants comes as if he is now a ghost, a hollow man, floating in to his old world again. His one way to help his family in remorse for the sins he feels he has, not even able to say who he is to them, is by an act of kindness after an accident of melodrama, a car hitting someone, but this in itself is as unexpected an event to transpire as it would if it happened in real life.

For the outsider, this film from a country whose cinema is not commonly accessible means a great deal. Lebanese customs are show including sword dancing, and dance with shields, at a wedding reception. Thus too you see life of a family - one son who has found everything staying where he is, the other showing the frustrations of all those who finally emigrated out of their homeland - that in itself a cultural aspect in how these universal issues any can have are dealt with in this context, in time and location. This means so much more knowing how difficult the film actually was for Nasser to make, commenting decades later that he did not even have access to technicians let alone actors¹, making this a hard fought for debut to produce with those with him. Sadder is in knowledge this was not a success at all when it was first released. His career onwards was a struggle. His next film Le Petit Étranger (1962), a French language coming of age story, was both a critical and commercial failure. Even more intriguing, but taking twelve years to be created and his last film, would be Matloob Ragol Wahed (Only One Man Wanted, 1974), a Palestinian allegorical tale that, a Syrian production, combines its themes with a b-western template with garish primary colour and female nudity, a kitsch cultural political work that I never heard of until writing this review tragically, but in its little knowledge of sounds like Nasser throwing caution to the wind even in a lurider genre context for the themes¹. Only a year later, the Lebanese Civil War begins, lasting between 1975 to 1990, sounding as cataclysmic for how long and bloody that time passing sounds, and Nasser went on, with no success, to create a Lebanese film syndicate, before becoming a teacher at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts¹.

It is with happiness that, decades later at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, a 91 year old Nasser was able to return with a world premier of his debut's restored version. As with these films, sadly were it not for the likes of MUBI, they are difficult to see, and unless physical media is available, even MUBI can only have temporary access to a film which, in movie markets, is tragically not going to be picked up. Unless you get the cineastes to take the chance and get the film more readily available, cinema really has a danger of forgetting cinema is a time capsule, only better than other mediums of expression because the cineastes fought tooth and nail to make sure films like this were preserved and accessible even briefly. A film like this does deserve more attention; I normally write of cult and "unconventional" cinema, but the same reasons I am drawn to those films applies to cinema from countries like Lebanon barely accessible even still. I will be honest in saying it is a form of tourism, but my interest within deep diving into "world cinema" in the truest sense is noble where it leads to films like this. Where To is as much the underdog, still subversive in offering an alternative eye in how, casting his glance in a story based on history in his country, Georges Nasser does not even need over eighty minutes, under that running time by a couple, to fully flesh out so much meaning in pondering the desires and strains of a man (of many) migrating in hope of finding more, and the consequences. The calmness and how elegant the film is, beautiful in its restored monochrome as the camera will linger for a minute or so up at clouds in the sky, is timeless. That of the era, its distinct music scoring of older films, has not aged, merely is a tool of before which touches the heart strings. A film like this you would hope, through cineastes, will eventually get a higher spot in recognition because it deserves it.

==========

1) Taken from the Middle East Eye web article Georges Nasser: The return of Lebanon’s first great film luminary, published on Wednesday January 24th 2018 and written by Joseph Fahim.

2) Take from the Executive Magazine web article How the Lebanese conquered Brazil, published on July 3, 2014 and written by Joe Dyke.

Zombie Nightmare (1986)

 

Director: Jack Bravman and John Fasano

Screenplay: John Fasano and David Wellington

Cast: Adam West as Capt. Tom Churchman; Jon Mikl Thor as Tony Washington; Tia Carrere as Amy; Manuska Rigaud as Molly Mokembe; Frank Dietz as Frank Sorrell; Linda Singer as Maggie

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Frank, let's not have any more high school kids turn up dead.

