Review of Princess Raccoon

It’s safe to say that most Japanese film enthusiasts are familiar with the cult director Seijun Suzuki’s work (thank you, Criterion!), especially his unconventional psychedelic yakuza films from his days at Nikkatsu. Suzuki was an important dissident from within the studio system, a spiritual brother of Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller who took subpar B-movie scripts from his producers and twisted them into surreal, inverted genre-busters infused with a unique auteur sensibility. While a cult audience followed his film even at the time, Nikkatsu’s higher-ups hated his unauthorized script changes and, inevitably, he was fired in 1968.

Somewhat ironically, the films that Suzuki made after his studio days are less well known despite his immensely increased degree of artistic freedom. I can understand why his studio work is more popular, given that Suzuki’s use of arty techniques and surprising aberrations hangs handsomely on the unpretentious genre frameworks that ground the stories. His later free-wheeling experiments are less accessible and harder to follow. The strangeness that initially popped out of the details came to take center stage. I confess to being somewhat disappointed with “Zigeunerweisen” (1980) and “Pistol Opera” (2001).

His most recent and probably last film, “Princess Raccoon” (2005), may be the key that has opened up my appreciation for his later career. It’s a musical starring Joe Odagiri as Prince Amechiyo and Zhang Ziyi as Princess Raccoon. Amechiyo’s father, a powerful demon, banishes his son to a lonely mountain out of pride (lest his son become more beautiful than the father). Before Amechiyo’s kidnapper reaches his destination, the princess of Raccoon Palace rescues him for her own mischievous purposes and soon falls in love.

“Princess Raccoon” is set in the world of ancient Japanese folklore and mythology, populated by gods, demons and shape-shifting raccoons (actually tanuki, but I refuse to enter into that debacle) who meddle in the affairs of humans. The time period is a bit nebulous, with renaissance era Europeans wandering around in the background and a giant classical Italian painting dominating one set. Equally so is the landscape, which includes soundstages in the heavens, earthly outdoor terrain and impossible CG environments.

The point, made clear from the very start of the film, is less the romance of the relatively uninteresting characters, than the spectacular design concepts that Suzuki engineers from this chaos. One suspects that he cast actors based on whether he liked their faces rather than on their emotive talents, and he tends to take more interest in their elaborate period costuming than their delivery. His rainbow palette is outright gaudy, but allows us to soak up a childlike love for color and contrast devoid of overly academic good-taste.

There’s a great deal of risk when a director becomes obssessed with orchestrating essentially undemanding eye-candy, and it’s doubtless that may viewers will find the film self-indulgent and shallow. However, Suzuki does his best to make us understand that the artifice is part of the point and that the visual presentation is worth our attention. Katie noted that the film reminded her of “Percival” (1978) in it’s intentional artificiality, but its lineage can be traced natively in the strong Japanese tradition of ritualized staging and detached abstraction (visible in films as diverse as 1963’s “An Actor’s Revenge” and 2001’s “The Happiness of the Katakuris”) that owes more to Kabuki than Brecht.

By foregrounding the methods behind the fantasy and illusion, “Princess Raccoon” makes us admire the process of creating as much as the experience of viewing. The intricate painted backdrops (sometimes with the wrong perspective), stuffed raccoon toys attached to strings and crude CG (I’d quibble that it goes too far) are never integrated systematically into a kind of realism, but are left isolated enough so that we can appreciate them as individual elements within a swirl of arts and crafts.

[Images: Some of the backgrounds are designed in the style of traditional Japanese ink and woodblock art.]

This makes for a film that isn’t particularly smooth and cohesive, but somehow Suzuki never lets it devolve into the type of postmodern pastiche where the humor comes from random non-sequiturs and anachronistic juxtapositions. He unwisely includes a weak subplot that breaks up the flow of the romance, music and adventure, but he makes the right decision to eschew manic editing. The craziness is contained, if just barely, and everything fits comfortably into Suzuki’s overarching vision, though his is a dreamlike vision divorced from ordinary reality.

[Images: One set is nominally reconfigured and relit as Prince Amechiyo walks in a circle around it. The shot changes from arctic to desert, either to symbolize the long passage of time on his journey or the variety of terrain he traverses. By recycling the same camera position and layout, we can’t help appreciating how the mild redressing of the few props changes the atmosphere completely. The taxidermied hawk adds a touch of humor.]

Suzuki preoccupation with beauty is also addressed thematically within the narrative. Beauty is shown to be a powerful force independent from morality; a force capable of both good and evil. The prince’s father, for instance, is fatally consumed by pride in his beauty, while vanity hampers the budding romance between Amechiyo and Princess Raccoon. But the film also shows how beauty is an inspiration, a cause for celebration and a foothold for love. The film is neither particularly original or deep in what it has to say on the topic, but it’s self-aware about its superficiality.

[Image: The princess is so beautiful that the firewood for her warm baths burns with jealousy.]

The eclecticism in the art design is shared by the music numbers. Suzuki bounces around the world and across history with everything from traditional poetic pieces and show tunes to rap, tap dance, ska, hymnals, hard rock, opera and children’s choir. Like Hollywood musicals of old, the songs are funny and buoyant and more about having a good time than about demonstrating raw musical talent.

