Uncut…Unexpurgated…Ungrammatical…Unreadable…It’s time for…

Lino-types!

Picture it, London, April 1993, handsome editor Jim McLennan is talking to loveable Lino……
“Listen, Jim, of course you can trust me.”
“I hope so, I need those reviews as soon as possible”

Ha, what a fool Jim is, it is now November 1993 and I’m only just sitting down to write the reviews! Now it isn’t that I’ve done this on purpose, it’s just that I’ve had other pressing matters on my mind. Don’t you hate it when people resort to threats to get things done, and anyway, Jim, I don’t think it’s physically possible to “Stick your moronic head up your huge arse!”)

Sorry, I think I was getting off the point just a touch, and for that, I apologise.

Right, on with the reviews, as it has been a bit a while since the last reviews, if I have more than one issue of a particular mag I’ll stick the reviews together. And now, if everyone’s up to date and sitting comfortably I’ll begin.

Ohh, My Brain Hurts 9-11……….50p. Three issues eh, three issues Jim, that’s young people for you; issue nine is an anime special and has guest reviews from the likes of Jim McLennan (Hmmmm) and also has reviews of Man Bites Dog, Burial Ground and an article on Drive-In movies. Issue Ten is a McLennan free zone but still has lots in the way of Anime reviews (watch out for that bandwagon!!!), Braindead and a Frank Zappa overview. Issue Eleven takes a look at the short films of Sam Raimi and has reviews of Bullet In The Head and Cinema Of Vengeance (superb video mastering on that movie, i wonder who was responsible!) and some more Anime reviews (Phew, that was close, they managed to jump onto that bandwagon!). Nice work (for the most part) by Madam Auty and his love slaves and for 50p you could do a lot worse.

Jonestown Aloha…………$3? Joshua Wilson, an American, A sick American, and aren’t they the best. Josh has written all you wanted to know about Jim Jones and then written a bit more. His ‘zine came complete with a Jim Jones sticker and packet of Fla-Vor-Aid (Thirsty, Mr. McLennan?); Jonestown Aloha contains a transcript of Jim’s last sermon and some great pictures of his followers. Superb entertainment for the bus or tube!

Gore Gazette 108-109………..$1. Rick Sullivan’s marriage doesn’t seem to have calmed him down any, which is a very good thing, as Gore Gazette still pokes it’s stumpy dick into the eye of the likes of Film Threat and the likes. Issue 108 votes Harvey Keitel as G.G. Man Of The Year for 1992 and has the usual rambling editorial and wide range of reviews (The Distinguished Gentleman???!). Issue 109 charts Gore Gazettes troubles with Russ (Gimme more money) Meyer, as well as re-printing a letter from an irate reader, who berates Rick Sullivan for slagging off Mexican Americans and a funnier letter from a Patrick Bateman who claims that Rick’s marriage is rotting his cock and his mind and who also encloses a wad of tissue complete with sperm! I look forward to the hardback reprint of all 107 issues!

Dementia 13 10-12…………..1.75 & 2.00. Fiction, fiction, fiction fiction, art and fiction. Do you get the message!
Good!
Now buy it!
Ta!

Yutte Stensgaard…….Price Unknown. Mentioned by Jim in the last issue, Tim Greaves takes fan adoration one step further and… [sorry, Lino, you’ve taken so long that this one’s now sold out!]

Madeline Smith……….Price Unknown. Tim Greaves opens up…[and this one, too!]

Mkultra 9………..2.75. Now, listen, I’ve told you all before, I like Mkultra, and this issue’s no exception. It calls itself “A Pure Trash Special”, and it certainly is pretty trashy. Articles range from a Troma retrospective (including a repro of a Troma press sheet) to an article on Dr. Who claiming it to be the definitive trash T.V. programme?!?!! On the way they stop at John Waters, Russ Meyer and a lot more. Editor Andrej Karczewski has gotten rid of the long rambling articles that used to feature in “Mkultra” and in my opinion slowed the whole pace of the ‘zine down. Now my only quibble with it is the cover price, 2.75, for a black & white ‘zine?????

Oh No, Not Another Fanzine! 1……….60p. Oh yes it is, (Ha I just made that up!). “Oh, No…” Is a spoof ‘zine and has a few moments of inspired wit (for a much better read try the ‘zine that appears inside Spencer Hickmans “Psychotic Reaction”, NOW THAT IS FUNNY!). Included in issue one of “Oh, no….” are such delights as interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and reviews of the films “Brains Splattered Everywhere” and “Nightmare on Elm St 7 : It’s Halloween”. Best for me was an ad in the back of the ‘zine which reads as follows:
“Help, I am a new collector, if you are a dealer please send your list to me at 3, Soho Square, Soho, London”!!!!