Zombie Nightmare does not have a great reputation. From the land of Canada, they have also produced some truly bizarre films, from the Things (1989) of the world to Science Crazed (1991), and in mind to Zombie Nightmare's reputation being so bad, it was chosen for a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode and everyone on the cast hated sitting through it, Zombie Nightmare is just conventional for me. It says a lot of me that I have seen more that I can consider far worse in horror films, and I came to this instead just being reminded that the eighties actually existed. I missed this era being born in 1989, and I can now look at it in films like this with curiousness, a time where Jon Mikl Thor can look resplendent as he does in the first act, but would be a dress sense viewed only in irony in the modern day.

Playing the son of a brave man killed protecting a young voodoo priest, Jon Mikl Thor, the cult Canadian heavy metal singer who used to bend bars in a muscle man stage act, can wander around with luxurious long hair, wearing mascara and almost looking feminine, things which have aged incredibly well in the modern day and would suit a look of people of any gender. He however also contrasts it with a muscle shirt that could not hide anyone's boobs, men's or otherwise, and would be mocked in the modern day by cynical film fans; in the era this film was made, only then would no one bat an eye on the choice of practical day wear to go to a convenience store in. Considering the hair on display even on psychopathic young male hoodlums, who realise killing Thor in an accidental hit and run is almost ecstasy, and are sex pests with knives, and you cannot help to see how each decade is rewarding to see in films, even ones with wavering quality, just to see that once everyone's hairstyle exploded in elaborate mountains of hairspray filled manes.

In mind that the main director later made Night of the Dribbler (1990), which is a poor horror comedy I struggled with, which makes Zombie Nightmare at least passable for trying at something more engaging. The music alone is of the era and also really interesting as a heavy metal fan to take in, where starting your opening credits with Motorhead's Ace of Spades, playing over the credit of cult actor Adam West's name on a green fingerprint, is memorable to say the least. When Thor dies, the young woman who his father rescued, a voodoo priestess whose actress does eat invisibly scenery when she can, resurrects him on his mother's behalf is just to get revenge on everyone in the car that ran him over. The interpretation of voodoo as less an actual religion, but a Western narrative's occult trope, is always problematic, something I accept more in a forties film like Voodoo Man (1944) as of the time, and just to see a cult actor like George Zucco playing bongos onscreen, but by the late eighties it is startling to see how far we did not progress with depicting the religion. Wes Craven, even in context of a horror film with a white outsider as the protagonist, is one of the only people in this genre with The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) to have made a horror film which tackles actual voodoo beliefs, with few other prominent film afterwards made, and that is startling and looks terrible to even consider. Even here too, if the treatment of voodoo as a plot trope is just campy, you are stuck with the problem that eventually, decaying more and more, Thor is effectively replaced by a hulking actor who could have been anyone, in zombie makeup, shambling around with a baseball bat. He can twist a man's neck with his undead hands easily, but a beefy undead Jon Mikl Thor, who you could pick out just from that hairstyle at the start of the film, would have been a huge advantage for the film if just for camp purposes. The film's flaws, as a person with a tolerance for cinema which few might defend, is entirely for being conventional, where the aesthetic of being soaked in late eighties excess becomes the tonic.

You cannot help, least I do, still find a cheesy horror film like this fascinating when it is still about grief, the loss of love ones and revenge from the grave, still trying for high stakes drama, alongside the fact that most of the hit-and-ran culprits are scared young adults, one a young Tia Carrere, scared out of their minds and sympathetic, only to be picked off, whilst it is just the main member of the group whose psychopathic tendencies feels like a fifties juvenile delinquent character for a scuzzier age. The time stamp is compelling, especially because this is part of a wave of heavy metal horror films from the time. A lot of the music will be obscure for many, with bands like Fist I have never heard of, but with some curious choices, such as Girlschool, an all-female British band who collaborated with Motorhead, whose admiration for the band through Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister's helped the band in recognition as much as create a bond between both groups. My biggest disappointment in musical choices is that the Pantera in this film is one of the many Thor himself is involved with who contribute to the soundtrack. This is disappointing on a morbid level because, contrary to belief, the legendary Texas band were recording albums since 1983 and no one wants to admit everything before Cowboys from Hell (1990) exists. It would have been beautiful, even in a sick way, to hear when they were the comically cheesy glam metal band no one wants to admit once existed. Considering as well the film will be sold on Pantera, and not the right one, will make this even more disappointing.