[Image: (Bottom) A literal and Greek chorus of Japanese ladies-in-waiting.]

Suzuki’s biggest flaw in his musical numbers isn’t the questionable vocal training, but his limp choreography. He never quite manages either the graceful precision of geisha dancing or the effervescent energy of a Hollywood showstopper, though some of his concepts are intriguing, including dancing duets of women giving birth and sumo wrestlers who play drums on their massive bellies. Suzuki has always been better at composing static images than at capturing motion (it’s part of what makes his action movies so startlingly different), causing the dancing to feel poorly directed and less spectacular than the backdrops.

The films from both the highest of high culture and the lowest of pop culture are often accused of having poor plots and acting, but for very different reasons. Somehow “Princess Raccoon” manages to sample those flaws from both ends while also capturing their best attributes: inventive artistry and unabashed entertainment, respectively. It’s a combination that might be said of Suzuki’s 1960’s work, though it manifests quite differently. If this really is his final film, I think it makes a fine finish.

Walrus Rating: 7.5

[Image: One croak from the Frog of Paradise is all you need.]

Review of The Lost World (1925)

When I was young I tried reading Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World” (1912), about the discovery of an Amazon region where dinosaur still reign, and I don’t think I ever finished it. I had much better luck with Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, which I sometimes read aloud to my brother as a form of speech therapy (sadly, I never acquired a British accent). But back in the turn of the century everyone and their literary agent, from Edgar Rice Burroughs to Henry Rider Haggard, was trying to get a lost world story to market.

Now nearly 100 years later, the subgenre is making a bit of a comeback, albeit with far less serious treatments. “Land of the Lost” (2009), the latest in the uninspired “Will Ferrell plays the fool” franchise appears to have already sealed in its fate as an artistic and financial disaster. What that means for the knock-off created by The Asylum, “The Land That Time Forgot” (2009), which comes out next month is easy to guess. The Asylum, an unscrupulous studio that makes no-budget films that ride on the coattails of blockbusters with similar titles(amongst them “The Transmorphers,” “The Day the Earth Stopped” and “The Da Vinci Treasure”), deserves a post of their own, but it will have to wait.

The subgenre’s only real success since “Jurassic Park” (1993) may be Pixar’s delightfully self-aware “Up,” which has the sideways wisdom to update The Lost World while dropping the dinosaur angle at the crux of the original. It manages to be satiric and yet still whimsical, heartfelt and original. Amongst the clever nods to Doyle’s story in “Up” is an image of ‘Paradise Falls,’ a sheer Venezuelan plateau taken right out of the 1925 adaptation of “The Lost World.” It’s that film, which might be considered the grandfather of lost world cinema that I’m going to review today.

“The Lost World” (1925) begins with journalist Edward Malone being told by his girlfriend that she won’t marry him unless he proves his manliness by facing death. Looking for a dangerous assignment, he agrees to sneak into a conference by the irascible Professor Challenger, a scientist whose reputation lies in tatters after championing the lost journals of Maple White, which depict dinosaurs on an obscure South American tepui. Challenger becomes the laughing stock of London high society, but manages to mount an expedition with Malone, big-game hunter Sir John Raxton and White’s beautiful daughter Paula.

It doesn’t take them long to reach the plateau and they’re soon sighting more dinos than they know what to do with. After crossing unto the plateau by felling a tree over a vast chasm, a brontosaurus destroys their makeshift bridge and leaves them stranded. The scientific inquiry and search-and-rescue mission quickly become secondary issues compared to survival and escape.

Director Harry Hoyt let his special effects team go wild, headed up by Willis O’Brien of later “King Kong” (1933) fame. In the fully restored version of the film his stop-motion battles between various dinosaur combinations threaten to overwhelm the rest of the story. Most of the action with the giant reptiles has little to do with the human characters, who mostly stand by and share our rapt attention rather than running for cover.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s primary villains, a race of violent ape-men, have been consolidated into a single character. This ape-man, who hasn’t any backstory, motive or means of expression, is incongruously bent on murdering the rescue party. Lacking higher cognition or anything to rival the firepower that Raxton possesses, he’s something of an anticlimactic pushover when compared to the potential killing-power of the dinosaurs. The result is that there isn’t much tension or oppositional force to drive the film until the film’s memorable last act, in which Prof. Challenger’s pet specimen breaks free and rampages through London. The idea was so much better than the novel’s ending that it was also tacked onto the adaptation of Michael Crichton’s “The Lost World” in 1997.

Hoyt’s handling of his actors is not nearly as bad as I was expecting for a special-effects driven silent-era film. Lloyd Hughes is fine, if forgettable, as the gung-ho handsome lead and his biggest fault may be that he’s chained to such a predictable character arc that includes an inevitable romance with Bessie Love’s Paula White. Bessie Love makes the best of her role considering that she has no qualifications for being on the trip and serves little purpose but to provide a love interest, a duty made difficult considering that she’s also required to be constantly screaming with fear and crying over the death of her father.