Sadist 1………….1.75. A comic strip that is well drawn, funny and original? YES, Sadist follows the adventures of Teenscene & Harold Sadist as they smash they’re way across the U.K. in search of random acts of violence. Hang on, doesn’t sexy HRH Princess Mink look awfully familiar? Find out for yourself and track down a copy.

Body Count 2………..1.25. O.K. lets get this out of the way, I HATE POSTERS THAT APPEAR IN FANZINES (unless they’re half naked orientals, eh, Jim!). I HATED THE POSTERS IN “IN THE FLESH” AND THE POSTER IN “BODY COUNT” IS SOME CRAPPY B & W HAND DRAWN (BY A RETARD) ABORTION. Right, now I’ve got that off my chest, “Body Count” #2 contains a section called Prime Cuts which lists differences in various versions of films such as Hellraiser (I & II) and Legend of the Overfiend, and is full of really useful information, for instance, B SKY B are showing films in longer versions than are available on video? Now why didn’t they include more of this AND LESS OF THE SODDING POSTER ARGGGHHHH. Sorry, anyway, there are the usual reviews and BLOODY HELL A PICTURE GALLERY, GOD, DAMN, ARRGGHHH.

The Wild Places 7…………Price Unknown. Shamen, U.F.O.’s, gobblegook, mumbo-jumbo, weirdo’s, geek’s, losers, anoraks….. I could go on, but what’s the point. If you like the supernatural doings buy it, if you like laughing at geeks, watch someone else buy it, follow them home, laugh at them through their windows! [Hmm, didn’t you like it last time, Lino?]

Legend Of The O.V.A. Fiend 1……….1.50. Look in the dictionary, find the word Meglomania, and [as well as discovering how to spell it correctly…] next to it you will find a picture (probably with an inane grin on his face) of Gentleman Jim McLennan. Yes, for he does verily contribute to this new ‘zine. Issue one looks at all manner of things Japanese (Both live action & Anime) and our mate Jim looks at “Lupin”. Can I just pause at this time and say that if I’m getting a bit carried away with mentioning Jim McLennan, it has to be said, that as I’m reviewing fanzines and Jim appears in what seems like all of them it really can’t be helped. Anyway, importing discs & tapes and having them converted is covered in this issue and overviews of Lodoss Wars and more. Written by fanatics for fanatics.

Children Of A Far Greater God 3……….1.50. Now, I like “Married With Children” a hell of a lot, anything that has info. on the show is good news as far as I’m concerned. (I spent a couple of weeks in the U.S. earlier this year and saw the first couple of episodes of the new series, good news is Kelly still appears, but the bad news is that it seems to have lost it’s sparkle). Issue three contains the first part of a complete episode guide and news about all the stars. What it doesn’t have is pictures of Kelly half naked slowly sinking into quicksand, all the time squirming and writhing around in the warm slick goo…………..Sorry. Right, I’m back. LWT, bring back married with children now!

Exploitation Retrospect 35…………..Price Unknown. Looks at muzak and stuff, tedious, American and un-interesting. Don’t bother, get a life instead.

Eidolon………. It says it’s the journal of Australian science fiction & fantasy, and it is, and it’s nice and I like it, and so will you. Thank you.

Great Universal 1,000,000 Prize Bingo…….Free. Just scratch the ‘X’s and win Millions……..Hang on what’s this doing in my bag, JIM!!

Invasion Of The Sad Man Eating Mushrooms….How the bloody hell am i supposed to know which issue it is the covers all bloody well black! Ok? Sorry, got a bit wound up there and I apologise. Anywaydedo “Invasion” has a letters page, including a letter from “Julie Arpino” who spends her time (always assuming this is a real person and not a false front!) Slagging off Spencer Hickman’s Nothing Shocking. Now as much as I’d like to jump into the argument I won’t, I’ll just say that I spent the day before the show with Spencer and he did everything humanly possible to get hold of the films he’d booked, and Julie, if you’re reading, I’m sorry you had such a bad time at the show, but if you think you can do better… Sorry Jim! Anyway “Invasion” covers Buttmans arse and talking of arse’s also covers Clive Barker (draw from this what you will!).

Riot………….40p…..ISSUE FIVE PUNKROCKNOISEREVIEWSERNIE*** CHEAPALRIGHTALRIGHT?

Fax 21 Summer/Winter 2043…………..Money Jim, have I reviewed these already? If I have ignore this, if I haven’t…News stories from the 21st Century, ha, they’re reet funny, HA Jim McLennan, Ha, buy it. Ha ha ha, hee hee hee I’m the laughing gnome and you can’t catch me…Tie me kangaroo down sport……Bibble. Bib.

Datakill 1………..25p. Loud, crowded, hard to read, music, perfect first issue. Avoid.

