Introduction to Vampire Week

Halloween is a time for horror movies. It used to be a time for candy, but now that I’m too old for that, it has entirely given itself over to that most beloved and derided genre. In fact, the entire month of October is usually a good time to catch up on horror classics and morbid guilty pleasures. It is also a good time for horror lists. If you haven’t already checked it out, you can vote for your top 31 favorite horror movies over at Shoot the Projectionist. I’ve already submitted my picks, but sadly many of my favorites didn’t make it through the nomination round. However, personal favorites “Deep Red” and “Possession” [1981] did along with 181 other choices!

Like Ed over at Shoot the Projectionist, I wanted to present a list of horror movies, but I spent September wondering what my theme should be. My top 100 horror films seemed too easy and I’m saving that for a more interesting number. A top giallo list is both a bit too obvious for me and, frankly, I haven’t yet seen enough to give a really complete overview (I wish Giallo Fever would treat us). How about best serial killers? Not bad. Witches, werewolves, ghosts? All too sparse. I finally settled on vampires. So how about the top 35 vampire films?

I have to admit to loving vampire movies, even though they so often suck. Even the original “Dracula” (1931) isn’t objectively very good nor is Bram Stoker’s source novel a particularly impressive read. Many films over the years have been content simply to replay the same tired conventions and plotlines without really elevating or innovating the subgenre, although precious exceptions exist. I’m especially drawn to those ones that break the mold, although sometimes you need a trashy exercise in the basics: gothic architecture, Hungarian accents, artery-spouting violence and lesbian exploitation.

You can expect a pretty idiosyncratic list (as usual). I’ll be stretching the definition of “vampire movie” pretty far, and I expect at least a few objections. As for coverage, I can’t claim to have seen every vampire film – who can? Dracula, according to Guinness, is the most depicted fictional character in cinematic history, and he only accounts for a fraction of the vampire films out there.

I can claim to have seen more than 50 (drawing from a dozen+ countries), and that should provide a decent foundation. These last few weeks I’ve been filling in some of my gaps, but I won’t be able to get through even the “important” titles. At the end of the week, I’ll list some of the ones I haven’t seen to ward off indignant complaints. If you don’t see one of your favorites on my top 35 or my losing contenders lists, feel free to recommend it to me.

So for the next week they’ll be five vampire movies reviewed each day, starting with #35 and counting down to my all-time favorites on Halloween. Sharpen your fangs, dry-clean your cape and get ready to feast!

Hall of Strangeness Part XXI

Sorry about the scant postings! I've been a bit busy with all sorts of stuff (mostly fun). Though I've primarily been working and seeing more films, I've also been developing a new board game and enjoying a fairly new Wii. Two large movie projects have been slowing my regular output, but they are approaching completion.

In the near future, I'll be launching a special horror series for the week leading up to Halloween. There will be several reviews per day for seven days on a special theme. I hope you'll all enjoy.

The second project is the ultimate indulgence of my list-compiling obsession. I'm putting together a master list to track many of the awards and greatest/best/most-important/favorite lists that I follow. The composite already includes more than 2000 entries (a very time-consuming entry process) and the result will be nice spreadsheet that users can check off as they view films. Expect plenty of statistical data for nerds like myself.

Anyway, now for a Hall of Strangeness:

Persona – (Ingmar Bergman) After a series of non-narrative images, the film tells the classical art-house tale of a despondent psychiatric ward tenant and her nurse as the two blend, blur and reverse personalities. Alone in a house to relax and recuperate, the nurse begins to speak to the patient (initially just to fill the silence) and soon the patient/doctor status is only the first barrier to collapse.
Artistry: ***** Fun: * Strangeness: ****

Phantom of Liberty – (Luis Bunuel) Another high-water mark from surrealist master, Bunuel, Phantom of Liberty satirizes the conventions and taboos of the western world. Parents confiscate “pornographic” photos (of landscapes) from their child, exotic birds wander aimlessly through bedrooms and a family sits around a table on toilets and excuses themselves to eat in small secluded chambers.
Artistry: *** Fun: * Strangeness: *****

Phenomena – (Dario Argento) A personal-favorite giallo about a young girl (Jennifer Connelly in her debut starring role) who telepathically communicates with insects to solve a murder mystery. A scientist in a wheelchair (Donald Pleasance), a monkey and a very creepy triple-ending are involved. Goblin, Iron Maiden, The Andy Sex Gang and several others provide the appropriately malevolent prog-rock/heavy-metal score.
Artistry: *** Fun: **** Strangeness: ****

Picnic at Hanging Rock – (Peter Weir) A group of girls from a boarding school take a field trip to Hanging Rock. Three of them are never heard from again. Set in the sunlit Australian countryside, the mood is somehow dominated by a dark, primal energy. The rock formations of the title become a brooding meditation on the gulf between repressive Victorian society and the seductive mysteries of the great unknown. Based on a true story.
Artistry: ***** Fun: *** Strangeness: ***

Pierrot Le Fou – (Jean-Luc Godard) The traditionally trashy lovers-on-the-run genre has never been this strange, before or since. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina star in this stylish, free-style trot across France that bursts into musical numbers, directly addresses the audience, references obscure literature and generally breaks all the old cinematic rules. French New Wave artiness to the very core, this film nevertheless lives in a post-modern world of pop-culture celebration and colorful genre tributes. Notwithstanding that these opiates for the masses have been cut with intellectual philosophizing and abstract non-sequiturs.
Artistry: **** Fun: *** Strangeness: ****

Iceberg Arena: Mutiny Madness!