The minor roles are much more interesting. Professor Challenger is no fatherly academic, but the type of guy who chops his own firewood and can handle himself in a fight. His performance is proud, angry and determined, but just short of hacky mad-scientist overtones. Sir. John Raxton is surprisingly sympathetic as the uptight British hunter who shows a good deal of quiet humility and restraint as he comes to accept that Paula prefers Edward. He gets to have a subtle performance amidst all the huff and roaring. There’s also Jocko, an ingenious monkey who actually plays into the plot somewhat cleverly. I also liked that Arthur Conan Doyle has a cameo at the beginning, where he introduces the film.

“The Lost World” may stray into cheesiness at times, but it’s really never bad (well, excepting scenes involving the blackface natives) and is overall a highly entertaining treat for fans of old-timey adventure yarns. Despite the excellent job restoring the film, there were still cuts that made me think there was still footage missing and pieces mismatched and that may explain why the action isn’t as sustained and smooth as it could have been. If you can live with that, and appreciate the fact that the stop-motion and live-action events are necessarily a bit detached from each other, you’ll enjoy the film’s charm and gusto.

Walrus Rating: 7.0

Film Noir Poetry

I’ve written a script/poem that uses only classical-era film noir titles for words, making it arguably more referential than a Tarantino screenplay. Punctuation and formatting has been used to manipulate the meaning, but there should be no added words. See if you can follow the story and recognize all the films. (I’ve by no means seen them all myself!)

Kansas City _________ [[[Confidential]]]
‘Crime Wave Niagara’
‘Underworld USA’
‘The City that Never Sleeps The Big Sleep’

Black Tuesday, Nightfall.
Moonrise.
I Walk Alone Down Three Dark Streets.
So Dark the Night; The Night and the City.

Danger Signal! Sudden Fear.
Cause for Alarm?
Tension…
Suspense…

Clash By Night.
Witness to Murder!
Crime of Passion? Murder By Contract?
Crack-Up, Vertigo, Whirlpool… “...Angel Face?”
*Blackout*

I Wake Up Screaming.
T-men: “The Killers?”
[Spellbound] “…Phantom Lady...”
Ruthless Rogue Cop: “Gun Crazy Guilty Bystander.”

?!
Panic in the Streets
"#%$&! Raw Deal."
The Wrong Man Pursued!

The Chase:
99 River Street, 711 Ocean Drive,
Plunder Road, Scarlet Street.
(Sunset Boulevard - Nightmare Alley)
He Ran All the Way, He Walked All Night.

Mystery Street; The Street with No Name.
Detour? One Way Street…
Roadblock!
Suddenly Cornered. No Way Out.
Pickup on South Street.

Accused of Murder Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
Convicted: “The Killer Is Loose Among the Living!”
They Won’t Believe Me!Cry of the City: “Rope The Accused.”
Railroaded Behind Locked Doors.

Caged In a Lonely Place.
The Big Clock, The Long Wait, The Desperate Hours
Journey Into Fear…
Private Hell 36

Betrayed? Framed?
Suspicion: I Married a Communist.
The Suspect: Rebecca, Laura, Gilda?
Out of the Past, The Dark Past, Shock!
“The Unholy Wife: …M-Mildred Pierce!”

I Want to Live!
The Breaking Point (The Turning Point?)
“Notorious Black Widow,
Force of Evil Born to Kill,
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye!!!”

Body and Soul Possessed.
Desperate Act of Violence:
Bodyguard Conflict
The Dark Passage => High Wall.
Loophole: The Window! Ivy…
Side Street… Asphalt Jungle!
Illegal Second Chance!

Knock on Any Door.
{House of Strangers}
“Call Northside 777.” Dial M for Murder

...****...****...(The Postman Always Rings Twice)
Mildred Pierce: “Johnny?” [Eager]
“Sorry, Wrong Number.” Beware, My Lovely!

Fallen Angel, Somewhere in the Night;
The Night of the Hunter.
The Set-Up, The Trap, Temptation Lured...
Caught The Guilty Mildred Pierce!
Sweet Smell of Success!!

Human Desire… Inferno Fury
I, the Jury.
Shadow of a Doubt…?
Time.
Without Pity.

“Follow Me Quietly.”
…
Brute Force, The Killing Kiss of Death:
*Impact*
“Murder, My Sweet,” I Confess.

Pushover The Narrow Margin
The Lady in the Lake
The Raging Tide,
Undercurrent…
Dark Waters…
[Blast of Silence]

“Sleep, My Love. Nobody Lives Forever.”

Hollow Triumph? Too Late for Tears.
Leave Her to Heaven…

Review of Four Flies on Grey Velvet

[Image: Robert, moments before squashing a fly with a climactic cymbal clash.]

“Four Flies on Grey Velvet” (1971) was released for the first time on R1 DVD this February, and I didn’t even find out until last month. That’s pretty inescapable evidence that I’ve been slacking off on my giallo intake, but no reason why I can’t have an excited delayed reaction. “Four Flies” is the last of Dario Argento’s ‘Animal Trilogy’ and the last to get released. It falls somewhere between the quality of the groundbreaking “The Bird with the Crystal Plumage” (1970) and the stodgy “Cat o’Nine Tails” (1971).

