By Kit Rathenar
I think this may mark the most times that Brutal As Hell has ever reviewed a single movie, given that we’ve covered this one here, here and here already. That being the case, I was asked in this review of Monster Pictures’ UK release of the already-legendary anthology film The ABCs of Death to focus on the DVD extras as well as the finished product itself. As it happens, the extras are almost all specific to the individual shorts, so I’m simply going to go through, do some ultra-brief reviews and tell you what you get for your money in the extras for each short in turn…
A – Apocalypse. I’m impressed with Nacho Vigalondo for squeezing trauma, tragedy and a twist into such a short piece with both humanity and narrative sophistication. Sadly, the only extra here is a short clip showing how one of the special effects was done – a shame for a film that was very much more about character and story than it was about splatter to begin with.
B – Bigfoot. Adrían Garcia Bogliano offers an evocative, well-executed and darkly playful take on the myth of the boogeyman. This one stood well on its own, but the DVD adds a routine but watchable “making of” clip that isn’t terribly informative, but still conveys the impression of a team of professionals not afraid to have fun doing their jobs.
C – Cycle. A tightly focused little exercise in the macabre that answers no questions but leaves the viewer with a strangely queasy sense of comprehension nonetheless, from Ernesto Díaz Espinoza. As extras, he’s provided a couple of deleted scenes – whose deletion makes perfect sense, as they wouldn’t have added anything to this stiletto-sharp little piece for being left in.
D – Dogfight (see main image). Marcel Sarmiento supplies my favourite film of the entire ABCs with this emotional curveball of a short that takes the relationship between a man and his best friend in a gut-punching new direction. If anyone in the entire ABCs deserves a Best Actor award, it’s Riley the dog; which is why I was delighted to discover that the “making of” bonus feature shows – with reassuring openness – the tricks, effects and awe-inspiring levels of dog-training that went into creating this beautifully savage film without harming either human or animal stars. A genuine masterpiece.
E – Exterminate. I’m not a fan of spiders and Angela Bettis does nothing to change my mind with this disappointingly simplistic riff on a particular horror trope that thankfully is mostly restricted to the realms of urban legend. No extras.
F – Fart. There are two kinds of people in the world – those who find fart jokes funny and those who don’t. From what I can tell, most of the population of Japan consists of the former, and certainly Noburu Iguchi is one of them. Despite its resoundingly absurd premise this light-hearted little romance-with-a-twist had me laughing for the duration, and the attached making-of reveals that it did pretty much the same for the cast and crew. I defy even the most po-faced critic not to chuckle somewhere along the line here.
G – Gravity. A snapshot of tragedy in paradise from Andrew Traucki, utterly stripped of context but still leaving a coldness in the gut. No extras.
H – Hydro-Electric Diffusion. Thomas Malling’s surreal riff on a Nazisploitation flick could have equally well been filed under F – for either Furries or Fascists, which aren’t two things I usually expect to see together. Despite this, taken for what it is this tale of the good, the bad and Third Reich mad science is well worth a look and a smile. The extras here are a little too extensive and repetitive (the parallel screening of the finished and making-of versions of the film doesn’t add anything to the making-of itself) but the how-to of making really convincing anthropomorphic animal masks might be of interest to many viewers and practical use to a few…
I – Ingrown. I was halfway to writing off Jorge Michael Grau’s painful little lock-in sequence of a woman’s victimisation and death as mere torture porn until I saw, in the final credits, the words “2015 women murdered in the last 10 years in Mexico… the horror is not on the screen”. And when Grau explains in the making-of how this message was deliberately framed to dovetail with the film itself, I realised that the compilers of the ABCs did this stark little piece a huge disservice when they moved all the credits to the end en masse. Respect to Grau for sacrificing his chance to make a merely artistic statement, in favour of this obviously far more personally significant one.
J – Jidai-geki (“Samurai movie”). About all I could glean from this is that Yudai Yamaguchi is a fan of funny faces, and the behind-the-scenes footage mostly reveals that it’s surprisingly hard to pull the right funny faces at the right moment and then film them effectively. Comical but disposable.
K – Klutz. I was almost expecting the K to be for Khazi, since once again we’re in the realms of bathroom humour with this animated short from Anders Morgenthaler. Gross as it gets, but with little beyond that to its name. No extras.
L – Libido. I’m somewhat glad that Timo Tjahjanto didn’t contribute anything else to go with this ultra-extreme piece of psychosexual horror, since I was wincing enough sitting through the piece itself. An endurance test for both the characters and the audience, this film will leave you either unable to masturbate for a week, or possibly, for some people, needing to do so the second the credits roll. While I was definitely in the former camp I’m still impressed with the sheer horrific imagination on show here. No extras.
M – Miscarriage. I think Ti West was stuck for inspiration, as he’s fallen back on a cheap combination of hot-button subject matter, and a quick gross-out punchline. There’s a nasty whiff of misogyny, too, in the choice of “baby mama” as the designation of the main and only character in the credits. No extras.
N – Nuptials. There’s an old joke about a man who bought a parrot that used to live in a brothel. I can only assume that joke is told in Thailand too, as Banjong Pisathanakun turns a variant on the idea into a short that goes from cuteness to catastrophe in one swift slide. Predictable but neatly executed. No extras.
