Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

Unchained Melody: The Films of Meiko Kaji

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Meiko Kaji is, from a Western perspective, one of the most unmistakable and recognisable Japanese actresses of all time, but this comes with a significant proviso. Most of us know just a tiny fraction of the films she has ever made; only a handful of these nearly one hundred films have really made it over here anyway, and even out of that, we tend to think of her in one of a couple of key roles. Either Meiko Kaji is ‘Scorpion’, the largely mute and indestructible prison inmate of the Female Prisoner series, or she is the sword-wielding agent of doom in Lady Snowblood. This is a state of affairs acknowledged by author Tom Mes in his neat Meiko Kaji book Unchained Melody, available now on the Arrow Books imprint (and thus an extension of the work which Arrow has so far done in publicising Kaji’s work via their existing range of Meiko Kaji releases.)

Mes provides here a meticulous and exhaustive filmography, starting at the very beginning of Kaji’s career with her shortcomings as an ojo-sama, or a ‘well-bred young lady’, the kind of girl generally sought-after in the Japanese cinema of the early 1960s, and how this soon led to rather meatier and more challenging roles – even though this doesn’t mean she was ordinarily as taciturn as she seemed in the Female Prisoner films, and the book does well to point this out. As a means of adding structure to the book, Mes has closed each chapter with a mini-biography of a number of significant directors with whom Kaji has worked – the likes of Masahiro Makino, Yasuharu Hasebe and of course Shunya Ito all figure. He also talks us through her work for a range of successful Japanese studios, each with their own key styles and themes, each who had to adapt, or sink as audience tastes altered. There are also other chapters, one on Kaji’s TV work – a complete void to me, and probably to many other readers – and a chapter on her musical career, although this of course goes hand in hand with her film and TV work. It’s nonetheless interesting in its own right.

There is a tremendous amount of knowledge on display in this book: it’s almost overwhelming in places, perhaps because a lot of these projects are so broadly unknown to us, but for anyone with a desire to know more about Kaji’s career then this book would be an excellent roadmap to guide them through. The emphasis here is very much on the acting work itself, however: this is not a biography in anything but the loosest sense, with little comment on what may have been going on in Kaji’s personal life during her career, for instance. The author’s initial recounting of an interview with the actress in Tokyo in 2006 was clearly a defining moment for him (and I’m not bloody surprised) but it feels unclear whether any specific parts of this interview thread their way through the rest of Unchained Melody; I suspect a lot of existing commentary, from a variety of sources, has been brought together here too. It’s not that the book doesn’t feel personal, exactly, just that the author’s fandom is revealed via his comprehensive knowledge and a range of interesting asides about Japanese culture pertaining to various films and audience trends along the way. This can mean footnotes which would just as comfortably fit into the main body of text, but it all goes to show that Tom Mes knows his stuff and wants to share as much as possible.

This is, despite its detailed approach, a slim volume: it comes in at just over 150 pages, including references, acknowledgements and so forth, in a compact and bijoux 17 x 14cm format. It’s an appropriately attractive book too, with a number of full-page colour images, a large range of hitherto-unseen stills and behind-the-scenes pictures, even including Meiko Kaji grinning (!) out of a Sunsilk shampoo print advert from the 1970s. Unchained Melody also boasts excellent custom colour cover illustrations by artist Nat Marsh.

Unfortunately the book can’t (and doesn’t attempt to) answer the big question, which is: why aren’t current directors, Japanese or otherwise, falling over themselves to hire Meiko Kaji now, considering her documented avowed desire to act again? This is even after her name reappeared in the limelight in the wake of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill series, and even allowing for a couple of unhappy incidents which took her out of the running for a few projects in the noughties. Ah well, we can only hope that renewed interest in her career, coming across through ventures like this book, might lead to audiences seeing her again in cinema. In the meantime, this is a solid piece of work and a definitive guide to Meiko Kaji’s career – hopefully her career to date.

You can find out more about buying Unchained Melody: the Films of Meiko Kaji here. 

Tag (2015)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

I have a real love/hate thing going with Japanese director Sion Sono. On one hand, his so-called ‘hate’ trilogy contains, for me, some of the most genius, subversive films I have ever been immersed in; they’re absolutely jaw-dropping, to the point that I don’t know if I can feasibly revisit Guilty of Romance for fear of washing away that initial impact. He’s also made brilliant cinema with a far more playful edge, albeit for the fact that there’s usually a grim, self-referential message tucked away beneath the many layers of flying limbs and arterial gore. But on the other hand, when I sat down to watch his manga adaptation  – usually an indication that things are about to go straight over my head – by the name of Tokyo Tribe, I have to confess I could stand to watch so little of it that I had to abort watching it at all. And I can usually make it through anything. It kind of goes with the territory. Yet here I was, switching off a film by someone I claimed was one of my favourite directors. A straightforward antipathy to hip-hop isn’t quite enough to explain that one.

So it was with a certain level of trepidation that I sat down to watch Tag (2015), the first of Sion Sono’s films which has made it to Western screens on any sort of broad scale in recent years. And it’s a strange thing to say perhaps, but I felt fairly reassured by one of Tag’s first sequences – an absurd, resplendent gore tableau strongly reminiscent of the still-incredible first reels of Suicide Club (2001). Here, what begins as a cliche-laden girls’ school trip (they’ve even brought feather pillows to fight with!) turns in an instant into a piece of monumental grotesque, with only one girl, Mitsuko (Reina Triendl) surviving a health and safety worst-case scenario on the bus. Sure, this is a strong indicator that we won’t be getting to grips with Kafka this time around, but Tag starts out with nicely familiar handling. After this event, Mitsuko, alone and terrified of whatever improbable force has just offed all her friends, starts running. But in a few minutes, she finds herself on the approach to her high school, where everyone is acting completely normally. Was it all a dream?

Before she has too long to reflect on this, however, Mitsuko, along with some schoolfriends, is bunking off class, with her (apparent) friend Sur (Ami Tomite) ruminating on how you get to stay one step ahead of fate – it’s by acting in increasingly improbable ways, in case you were wondering. You are, though, prepped for another grisly outburst thanks to the cartoonish tone-setting of the early reels, and – hopefully no spoilers here – you’d be right, even though it all comes refracted through an unreal blend of art-house and dreamscape. There are action sequences, too, which marry the sublime and the ridiculous. Can Mitsuko suss out why all of this is happening to her, before she gets showered with limbs? Or, hang on, is she who she thinks she is at all?