[Image: Robert and Tobias.]

Robert Tobias is a rock band musician who finds himself annoyed by a mustachioed stalker. After pursuing the man onto the stage of an abandoned theater, Robert accidentally knifes the confused guy, a murder inconveniently photographed by a masked fiend in the upper galleries. Robert and his wife Nina are then terrorized by the murderous blackmailer, who knocks off their diverse network of friends and helpers (including a gay private eye and a hobo named God). After about an hour and a half of this, the deranged killer is finally revealed.

The plot is easily amongst the worst of Argento’s oeuvre, with some of the poorest psychological balderdash to motivate the killer in particular. There’s vague hints concerning the identity of the villain, but nothing resembling actual clues, and with our protagonist passively going about business as usual while he hopes for one of his friends to catch the blackmailer, there’s no sense of an investigation with forward moving progression or rising tension.

[Image: At least there’s no shortage of focus pulls, like this elaborate zoom into Robert’s rearview mirror.]

The upside is that Argento, cinematographer Franco Di Giacomo (“Who Saw Her Die?” (1972), “The Killer Must Kill Again” (1975)) and special effects wizards Carlo Rambaldi and Cataldo Galliano work out a visual style easily on par with Argento’s best work. Their inventiveness is rather astounding, including at least three ideas that I’ve seen ripped off (more likely reinvented given the film’s low penetration) and praised in many films made decades later: slow-motion “bullet time,” following a phone cable from caller to the recipient and pulling the final image off the retina of a corpse (which even Argento admits was a stupid concept, but he liked the way it looked in the film).

[Image: A step-by-step transition from a phone booth to the killer’s home set along the route of the wires themselves.]

The special effects sequences largely guide the plot, rather than the other way around, but Argento makes this into an asset and even a primary theme. “The Bird with the Crystal Plumage” focuses heavily on what we see and how we interpret it, but “Four Flies on Grey Velvet” is more about vision on a more fundamental if less tantalizing level: how what we can and can’t see creates fear and how vision can grant power and strip privacy. Robert is tricked into manslaughter (staged, quite literally, on a stage) because he is being spied upon, then spends the rest of the film rather helpless as the villain taunts him by repeatedly breaking into his house and planting photos of the crime. At least two characters witness the villain’s work and try to blackmail the blackmailer, creating a spiral of peeper power struggles with predictably deadly results.

[Images: Plays on vision: (1st) Running a laser through an eye to get its last sight, in this case the titular four flies. (2nd) A classical peering-out-of-wardrobe-as-the-killer-searches shot with the eye caught in a sliver of light. (3rd) The type of doorknob every private eye should have. (4th) The killer’s wide-eyed grinning mask, paired with spotlights and a camera lens to make it the ultimate gaze.]

Most of the scenes are quite dark, probably one of the oldest and most worn tactics for generating fear and uncertainty in horror films. Despite this, however, Argento’s colors are usually remarkably vivid in “Four Flies,” very much in keeping with his other works from the 1970’s. It’s a combination the director often uses to apply lurid, emotion-inflected splashes onto the more typical canvas of brooding shadowy suspense. “Four Flies” contrasts the darkness with an even more unique technique, in that scenes set in the mind’s eye are brightly lit and uniformly white.

[Images: The killer’s traumatic memories of time spent in a padded cell and Robert’s reoccurring dream of a Mid-East execution.]

Like with many gialli, the games played with lighting, color and camera position don’t necessarily have any particular meaning; what’s important is how they make a viewer feel. To take an example, one scene has Robert’s maid waiting in the park to be paid off by the killer. From the first shot, we know she’s going to die and the whole exercise could unfold with excruciating predictability. Instead we get a series of intriguing flourishes: the mood changing from safe to scary via startling jump-cuts, the chase runs through an illogical hedge maze and crushingly tight tunnel and the final stabbing is left unseen, but heard from the opposite side of a tall brick wall where a young couple impotently responds to the cries for help (reminiscent of a scene in “The Leopard Man” (1943)).

[Images: The music on the park’s loudspeakers cuts off abruptly, followed by a trio of jump-cuts (every bit as quick as just glancing down the two screenshots above) showing the park going from full-swing to empty. By dramatically abridging the maid’s wait from an hour or so to a few seconds, we’re thrown off-balance.]

Other set pieces may go a bit too far, particularly one at a luxury coffin convention that serves almost no purpose and is probably intended as comic relief. There are a few other moments of largely misguided humor, including a bible-quoting bum and an incompetent mailman, that only drag out the already sparse pacing.

[Image: Presenting the race-to-heaven and honeymoon coffins!]

My biggest complaint, other than the story, is the music. It’s very rare for me to give a thumb down to anything composed by Ennio Morricone, but this is some of his least impressive work. Robert is a drummer, and I wanted to like the way that his band’s music and his rambling drum solos are crosscut into the action, but it doesn’t have nearly the right feel. Apparently Argento wasn’t happy with it either, and the two didn’t work together again until the mid-90’s.