Rollicking seafaring adventures never seem to go out of style, if the success of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy is any indication (or “Master and Commander” somewhat less recently; 2003). It’s hard not to get caught up in the chaotic panic of a thrashing oceanic storm or the bravado of a swashbuckling pirate raid or the claustrophobic tension of a submarine mission. However, one of my favorite elements found occasionally in the wave-scaling genre is one that is one less-often addressed (almost as rare as its real life counterpart): Mutiny.

Mutiny has a great deal of appeal both as plot element and theme. Who doesn’t like the vicarious bucking of authority and upsetting of petrified power structures. Today’s Iceberg Arena will pit two mutinous crews against each other, both heralding from acknowledged classics of the studio era. The contenders are “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1935) and “The Caine Mutiny” (1954).

Mutiny on the Bounty:

“Mutiny on the Bounty” is based on the novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall (in turn based on the real-life 1789 incident), which has seen other adaptations both before and after this one. I can’t claim to have seen them all, but the 1935 Frank Lloyd version has remained a popular favorite if not a particularly accurate retelling of the tale.

The always-dashing Clark Gable plays Fletcher Christian, the first mate aboard the H.M.S. Bounty sailing from England to Tahiti. Gable and the crew suffer under the totalitarian regime of Captain William Bligh, an extremely capable if sadistic taskmaster. Bligh’s excessive punishments result in the death of at least one sailor and morale drops below sea-level. Arrival at the tropical island provides some relief from the seething tension, but also gives the men a taste of contentment, relaxation and even love. When the barked orders and snapping whips resume, it isn’t long before the last straw breaks and a ship-side civil war breaks out. Christian and his primarily low-ranking cohorts successfully overcome Bligh and his surprisingly numerous supporters. Christian returns to his island paradise and leaves Bligh and his buddies in a small sailboat with a bare minimum of supplies. Undaunted, but against all odds, the revenge-driven captain sets about the 3000+ mile trip back to England to secure a new vessel and a means to destroy Christian for good.

Director Lloyd gets in all the action and adventure you could want, with a snappy pacing that manages to draw attention to the arduous stretches of endless sea travel without lashing the audience to the drudgery and repetition actually involved. The story is thankfully divided into several phases: the outbound journey, the island, the mutiny, Bligh’s return and so on. The script smartly keeps a tight character focus, with a convincing friendship developed between Fletcher Christian and Roger Byam. Byam (played by Franchot Tone) is a midshipman who sides with Bligh as a matter of honor and patriotism despite his frank revulsion for the captain’s methods. For his trouble, he still ends up on trial, in a scene that neatly transfers the sense of gross injustice from the ship to the courtroom.

“Mutiny on the Bounty” plays fast and loose with historical facts and thus often finds itself dealing with caricatures where more interesting realities could have been useful. Charles Laughton’s performance as Bligh is vintage villainous hyperbole and swells with a transcendent megalomaniac evil that is sure to get every viewer outraged. However the character is a bit too Dickensian, with his one loudly declared trait emphasized at the expense of any other development. He is finally vindicated by his bravery, authority and shipsmanship (if I may make up a funny-sounding term) in his daring cross-ocean return to England, but where was the evidence of those positive attributes earlier? Ultimately we are also left with little clue into his personal life or private thoughts and he seems occasionally blind and obtuse beyond belief.

Other minor characters likewise suffer from the bold swath-stroke screenwriting. The painfully sexist island girls, for instance, are male-idealized into exotic fantasies of long hair, big smiles and chipper servility. Why don’t they ever mutiny from having to fetch coconut cocktails and dance in uncomfortable outfits for their male imperialists? Then again, Clark Gable’s gentlemanly crew of good-hearted, hard-working chaps are hardly the prison-drafted thugs and rapists of the real life case. A happy-go-lucky drunken doctor stereotype is the only evidence of alcohol (and that is only as eye-winking guilty pleasure confined to a small hip flask). No evidence of debauchery, crime, deprivation or tropical illness taints the Bounty. Perhaps that’s why the historically inaccurate euphoric ending sits so uneasily.

The Caine Mutiny:

“The Caine Mutiny” (1954) is slightly milder on the action-adventure, but sturdier on the characters and realism. It too is a literary adaptation, but comes from the entirely fictitious novel by Herman Wouk. The nominal protagonist is Ensign Willie Keith (a somewhat dull Robert Francis), a preppy, sheltered young man newly assigned to the titular disorderly minesweeper. The setup could almost belong to a wacky comedy, but the entrance of a new captain, Philip Queeg (Humphrey Bogart in an against-type authority role), sobers up the ship’s disparate slackers.

