Here we go, part 4 of Brett's Criterion Binge, this one's an all-Japanese film edition!
Here are the previous posts:
"Life is a messy weapon"
"I'll smash through this hell or there's no future for me"
"All these people's vitality irritates me"
The Living Skeleton (1968): From the same DVD set as Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell. A revenge tale with a neat pseudo-supernatural vibe to it and a few neat twists thrown in. Shot in black and white, it is of course a very good looking film, but it isn’t nearly as outrageous as Goke was, or as insane as the next movie is, so it isn’t quite as memorable for me as those two.
Genocide (1968): Also from that same DVD set. Utterly, completely bonkers. This is a very low budget, nonsensical horror film of the killer animal variety. As far as “NATURE ATTACKS!” movies go, this one is probably my favorite just for how madcap it is. The first scene of the movie (after the colorful pop art opening titles) is a man on a military plane having a PTSD breakdown, hitting some switches which open the bay doors…which a nuke is hanging over. As two more men on the plane try to calm him down and sedate him with drugs, the plane flies into a massive cloud of insects and EXPLODES. They never tell you what kind of insects they are, but they’re definitely bees. Why not just say they’re some superviolent breed of bees? Everyone knows what bees look like, you’re not fooling anyone, Genocide. Still, watching this was a lot of fun, definitely give it a shot.
Sword of the Beast (1965): Not tied to Sword of Doom, sadly. Not as awesome, either, but still pretty enjoyable and nice and grimy in all the right places. I should’ve watched it before Sword of Doom and Harkiri though, it just doesn’t quite reach the same heights as those two and I feel I’m not being fair at all in comparing them…
Throne of Blood (1957): I hate Shakespeare. The only interpretation of his work I’ve ever enjoyed is Ronald Wimberly’s graphic novel Prince of Cats, a crazy take on Romeo and Juliet which was released last year. I have little to no familiarity with Macbeth, on which this film is roughly based, but hey, it’s Kurosawa, it’s Toshiro Mifune, hopefully the Sharkespeariness of it won’t bring things down for me, right? Err, well, it almost does. The first hour did nothing for me. I was bored. But once an air of doom truly sinks in, when Mifune starts losing his mind in the castle, I was enthralled. That final act makes up for the rest of movie to me. His downfall is incredible…but I still hate Shakespeare.
The Face of Another (1966): I knew nothing about this movie going into it. I’d never even heard of it before, I was just browsing through Criterion’s website, reading up on some previous movie I’d watched, when I saw it in the Related Films sidebar. What a discovery it was, this movie really held my attention and wouldn't let go. A man’s face is severely disfigured in a work-related accident, and he’s forced to wear bandages all the time. He and a psychiatrist decide to craft a mask for him to wear in public, forging a new identity as some kind of odd experiment. It feels a bit indebted to the old western horror films like the Invisible Man and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but it’s entirely its own beast, not really a horror film but definitely more unsettling than any of the actual horror movies I’ve watched in this crusade. The movie is all about identity, the things about ourselves that we hide from one another, which permeates through the dialogue and especially the visuals. You can’t look away from it. It’s maybe a bit too on-the-nose and obvious, yes, but for some reason I’m fond of movies in which people sit around in interesting places discussing philosophical things. I feel like this would also make for a good double feature with Eyes Without A Face. I learned that this is from the same writer and director of Woman in the Dunes, a film which I HATED when I watched it in a class on absurdist film a couple of years back. This movie is only available in a DVD set with that and another film by the same people called Pitfall. How I feel about that movie will determine whether or not I’ll be getting that set…
Gate of Flesh (1964): The fourth Seijun Suzuki film I’ve watched, about a gang of prostitutes living in the rubble of post-WWII Tokyo and a former Japanese soldier who shacks up with them. While the story and its themes are quite different from Suzuki’s crime films, his stylistic choices remain intact. More lonely harmonicas, bright pastel colors, and frenzied editing, as well as quite a lot of superimposed shots and other neat visuals I haven’t seen in the other films. There’s a great dose of anti-Americanism, certainly, but it’s mixed in with quite a lot of self-loathing as well. The ruthless girl gang and their guest are equal parts hateful and charming. You can’t really root for anyone as they spit in the faces of those around them and turn on one another, only watch as they live out their rough lives in these brutal ruins. I was expecting it to be more titillating than it was given the subject matter, but this is no pinku film. Even when the girls spend most of the movie in brightly colored, loose, translucent slips, it’s hard to be turned on by anything in this movie. This isn’t erotica, it’s horror.
The final day of my Hulu subscription is October 6. Will I be able to cram in six more movies before then and squeeze out another of these blog posts? Will I watch something that ISN'T Japanese this time around? LET'S FIND OUT.