In these massively anxious times here in the West, where we have now exerted such a semantic shift on the word ‘historic’ that we almost expect the phrase ‘sexual crimes’ to follow it as a matter of course, it would be fairly easy to look at Tag and see it as exploitative, even if any culture so entangled in issues and non-sequiturs as ours should perhaps step away from that particular glass-house. Still, no doubt there’d be a public outcry if we even expected young girls to wear that standard-issue sailor girl school uniform so symbolic of Japan, let alone then adding an element of undress and/or peril into the mix, which is what I suspect will turn people off Tag primarily. There isn’t really a moral message tacked on here with any earnestness whatsoever, and the unusual all-female cast for the greater share of the film might count for little considering what happens to them, how they behave and how the story turns out.

But whilst the justification for all the things which befall our protagonists feels rather hasty and unconvincing in the end, and perhaps a very short hop from the ultimate cop-out of saying it was all a dream, I think what we have here is, overall, a decent Sion Sono film which joins up with many of the styles and preoccupations he has explored previously and feels, at least, a lot truer to form. Really, he’s getting up to his usual mischief here. He’s splicing ultraviolence and cartoonish splatter with questions about, oh you know, selfhood, free will, memory, fate, all the small stuff, even if not dipping into his passion for literature along the way this time. What’s more, Sion Sono is doing all of this with his usual fantastic imagery, set pieces and symbolism – that innovative bridal bouquet is a clear winner – and, to come back to gender for a moment, he’s executing a meticulous disruption of the old archetype of the ‘yamato nadeshiko’, roughly translated as ‘feminine woman’. (By the way, I am beyond excited to see Sion Sono has recently been working with Asami in Antiporno, a film about the roman porno genre which was quite literally big in Japan in the 60s and 70s.) That in and of itself is pretty subversive stuff in many ways, however you feel about the way things are eventually wrapped up.

Whilst I don’t think that Tag is going to displace any of my favourite work by this director, I think that on the whole there’s enough of a balance between batshit crazy and bizarre philosophising to be able to say that this is an entertaining Sion Sono film: it’s ambitious, dark and daft by turns. Perhaps the biggest compliment I can pay as a sign-off is to say that on several occasions, the grisly action sequences here made me laugh out loud in complete, head-shaking disbelief. That’s something Sion Sono always does impeccably.

Tag (2015) will be released on dual format by Eureka! on 20th November 2017.

Habit (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

It’s always a privilege, in these social media-saturated times, to walk into a film screening without the faintest idea of what it’s all about. As I hadn’t even looked at the Celluloid Screams programme before we sat down to watch Habit (and as I almost immediately mix up titles and synopses anyway) it definitely felt like a boon that I had zero expectations, allowing the film to speak entirely for itself. I’m about to stop this being the case for anyone reading, though, by offering the barest of synopses here: Habit is a dark urban crime thriller which gradually adds horror elements, a claustrophobic and nightmarish tale which perhaps overstretches itself in some key regards, but still deserves credit for many of the things it does very well.

Mikey (Elliot James Langridge) is a bit of a harmless deadbeat, lurching from dole office (where he arrives late) to pub, to club, where he spends all the money he’s just been given and starts again. This all seems to stem from a traumatic childhood experience, a few moments of which we are shown in the opening scenes, but he and his older sister Amanda (Sally Carman) have remained close into adulthood, as much as she’s completely exasperated with his inability to sort himself out. A chance meeting one day throws him into the path of Lee (Jessica Barden), a teenage girl who seems to have nowhere else to go. She promptly installs herself in the life (and flat) of him and his housemate, and the pair soon grow closer.

One day, Mikey accompanies Lee on a visit to her uncle Ian (William Ash), which happens to be in a massage parlour down a dark side-street in Manchester’s city centre. Her uncle seems to be something of a wheeler-dealer, but he helps his niece out and takes an interest in Mikey. Mikey, in good part, takes a keen interest in one of the girls working there, and returns on his own later that night for a promised ‘special offer’. The night doesn’t quite go to plan, though, when he witnesses a violent attack on another man using the premises. Ian’s tactic is to bring Mikey into the fold, offering him a job as a doorman. Mikey needs the money, so he agrees, steadily growing closer to his employer and the rest of the staff in the process, whilst questioning what ‘family’ really means along the way.

Still, this isn’t exactly a legal establishment. Things are going on, and – gradually – Mikey has his eyes opened to what these things are.

Some strong and largely plausible performances allow Habit to generate a sensation of slowly-ratcheting tension, with particular praise here for Langridge, whose turn as an essentially decent young man adrift maintained my interest throughout. The gangland characters were believably menacing, and the dialogue overall did convey, in Mancunian accents, this idea of something bigger and more profoundly wrong going on behind the scenes. So far, so good. The Manchester sights and sounds may call to mind the kinds of gritty TV drama, or indeed the gritty comedy, for which the city is better-known, but that’s only to be expected – regional dialects often crop up this way in the media. I do have to pause on Jessica Barden’s portrayal of Lee though, while we’re on the topic of believability: her tones were a little too cut-glass to really believe she had grown up sofa-surfing in Greater Manchester, but then elements of her writing didn’t help her either – first she’s the innocent bystander whose uncle just wants to keep her out of the mucky business of prostitution, then in a heartbeat, she’s involved after all. Still, these issues didn’t stop me engaging with the film as such, although they gave me pause for thought.

There are plenty of other things which I unequivocally enjoyed about Habit. What’s certainly impressive about the film is how the rain-lashed Manchester nightscapes appear on screen. This is a strong visual feature in the film, with a variety of shots which really make the film feel firmly rooted in its Northern England environment. In some scenes the city looks bustling and alive; in others, the rundown old industrial buildings and dark corners look like something straight out of a dystopia. I’ve always felt like there’s something special about Northern cities with their ‘dark Satanic mills’, even if these mills have been refurbished and let out as plush apartments now. It’s somehow pleasing to see these places represented on screen, even if it’s not necessarily as somewhere relentlessly upbeat. God, where’s the interest in that, anyway?