Queeg is a stickler for neatness and the chain of command, but gradually comes to exude the distorted perspective of a mentally unstable man. Lieutenant Thomas Keefer (Fred MacMurray) is the first to suggest that Queeg might be a paranoid schizophrenic. His diagnosis is based on a variety of observations from nitpicky (he fidgets with a pair of metal balls), to suspicious (his ruthless perfectionism and willingness to lie to protect himself) to convincing (his desperate late-night manhunt for imagined strawberry thieves). A series of cowardly and incompetent command decisions finally puts Lieutenant Stephen Maryk (Van Johnson) in the unenviable position of relieving his commanding officer of duty. After the ordeal, everyone who was on deck at the time is put on trial.

The courtroom drama is handled with much more interest than the scene in “Mutiny on the Bounty,” with director Edward Dmytryk treating it as a self-contained story in its own right. As for the earlier (and longer) scenes aboard the Caine, they are certainly more tame and at times more mundane than life on the Bounty. However the subtler angle works for “The Caine Mutiny,” especially the way we see Keefer grow and mature in a smoothly invisible continuum and the way Queeg’s mental illness is handled with dignity and care. Bogart’s performance isn’t nearly as spellbinding or iconic as Laughtons, but it is more nuanced and layered. The restraint in depicting mental illness is ahead of its time and I can imagine viewers in the 1950’s disagreeing with the protagonists that anything was seriously wrong with Queeg other than poor decision-making.

Bogart’s acting is great, but Fred MacMurray steals the show as the lieutenant who introduces the doubts that lead to mutiny. His character is a cynical, intellectual would-be writer who isn’t happy under any captain, but least of all one he feels totally superior to. Ultimately he is as much a coward as his target, and his lack of deeper honor or integrity goes from being charismatic to vile. Jose Ferrer gives another top-notch performance as the sharp, world-weary lawyer in defense of the mutineers. Ferrer and MacMurray team up in the unexpected coda to deliver a powerful scene that complicates the otherwise happy ending.

Robert Francis and Van Johnson are both less interesting characters, who play (perhaps necessarily) a pair of fairly typical navy everymen. Francis’s protagonist is a little too blandly handsome with his shirts always starched, his buttons perpetually polishes and his laces ever straight. His romantic subplot is somewhat tacked on as a scale by which to measure his maturity and doesn’t really get (or deserve) much attention. One could successfully argue that Keefer’s average-Joe role is needed as a perspective through which to view the more eccentric performances, but I think he could have been more interesting.

Conclusion:

Both films are shot in typical Hollywood style without much visual panache or virtuosity. The emphasis is on the plot and if we don’t notice what the man behind the camera is doing, all the better. The effects are about equivalent in both movies for their respective eras. They use detailed models for the storm scenes which seem a bit impressive for 1935 and a bit dated for 1954. The use of stock footage for some of the sea battles in “The Caine Mutiny” may have been a wise choice for realism, but the failure to color balance or clean up the older prints makes them distractingly jarring. The music, like the cinematography, is also of little note although I fancied Max Steiner’s score for “The Caine Mutiny” was slightly preferable.

Dmytryk and Lloyd are both directors who knew their trade, and kept the audience in mind when it came to maintaining momentum. The editing is smart on both films and despite some dragging in the center of both pictures, there is a sense of a three-hour movie packed tightly into the 130 minute range. These are two classic of the Hollywood mode (perhaps not of the highest tier) with wide-appeal and high entertainment value and free of guilt due to the literary tradition and solid acting.

With the competition so close, picking a victor is somewhat arbitrary. I’ve been waffling back and forth but I think I’m going to have to give my vote to “The Caine Mutiny.” The Bogart-MacMurray-Ferrer combination and the more mental, rather than physical, nature of the central conflict are the clinchers.

Review of The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On

I consider the best documentaries to be ones that strive for some objectivity, while still uncovering the most interesting aspects of its subject and doing so in a way that is fresh, fitting and inflected by the style, approach and experience of the director. “Objectivity” is the key word that gets into most debates about the merits of a documentary. How objective can one be? When you simply “document” in the sense of pointing a camera and recording (especially if done in secret) I figure that you can get pretty close. Yet I have to admit that objectivity is not always possible and or even desirable in every situation.

The exposé documentary is a popular example, in which the filmmaker explicitly has an agenda and actively wishes to change the opinions/actions of the audience. Even in a film lacking any narration or interviews, like the excellent “Koyaanisqatsi” (1982) a documentary has the power to affect the viewer. A documentary director is generally all too aware of this power. Still, an attempt at objectivity (or the illusion of it) plays a large part in the effectiveness of films. Pretty much everyone agrees that you should stick to the facts and present evidence to support anything said. Generally anything shown should speak for itself, but we know today that even that is subject to manipulation.

However, there is a special type of documentary that neatly transforms classical debates about objectivity. I’m referring to films not about social subjects (like war, pollution, corporate greed, etc.), but about specific individuals. Often times the complex personality of a single person is far more mesmerizing to me than an entire field of information presented by a lesser filmmaker.

Here, one of the best approaches the director can take is to depict the person as accurately as possible even to the point of allowing their subjectivity to dominate the film. Errol Morris and Werner Herzog are masters of this biopic documentary style. In the sense that Michael Moore’s films are equally about himself and his adventures as about his supposed subjects, he too can be considered a master.

“The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On” (1987) is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen (not to mention one of the best documentaries period). It had profound impact on the subgenre despite grabbing the attention of few viewers anywhere. It isn’t too surprising to find the film on both Werner Herzog’s and Michael Moore’s list of top ten films.