One of the best reasons to watch giallo is the visuals, and they’re strong enough here to compensate for the admittedly extensive flaws. With the DVD now widely available and the print cleaned up expertly, giallo collectors owe it to themselves to pick this one up.

Walrus Rating: 7.0

[Image: What do you think: the most horrifying cat corpse ever or what?]

Iceberg Arena: The Worst Sci-Fi Musicals

Today’s Iceberg Arena will be something of a reversal of the usual system. Instead of trying to decide which of two or more films is the best, the winner will be the one I deem worst. This inversion should not be taken to imply that I don’t like science-fiction musicals – quite the opposite – but merely that the hybrid has produced some bizarre and dreadful messes. Even as I enjoy laughing at these failures, I sympathize with their eccentricity and ambition.

“Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975) is perhaps the only SF musical that the general movie-going public remembers, and it has certainly become the archetype of cult success that later films try to emulate. Its fame is pretty deserving in my mind, as much of the music is actually pretty catchy and the set pieces keep up with the psychotic, but inspired, narrative. “Little Shop of Horrors” (1986) also enjoys a major cult following and at least some popular awareness, though I find the humor a bit strained. Time has been less kind to "Willie McBean and His Magic Machine" (1965), a time-travelling stop-motion children's musical adventure by Rankin/Bass (creators of perennial TV Christmas specials) that has never seen an official release, perhaps due to its constant racial insensitivity.

Other than these, my favorites would have to be “American Astronaut” (2001), an idiosyncratic SF western musical that I’ve talked about before, and “Privilege” (1967), a darkly satiric rock opera about the music industry, celebrity stardom and the marketing of rebellion. If you're looking for films that are actually worth seeing, there you go. But if you are just dying to get to the driveliest drivel, skip ahead to the first contestant.

SF musicals have seen a recent spike in activity during the last decade. Daft Punk has created two, the animated “Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem” (2003) and the less well-received “Electroma” (2006). 2006 also saw the release of Richard Kelly’s (“Donnie Darko”) sophomore film, the semi-musical SF comedy epic “Southland Tales.” Despite being inducted into the pantheon of notorious rejections during its Cannes festival premier, I’m almost fond of the overcast, schizophrenic behemoth.

2008 brought us three movies that at least partially qualify. Joss Whedon’s delightfully lightweight break from the writer’s strike, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” manages to be quick, clever and amusing. The Flaming Lips put together “Christmas on Mars,” which isn’t quite a musical but features the band and includes their instrumental tracks. The biggest budget entry of the year was “Repo! The Genetic Opera,” which was a rousing piece of hypergothic indulgence and gallows humor despite being overhyped and too unabashedly manufactured.

Most of the films above have their share of detractors (and often that share is a controlling interest), but all save one were cut in the preliminary tryouts for worst SF musical. The finalists are “Toomorrow” (1970), “Space Is the Place” (1974), “The Apple” (1980) and “Electroma” (2006).

Toomorrow

8 years before “Grease” (1978), Australian pop star Olivia Newton-John starred in “Toomorrow” (1970), a film easily worse than even “Xanadu” (1980), albeit one that was more successfully covered up (its only release was in Japan and on Laserdisc). Toomorrow features a dying race of aliens who secretly come to Earth seeking a source of life-saving vibrations. They ultimately determine that the upbeat groove of hippy band Toomorrow, led by Newton-John, can save their species, and so they hatch a largely benevolent kidnapping scheme. Their needlessly elaborate interferes with the band include fashioning an alien bimbo and abducting an entire concert venue, with supposedly funny high jinks ensuing.

“Toomorrow’s” attempt to build a youth culture phenomenon around a prefab pop group is hilariously unhip, but thankfully devoid of the smug insincerity and ubiquitous product placement of our Hannah Montana generation. The characters are all bubbling fountains of unrestrained optimism plagued only by difficulty balancing their time between girlfriends and band practice and dealing with an anti-fun school principal. There are times when they’re almost endearing, but their dialogue is just too flat and stereotyped. The clunky overuse of slang dates not only the film, but the true age of the producers.

The plot sputters along slowly, with far too much time spent repeating the same alien “special effects” and tame sexual comedy (think beach movies). The music is so naïve and inconsequential that one could never accept the assertion that it’s either life-giving or unique in all the universe, but it’s not without its peppy charm. More variety of tracks could have helped, but the story is awkwardly structured (the band’s inability to find a time or place to play is a key plot element) for a films that supposed to be about music.

Perhaps the kitschiest moment occurs aboard the alien spacecraft, where the band members briefly transform into toddler versions of themselves during a “time and space” musical number.

Space Is the Place

In the near-future 1970’s Afro-psychedelic musician-messiah Sun Ra lands his spaceship, The Intergalactic Solar Arkestra, on a vibrant jungle world. He claims the planet as the new home for the African-American people and returns to Earth to spread his invitation through music. While building a media empire to recruit passengers, he must do battle with The Overseer, a pimp in league with the white oligarchy and the evil embodiment of African-American social ills. The struggle is reflected in a real world crime feud and a metaphorical game of space-age tarot cards. After the inevitable concert finale, Sun Ra takes the souls he has saved and abandons the Earth, which promptly explodes.