Still, as much as this isn’t a straightforward horror yarn, it makes sense to talk about the horror that’s there. To give credit where credit’s due, I had suspected some sort of fantastical twist was coming, but the one that turned up wasn’t what I expected. This, in and of itself, is a plus, although the decision to take the film in an entirely new direction brings risks of its own.

The next two paragraphs could be considered a spoiler, so skip it if you want things to remain a complete surprise. I feel I have to mention the following, though, as the comparison to another film I’m about to make seems integral to a criticism I need to make about Habit.

I feel that the newer film owes many of its cues to We Are What We Are, whether the original or the (very competent) Jim Mickle ‘reimagining’ of same, which stayed fairly true to source. In We Are What We Are, the ‘ritual’ which united the loving, but clearly dysfunctional family unit was a surprise and a complication which eventually leads to their undoing; it’s a very, very similar case in Habit. The addition of this maybe-supernatural, definitely-deviant behaviour was, the first time I saw it, an interesting motif which has usually only made it to the screen in the form of mondo documentaries or what is as near to ‘classic’ exploitation cinema as we have, the likes of Ferox et al.

However, as engaging as this new treatment of the cannibalism theme is in We Are What We Are, it brings with it some issues. A little, even just a little more explanation would have benefited the film/s enormously; this doesn’t mean that all loose ends need to be tied up, but some of this would have added a deeper level of understanding for the characters and their motivations. Now, here is where someone on the Habit filmmaking team contacts me to tell me that none of them have even heard of We Are What We Are, so perhaps – perhaps – this may be pure coincidence, but to my mind, the issues which dog the older film cause some of the same issues in Habit. I’d like to know just that shade more about what motivates the characters, or how ‘the family’ were brought together in the first place. If their behaviour makes them feel alive in some new and exciting way, then why, and how does it do so? Admittedly, I don’t know the novel which Habit is based on – this may reveal far more, but going by the film alone is what many, if not most of the film’s viewers will be doing.

For all that this issue casts a slight shadow over the motivations of the characters in the film, however, I did enjoy the escalating nastiness of Habit. It’s now that I come to write my review that I realise how much I did enjoy it, actually. Ultimately it’s all about belonging, and the savage things people will participate in to feel that. It also touches on a very real source of horror – the ways in which people on the fringes of society can simply disappear without trace – and as such, it riffs on the idea of consumption in a brutal and visceral way.

Support Michael Sabbaton’s The Turk

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

It’s fair to say we’re fans of Michael Sabbaton. Seeing Lovecraft on the silver screen has always had its ups and downs, but witnessing the encroaching madness of his protagonists on stage is an altogether more all-encompassing experience, and this is exactly what Michael has achieved with his solo dramatic works so far – The Temple, The Statement of Randolph Carter, The Call of Cthulhu and, most recently, Polaris. For his next project, however, we can expect very different fare.

When I interviewed Michael last year he revealed that he had been working on the idea of The Turk for some time; now, he is focusing his energies on preparing a brand new theatre show, based on this idea and phenomenon which simply wouldn’t rest easy. The Turk is intended to premier in the autumn of 2018, before a general tour in the following New Year. It will be based on a rather curious tale…at which point, I’ll hand over to Mr. Sabbaton himself. Engage cut and paste mode:

‘In 1770 an incredible ‘thinking machine’ was presented to Empress Maria Theresa of Austria that was to influence and bamboozle the world for over 80 years.  

‘A life-sized, mechanical automaton in the fashionable garb of a ‘mysterious’ Turk gazed down onto two opposing armies of chessmen. A key was inserted, the mechanism wound and in a whirring of clockwork The Turk came to life, raising its head and making its move. The Turk appeared an impressive machine but behind the cogs was it all that it seemed?  

‘Originally built as ‘a mere bagatelle’ by the court engineer, Wolfgang Von Kempelen, The Turk became such a spectacle that it was soon sent on tour to showcase its performance. All across the chess boards of Europe, The Turk gained a reputation as a masterful player astounding the crowds and only adding to its ever growing mystery.  

‘Some years later, after Kempelen had died and The Turk near forgotten, another engineer and maker of automata eventually took possession. Johann Nepomuk Maelzel was more of the natural showman than Kempelen and embarked on worldwide tours eventually settling in Philadelphia. Maelzel was lavish, vain and ethically unscrupulous living fast and promoting The Turk at every opportunity. Maelzel’s shameless and often underhanded opportunism regularly left him in trouble or on the run from those he would exploit. At the end of his life he found himself alone, penniless and diseased with only his past regrets and a solitary case of fine wine to share with his only, automaton friend.  

‘Time passed, and eventually forgotten about once again in a corner of a dusty museum, The Turk finally met its own end. Consumed in a fire spread from a nearby theatre, The Turk stared out of the burning pyre and from behind a curtain of flame gave its final bow.  

‘With historical opponents from Napoleon to Beethoven, Barnum to Babbage, Benjamin Franklin to Edgar Allan Poe, The Turk’s enigmatic legacy of technology and chess paved the way for the future of computing, automation, artificial intelligence and even magic. In my show, and through the yellow-fevered eyes of a drunken and dying Maelzel, these themes will be presented as a philosophy of being and a morality of life.’ 

Existence, autonomy, sanity, humanity – all themes which have recurred over and over in literature since this ‘incredible thinking machine’ was first made. You only need look as far as Frankenstein, a word we’ve since co-opted to mean ‘any science which makes us uncomfortable’, to see what anxieties the new sciences and philosophies could and can engender. It’s intended that The Turk will be a real piece of spectacle, with light and sound working together to present audiences with something genuinely innovative and engaging. As it does so, it’ll delve into many of the themes which Michael Sabbaton has already vividly brought to life on stage.

We’re very, very selective about promoting Kickstarters here on the site: it’s rare you’ll ever see us mention them at all, so know when we do, it’s because we feel that the proposed project is something really special. Someone who puts such extraordinary levels of effort into his craft as Michael Sabbaton definitely fits the bill; there aren’t many people out there creating completely original stories like this one, much less within the immersive world of horror theatre. If you feel that you’d like to help The Turk come to life, then please check out Michael’s fundraising page for more details and help spread the word.