“The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On” (ENAMO from here on out) is a film about Kenzo Okuzaki, a Japanese WWII veteran. Director Kazua Hara couldn’t have found a more interesting peephole into the individual ramification of military violence. At the start of the film (early 1980’s), Hara has recently gotten out of jail for the third time. His crimes include a murder (never really elaborated upon) and several acts of political protest ranging from dropping compromising leaflets about Emperor Hirohito to shooting BBs at him.

The rage and trauma of WWII still burns within Okuzaki after more than 35 years and unlike many who learned to repress their memories, Okuzaki intends to do something about them. His plan, though not initially evident, is to discover the truth about two men in his unit who were killed by his own side shortly after the war ended (Kenzo Okuzaki was a POW at the time). One by one, Hara tracks down his war buddies, his superior officers and the family of the victims in an obsessive, impassioned quest for answers.

Okuzaki is not a calm, patient or scientific observer. He is a man with deep emotional scars that you can read on his face, in his voice and in his words. Okuzaki’s methods are neither professional nor even ethical. He manipulates to get the information he is after, not hesitating to beg, pester, threaten or lie. On several occasions he physically assaults the people he talks to, including kicking the sickly septarians who once sent him into combat. At one point the police intervene.

He teams up with the surviving family members of the two dead soldiers for a good portion of the film, but even they eventually distance themselves from Okuzaki. The family members can find solace at having gotten near the truth and can return to living their current lives. Not so for Okuzaki. He hires his own family members to pretend to be the victim’s relatives and uses them to guilt his stubborn opposition.

Eventually he gets at the terrible truth, but even the head-on confrontation with the horror he sought can not heal Okuzaki’s wounds. I won’t spoil the quest (it’s real-life history, but it works as a powerful dramatic revelation) nor will I reveal the Okuzaki’s final fate, but don’t cross your fingers for a happy ending.

While most documentaries work on only a single level (providing information, stirring controversy, etc.), ENAMO gets us emotionally and intellectually involved along several different axes. We experience Hara’s quest along with him, allowing us to follow a compelling story as it happens; a rarity in biopic documentaries. Then there is the inherent fascination with Kenzo Okuzaki himself, a hornet’s nest of passion, rage, commitment, trauma, humanity, righteousness, paranoia and self-destruction. Trying to decide how we feel about him is no easy task.

From the start, Okuzaki struck me as extremely admirable, a stubborn, but brave man who sincerely wanted to get at truth and justice. His quest is even more impressive when one considers that social rules in Japan are quite strict: making demands or accusations of near-strangers is a far greater taboo than in the States. There are also times when he seems quite pitiable, as when he tries to break back into jail to take measurements of his cell so that he can recreate one to sleep in at home. After a few minutes into the film is becomes quite evident that Okuzaki is more than a little crazy and ultimately his methods cross ethical boundaries with total disregard for the rights of others. Okuzaki’s lack of objectivity, self-restraint and perspective is troubling, but one would be hard put to deny that he only got the results he was looking for by using such strong-arm techniques.

From a top-level view, the film is also a provactive depiction of war trauma, conspiracy, guilt, the consequences of military rule and the burden of memory. The film could inspire a million conversations or personal reveries. Why have some of the soldiers in the film moved on and started new lives so effortlessly while Okuzaki is so powerfully, inescapably driven? How far should a crusader go to pursue a quest and what gives them the right to break rules to mend others? Is passive resistance or violent determination more effective? More noble?

Then there are the questions about the genre itself: Can the filmmaker ever really be just an observer and recorder? Certainly his mere presence has an effect: it is used by Okuzaki to manipulate his interviewees into making the visits seem more official, but it also discourages them from revealing their secrets. Does Hara’s choice of subject (which he was dedicated enough to that he followed him over several years) imply that he agrees with, supports or identifies with Okuzaki? Does the filmmaker have an obligation to help his subject by providing money, information or comfort? Is he obligated to interfere when he witnesses crimes or unethical behavior, as when Okuzaki is beating up other people?

Few films ever achieve such scope, especially when their ostensible topic is so personal and specific. ENAMO should be required viewing for everyone, rather your primary interest in seeing it lies in Kenzo Okuzaki, Japanese society, military history, political activism or documentary filmmaking. Ultimately what makes ENAMO so interesting is that it answers one important question (what happened to those two poor soldiers after the war ended) and ask a thousand more that go unanswered.

Walrus Rating: 9.5


It’s clear that this type of biopic documentary has only increased in popularity since the eighties. An excellent example is the recent “King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters” about two competitors for the world record in Donkey Kong. Like Errol Morris’s documentaries or Christopher Guest’s comedies, it manages to make gentle fun of its subjects while at the same time making us care for them deeply.

Review of After Life

[Image: Hello. You are no longer a member of the living. I’m here to conduct your exit interview.]

Japanese director Koreeda Hirokazu has made a quiet name for himself as a thoughtful, reliable auteur with a gentle, but profound, ability to stir emotions. The stylistic opposite of his contemporary countrymen, Takeshi Kitano and Takashi Miike, Hirokazu is a testament to the variety and creativity of Japanese cinema. I was unfamiliar with the charming director’s work until several months ago, when my East Asian cinema professor David Scott Diffrient (to whom I owe many debts) recommended him.