Sun Ra’s enormous ornamental headpieces and symbolic space-age imagery create a distinctively alternative vision that was as much about philosophy as music, but it’s largely hampered by the rock bottom production values and uninspired blaxploitation hokiness. The plot starts out high in guts and inspiration, but only drags under the weight of its many digressions and oversimplifications, petering out quickly and turning the final chapters into a death march.

Sun Ra’s music is a free-ranging variety of jazz futurism and traditional African instrumentation. For many it will be a highlight of the film, but the recording is so poor and tracks so crudely integrated into the plot that it’s hard to appreciate.

The fact that Sun Ra takes his distorted African-separatist mythmaking so seriously is at once the downfall of his film and the essence of its reincarnation as camp. Though it may have been intended to develop a real cult, it has at least succeeded in gaining a bemused following.

The Apple

Alphie and Bibi, a folk music duo from Moose Jaw, Canada almost win a glam rock megaconcert contest with their earnest, heartfelt tunes, but for the manipulation of Mr. Boogalow and his fascist corporation, Boogalow International Music (BIM). Determined to keep his brand of pulsating hypnotic disco at the top of the charts, Mr. Boogalow signs a contract with the country bumpkins and attempts to convert their image into that of his other mindless celebrity puppets. Bibi is duped, but Alphie manages to stage an uprising of homeless peaceniks (bad choice for an army as it turns out). The autocratic BIM brutally suppresses them and appears to reign supreme until the kids are saved at the last minute by God, who drives in and parades them up to heaven.

“The Apple” is a hopeless mess of overdone religious allegory, B-movie SF kitsch, self-conscious trippiness and laughable lyrics and choreography. The musical confuses shiny fabric for futuristic costuming, airport escalators for set design, pop culture silliness for social commentary and ostentatious strutting for a moral message. Still, the films seems largely self-aware of its ridiculousness and occasionally gets laughs that it was probably going for. Perennial Russian villain Vladek Sheybal (as Mr. Boogalow), seems clearly in on the joke, chewing the scenery with mad-eyed grinning gusto and ignoring the screenplay as it combusts around him.

The music manages to be bad in two genres, giving us reason to gag at the sappy folk music of our dumbly unsympathetic heroes and the mind-numbing beat-based loops of the equally brain-dead villains. The choreography never shies away from acting out any idiot idea expressed in the lyrics, leading to delightfully tacky music numbers in garish outfits. The coup de grace is the little silver diamonds that everyone has stuck to their foreheads, apparently just one more way to cram additional sparkles into the cinematography.

Electroma

The usually reliable Daft Punk takes to the screen for the second time in this ambiguous dialogue-free tale of two robots on a quest to achieve humanity. Their initial attempt, immersing their heads in grotesque masks of synthetic sludge, culminates in a disastrous chase through the robot suburbs as the beating sun melts off their faces. Later they set off into the desert where emptiness and desperation lead them to perform excruciating slow-motion suicides.

Band members Peter Hurteau and Michael Reich exercise their talent for visual panache, but prove that music video sensibilities don’t always translate to the big screen. The creators have about 12 minutes worth of rather abstract ideas (not coincidentally, the length of about 3 music videos), none of which can sustain a story. Stretched out to 74 minutes these ideas don’t deserve our attention even wrapped in Daft Punk’s stirringly dream-like beauty. Almost every sequence begins by proffering a signature set of stylized images, but then immediately settles back and lazily cuts between them through endless stagnant refrains of music.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the music were actually by Daft Punk, but the assortment of sweeping tone poems by various musicians is lacking in direction, cohesion and interest. Some judicious cutting could have saved us from the opening highway montage and one particularly “yeah, we get it” sequence comparing sand dunes to a nude body. In truth, initiating a solid round of editing would have quickly whittled the film down to a handful of cool photos to use on a CD insert, but nothing even quite at the level of their music videos for “Around the World” and “Da Funk.”


Conclusion:

Honorable Mention: The Apple.
The so-bad-its-good quality of “The Apple” strikes just the right balance of incidental and intentional humor, with enough highlights and surprises that making it to the end isn’t a masochistic chore. Critics rightly hated on it, but I was still joking about the film in high spirits and mockingly singing the songs days after seeing it.

3rd Place: Toomorrow.
Failure has nearly scratched the memory of Toomorrow from the face of the Earth, but its badness is really more quaint than monumental. It has moments where it’s actually rather cute, helped by Olivia Newton-John’s good-natured persona, when it’s not being sexist and obsequious. It gets last place for poster art.

2nd Place: Space Is the Place
A consummate misfire, “Space Is the Place” only manages to survive its many mistakes by being fascinatingly crazy. The deranged SF intrusions are like little sparks of life in a cemetery of dead scenes uncomfortably exhumed from our cultural past.