O – Orgasm. I adored Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet’s magnificent Amer but was disappointed in this, not least because in its plotless, eventless sensory overload it could easily be a cutting-room outtake from another project that needed a sex scene shortening. I do love those two but this time, I think they’re faking. No extras.
P – Pressure. Originally titled “Paramaribo” for the capital of Suriname where it was filmed, this visceral, sympathetic portrayal of how far someone might go for what they love held my attention with its rich visuals and powerful, dialogue-free soundtrack. The extras here are interviews with director Simon Rumley, a shy man who seems much less at ease in front of a camera than behind one, and cinematographer Milton Kam – both interesting viewing, if low-key. I was touched by the compassion and lack of prejudice shown by both men, despite their dealing with several different kinds of social marginalisation and stigma here both onscreen and off – two thumbs up.
Q – Quack. Someone had to make a meta-film about the challenges of making a film based on an awkward letter, and Adam Wingard rises to the challenge with the help of a duck. Sadly, I suspect it’s because he genuinely didn’t have any better ideas. No extras.
R – Removed. Running Dogfight a very close second for my personal favourite here, Srdjan Spasojevic’s contribution mixes visceral body horror with an evocatively cryptic plot that must surely be only a snapshot of an entire story waiting to be told. If there’s one film here that I’d like to see expanded to a feature, this is the one. The only bonus here is a photo gallery featuring a handful of on-set snaps, neatly reflecting the odd sense of frustration-born-of-admiration that the film itself creates. Show me more, dammit!
S – Speed. Jake West almost lost me at the opening of this faux-grindhouse tale of two women, one car and a monstrous pursuer thanks to some painfully wooden acting, but the combination of this film’s raw, hyper-chromatic beauty and the dark twist of its ending left me forced to admit I’d enjoyed it. No extras.
T – Toilet. Yet more animated bathroom humour, this time of an even blacker tint, from Lee Hardcastle; a man whose claymation filmmaking style is so stripped-down that when asked to provide a behind-the-scenes, he simply talks to the camera for three minutes and in that time manages to explain his entire process from storyboard to completion. While I’m not a huge fan of this particular piece, I’ve got to applaud his genuine talent.
U – Unearthed. The death of a monster from a slightly unusual perspective, courtesy of Ben Wheatley. I think this suffered from being a short, as I’d have cared a lot more about the events if I’d seen the rest of the prior plot. No extras.
V – Vagitus. Kaare Andrews attempts to squeeze an entire futuristic dystopia into a very small space with moderate success; though as with Removed, this is a scenario that could clearly have been expanded to much greater length, as the inclusion of a deleted scene makes further apparent. The lengthy behind the scenes segment has some interesting moments, mostly pertaining to the FX and props, but was rather spoiled for me by its self-congratulatory tone. As for the tedious “Animatics” segment that consists entirely of the storyboard being run on-screen with the dialogue of the film recited over the top, the less said the better.
W – WTF. Another take on the “we’ve got no ideas for this letter” gimmick, according to Jon Schnepp the “plot” here is about the contents of people’s subconscious minds becoming real. All I can say is that I’m glad my own subconscious isn’t that of an attention-deficient man-child, then, because I’d hate to deal with this on a daily basis. The behind-the-scenes footage only reaffirms this film’s general air of delight at its own idiocy, as does the blooper reel that consists entirely of Schnepp and a crony laughing too hard at their own dialogue to actually deliver it. Unfortunately, they’re probably the only ones who were.
X – XXL. Xavier Gens has created a masterpiece of nightmarish social commentary with this tragic, traumatic take on what our society’s obsession with skinny women is doing to the rest of us who can’t fit into those jeans. I watched this through my fingers out of pure empathic distress, and yet was glad every second that someone had had the courage to create this horrifying testament to the unreasonable expectations and the suffering that so many women deal with in silence every day. No extras.
Y – Youngbuck. A creepy, clingingly unpleasant little fable of abused innocence and deserved revenge that Jason Eisener has for some reason dressed up entirely in eighties trappings; from the look, to the feel, to the acid-neon colours, to the soundtrack. Obscure, macabre and strangely compelling. No extras.
Z – Zetsumetsu (Extinction). While Yoshihiro Nishimura’s deranged portrait of an alternate Japan where nuclear energy got way out of hand has a certain weird charm for its sheer joie de vivre, the behind the scenes footage demonstrates that when a film didn’t make any sense to start with, seeing how it was done won’t leave you much the wiser. Oversexed, politically incorrect and utterly chaotic, this is at least a truly fitting end to the rollercoaster ride that is the ABCs of Death.
There’s one final extra on the second disc that I have to mention, though: AXS TV’s “A look at the ABCs of Death”. A short teaser reel featuring snippets from the films and insights from some of the directors, it’s a watchable little piece that would certainly have made me want to see the ABCs if I hadn’t already – but the thing that most caught my eye about it was a single red screen featuring the pull quote “Bloody fun – Brutal as Hell”. See, I told you we’d reviewed this thing too many times…