As of yet, my favorite of Hirokazu’s films has been “After Life” (1998), a sleeper hit with a cute, documentary approach. The premise is that everyone who dies must spend a week at a rest stop before entering heaven. There they meet with special counselors to choose their all-time favorite memory. The staff then puts together low-fi short films of the recollection and replays them at a private theater before the undead viewer passes into the great beyond. They can only keep the single memory as a memento of their corporeal past.

[Image: (left) Erika Oda as Shiori Satonaka and (right) Arata as Takashi Mochizuki interviewing a recently deceased man.]

In the cynicism-melting opening, Hirokazu films dozens of actors and real-life citizens about their favorite memories. The range and honesty is fascinating and one can’t help speculating about which stories are scripted (some seem quite unbelievable) and which are spontaneous anecdotes (Hirokazu refuses to tell). The director’s documentary background is easy to recognize, as is his disarming ease with actors and strangers alike.

The movie follows a batch of new arrivals and the four counselors who handle their cases. The misleadingly young Takashi Mochizuki and counselor-in-training Shiori Satonaka get the most attention, as they juggle guiding their assignees and sorting out their own fears, doubts and confusions.

One of my favorite scenes has Shiori listening to a schoolgirl (you remain the age you were when you died) excitingly describing her favorite memory: a roller coaster ride at a theme park. Shiori stares at her with solemn frustration and later takes her aside to explain that she has personally heard half a dozen other girls pick the same experience. The girl thinks about it more, and eventually decides that while the memory was giddy and fun, it has no deeper meaning for her.

Another of the newly dead is a vaguely punkish slacker who spends most of his week feeling out the exact rules of the situation. “Can I choose a memory of a dream?” “Can I choose a memory from in the womb?” The impish combination of denial, rebellion and curiosity plays out with sly precision.

One old lady died after years of struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. Most of her memories are already gone, but she lives happily in a frozen state of her past: when she was five years old and played with carefree abandon. The counselors come to see that they’re job is already done for them. It’s sentimental. It’s also an unabashed fantasy that fails to acknowledge the unglamorous details of mental disease, but it’s touching nevertheless.

The closest thing to an overarching plot comes from an old man who kept a passionless marriage and worked a boring salary job. He’s a nice enough guy, but his personality has eroded to nothing more than humble contentment. His depressing conundrum is that he feels he lacks any noteworthy memory of conspicuous joy, triumph or love. He is allowed to undergo the daunting task of skimming through recordings of his life (from boxes of neatly labeled home VHS tapes!) for a moment to keep through eternity.

[Image: A lifetime fills a lot of magnetic tape.]

The different reactions are an intellectual and emotional smorgasbord. Some are angry and overwhelmed by the limitation while others are happy to forget most of their lives. Some look back to their childhood while others reflect on their golden years. Some wish to cherish moments of serene love while others want to remember passionate bouts of sex. One poor woman discovers that she has mentally fabricated her favorite memory!

The pacing is very easy-going, and one doesn’t feel that the week-long schedule is put in place just to whip the narrative forward. The acting and setting also match the mood of “regular people, real reactions,” a decision that allows for greater identification, sympathy and warmth. The script is beautiful, walking a fine line realism and imagination and flitting delicately between humor, melancholy, and nostalgia.

The travel lodge is not particularly removed from the mortal plane, and beyond the surrounding woods is the bustle and jostle of the real world. When the characters and camera wander outside, there is a pleasant detached wistfulness. Much of the character development comes from Shiori and Takashi drifting around the premises and looking for film locations and props in the nearby region. The counselors occasionally meet and have candid talks about their job, their own decision to stay behind and the complicated emotions they encounter.

Hirokazu clearly bares traces of the inner romantic poet that got Kurosawa, Ozu and Mizoguchi celebrated as masters of humanism, but he has his own distinct sense of whimsy. The soul-searching characters have plenty of time to pace the corridors at night and often gather their thoughts by staring up through a ceiling window at the moon. At one unobtrusive point in the movie, we see a custodian on the roof nonchalantly replacing one model of the moon with the model for next evening’s lunar phase. Though sometimes dreamy, as the premise would also imply, Hirokazu is mostly down-to-earth. His film doesn’t feature the epic, the grand or the exceptional. What makes him so effective is his clear appreciation, and even respect, for the casual, mundane and quotidian.

[Image: This bench and lamppost confirm my suspicion that Hirokazu is a hopeless romantic.]

The film has enough range and good sense to do more than just reassure ourselves about the afterlife, but it is a “feel-good” film. The dogma 95 realism keeps the film from having the smug, polished charm of Hollywood rom-coms, but it doesn’t attempt dogma’s provocative extremes either (at least not in the sense of eye-searing discomfort and international controversy). The happy in-between is a recipe for genuine smiles and some truly poignant scenes.

Perhaps the most pleasant part is the shooting of the re-enactments in the film’s final third. The resourceful creativity and low-budget aesthetic (think of “The Science of Sleep (2006)) showcases not only a visual craft often unrevealed in this particular Hirokazu outing, but also demonstrates the director’s basic optimism. His belief in the redemptive power of film to preserve and (we must admit it) embellish our humanity, rings true. It is also thankfully devoid of the tinny taint of self-congratulation.