1st Place: Electroma
Perhaps because it is the most finely-crafted of the contest entries, Electroma fails to find redemption in its own tragic hubris. One day enough time may pass for Electroma to join the other films as amusing retro camp, but it will still have too much boring pretentiousness (which doesn’t age well) holding back the blindly ambitious pretentiousness (which I admire).

These Cliches Are For Your Own Safety

It has come to the attention of the Screen Characters Guild that preventable fatalities amongst horror film characters are at an all time high. Many characters, even protagonists and persons played by famous actors, have demonstrated a complete disregard for standard safety guidelines. It now falls upon the SCG to remind you that these practical precautions and handy rules of thumb are designed with your own safety and well-being in mind.

Please review the following brochure carefully. With luck, we hope to see you in a sequel.


If you hear a noise, thinking the killer is nearby, go silent immediately. It will actually turn out to be something else.

Whereas if you say you hear a noise you greatly multiple the real risk. Should someone else replies something like “it was probably just the wind” it will never actually turn out to be the wind or any other benign explanation offered. It will turn out to be the killer. If anyone says “I didn’t hear anything” than you are especially screwed.

Other phrases that can doom you and your entire party include:

Do not announce any phobias or weaknesses. It will only be inconvenient later when are forced to overcome them.

The first time you are attacked or chased by the killer, your boyfriend/husband will not believe you. That’s just normal. There’s a good chance you’ll shortly be vindicated by the killer unexpectedly murdering him. However, if he still doesn’t believe you after the second or third incident, I have bad news. He’s the one trying to kill you for insurance/inheritance money. If the frightening incidents you are experiencing are particularly strange and mysterious, count yourself lucky; your significant other is plotting to drive you insane instead, which gives you considerably more time to fumble about in distress before you have to buckle down and fight back.

Do not respond to any invitations from eccentric millionaires. Psychiatric experiments, even when they pay well, should obviously be rejected. Never, ever go camping. Do not visit any haunted houses or agree to look after any remote locations. If anyone describes the history of a place, avoid going there. Don’t even enter your attic or cellar (unless you have a nice finished basement) or any room where the light switch doesn’t work. Do not clear dust and cobwebs off anything. If you are in a place with lots of dust and cobwebs, leave.

Pay extremely close attention to local legends and any references to objects that could be used as weapons. Allow yourself to be regaled by old-timers, especially if everyone else regards them as crazy. If anyone starts to talk about their past, especially if involves a trauma or transgression, make a note to keep your distance. Express the utmost interest in hearing out any longwinded description of the how villainy against you was engineered.

If someone mentions that they have a twin, dead sibling or long-lost relative, avoid them and anyone who looks like them. Beware of people loudly proclaiming that they run a successful enterprise of any type. They are actually in a great deal of debt and are probably planning to kill you for your money. Treat with suspicion anyone who does not have a clear motive to be the killer. Most importantly, do not have sex with anyone. Let me repeat that: NO SEX.

Remove any keys from your key ring that do not correspond to your house, a potential escape route or a vehicle. It would also be wise to label your keys clearly and make sure they have distinctive shapes that you can distinguish in the dark and under stressful conditions.

While we’re at it, make sure to keep your gas tank full and your car battery charged. When driving, never take any detours or pick up hitchhikers. If you must pick up a hitchhiker, do not proceed to turn on the car radio and listen to news bulletins. It is highly recommended that if you even find yourself driving anywhere with a group of friends, to just turn around and settle for a subdued little get-together at a crowded, well-lit pizza parlor. Do not invite your ex.

And remember, safety is the responsibility of everyone.

Well, except the killer.

Review of The Shout

When a trailer uses the hyphenate “soul-shattering” multiple times, it’s clear the film isn’t going for a soft sell. I have to admit to possessing a perverse pleasure in such hyperbole. How can one not be amused, for instance, by William Castle’s overkill showmanship, like his advertisements for “Macabre” (1958) that claimed, “Any member of the audience is insured for $1000.00 against DEATH BY FRIGHT during the performance of this terrifying picture!” Considerably less risk was involved than the ambulances Castle would park right in front of theaters. Another fine example is the early William Shatner Esperanto film “Incubus” (1965) whose shortsighted trailer predicted that “Time can not fade the brilliance of… THE INCUBUS!”

But my favorite overblown trailers hit a hypnotically bombastic cadence with the title functioning as a portentous refrain. That actually applies to “Incubus” rather nicely. One of the most iconic is the “Zardoz” (1974) trailer which opens with "BEYOND 1984. BEYOND 2001. BEYOND LOVE. BEYOND DEATH.” and includes largely fanciful interpretations of the plot like "...AND THEN ZARDOZ CREATED GOD... AND IN THE END ZARDOZ RE-CREATED MAN!"

This is my long way of getting around to how much I liked the trailer for “The Shout” (1978), which is where the aforementioned cases of “soul-shattering” cropped up, as in, “Greater than the frightening power of exorcism. More mystifying than any omen of reincarnation. The soul-shattering experience of... the SHOUT.” In case you were concerned, I managed to escape a viewing with my spiritual essence intact, but I highly approved of the film as a whole and especially the fact that one of the main characters quite literally does get his soul shattered. Since you are probably wondering, it breaks into exactly four pieces.