Fantasynopsis 5…………2.95. I used to be a werewolf, but I’m alright noooooooooo-owwwwwww. HA, HA. That was a joke about werewolves, and #5 of “Fantasynopsis” looks at werewolves and sundry other creepie ghoulie thingies, for instance, Herbert Lom, John Brosnan, Sapphire & Steel and more. Also includes pages & pages of reviews and a in depth interview with Michael Armstrong. One of the better reads available.

Girljock 8…………$3.95. Now, listen careful, I don’t intend to repeat myself, are you ready? O.K. Girljock is a surfing magazine for Lesbians. Issue #8 reviews Cher’s Workout Tape (errrrgghhh) and the cover features a naked lesbian on a surfboard. Why, I’ve got this I don’t know, but, if you’re a lesbian who would like to take up surfing, “Girljock” is the ‘zine for you. I thank you. [I think it’s probably true to say that Lino isn’t the target audience for ‘Girljock’. Readers may insert here their own joke about him surfing; bonus points for originality, wit and not using the words ‘harpoon’ or ‘beached’]

Sanity Sux 17………..$2.00. Now, this is more like it, a fanzine, written and edited by a fourteen year old American girl called Kim Martin (Her best friend is called Missy! HA!). It’s full of drawings of River Phoenix (Ha Ha GBH Ha Ha. lino) and fanzine reviews, and here is the review for issue #12 of “Trash City”: TC is a highly charming British ‘zine, mostly about Japanese culture-related things like Anime and Kung-Fu, but actually there’s not much of a central theme (HA! lino). There’s an article about the Dead Kennedys, excerpts from the Heathers script, a rant about customs, and even movie reviews! (duh, huh,huh!? lino) […and a pint of whatever Lino’s on please…]. Strange but interesting and very cool!

VERY COOL HA, HA, #Jim’s got a girlfriend, Jim’s got a girlfriend# [Jealousy will get you nowhere]. Anyway if you want to phone little Kimmy you can because she’s included her phone number along with this cryptic message:

If you are in a good mood and bored (???lino), then give me a call :1-706-532-XXXX. If 706 doesn’t work, then try 404; they’ve (the thought police?) screwed up out area codes. We leave our answering machine on all the time, so just start talking after the beep. If I’m at home, I’ll answer. PLEASE, NO OBSCENE messages – this is my parents machine & I’ll get in trouble. [yep, I wimped out – if you want to talk to Kim’s machine, you’ll have to write off for the ‘zine! But I know she is keen to hear from Brits, especially those with good audio tape collections…]

Well, there you go, sage words from one so young, and if you’re going to ring young Kim, send her Trash City’s love.

Well that’s really got to be it for this issue, to those I didn’t mention, you should think yourselves very fortunate. I must mention Tim Greaves “Vampyres”…[nope, it’s sold out too]. I have still got half a bag full of fanzines but I’ve simply run out of room and most of the ‘zines are incredibly old.

So, until we meet again, I bid you a fond farewell and hope to catch up with you at Psychotronik Video 18 Hanway Street, London, W1 (Just off Tottenham Court Road) Open 6 days a week. Telephone 071 637 4506. And in the immortal words of Casey (Shaggy) Kasim, “Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars!”

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[Arrived since the last batch went Lino-wards, or deemed too good for him; ‘Legend of the OVA-Fiend 2’, reviewed above, ‘Animejin’, the ‘official’ replacement for the now defunct Anime UK newsletter, and thus recommendable to anyone who used to get AUK-letter, ‘Veronica Carlson’, a Tim Greaves’ publication with droolworthy pics of said babe, and words too (hopefully, not out of print yet!), ‘Tales From the Cajun Sushi Bar’, highly readable fiction set in the remarkably odd anime multiverse, plus a new ‘Girljock”; I suspect I’m not the target audience either, yet I find it…strangely interesting, regardless of what Lino sez. They may play on the opposite wing, but the goal is still the same i.e. cute babes! But can I find the address? Can I heckaslike!

Also add ‘Strange Adventures’, still appearing with quite alarming regularity – dunno how Tony manages both frequency AND quality, ‘Asylum for Shut-ins’, a impressive collection of high weirdness available by mail (some of which makes TC look normal!), ‘The Hip Dad Look’, definitely high-weird, a 12-page Subgenius cutup rant of imaginatively low-tech, and ‘From the Sublime to the Ridiculous’, which is best described as TC-like in scope (this IS a compliment), with extra added roleplaying game bits…

Now, addresses for the publications mentioned above. Any omissions are because I’m still waiting to get the ‘zines back from Lino. They were last seen heading towards Tony at Psychotronik, who wanted to see if there were any worth stocking… Sigh. Who’d be an editor?]