So bring the whole family to this one. It doesn’t walk any sectarian line or try to convert you or impress you with the correctness of its portrayal (a rare feat these days). Rather, it defines a spiritual system for the afterlife that out of sync with any particular religion, and yet not aggressively oppositional to them either. It is more of a topic for meditation than a literal doctrine and it’s certain to have you asking yourself, “What memory would I keep?”

Walrus Rating: 8.5

For harder-hitting stuff, try Hirokazu’s “Maborosi” (1995), about a woman unable to overcome the inexplicable suicide of her husband. The vibe is more formalist with a much more typical art-house approach to topics like alienation and psychological trauma. Then there’s “Nobody Knows” (2004), a based-on-real-events story about a mother who abandons her young children to live out a pitiful secret existence in a small apartment. Both of these films are heavier, darker works (and great films in their own rights), but “After Life” provides a softer welcome into Hirokazu’s work.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times

Last year NoShame released another giallo box set focusing on a director (Emilio Miraglia) that might leave even casual fans of the genre scratching their heads (the other being Luciano Ercoli’s “Death Box Set”). Miraglia was far from a prolific director, but did put out a pair of noteworthy gialli in the height of its glory: “The Night Evelyn Came Out of Her Grave” (1971) and “The Red Queen Kills Seven Times” (1972). NoShame’s impressive box set comes with a “killer queen” action figure making it officially more awesome than the complimentary log that comes with the “Twin Peaks: Special Edition.” I’ll be reviewing “The Red Queen Kills Seven Times” today with a review of the other film to follow at some indefinite future date.

“The Red Queen” is a real winner, and lets you know just how good it will be without wasting any time. The introductory prologue features a little blonde girl (named Kitty Wildenbrück) playing with her doll. Her mean brunette sister, Evelyn Wildenbrück, steals it and runs into their father’s cozy study, within a dwelling that looks like a manor mutated into a castle. There, to the horror of her sister and wheelchair-bound father, she proceeds to stare at a creepy painting of a black queen stabbing a red queen and then stabs the doll repeatedly while screaming “I hate you!”

[Image: (bottom) I don’t think this girl is acting…]

The scene so neatly summarizes the whole of the human condition that Miraglia might as well have stopped the film there, but he goes on. The patriarch gathers the two girls onto his paralyzed lap and relates to them the terrible story behind the painting: every 100 years a pair of sisters who are intense rivals undergo a terrible curse. The “black” sister kills the “red” one, only to have the young woman reborn as a vengeful spirit that butchers seven victims, ending with the “black” sister. No worries though; the next iteration of the cycle is more than ten years away. The audience is left to wonder if this seemingly inconsequential backstory may, in fact, be foreshadowing some later event. Hmm…

[Image: The dialog subtly helps the viewer to make the connection between the painting and the present day characters.]

The opening credits play as a montage of Evelyn being mean to Kitty establishes, beyond any residual doubt, that a rivalry exists between the two girls. The scenes show Evelyn perpetrating such merciless acts of unadulterated evil as pushing Kitty out of a swing and jumping out of a bush at her. One can sense that a brutal slaying will not be long in coming (at least not in terms of screen time).

Sure enough, a camera cut and a decade+ later Kitty is all grown up (played by the beautiful Barbara Bouchet of “Don’t Torture a Duckling”) and listening to a lawyer execute her father’s will on the very year the curse is supposed to occur. Evelyn is not around, but it turns out that Kitty has another sister named Franszika (Marina Malfatti) who is also getting a piece of the pie. However, the lawyer announces that their father did not want any of the inheritance distributed until a year after his death.

[Image: Barbara Bouchet as adult Kitty]

The two sisters are a little nervous and jumpy, since they are both well aware that Kitty recently killed Evelyn, albeit accidentally. They are even more rattled when Evelyn’s drug-addicted psychotic ex-boyfriend (Fabrizio Moresco, the “giallo Steve Buscemi” who also has a role in “Death Walks at Midnight”) appears from behind a door to demand her whereabouts.

[Image: Kitty “accidental” bashes Evelyn’s skull against a statue and lets the corpse drift down river, witnessed by Franszika and Franszika’s husband, Tobias.]

We soon learn that Kitty and Franszika work in the fashion industry along with their friend’s Rosemary and Lulu (and every other female character in a giallo ever).

[Image: (from left to right) Lulu, Rosemary, Kitty and a girl who considers a pink-and-purple-striped turtleneck to be the peak of high fashion.]

When a bevy of gorgeous corpses start turning up of people close to Kitty, everyone in the know starts to whisper about the Wildenbrück curse. While I would not normally jump to any conclusions without irrefutable evidence and due process of law, the killer is seen and described as looking exactly like Evelyn in a red queen cape.

[Images: The red queen (top) fifteen seconds from killing, (middle) eight seconds from killing and (bottom) one second from killing.]