The Endless (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

I’ve followed the careers of directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead with interest ever since I covered their challenging and innovative feature debut, Resolution, back in 2012. I loved the way that the film combined interesting characters, plausible dialogue and a type of slow-burn horror which was quite unlike anything else I’d seen. It’s rare to see filmmakers do something quite so unpredictable on a shoestring, and their second feature, Spring (2014) was just as ambitious. These guys have never felt the need to make a string of tester short films to find their own style, and although they work together very closely, manning most of the key development roles in their own films, they’ve thus far avoided the affliction of the indie filmmaker: an inability to edit their own work. Their films are economical in many respects but achieve a great deal, and consequently I had high hopes for The Endless, their new, third feature-length. Here, the two directors are taking on yet another role – actually starring in their film, but this works well; I soon forgot I was watching the directors directing themselves and got absorbed by events on screen.

Justin and Aaron (as in the characters) are living the dream. You know, that awful dream where you work your fingers to the bone to make minimum wage cleaning up after other people simply to eke out an existence. Justin seems to have made peace with this; his brother, Aaron, has not. Admittedly, their lives have never been easy or straightforward: ten years ago, they escaped from a place called Camp Arcadia, a cult where they had both been raised. Justin masterminded their escape with the best of intentions, but Aaron is struggling with his so-called freedom. Receiving a mysterious video through the post – where one of the inmates of the camp seems to be alluding to some sort of suicide pact – only helps to drive Aaron towards a decision: he wants to go back. Not to stay, he insists, but to say a proper goodbye. Justin reluctantly agrees to go with him, and so they make the long drive into the back of beyond.

When I first saw that there was an ominous circle motif being repeated, then a huge circular pit at the camp, I thought: Jug Face. Was this going to be another tale about an isolated community gone rogue, playing by its own rules? Well, in a way that’s true, but any expectations of blank-eyed backwoods folk were not to be fulfilled. Jug Face is a superb film, but this particular cult isn’t savage. Far from it.

Things at the camp are…fine. Better than fine. There’s been no Kool Aid incident, and if anything, life at Camp Arcadia compares all too favourably with life on the outside. Sure, it’s a little remote, but all that fresh air, fresh food and homemade beer seems like a far better deal than snacking on ready meals in-between cleaning jobs. The people who live there seem quite normal, too, and with the exception of ‘Smiling Dave’, no one appears particularly happy-clappy. Hal, the leader of the group (though he protests otherwise) seems pleased to see the two brothers, and they’re made welcome. So far, so good. Thing is, when they ask a girl called Anna why she sent them that strange video message, she (plausibly) denies all knowledge of it. The most obvious question – the question of who really sent it – soon breeds others. There seems to be some sort of malign force at play which has brought the brothers back to Camp Arcadia, for some as-of-yet inexplicable reason. As Justin and Aaron begin to understand all of this, the fabric of everything seems about to rend in two: at the camp, time and place are not what they seem.

I really feel that saying much more about the plot would spoil it, so please forgive all the following abstractions…

The Endless is not shy of grappling with themes which are terrifying enough in their complexity at the best of times, adding its palpable sense of unease by slow, expertly-wrought degrees. Our vulnerability to something vast and humbling like time itself has long been a source of horror, so the addition of – potentially – a pernicious unknown behind the scenes is both unsettling and ambitious. Linked to this is the idea that personal freedom itself is dubious – something else we don’t like to dwell on, something else that scares us. It would be easy to throw in the word ‘Lovecraftian’ here, and yes, there are a few key moments where that author comes to mind; I’d argue there are some links with his short story, The Unnamable [sic] amongst others. And, like Lovecraft, The Endless knows better than to straightforwardly show its hand. Retaining elements of mystery is key to the film’s success.

To leave it at that would undersell the film, though. Unlike Lovecraft, slivers of (intentional) humour underpin the growing sense of alienation throughout without undermining the darker elements. Sympathetic portrayals of Aaron and Justin, a first starring role for Benson and Moorhead, also allow a more relaxed, relatable feel to the film. The Endless is beautifully shot, too, with a sense of space and place which dwarfs its characters.

Benson and Moorhead have past form with this kind of ambitious handling. I credited Spring (2014) with how successfully it realised a lofty aim: creating a brand new mythology. Here, by linking in with other themes Moorhead and Benson have explored on film previously – and I’ll say no more about that here – The Endless successfully merges a study of family dynamics with something altogether more horrific. It’s believably realistic at the same time that it’s abstract and alienating. A lot of that stems from the terrors of analogue technology, used to subtle but compelling effect here once again. I think people of a certain age – namely those growing up in the Eighties and Nineties – will appreciate the fact that the visual distortions and audio disturbances on old video and audio tapes could be very creepy indeed. This theme appeared in Resolution, and it’s used to superb effect in The Endless.

Honestly, in many ways this has been a tough review to write – not because I have nothing to say, clearly – all these words in – but because I’m struggling to think of ways to balance out all the praise. But then, the first two films each made my top three films of their release year, so I suppose there’s no real reason to play coy now. The Endless is an intricate and subtle horror which never quite shows its hand. Messrs Benson and Moorhouse should be known absolutely everywhere by now; that they’re not is disappointing, no doubt more for them than for us, but while we live in a world where huge studios effectively buy people’s admiration, it makes this kind of unique cinema all the more compelling. See it if you can. In fact, see all of their films, and don’t skimp on Resolution. They all deserve your time.

I Remember You (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Being a tiny nation, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Iceland hasn’t yet featured very prominently, in its own right, in cinema. Its stunning and evocative landscapes have been used a thousand times in films which simply seek a striking location, but it’s comparatively rare to see Icelandic people, language and stories making their own way to the screen – at least for audiences outside of the country. For this reason alone, it’s welcome to see I Remember You (Ég man þig) – an Icelandic thriller which unites the noir stylings of popular TV shows like The Killing and The Bridge with something altogether more supernatural, more intangible. To achieve this – which it does, largely effectively – it relays an extensive story via two seemingly separate narrative arcs. 