• Animejin – Jonathan Weeks, 65 The High, Streatham High Rd, London, SW16 1EY.
• Asylum for Shut-ins – PO Box 46581, Bedford, OH 44146, USA.
• Children/Greater God – Miles Wood, 2nd Floor, 221 Ashmore Road, Queens’ Park, W9 3DB
• Dementia 13 – Pam Creais, 17 Pinewood Avenue, Sidcup, Kent, DA15 8BB.
• Fantasynopsis – Paul J. Brown, 1 Bascraft Way, Godmanchester, Cambs, PE18 8EG
• From the Sublime… – Alex Clark, 22 Crimon Place, Aberdeen, AB1 1RX
• The Hip Dad Look – Simon Wood, Fieldside House, London Rd, Blewbury, Oxon, OX11 9NY
• Invasion – PO Box 7, Upminster, Essex, RM14 2RH.
• Ooh My Brain Hurts – Daniel Auty, 9 Andrew Close, Wokingham, Berks, RG11 2HY.
• Sadist – Dom Morris, 32 Spital St, Lincoln, LN1 3EG.
• Sanity Sux – Kim Martin, 3754 Kimberley Drive, Gainesville, GA 30506, USA
• Strange Adventures/Fax 21 – Tony Lee, 13 Hazely Combe, Arreton, Isle of Wight,PO30 3AJ.
• Tales From the Cajun Sushi Bar – Jim Swallow, 21 Wadham House, 12 College Close, Edmonton, London, N18 2XT
• Veronica Carlson – Tim Greaves, 118 High St, Eastleigh, Hants, SO5 5LR.
• The Wild Places – Kevin McClure, 2O Trembear Road, St. Austell, Cornwall PL25 5NY
• Girljock [Hooray!] – Roxatronic Publishing, PO Box 882723, San Francisco, CA 94188-2723
• Jonestown Aloha – Joshua Wilson, 41 7th Ave. 3R, Brooklyn, NY 11217, USA

Philippine bank guard kills five in first gunfight

Manila – A security guard on Wednesday shot dead five armed men who had robbed one of the Philippines’ biggest commercial banks in what he said was his first-ever gunfight. Virgilio Joseco, pitting his 12-gauge shotgun against the robbers’ Uzi automatic weapons, picked them off one by one as they stormed out of the Bank of the Philippine Islands in a Manila suburb towards their getaway car, police said. Police recovered the 245,000 pesos ($9,800) and $7,000 in cash that the robbers had grabbed from the tellers’ counters. The bank said Joseco would receive a bonus but the amount had not been decided.

Uncle beats niece to death over 52 cents

Beijing – A man in northern China beat his 12-year-old niece to death with a wire whip, brooms and a washboard after accusing her of stealing a few cents from him, a local newspaper said. Sun Chang Sheng, who was sentenced to two years in prison for assault in 1983, whipped his niece Jia Yu for two hours on April 20, Monday’s edition of Shanxi Daily said. He justified his action saying the girl stole three yuan (52 cents) from him. At first he and his wife told the local hospital that the girl had fallen to her death from a window, but a doctor diagnosed she was beaten, the newspaper said.

Student bombed Hanover because he was introverted

Hanover, Germany – A 22-year-old student dubbed the “Bomber of Hanover” told a German court on monday he detonated three bombs that injured at least 23 people because he was introverted and had a passion for weapons. The student was arrested last October after a two-year manhunt and confessed to planting the bombs in the North German city in 1990 and 1991. He also admitted attempting to blackmail Hanover’s mayor for cash, diamonds and weapons. “I never had very much contact with other people,” the engineering student, named only Stefan S., told the court on the first day of his trial.

Debauched police chief dies by firing squad

Rabat – A Moroccan police comissioner was executed by firing squad on Monday for a three-year orgy of rape and sexual violence. The trial of Mohamed Mustapha Tabet, 54, created a sensation in March. He told the court he had had sex with 1,600 women. Prosecutors showed videos he took with hidden cameras in a Casablanca flat kept for his orgies. He was sentenced to death for rape, deflowering virgins [ouch!], abducting women, inciting debauchery, violence and assault. Moslem fundamentalists demanded Tabet be put to death by stoning or crucifixion.

‘Guinea Pig’ and other extremes of Japanese film-making

“When crimson blood crawls over a white woman’s skin like a living thing, she blossoms into a flower of flesh and blood whilst drowning again and again in a bloody sea of rapture and ecstacy”

With the effective death of the horror film in Hollywood, or at least it’s absorption into the mainstream, fans have been looking elsewhere for their fix of horror. Germany has given us the works of Jorg Buttgereit; from Hong Kong we’ve had “Man Behind the Sun”; New Zealand produced the wildly warped mind of Peter Jackson. But perhaps the most notorious film of recent years is Japanese: “Flower of Flesh and Blood”, or ‘Guinea Pig’, as it’s often referred to.