The film tries as well to clearly not "look" and "sound" Canadian either, with the sense its biggest get Adam West is the older bankable American star to sell the film on. It is forty four minute in when West actually appears, but alongside how the film gets some additional drama with his back-story, anyone expecting (as I did) additional camp from the former Batman may be taken aback by what he does instead. Rocking a moustache, he plays a cynical cop with complete seriousness, which actually adds to the film for the better. Even for a film which has impalement with a steel baseball bat, its seriousness actually helps for the movie, with the unintentional cheesiness still able to have some meat to it because of an attempted sincerity. Again, my taste in films and knowledge means that I have seen so much worse that Zombie Nightmare is passingly entertaining and even charming. Truthfully, it was one of many horror films from this era, including from Canada, and this one just got the rotten luck of notoriety.

The Mummy Theme Park (2000)

 

Director: Alvaro Passeri

Screenplay: Alvaro Passeri and Antony Pedicini

Cast: Adam O'Neil as Daniel Flynn; Holly Laningham as Julie; Cyrus Elias as the Sheik; Helen Preest as Nekhebet; Peter Boom as Professor Mason; Paola Real as Damcer; John Gayford as Richard

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

You think the Sheik will like my boobs?

I encountered director Alvaro Passeri for the first time with Creatures from the Abyss (1994), an incredibly lurid and ridiculous Italian nautical horror from the nineties, a film who marked the end of the golden era of Italian genre films with a sense of aware absurdity. Alongside Passeri having an obsession with giant stuff animals in his set decoration and automated bathrooms with A.I., this film as his follow up nonetheless also marks him stepping into a new world of cinema, that of the straight-to-DVD era. From its title, it looks like a cash-in on The Mummy (1999), the big budgeted reboot for Universal of its original 1932 horror film with Brendan Fraser. I would not be surprised if The Mummy Theme Park was actually titled that way for the brand recognition, but I do not point fingers negatively even if proven. Considering Italian genre films ripped off or built themselves on what was popular in North American cinema, I consider it befitting and a compliment if that was the reason behind the title. Only that it might have undercut this film's chances with a quick dismissal are against it as a choice, as the title does nothing to show what the film to my surprise actually was.

More of a concern is that this openly goofy movie is built by love from Alvaro Passeri, deciding in this of all films to invest techniques from models to superimposition, film techniques from as far back as silent cinema, and I admire the results. This is all for a film effectively about cyborg mummies, which adds a joy, when in truth Passeri commits to an aesthetic more vast in production than some of the golden era Italian horror films from the eighties, all in the name of making the silly premise actually live up to expectations rather than be disappointing. Namely, that this has the ridiculous premise about cyborg mummies and, even if not pushing this to the level some audiences may want, replacing the potential disappointment with a joyfully over-the-top tone and spectacle to compensate for that audience still. An American photographer, taking his female assistant and love-of-his-life with him, is assigned to go to Egypt and promote the titular theme park. Created by a powerful sheik, after a fissure in the earth has exposed a secret burial site, he has decided to commit complete sacrilege of the dead, creating a theme park about ancient Egypt which has no qualms about rebuilding centuries old corpses in their original form, operating them by machinery and forcing to dead to be undead animatronics. Even how they start to go berserk, by photographic flash, evokes Itchy and Scratchy Land from the famous Simpsons episode, how everything went to shit in that episode with the mascots going on a rampage, only with someone in charge whose lack of qualms and greed for this makes this suitably karmic when it goes wrong for him. Not even skeletons are safe from this reanimation by the Sheik's scientists, and the one woman on staff who is secretly communicating with the angry ancient Egyptian gods is going to make sure he gets his comeuppance.