We first encounter a doctor, Freyr, apparently a psychiatrist (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson) but enrolled to attend a death scene out of sheer necessity, when an elderly woman commits suicide in a remote church. She’d clearly died in some distress, having trashed the church’s interior and carved numerous crosses into the walls before hanging herself. The mystery deepens; the crosses carved into the walls have also been carved into her flesh, by whom we do not know: it’s something which has apparently been taking place for years given the differing degrees of scarring. Alongside detective Dagný (Sara Dögg Ásgeirsdóttir) Freyr becomes embroiled in trying to understand the reason for this death. Examinations of her background reveal that a number of people from her childhood have also died in strange circumstances – in fact, only two of the children from an ominously defaced group photograph are still alive, whilst another boy disappeared decades previously, never to be seen again. This would all be troubling enough, but when the elderly survivors seem to know something about Freyr’s son Benny – himself long missing, presumed dead – then Freyr has to follow the mystery to its origins. 

Elsewhere, husband and wife Garðar and Katrín (Thor Kristjansson and Anna Gunndís Guðmundsdóttir) arrive in a weathered corner of the country with the goal of renovating a dilapidated shack in what was once a whaling village, long since abandoned. Katrín’s friend Líf has come along to help out, and on the surface, they seem a happy trio who aren’t afraid of the hard work ahead; there’s money to be made from the tourism which summer will bring, Katrín asserts. However, the ulterior motive behind all of this also pertains to a lost child. Katrín recently gave birth to a stillborn son, and the resulting pressure on the marriage caused a rift which is only just healing. Things are not as promising as they seem, however, and the cracks are soon to show, but Katrín seems to be prone to seeing and hearing things which seem to be supernatural in origin. The more she seems affected, the more issues between her and Garðar come to the fore; is she seeing the ghost of a little boy in the property because of her own trauma and her own situation? Or is there something else at play?

How these two stories will intertwine is kept quiet for a large share of the film, with each story generating its own interest (and several low-key scares); course, you can probably gather that they will, eventually, overlap, and to give credit to writer/director Óskar Thór Axelsson, it’s quite hard to predict the process. That said, it feels like a long road to get to this point: the film runs at 105 minutes, which in today’s climate is not that long at all, but given the deliberation and pace of I Remember You, it feels somewhat longer. If you have patience for these kinds of slow-burn thrillers, then I would say there’s plenty there to reward it, but if you prefer your films more tightly-wrought then you may also feel that this film meanders in places.

Still, what a place to meander: part of the joy (if that’s the right term) of so much of this scandi noir comes simply from looking at the Scandinavian locations where these various shades of hell are unfolding. Like its neighbours, on one hand Iceland is neat, orderly and picturesque, and on the other it’s stark, barren and oddly colourless: these places look like nowhere else on earth. In fact, it’s a wonder more specifically supernatural cinema isn’t coming from Scandinavia, as the whole ethos of order being overshadowed by something sublime and terrifying is right there in the landscapes and the towns in equal part. I Remember You also has decent performances throughout, which underpins the unsettling horror at its core: lost, dead children, and the impact this has on their surviving relatives, especially parents. Still, this has been done elsewhere in recent years: the stark locations notwithstanding, I Remember You is thematically quite similar to The Orphanage, with a similar balance of mystery and supernatural phenomena (mercifully brought to the screen with a minimum amount of jump scares, though a few black-eyed child ghosts, which seem irresistible to filmmakers everywhere). The problem is, once you spot this similarity, many of the mysteries may lose a little something, but this is to be expected when there are comparatively so few modern ghost stories which rely on this kind of mystery-solving.

All in all, however, I Remember You is a well-shot film which shows us that ghosts inhabit the bleakest corners. It lingers over its exposition in ways which may challenge the patience of some viewers, but those who enjoy things to move a little slower and quieter will find plenty here. Not an instant classic perhaps, but an aesthetically-pleasing slow burn chiller nonetheless.

 

Borley Rectory (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

For many of us growing up in the Seventies and Eighties, being terrified by the Borley Rectory hauntings was practically a rite of passage. For my part, I must have been around nine years old, I’d guess, and found out about ‘the most haunted house in England’ from a Readers’ Digest Mysteries of the Unexplained compendium. There were other tales of ghostly phenomena which also fascinated and appalled me – the Matthew Manning story, the Bell Witch case – but the allegedly ghostly scrawls addressed to ‘Marianne’ really fixed themselves in my imagination. I couldn’t bring myself to re-read the section on Borley Rectory for weeks at a time, but thought about it constantly, even beginning to practise my own automatic writing after I read about its use in Borley – thus, terrifying myself even more.

I’m clearly not alone in this; many people of around my age need only hear the phrase ‘Usborne Book of Ghosts’ and they’re off into a kind of traumatic nostalgia trip – the kind which seems uniquely beloved of horror fans, this drive towards recapturing the halcyon terrors of childhood. This makes it all the more unusual that a cinematic take on the Borley Rectory hauntings has been so long in coming, Haunting at the Rectory (2015) notwithstanding, and even if several superb haunted house movies (such as The Legend of Hell House) have already taken their cues from the case. Director Ashley Thorpe originally intended to make his Borley Rectory a short film; years have ensued, the project has grown, and the resultant film is a feature length offering.

Some sort of potted history would seem to make sense here, given the framework used in the film itself, but then the history of Borley Rectory, in Essex, England, is a convoluted, complex one. Originally built on the site during the Victorian era, the first inhabitants of the house – the Bull family – soon reported ghostly phenomena, such as footsteps, and the apparition of what seemed to be a nun, walking in the grounds. A combination of local rumours and the literary imaginations of the Bull daughters no doubt fuelled an atmosphere of suggestibility, but it seems that the people involved were very earnest about what they had seen. By the time that the Bull family vacated the living, with Harry Bull dying in the late 1920s, the rectory’s reputation was firmly established.