It’s almost an hour long and depicts the abduction and dismemberment of a woman by a modern-day Samurai. There’s no plot, no characterisation and speech is limited to some monologues. With few of the cinematic trappings one expects from a film, it’s perhaps not too surprising that soon after it’s arrival, it was suggested the effects are not actually effects, and that it is the often-discussed but never seen creature, a snuff movie.

And the effects are very, very good, especially coming from a country more noted for rubber-suited Godzillas than Savini-style flesh shredding. Some measure of just how good can be gained from the fact that when Customs recently seized a copy being sent to an employee of the National Film Theatre, they had to call in forensic experts to determine it was not real. The poor sod who’d ordered it, instead of the usual wrist-slapping letter, got a six hundred quid fine. HM Customs clearly do not like being made fools of, but this does seem a tad excessive for importing a cassette of special effects. And in America, Charlie Sheen apparently reported the tape to the FBI, proving again that common sense is no prerequisite for an acting career.

Even many die-hard horror fans feel that ‘Guinea Pig’ is pushing the boundaries too far. The film poses a lot of unpleasant questions to the viewer, the most obvious one being the old chestnut, “Why am I watching this?”. One can find justification in several ways – admiring the effects, for example – but none of them allow you to relate to it as a movie; identification with the characters, for example, is near-impossible. But can a better reason be found?

Let’s start by reiterating one thing: it’s not real. It’s merely an entry in a series of semi-underground Japanese films which explore various facets of horror. Strange though many of their moral concepts may seem in our eyes, the Japanese would not permit the open distribution of a snuff movie, and the documentary “The Making of Guinea Pig” gives the game away in any case.

It’s not the first film to have gained notoriety through the supposed ‘death’ on screen of a participant. But the major difference is that films like ‘Snuff’ and ‘Faces of Death’ are obviously fake, to anyone with an ounce of common sense. Watching ‘Guinea Pig’ for the first time, I had almost to adopt the old standby: “Keep telling yourself: it’s only a movie”.

‘Guinea Pig’ represents the horror film in it’s leanest, meanest, stripped to kill sense, reduced to it’s bare essentials. Part of our appreciation of the genre is because we know it isn’t real, and it’s only this basis in fantasy that makes it acceptable; remove the cushioning support of filmic convention and we’re open to the body-blow of raw emotion.

It’s not a film for the non-horror fan, and I can to a certain extent understand the reaction of Customs officers on seeing it, taken out of context. The film is more tolerable – and to some extent makes a lot more sense – when associated with the other entries in the series. My first reaction on hearing about them was “Why?”, but many of the other entries have little in common with the notorious number two, though they are just as strange to Western eyes. One has a woman chased by a flying, pulsating heart, until the icky flesh gobbet is caught in a dustbin by a transvestite and another very bizarre film has a suicidal man discovering he’s immortal no matter what he does to himself. This resembles ‘Tetsuo’ more than anything else – which may not be a coincidence, as the salaryman from said movie does appears in a further member of the series.

The problem with most articles on the film is that they have concentrated on the gore; this is understandable, as a) the gore is most impressive and b) the tape is unlikely to be released anywhere outside its native land and so no-one has gone to the trouble of subtitling it. However, the monologues of the Samurai provide essential insights into the ethics behind the film when they are translated. As the quote at the start suggests, he is an ardent admirer of beauty, although his appreciation is shown in a way which will perhaps only ring bells with fans of Dario Argento! Another key point is revealed in the following:

“Now the woman is in a state of rapture. Due to the drug I injected into her, as can be seen, she is completely unable to feel pain. But, instead of feeling nothing, she feels only ecstacy.”

This is a small but significant alteration to the attitude of the entire film; it becomes clear that pain and suffering are not the aim, in fact they are a positive barrier to observing ‘the flower’, which is the real objective. It’s very much an ongoing process:

“In this world, there is nothing more beautiful. I shall now reveal clearly the ideal of beauty. First the red flower shall bloom from her wrist. [Later: after some disembowelment] Finally, I shall pluck out the jewels. They are the most beautiful part of a woman’s body”

If we have trouble making sense of ‘Guinea Pig’, it may be because we are trying to impose Western values on a peculiarly Eastern product. It was not intended for international consumption, so should not be condemned merely because it adheres to very different moral standards. ‘Guinea Pig’ can be seen as just another facet, an experiment in pushing the limits of the genre ever further. It therefore stands alongside films like Hammer’s versions of Dracula and Frankenstein, condemned as repulsive and obscene when first released. Time mellows all things: maybe, in 30 years time, we’ll be seeing ‘Flower of Flesh and Blood’ on TV.

“Thusly, this flower of flesh and blood has bloomed completely…”

Tokyo Decadence Topaz (Ryu Murakami)

Miho Nikaido, Sayoko Amano, Tenmei Kanou, Masahiko Shimada.