Though the plot might seem pretty cut (heh heh) and dry from the outside, Miraglia has plenty of twists to unleash. He goes on a touch too long with his stream of bloody murders (probably extended just to get the coveted number 7 into the title) and unnecessarily holds back on the delicious plot. However, I felt he kept me ravenous for more as opposed to starving. The tidbits he throws into the audience grow meatier and meatier. Miraglia ultimately manages to complicate and unbalance our expectations, while keeping us engaged and excited. Perhaps his neatest trick, which borders on showboating, occurs when he seemingly unveils the truth in a climatic moment and then immediately trumps it with second revelation a single scene (and less than a minute) later.

[Image: Could the killer queens be just as much a victim, misunderstood and unloved…?]

Emilio Miraglia’s camerawork and inventive, playful style is enormously entertaining to watch. To a greater extent than Ercoli’s duo of films, which was occasionally carried more by Susan Scotts performance, there is a sense that Miraglia was closer to developing a unique visual style and might have gone on to greater success. His sets feel like a clash between gothic architecture and sixties mod. The Wildenbrück manor broods in dark earth tones and sharp edges (emphasized by a pair of deaths at the hands of a cornice and a wrought-iron gate, respectively), while the interiors and fashion are colorful and curvy, slathered in swaths of trippy stripes.

[Images: A continuum that shows the ease with which Miraglia moves between old world and new world sensibilities of design and color theory.]

The fashion is an inextricable element of “Red Queen’s” appeal, indulging in extremes of kitsch rivaled by only a few other giallo. Much of the credit must go to costume designer Lorenzo Baraldi (his credits include “Portrait of a Nude Woman” (1981) which I would think would not have needed his services) who was clearly at least as interested in radical color combinations and dizzying op art as he was in showing off the assets of cast.

And now for a montage:

[Image: An admittedly excessive fashion montage. And yes… those are pentagon glasses.]

The dazzling glint of candy-colored plastic, the garish hues of trendy blouses and the bright flash of fashion photography seems to suggest a world of light and freedom bordering on hedonism. Though there is a brief scene of nudity (that occurs with near-comic suddenness), the film relishes clothes far more than skin (it even received a PG rating in the US). Miraglia would seem to suggest that fashion and design is a tool for individuality, assertion and power rather than merely Mulvey’s “to-be-looked-at-ness.” It is interesting to note that almost all the roles of power (and most of the roles in general) belong to women. Even the killer must don the queen’s cape to murder.

Most of the characters are involved in the process of creation and production, with Lulu being the only fulltime model. Lulu is also depicted the most negatively and while her sexuality makes her one of the most exploited characters in the film, she is at least as often the predator as the prey when it comes to relationships.

There are a handful of male roles, most of them rather minor and lacking in agency, including Mr. Wildenbrück (trapped in a wheelchair), Tobias (who limps), Evelyn’s boyfriend (devastated by addiction) and the usual ineffective police officers. Even Martin, Kitty’s fiancé and the presumed male lead, gets scarce screen time. He can’t marry Kitty because he must look after his aggressive, threatening wife, who has been committed to an asylum. Though he puts in some investigative footwork, he is ultimately unable to save Kitty when she needs him most.

[Image: Ugo Pagliai as Martin Hoffmann, Kitty’s boyfriend.]

I would suggest that Miraglia does not even set up the central themes of his film in terms of gender opposition. From the outset, he defines the curse (the centerpiece of the plot) as the rivalry of two women. Men only enter into the picture incidentally. The new-found (well, kind of new) freedom of the career girl and her powers of creative expression as both producer and consumer replaces the standard conceit of male heroism, machismo and chivalry.

The villain, then, is really nothing but the remnants of the past; the old world primitivism represented by the medieval architecture, faded paintings and an ancient curse. The thrilling finale even takes place in a flooding tomb (complete with rats pouring from the drains in advance of the water) filled with rot and decay. Then, too, the sisters must contend with the past in another form: their childhood memories and guilty consciences.

[Images: Kitty, who has not actually donned her symbolic color for most of the film, wears a bold contrast to the dour concluding sets.]

“The Red Queen Kills Seven Times” comes together much better than the average giallo. The director, screenwriter, cinematographer, costume designer and composer (a terrific score by Bruno Nicolai) are all in sync with each other. They create a thriller that looks and sounds as it should with a script that actually works and enough acting chops to pull it off. The film is not particularly scary, and it has more silliness than your average Argento or Fulci flick, but it is also likely to have broader appeal.

Walrus Rating: 8.0

[Images: Well, broader appeal to people who don’t mind shots like these.]

Knee-jerk Response to It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

It has been a while since I last foamed at the mouth as the result of a terrible movie, but “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” (1963), the subject of this knee-jerk reaction, has me absolutely rabid with anger, frustration and condemnation. The film had a lot going for it, and I knew that it was held in very high regard by some. It ranks as the 75th highest grossing film (adjusting for inflation) and sports what is arguably the greatest comedic all-star cast ever assembled: Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Jimmy Durante, Peter Falk, Buddy Hackett, Buster Keaton (though he doesn’t appear in the surviving cut), Jerry Lewis, Ethel Merman, Carl Reiner, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Jonathan Winters, The Three Stooges and many, many more. Spencer Tracy plays the “straight” counterbalance as a police chief.

At the beginning of the film, a speeding driver flies off a cliff and is fatally injured. Before he dies he tells a crowd of disparate onlookers about $350,000 buried under a “big W” in Santa Rosita Park. They initially pretend not to believe the “ravings” of the dying man, but after some arguing, the inevitable free-for-all race begins. Meanwhile, an underappreciated police chief tracks their movements and prepares to arrest them all after they’ve led him to the money.