In 1929, Mr and Mrs Smith became the new incumbents, and the supernatural phenomena persisted; the family eventually contacted The Daily Mirror newspaper, asking for their help in contacting the Society for Psychical Research, and a series of sensationalist articles duly appeared before the newspaper facilitated the involvement of Harry Price, a notorious ‘ghost hunter’ of his day. After the Smiths left and the Foysters moved in during 1930, Price maintained his interest, and in many ways the phenomena seemed to intensify around the Foysters, particularly Mrs Marianne Foyster. Allegations of faking phenomena dogged Price throughout his professional life and Borley was no exception, but certainly Price’s involvement helped to cement a public interest in the place which has endured for the best part of a century, and after the Foysters, too, left Borley Rectory, Price and his team even took the unusual step of leasing the property for a year. Further spirit messages were communicated to members of his team during this time, including the prophecy that the Rectory would soon burn to the ground: this it did, in 1939, with at least one witness claiming to have seen a ghostly nun at an upstairs window…

Borley Rectory (2017) is unusually framed as a documentary film, exploring and discussing the events mentioned above in largely linear order with the help of a narrator – none other than Julian Sands. Ashley Thorpe explained at the screening that his film had been heavily influenced by his own childhood nostalgia for spooky 70s TV, such as the works of Lawrence Gordon Clark and the Armchair Thriller series, which had a scary ghost nun of its own. I’m sure I saw some Ghost Story for Christmas artwork tucked away in one of the sequences, too. However, Thorpe also mentioned a love of 1920s and 30s Hollywood horror, which seems altogether heavier in the mix: Borley Rectory is shot entirely in black and white, and the actors wear the heavily stylised costumes and make-up beloved of, say, early James Whale cinema. Whilst it’s somewhat engaging to see some well-beloved actors both dressed in period costume and acting accordingly – with Reece Shearsmith as the Daily Mirror reporter, Nicholas Vince as Reverend Smith and author Jonathan Rigby as Price himself, the rather studied delivery somewhat dwarfs any stylistic links to the barely-glimpsed horrors of Gordon Clark.

This brings me to my biggest gripe with Borley Rectory, something concomitant with the chosen acting approach. It’s the animation. Rather than a conventional shoot, the film was shot entirely on green-screen and then pieced together; the actors themselves were never shot on any location, it was all done and dusted in a few days, and then the film was built around them. I don’t doubt that this is a meticulous process, and doubly so for sequences such as the pop-up book, which I acknowledge was built on the back of careful research and application. I also know that there are other forces at work and other considerations to be made in judging how best to put a film together, made all the more difficult by the vastness of the Borley history. Some viewers may love this painstaking approach. However, the effect for me was to make me feel doubly distanced from the events taking place on screen. An altogether quieter, more conventional framework would, I feel, have better served the story. The ambition here is clear, but ultimately, the flashy visuals engulfed the haunting.

That all aside, it was certainly enjoyable to see something so oddly beloved finally make the leap from the printed page to the screen. Perhaps the most salient point which Borley Rectory successfully communicates, is that a haunting seems to be very much like a relationship; people, with all of their flaws and ulterior motives, imprint upon the phenomena they report; in some cases, their flaws make the phenomena altogether. This is one of the most confounding but fascinating aspects to any alleged haunting, and Borley Rectory – the place –  seems to have been an example of this par excellence. It’s fitting that Borley Rectory – the film – successfully makes this point, whatever my misgivings about its visual style.

 

Doubleplusungood (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The legacy of Catholicism in French and Belgian left-field cinema seems to mean a strange predilection for Christian themes, although it finds its form in curious ways. In recent years we’ve had Calvaire, made in 2004 (retitled ‘The Ordeal’ for English audiences, which neatly strips it of its Biblical meaning), the Christmas creation horrors of Satan (2006) and of course Martyrs (2008). Now, ten years later, we have something which merges crime drama with something altogether more spiritual and not a little gonzo: voila, Doubleplusungood.

Doubleplusungood (and I’m using the one-word form here after IMDb) at least ostensibly looks like a very different deal to the films aforementioned: we start with a gritty Man Bites Dog-looking black and white intro and meet our key character, whilst a voiceover regales the audience with the pleasures of operating in the criminal underworld. But we move on, fifteen years (and into sharp colour) to pick up with the narrative and narrator again. Yep, it’s the same guy, same dark streets in an unspecified location, and now he’s on a specific mission. He’s on a theologically-tinged quest to terminate the so-called Twelve Apostles of Lucifer; organised into a so-called ‘Pyramid of Power’, our guy proceeds to ‘climb’ said pyramid, dismantling the apostles’ hold on his society as he goes.

The film therefore follows the pattern of our protagonist, Dago Cassandra, working steadily through a hitlist; the apostles he’s seeking are a disparate bunch, but overall, they appear to be low grade crooks, and (hopefully no spoilers here) they get offed in a series of increasingly grisly ways – whilst all the while, a mysterious key player seems to be monitoring proceedings from a shady office, and you get the distinct impression that he will figure prominently over the course of things. The involvement of a character called Eve is a further complicating presence, but this allows further asides about the nature of religion and morality – this is all context which clearly underpins Doubleplusungood throughout.

In this recognisable, but unnamed country, with an apparently supernatural frame and a heavy reliance on dialogue (or more often, monologue) in order to explicate all of this, one thing leaps to mind here: Tarkovsky. Like Tarkovsky, the presence of fantasy (or in the more established director’s case, sci-fi) elements is more a means of allowing us to explore characters and how they behave under extreme, unexpected circumstances than a means to study the fantastical – it’s all about the melting pot of human drama. There’s definitely something of this in Doubleplusungood. However, as the film takes place on the streets of what at least looks like a conventional European city setting, it’s far more streetwise than Tarkovsky, and there are some elements of worldly, or at least world-weary humour along the way here.

The film, for all its unusual contextual factors, is however broadly linear: it takes its unconventional elements on a pretty straightforward journey through a series of kills, which can feel repetitive, despite the film’s efforts to draw down interest via its inventively-nasty sequences. The film certainly steers away from conventional style or approach throughout: it’s thoughtfully shot, with a wide range of locales and lots of artistic, experimental detail (even veering into psychedelia on occasion). There is undeniably something of the new-wave of French/Belgian horror cinema in the way Doubleplusungood looks, with lots of that blueish colourisation, though it’s still far more of a crime thriller overall. That said, we do see a bit of ‘implement torture’ going on here, which also chimes with those new wave horrors.

This brings me to another of the film’s features, and probably the one I have most problem with: the voiceover technique employed. Doubleplusungood makes heavy use of a voiceover (by the central protagonist) to explain most of its goings-on, which – considering the mysterious elements in the film – it could have dialled back, leaving the situations to speak for themselves. Having all the elements of the plot explained along the way felt like heavy going at times, and the heavy American accent being attempted, whilst possibly intended to further the film’s sense of rootlessness, was an oddly jarring decision which raises as many questions as it answers.