This is, for the most part, a very shiny film. It tells of ‘Ai’ – the Japanese word for love – a Tokyo call-girl who works for an S/M agency. Much of the film is taken up with languorous portrayals of her activities, the clients she serves, ranging from coked-up yakuza to spoilt yuppies, via almost every form of bondage, domination and humiliation you can conceive (plus a few more you probably can’t!). The heroine does, however, balk at pretending to be dead…

It’s the stuff of which ultra-warped commercials are made, as it’s shot through with a highly deformed gloss. A lot of it seems to happen in real-time, too, which has both benefits and penalties. It adds a realistic edge, but S&M games are no different from any other porn, in that after a while, their interest value diminshes rapidly, unless you’re a real connoisseur of such things.

After, oh, maybe 80 minutes of this, we get something vaguely recognisable as a plot. Or at least, something happens. After an especially aberrant session – just her, a dominatrix called Saki, a patron, a fruitbowl, a whip, an Art Deco dress and a plastic penis – Ai does some drugs with Saki and resolves to find herself. She does, after a fashion, but it’s not quite what you’d expect, though the ending is not conclusive one way or another. Er, if you get my drift….

Despite this being the only section with anything like a story-line, I felt this section was the film’s weakest. Director Murakami seems happiest when dealing with the twilight world behind locked hotel doors, his style doesn’t transfer well to the suburbia where the film’s terminates (the word ‘climaxes’ isn’t appropriate in any of it’s senses!).

But is this ArtPorn or it PornArt? On balance, probably just the latter, though it’s chances of getting released in this country evaporated after less screen time than any Traci Lords film I’ve seen. But it’s probably too varied to appeal to the tastes of any one devotee, and in any case, it’s got music by Ryuichi Sakamoto, who shared an Oscar for ‘The Last Emperor’. I don’t think his career has gone downhill that far!

Two Girl Warriors in Hara-Kiri

Even as Japanese films go, this is very strange. The title says it all: a pair of nameless female samurai, leaving the scene of a battle, commit ritual suicide. There is no significant dialogue and the action, such as it is, happens in real-time, making the 42 minutes duration seem several times longer.

I really don’t know why I like this film so much. It gives the impression of being a chunk taken from the middle of some great Kurosawa epic, leaving the viewer to fill in the blanks. Who are the characters? Are they related to each other? Why were they in battle? How did they get injured? And, even though the only two characters in the film are dead by the end, you feel there must be something more. Maybe a relative finds the body and seeks revenge? The film, perhaps wisely, doesn’t try to answer these questions, leaving them instead for the viewer’s imagination.

The film is as much concerned with the ‘ritual’ as the ‘suicide’, every detail of the preparations, mental and physical, is carefully depicted with near-fetishistic precision. This takes up a significant part of the running time, but gives an added punch to the actual suicide, when it eventually starts.

Which is when it becomes difficult to watch, especially for a Western consumer used to movies where death is quick, simple and – crucially – painless. None of this is true in ‘Two Girl Warriors’. The second half of the film relentlessly shows the slow and painful process involved in the reality of death, as first one girl, then the other, commits seppuku.

Despite the lack of dialogue, the warriors are substantially more than ciphers, or models for splatter and gore (those expecting a ‘Guinea Pig’ style atrocity exhibition will be disappointed – the special effects are competent, but really don’t seem to be the point). One is hesitant, and unwilling to do ‘the right thing’, the other has a fatalistic stance. In less than 45 minutes, the characters are better developed than many Hollywood movies manage.

This is one in a series of films, including ‘Lost Paradise’. While all are undeniably odd, the others tend to a certain sameness; there are only a limited number of ways one can show a girl slitting her stomach open. But the dramatic tension ‘Two Girl Warriors’ generates, lifts it above the rest, and propels it alongside the likes of ‘Videodrome’ and ‘Miracle Mile’ for it’s relentless depiction of death. But while those two films almost make death appealing, as an escape, ‘Two Girl Warriors In Harakiri’ suggests that it may be far worse than you expect.

Pretty Body: Frankenstein’s Love

If the preceding film seemed strange – and if it didn’t, I recommend therapy – then at least it was clear what was going on. But in ‘Pretty Body’, the puzzle is less what is taking place than why. The whole creature resembles a cross between ‘Flesh for Frankenstein’ and ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’; if you can imagine trying to watch the latter in a language you don’t comprehend, you’ll have an idea of the mood instilled by ‘Pretty Body’.