It isn’t a lot of plot, so one would figure that the screenwriters were leaving plenty of room for non-stop hilarity, especially considering that they had 161 minutes (192 in the original cut), Cinerama’s massive 1:2.35 aspect ratio, almost $10 million dollars to budget and the combined talents of American’s then-best-known comedians to work with. However, after ill-advisedly sticking it out to the end of this hulking, limping trainwreck of flat, uninspired gags and pointless face-dropping I had nary a single laugh to show for it. If failed potential was the sole standard of judging films, this would be the worst comedy I’ve ever seen. Objectively, it is not quite the worst, but it certainly stands as a testament to unfunniness throughout the ages, effectively exposing how dull and dated mid-20th century mainstream comedians now appear.

Can we expect the same thing in another couple of decades when we look back at the closing of the century? Probably. Am I making irresponsible blanket statements in a fit of temporary, bad-movie-inspired wrath? Sure. However, the fact that not a single actor of the dozens present in Mad+++ rises above the film’s mirthless, vacuous trajectory and stale, embarrassing script gives me reason to brood. Ron Liddle’s recent op-ed in the Times Online reflects exactly how I feel, lamenting the deaths (metaphorically speaking) of comedian Mel Brooks (who secretly died at birth but walked around as a zombie, strangling jokes for most of his career) and Woody Allen (who continues to thrash around on the floor, but considering that all his recent films stink like rotting corpses I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just autonomic twitches). At least we laughed at the time, right? Oh, wait… I wasn’t alive then…

In fairness, leaving each comedian to explore their own individual style and perfect their own routines seems to resist the erosion of time far better than cramming famous names and faces (not so famous anymore) into an attempt at the ultimate comedy. Many comedians who crafted highly personal and idiosyncratic styles are, paradoxically, the ones that transcend time and audiences. Conversely, director Stanley Kramer’s attempt to broaden the humorscape enough that every American could understand the blunt, cartoon antics and unadorned stereotypes simply bulldozer’s every potential high point.

He had the hubris to declare his film “a comedy to end all comedies,” which, if it had been true, surely would have succeeded only in the apocalyptic sense. Perhaps his travesty was the culmination of some dark art meant to tear an entrance into a dimension of pure unfunny that would suck the laughter from the throats of every man, woman and child. Kramer should have known better (and Spencer Tracy, too, for that matter) having worked on far superior efforts. The director worked best wielding another type of hammer and hitting viewers over the head with preachy, but decent, liberal odes like “The Defiant Ones,” “Inherit the Wind,” “Judgment at Nuremburg,” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”

I’ve let myself digress far from the actual movie and descended into the type of name-calling and hyperbole that isn’t particularly informative to those who haven’t yet seen the film (but it sure is fun and possibly therapeutic). However, if you’re with me so far and not yet convinced, then there’s still a chance I could save you from seeing “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” should it try to mug you in a video store or break-and-enter through your TV screen. Here is a mere handful of specific reasons to charter a course around Kramer’s lifeless World:

First of all, it is probably a safe bet that no comedy should break the 2.5 hour barrier. Even if our gut is being exercised with healthy bouts of chuckling, our butts complain after sitting through too much slapstick. Mad+++ makes no attempt to justify its running time except its vainglorious desire to be crowned epic-emperor of the genre. The untrimmed fat hangs languidly from this bulging mass, with repetition used to fill the time the screenwriter’s have neglected. You’ll be subjected to looking at endless “wacky” car chases and listening to redundant reiterations of each character’s over-established one-trait personalities.

Ethel Merman is particularly bad as a shrieking, bossy mother-in-law (a cliché Hollywood can’t seem to get over) who leads a backwards march into the sexist depths of the distant past. Jonathon Winters gets to wave his arms around and turn his face red about a dozen times, which is probably supposed to tie into physical humor somehow. Sid Caesar plays every alpha-male husband gag as if he’d already resigned himself to being replaced by a robot. Most of the characters get trapped in subplots that don’t progress even though the inter-cutting revisits them multiple times. One gets an impression that we are watching has-been jokesters mired in quicksand. Spencer Tracy’s plot thread seems to move in particular slow-motion with all his words and deeds predestined within the first few minutes and telegraphed so loudly to the audience that no surprise or satisfaction is possible.

The movie attempts to dash forwards head-long, but ends up moving in fits and starts. The auto stunts and “quick-witted” dialogue (also not funny and lacking in chemistry, dynamism and cleverness) can’t pull the pacing out of the narrative quagmires. In the film, there is a scene where a car breaks down in a tunnel and we see a single tire come rolling out of the darkness. That last tire, unable to come to rest after the crash, captures the unmerited tenacity with which the film continues through the final 45 minutes. Except that in the case of the film, there isn’t even momentum to carry it onward.

The single, interminably repeated theme is that people are greedy and selfish. Perhaps that would explain why all these comedians took the sizable paychecks they were offered for this film. Perhaps the producers flattered and told them they were “comedy greats” that needed to be immortalized in this ultimate “masterpiece.” I wonder if any of them had any precognition of how poorly it would hold up.