Still, Doubleplusungood is stylish throughout, even if it’s a little too free-floating at times in the way it draws all its action from a largely straightforward journey (once we accept the divine calling behind the killing spree, that is). This is undoubtedly an experimental, attractive and ambitious film in anyone’s book, though perhaps needs a few more moments of key dramatic development to justify and sustain the wide range of creative styles it uses.

Torso (1973)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Honestly, I’m the sort of reviewer who thinks that the vast majority of slashers (and many gialli) are better enjoyed as still images than films – being largely an array of stylish, bloody set pieces only loosely linked by some sort of plot – so watching Sergio Martino’s crossover film Torso was an opportunity for me to test my misgivings about this type of catch ’em and kill ’em horror. His other work has been pretty diverse fare in its way, after all, and a who’s who of cult film stars helps to underpin the potential of the film under discussion. Worth a shot, right?

Well, the heady mix of sex and death promised by the film’s subtitle (‘Carnal Horror’) is present and correct straight away, so at least false advertising is not a charge we can comfortably bring against Torso. We’re straight in with the nudity, albeit with some strategic creepy doll placement which not only spares the lady in question’s blushes, but seems likely to be Plot Relevant. Creepy dolls in Italian horror tend to be there for a reason, I find. The opening sex scene quickly turns into a soft-focus tableau, but something sinister is going on in the background. Someone’s snapping away with a camera – an example of voyeurism which will recur throughout Torso. Following this, we’re taken on in time to an art lecture in Perugia, Italy, and a lecture on what the lecturer believes to be the unconvincing torments of arguably an early vision of torture porn, Saint Sebastian, as imagined by artist Peregino: after discussing the finer points of Saint Sebastian’s representation, the largely hot and pouty student body make time for play, which soon gives way to yet more surveillance: this time, a masked figure watches a couple unbelievably manage to get it on in a Mini (and an old Mini, too) before dispatching the lovers in a gruesome manner. Shock ripples through the campus, and as a group of friends try to solve the mystery, it seems as if there’s a large number of potential suspects at hand.

This is possible – and plausible – because, my word, director Martino has made practically all of his eligible bachelors here completely nightmarish. Scrub that; it’s all but maybe one or two of the male characters in the film. The men are by turns sinister, lowering, socially awkward (which on its own would be fine) and completely unable to appreciate that women might have plans of their own which don’t involve accommodating them. Oh, and there’s that whole thing where at least one man is so repressed that he’d rather maim a beautiful girl than accept her on her own terms. This network of weasels pops up throughout the film, and whilst a good share of what they do or say is obviously designed to repel, you can’t help feeling that a lot of the dialogue was scripted and spoken in good faith – it simply happens to sound positively creepy now. Torso also falls into the slasher/giallo trope of trying very hard to be liberated – lots of flesh on display throughout – but ultimately, it still often feels rather arch and prim in that its transgressions need to be paid for with restorative violence. Of course, it’s unfair to criticise a single film for clearly following a generic formula, as Martino intended for Torso, but by the same token, knowing that any boobs on screen will probably be followed up with some sort of assault isn’t necessarily that engaging for the most part, either.

All of that said, Torso does achieve many things which distinguish it against a crowded field of carved-up nubile flesh. It boasts beautiful locations (mind, Italian cities seem to do the hard work by themselves) and some scenes border on the supernatural, in ways beloved of Martino’s near-contemporary Michele Soavi. It’s also an incredibly tactile film, with close attention to small details; whilst the gore FX haven’t aged particularly well, they’re very brief, whilst interesting, unusual shots (such as a woman’s hands palpating mud) show artistic flair. And, after moving all of its pieces into position for benefit of the big whodunnit, the film generates tension very effectively: yes, this takes time, but the closing twenty minutes or so give a good pay-off for all that has come before, resulting in a genuinely gripping finale. I’m not sure I can say that Torso has won me over fully to this style of filmmaking, but certainly, this is an arresting example of its genre, which manages some real surprises, in amongst the various nods to Bava et al.

Shameless Films have gone the extra distance in putting together this Blu-ray edition, splicing hitherto missing footage (subtitled rather than dubbed) into a well-presented, well-packaged release. Alongside the standard Shameless trailers, there’s also an extra feature starring Sergio Martino. You can find out more purchasing Torso here. 

 

Willard (1971) and Ben (1972)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

1970s cinema has many noteworthy qualities, but amongst these, the decade is certainly remarkable for its brief, but intriguing phase of imagining animals ‘going rogue’ and attacking humans; some of the resulting films were breakthrough hits, such as Jaws (1975), whereas some, such as Day of the Animals (1977) would be long-lost to obscurity if the DVD age hadn’t decided seeing Leslie Nielsen wrestling a grizzly bear was too good to pass up. Before sharks, bears and other beasts were redressing the natural balance, however, there was Willard (1971) – a film where it’s the humble rat who’s up to no good, though all at the behest of a rather lonely young man. I suppose the initial premise makes some sense: compare the number of people killed by sharks to the number killed by rats over the centuries, and the rat is definitely king – though to be fair to rats, they’ve simply been clearing up after Man for millennia, fighting over the same resources, often dying of the same things, whilst not being particularly deferential along the way.

Willard himself is a rather feckless young man: he has a white-collar job as a cashier at the ultimate blue-collar business, a steel mill: he clearly doesn’t fit in there, and when he returns to the sprawling but tumble-down home which he shares with his mother (Elsa Lanchester), he’s frequently surrounded by elderly family members and family friends who can’t understand why he doesn’t use his initiative at work to get further on in life. The plant once belonged to his father, after all. After a particularly abortive 27th birthday party, Willard – miserable and brow-beaten – disappears outside. He sees a rat out there, but rather than call Rentokill, he throws the creature a few crumbs, which – being a rat – it happily eats. As escapism goes, it’s not orthodox, but Willard continues to feed the rats he sees, lying to his mother that he’s got rid of them. He even tries to obey her command to kill them off on one occasion, but he can’t face it: soon, Willard is spending more time with his growing cabal of rats, training them to perform simple commands.

To state the bleeding obvious, anyone with a rat phobia is going to have problems with Willard: the rat cast is actually quite large, though these are of course fancy rats (the tame variety) rather than wild rats. They’re quite well-trained, too, which makes the film’s initial premise seem more plausible than it might otherwise; I used to keep fancy rats myself, and I can verify that they’re surprisingly bright little critters who can learn basic commands, even if they then choose to do the opposite of what they’re meant to be doing at twice the speed. Course, I’ve never (yet) tried to train a rat to take vengeance on a malingering boss, as Willard eventually does: as his life begins to unravel, the command he exerts on his rat posse becomes more and more unlikely. The film is chiefly about a man losing control over his life, however: the rats are an engaging sideshow, but the spotlight is very much on Willard.