A girl moves into a flat in a seaside block occupied by some indubitable odd-balls, most notably the couple who engage in icky sex reminiscent of ‘Society’ and the mad ear doctor on the floor below who is assembling a “monster”, although that’s the wrong term as it looks more like something out of the Chippendales. The girl accidentally meets the creation, and becomes fascinated by it, to the extent of crawling through the air-conditioning to meet it. When she finally does, they sing a duet. They are interrupted by the doctor, who is then set on fire, and the creature’s brain swells up and explodes. The film ends with the heroine throwing an eyeball into the ocean.

Ever feel like you were missing something somewhere? Also involved (somehow!) are a schoolgirl who gets her intestines punched out, a point-of-view shot from inside an ear and a monster-as-ventriloquist variety-show sequence. It’s all crammed into 54 minutes, which makes me wonder about it’s origins – too icky for TV, too short for a movie (and not letterboxed either), it’s just an all-round curious animal!

No exotic holidays to far-flung locations this year for me, thanks to the arrival of a large chunk of terraced debt. However, after an offer of rooms from a sister of a friend of a friend – no relationship offering free accommodation is too distant – it was decided that the 1993 TC Trip would be to Prague in Czechoslov…No, damn it, it’s now “The Czech Republic”, isn’t it? Horrible name, more like a political statement than a holiday destination: by the same token, 1992’s trip was to the Decadent Capitalist Fascist-Imperialist States of America.

I was a little uncertain at the prospect; my last few holidays have, to a large extent, been glorified shopping trips for books, CDs, videos and so on. However, I couldn’t read Czech, was unable to name a single Czech band, and assumed a country with four years of freedom would have had better things to do than evolve a trash video culture. I was forced to consider the possibility of a holiday spent in civilised activities like admiring ancient monuments.

We flew Czech Air – nice meal, dodgy English (the in-flight magazine had florid phrases like “Try to join with pencils of different colours the things which match in a way”, and that was on the kid’s page) and arrived in appropriately Stalinist, chucking it down rain, to be informed with near-sadistic glee that it had been perfect weather until that day.

Prague is finally undergoing adolescence at the age of 600 or so, with scaffolding pock-marking it’s face like urban acne as it rushes to embrace Western concepts like Cambio/Wechseln/Change and Benetton shops. Yet there remain sections of stunning beauty; get to Prague Castle at 9 a.m, before the invading hordes descend and you can enjoy sights that rival any in Europe.

Though the most unique such sight of the holiday was seen on a day trip, and was about 40 miles outside Prague. The Ossuary at Sedlec probably ranks as the most wonderful example of bad taste I’ve ever seen. It dates back to last century; the cemetery there had been in great demand ever since some holy soil taken from Golgotha was spread around it, and it was deemed necessary to do “something” with the 40,000 or so skeletons contained therein. An artist was engaged to perform the honours and, lo, the entire chapel was decorated, almost floor to ceiling, with bones. There’s bells made of bones, coats of arms made of bones, and the piece de resistance (above), a chandelier which contains every one of the 206 bones in the human body. This is religion à la Jeff Koons.

Sure irreverence is not surprising; while the Czechs are theoretically Roman Catholic, the true faith is probably “brewing”. They drink more beer than anyone in the world bar the Germans, and I can see why. It’s superb stuff and doubly tempting when it sells for half the price of Coca-Cola. In the nine days there, I probably put away 50-60 pints, but my drinking patterns were such that I was only ever “sober” or “dehydrated” without ever passing through “drunk” or “hungover”. Instead, for some reason I got dreams in 70 mm, Dolby stereo sensurround. Little wonder my hand luggage on the plane back a) weighed more than my regular case and b) clinked.

The other, non-alcoholic shopping was a pleasant surprise, in weird and unexpected ways, such as fossils – get your own amber-containing-insect-containing-blood-containing-DNA. There was also an interesting trade in ex-Warsaw Pact militaria: medals, badges, boots, coats, I bought what seems to be a Soviet submariner’s watch for fifteen quid. It has a compass in it, which at any given moment, can be made to point to any direction as North. This would explain why the Russians never invaded the West – they couldn’t work out which direction it was…

If they’d put as much effort into building their compasses as they did into toys, things might have been different. Rummaging round in a toy store, I came across a fearsome weapon, in the shape of a gun-metal blue jet plane, which fires sucker darts at a velocity where they’d probably imbed themselves in the target regardless of suckers. You can load up three darts and select single-shot or one, mutually assured blast of destruction. It’s the best sort of toy – the kind Trading Standards would have a fit about!

Which bring me naturally to videos. My earlier assumption about no trash culture was almost correct. However, there was one notable exception: Hong Kong films. Somehow, a Czech company seemed to have done a bulk purchase of D&B films, including their “Nikita” remake “Black Cat”, “Iron Angels” and it’s sequel, “Tiger Cage” 1-3, and all six parts of “In the Line of Duty” (renamed for the Nth time. The Czechs know them as the “Red Force” series, sigh!). Dubbed, but bearable – in fact, “Black Cat”, being about a government assassin, sounds pretty plausible in Czech, knowing their penchant for such things in the good ol’ days.