You have the paradox that Alvaro Passeri's take on Egypt is questionable, the one issue you have to get around with enjoying the film. It is problematic, that this Egypt feels like it is from a different century, with harems and armoured guards, one from a European Western view of Egypt that reality. It is the fantasy of the Arabia, despite modern technology being involved, from fantasy narratives outside of real Egyptian culture. Also of note is that everyone, including the Egyptians, is clearly a white European in prominent roles, Passeri's style clearly evoking old Hollywood films which did not think carefully about casting, or even one of Fritz Lang's last projects, the two part The Indian Tomb and The Tiger of Eschnapur (1959), a film which had locations shot in India, but alongside interiors in West Germany, has prominent roles even for Indian characters for an Indian epic played by white actors. In that case, it felt less offensive on purpose, more a really misguided aspect to what are still compelling pieces of adventure narrative, only stung by the bad surrealism of a European actor in obvious makeup passing off as West Asian, in rich fifties colour film images to emphasise this contradiction. In cases like this, it is understandably going to raise questions from a non-Caucasian cineaste, even the most forgiving, for justifiable reasons. The problem is here with The Mummy Theme Park, and you cannot justify privilege of exempting this film either from this problem, only admit I enjoyed the film but that it was a strange decision, more so at the turn of the 21st Century, even for budgetary reasons.

The aesthetic without this problem would have been enough, even if in danger of exoticising Egypt as merely fantasy, not of thereal place. That is because, ironically, the film whilst with its problems with this is nonetheless about exploitation of Egyptian culture even from within for Western tourists. How befitting even this proud b-flick, probably better without subtlety, will mock and parody all the transgressions done to ancient Egypt and sacrilege of the dead, only beyond an Egyptian film like Shadi Abdel Salam's The Night of Counting the Years (1969) to actually contemplate the transgressions committed to Egypt as a culture and a land to have their history stolen from them. In history where the British (my nationality) are not guiltless either in our transgressions, in raiding tombs and stealing another nation's artefacts in a colonial form, Alvaro Passeri, even if a twisted humour and a love in the set decoration in depicting it, sets out as perfect a metaphor for this even in a silly genre film as you could get, Egypt now desecrated as a tourist train ride where popcorn and pizza are available at the concession stand.

The film is absurd. You can distract a mummy with your cleavage here, and Passeri for some will need a slap on the wrist for how much lewdness there is, even for a film still suitable for fifteen year old in Britain in the age rating, ogling scantily clad or nude female cast with a considerable horniness on display. When you get a melted cat mummy man, in a moment of playful glee which is less an issue, it is with the bizarre aspect of them roaring like the MGM Studio lion in the sound clip choices that feels more on purpose than I would initially presume. The English acting, like Creatures of the Abyss' dub, is just as ridiculous here as there, and again it feels more aware of this than other Italian genre films from before it. The theme park sets, all depicted in models, has a giant dinosaur skeleton as a prominent prop clearly for the hell of it, and I can even manage to squeeze in a justifiable reference to Karel Zeman, the legendary Czeck animator and filmmaker who would literally built his worlds in films like Invention for Destruction (1958). Here Alvaro Passeri has built most of this world, barring stage sets, from model work, projecting backdrops around his cast, and techniques that are artificial but, honestly, feel more tangible and compelling than just using green screen and CGI when it lacks the encouragement to flourish. All of this to for a straight-to-video film is even more spectacular to consider in hindsight.

Passeri's films so far for me have their crassness, that lurid old era of Italian genre films we fans admits exist but can put people off them, but I think Passeri would admit to this himself as I learn of him. His heart is for the construction of the films, to play, and even the obvious CGI here, to reference that again, feels less like a necessary but a new tool he realises in like a new type of paintbrush. This has gore, some nasty practical effects, but I think less of this as a horror film, but a goofy supernatural jaunt which allowed Passeri and his production team to have fun, and that is taking into consideration one such scene having a man's tongue grow engorged and be vomited out of his mouth. In this gaudy world of straight-to-video cinema, that a craftsman is having fun and being a great craftsman at that is something I cannot believe few are even still aware of nowadays, and despite the title being a potential put-off, the film is so much more interesting even when it is ridiculous.