With these rather gentler kinds of exploitation films – y’know, where the goings-on are incredibly unlikely but there’s a story behind it – it’s completely possible to take them on face value. You can do that with Willard: sad loser wreaks havoc on an unfair world. It’s interesting, though, if you can be persuaded to look a little further, to see a young man up against a system which seems completely stacked against the young. The only people who own anything are resolutely much, much older: the Willard family business has gone to an opportunistic post-World War II businessman; Willard’s remaining family are ageing; he has no siblings; even the people meant to care for him or about him are ludicrously out of touch. The 1970s inhabited by our main character is a very lonely place – lonely enough for him to make friends with creatures usually considered vermin. He has no control over who comes and goes at his own home, either: let me potentially be the first person to compare Willard to mother! (2017) in that he continually finds people letting themselves in, talking about helping themselves to his house, and there’s even an impromptu funeral bash which he hasn’t organised.

Still, for all the extremes of unlikelihood which ensue, with rats eventually rebelling against their master, Willard is by and large a fairly quiet film, with only one or two scenes which go beyond this. Really speaking, Willard is an interesting oddity in the ‘careful what you wish for’ category, an engagingly dismal look at 70s America.

Clearly, it was modestly successful enough to give rise to a sequel: Ben (1972) appeared just the next year, this time named for the particularly intelligent rat rather than for yet another lonely human whom he would ‘work alongside’. Ben therefore shifts focus, escalating the horror which only constituted a fragment of the earlier film and adding extra rat attacks on humans. And yes, it’s a bloody weird quirk of history that the late Michael Jackson sang on the film’s soundtrack: perhaps people don’t realise that the King of Pop was in fact serenading a hyper-intelligent killer rat, but there we go.

In the sequel, Willard’s rat posse have escaped and decided to go it alone, moving into the sewers beneath the city. Forging a link to Willard before it, people establish that Ben is the leader of the rats via some pages from Willard’s diary (which we never saw him keep, but hey.) This eventually throws them into the path of a young lad, Danny, who is being bullied and suffers from a heart condition: Danny befriends Ben in particular, and Ben – who is already rather comfortable with people – becomes his best mate/avenging angel, protecting him from the bullies. Thing is, Ben the rat isn’t always a force for good. Ben and his crew aren’t too keen on human intervention in their now-habitat, and anyone making the mistake gets attacked by a whirlwind of flying rodents; again, probably not safe terrain for a phobic.

Ben (1972) feels as rushed as it no doubt was, but it’s interesting in how it manages to generate some sympathy for a pack of occasionally hostile rats led by an oddly prescient rat. It retains the same half-eye on the underbelly of America, too, with lots of clambering about in the tunnels beneath the streets. The performance given by Danny (Lee Harcourt Montgomery) swings the focus, though, now that we have a victimised child in the frame, rather than an isolated adult. By the end, you even find yourself gunning for the child/rat combo rather than the people meant to be sorting things out, which happens despite all of the film’s flaws and overdependence on simply chucking more rats into the mix. Their friendship is even a little Disney, considering all that’s gone before – which includes the addition of flamethrowers.

Truth be told, neither Willard nor Ben are superb films and Ben is the weaker, but they’re certainly quite unlike anything else, and they have had some influence elsewhere. Willard even got a fairly glossy remake/’reimagining’ in the Noughties featuring cult actor Crispin Hellion Glover, so its reach was definitely there. Willard, in particular, is also notable for a surprising cast featuring ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ Elsa Lanchester in one of her last roles, alongside Ernest Borgnine as the execrable boss. There’s enough here to entertain and some material which can surprise. Well, you can now own this ratsploitation double bill in an attractive limited edition Blu-Ray box set: the good folk at Second Sight are about to release this, and you can find out more about it here.

Sneak Peak: Adam Mason’s Empire of Dirt

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Few modern directors have such a distinctive, visceral style as Adam Mason, and it’s fair to say that I’ve taken a keen interest in his career so far: over the years I’ve reviewed his feature films Blood River, Pig, Luster, Junkie, and Hangman, and also interviewed Adam (together with collaborator Simon Boyes). I’ve always felt excited and challenged by his work. So obviously, when I got the opportunity to take a look at his brand new short film, Empire of Dirt, I jumped at it.

Rather than a straightforward stand-alone short film, Empire of Dirt is intended to introduce characters and themes which will be explored fully in a feature-length offering. As such, no time is wasted: we’re shown, briefly, that these events are taking place in Manilla, 1997, and then we’re straight in to a frantic shootout, followed by a skirmish in a dilapidated building. It seems as though our protagonist is coming to the aid of a desperate, terrified woman, at least on first impressions: whatever his loyalty to her is, he pitches himself into some gritty, bloody and physical action, killing those he finds, with the violence happening both on and off screen. It’s a testament to Mason’s directorial abilities here that, even in a few short minutes, you feel as disturbed by the violence taking place off-screen as you do the violence in front of you.

However, any resolution to all of this is withheld: the film executes a radical shift, revealing to us that there is far more here than meets the eye. Our main character is acting under duress; supernatural elements are briefly introduced and we see enough to appreciate that that this isn’t some standard hitman, and the girl he’s saving? The first glance didn’t reveal everything about her, and she isn’t what she seems to be. Quickly, the film moves from its harsh realism into nightmare.

As a taster of a potentially full-length film, Empire of Dirt merges enough of the raw and the bizarre to suggest a deeply-intriguing and engaging tale could follow. It is full of that vivid claustrophobia which Mason does so well, and it looks superb, with strong palates of reds, blues and greens. The resonant music keeps up the emotional weight throughout, and the introduction of those otherworldly elements, even in a few short minutes, raises the tension of the film to an almost unbearable level, suggesting that we can expect a particularly grisly spin on haunting, conscience and revenge. I’m certainly curious…

There’s a great deal within Empire of Dirt which would reward development into a feature length format, and I look forward to being able to comment on the whole story.