The plot comes from a 1929 short story by Robert Graves, who is played by Tim Curry in the film. Graves encounters a mysterious madman (Crossley, played by Alan Bates) while scoring a cricket game at a scenic asylum. Crossley relays the story of one of the patients, Anthony Fielding (John Hurt), and his wife Rachel (Susannah York).

Some years previous Crossley shows up at the Fielding’s remote house along the English coastline. Despite being a rather abrasive stranger, Anthony invites him to stay for a time. At dinner, their unusual guest claims to have spent the last 18 years living deep in the Australian outback, ritually practicing the aboriginal right to slay his offspring. Rachel, who has been unsuccessfully trying to conceive with Anthony, is visibly disturbed, and Anthony soon has even greater cause for discomfort. Crossley describes having studied sorcery during his sojourn, including a monstrous power called “the terror shout” capable of killing everything within hearing. Soon Crossley is using his black magic to seduce Rachel and Anthony’s only recourse lies in destroying the physical manifestation of Crossley’s soul.

The material seems suited to the likes of Roger Corman or Hammer Film Productions, but with director Jerzy Skolimowski at the helm, the film is considerably more compelling than it might intrinsically deserve. For one thing, he chooses to film the horror story with genuine gravity and coaxes performances from his cast that are surprisingly devoid of cheesiness. The directing and acting are so good it’s easy to forget the film has hardly any budget and an almost absolute absence of special effects, action and gore.

Alan Bates overwhelms the screen, cutting a disquietingly dark profile with his chaotic hair and black overcoat. His bearing has the casual assurance of a man fully aware of his powers while his soft-spoken voice somehow dominates every exchange. Skolimowski uses sudden close-ups of his glowering eyes, unshaven jaw and deliberate hands to capture the uncomfortable intensity of his mere presence.

Other visual tactics contribute to the brooding, unremitting atmosphere, including excellent use of the cold, windswept landscapes. Rarely have grassy knolls and lonely beaches and ever seems so haunting and unpleasant. A liberal smattering of Francis Bacon prints, one briefly reenacted by Rachel (who even turns black and white for a few frames), certainly doesn’t help one feel warm and fuzzy either. However, the unique effectiveness of “The Shout” comes less from its visuals than from its sound design.

I have to confess to being rather unskilled at dealing with music in my reviews. I can’t play any nor can I easily recognize even relatively famous bands and I don’t know the jargon for describing it accurately. I do honestly believe that film is first and foremost a visual medium, but I doubtlessly neglect the audio unduly and don’t pay close enough attention to it. Today will be an exception.

It is probably not surprising that a movie about a fatal cry places conspicuous emphasis on sound design, but “The Shout” is really in a league with few other horror films save “Eraserhead” (1977). Eschewing the classical arrangements of creaky floorboards, slamming doors and maniacal laughs, the film instead opts for unearthly resonances; vibrations that hold the tense energy of something about to buckle… or explode.

Anthony is a part-time organist for the local church and an experimental musician whose work more closely resembles that of a foley artist (clearly not part of the original story given when it was written). He records insects buzzing about in jars, marbles rolling about in a wet pan and a violin bow sliding across a desiccated sardine tin. His interest in eerie and outlandish auditory effects makes him susceptibly curious about the terror shout (the sound bite doesn’t disappoint) and helps shape our understanding of his psychological state. The soundtrack often times feels as though it is giving expression to his introspective spells, the growing discord in his relationship and his rising fear and anxiety.

After foregrounding Anthony’s obscure hobby Skolimowski has us especially attentive to the subtleties of the background noise for the rest of the film. Within it he weaves uncanny touches like faint organ music, shrill bird cries or sudden changes in pitch as though even the wind carried some ominous message. It also helps structure the film, as the crack of a cricket ball periodically pulls us out of the flashback and into the present. The climax, a cacophony of lightning, screaming and explosions, comes as the culmination of a mounting auditory intensity that run through the entire film.

Conversely, the characters tend to talk quietly and politiely, often whispering, as if hiding themselves in a cloak of civility. This comes in sharp contrast with the primal scream of the terror shout. Anthony’s initial life consists of peaceful rural contentment, easy sexual gratification shared between his trusting wife and a breezy affair in the village and a harmless hobby where he maintains precise control over his experiments. The way sound comes to overpower this life keys us to its growing danger and intoxicating power. It grants a sense of scale, like an echo in a vast chamber, that dwarfs the Fieldings and implies the unfathomable horror that, as Crossley says, requires “imagination outside our direct experience.”

Fans of the type of psychological atmosphere horror I often advocate will almost certain enjoy. It’s a great opportunity to get more familiar with Jerzy Skolimowski, who has to be one of the most underrated directors around even compared to his Polish School compatriots. I’ve only seen a handful of his other films, the best being his spectacular “Deep End” (1970) (which has inexplicably lacked an official release), though I can also recommend “Moonlighting” (1982) with Jeremy Irons.

Walrus Rating: 8.0