Occasionally in a guidebook, you come across a phrase that leaps out of the page and burns into your brain. How about this one:

“Prague has 25,000 prostitutes”.

Hmmm. Population 1.2 million. Assuming an even sex ratio, this means one in 24 of Prague’s female population is a hooker. Rule out those over 40 or under 15, and the ratio is heading towards one in ten. Or put another way, if every male inhabitant spent 20 minutes per day with a call-girl, the babes wouldn’t need to work more than nine to five, and could still have an hour off for lunch. Here endeth Statistics 1.0.1.

So where is this hyper-abundance of fast females? Damned if I know. There’s no red-light district, the nearest thing is Wenceslas Square – incidentally, no more a square than Oxford Street is – where you can see a few girls in impressively short, tight skirts, lounging outside the night-clubs, awaiting an injection of hard currency. Of course, this may be utterly libelling them – the skirts worn by the waitresses in the castle cafe were just as short and tight – but even on the most Puritan of definitions, we were still faced with a shortfall of about 99%.

Even when we decided to investigate a couple of night-clubs, the numbers remained minimal, though we probably chose the wrong ones. Certainly, the first one, “Peklo”, was wrong in more or less all possible ways. Though nicely situated in Gothic catacombs under a former monastery, the music was crap, the drinks were hideously overpriced and the clientele…well, we were most of it. Total babe count: three, looking more like secretaries on a night out than sultry Slovak sluts (ok, it should be “sultry Czech sluts”, but why should I let geography get in the way of a nice titbit of alliteration? And they do seem laid-back about the split themselves, to the point that, six months in, the stamps still have “Ceskoslovensko” on them). “Peklo”, incidentally, is Czech for “hell”.

“The Classic”, the second attempt, was a little better. The music was still crap, but was at least crap rock rather than crap disco, the drinks were only mildly overpriced, and it was a lot fuller. However, it felt more like a school dance than a sleazy dive and the mystery of the truant tarts remains unresolved…

Actually, there is a lot of highly visible prostitution going on. Not of Prague’s cuter inhabitants, but of the city itself, it seems any indignity is acceptable as long as it brings in hard cash. For example, I went to a ballet performance at the State Opera House (above). In the old days, this sort of thing would have been state-subsidised, but now it has to fend for itself; the ticket prices have shot up by a factor of ten and the audience is now more or less all tourists. As a result, the performance was crippled by imbeciles with cameras, unbelievably using flashes and motor winds.

Now, I’m no aficionado (the last ballet I saw was back in 197~) but even I felt this was dissing the performers. But the staff, presumably scared of upsetting the tourists, did nothing until another tourist (and presumably fan) made a severe scene. It will probably not surprise you to learn that she was British, and that it definitely had the desired effect (we may have lost the Empire, but if our stiff upper lip is broken, we can still complain better than anyone else). However, I couldn’t help thinking that in pre-revolution days, one flashclickwhirr and ushers would have gone in with Alsatians and riot-batons.

The charm of Prague is not to be found in the places where you’ll hear German and English more often than Czech; after all, cafes charging extortionate prices to sit on the pavement are a Europe-wide phenomenon. The true delights are finding the pockets of the city which have been frozen in time, and stepping back into the age before McDonalds, when bars didn’t have MTV. One of the most enjoyable finds was in Petrin Park, where there’s a hall of mirrors – two parts, one a mirror-maze, the other a traditional distort-your-shape. Both were absolutely fascinating, all the more so for being virtually tourist-free.

The same can not be said of the public transport system, which may soon go the same way as the ballet. Currently, it’s a joy – less than 10p per ticket, the five-day pass shown below costs £2.50, or you can get a yearly one for about forty quid. It’s fast, frequent, efficient and clean, a source of great amazement to this adopted Londoner, who’d never really experienced good public transport. The most impressive thing, personally, was finding that the buses ran to a specific timetable. Here, if there’s a timetable at all, anything between “First Bus” and “Last Bus” is so inaccurate as to be useless. Prague’s system hasn’t a hope of surviving private enterprise, and already the fares are beginning to rise.

And that more or less sums up Prague. At the moment, it is definitely worth visiting – no place with beer at 13p per pint couldn’t be! But I give it two years at most before it becomes indistinguishable from any other Western tourist trap.

The company I work for has a news agency feed, down which many interesting stories come. previously, most of these important events were sadly ignored by the media, but now, TC is proud to present a selection. Similar pages may be found throughout the rest of this issue (wherever we need something to bring the page count even!). We start, appropriately, with reports from the Asian desk.

Schoolchildren see ‘devil’ in Manila

Manila – Some 20 Filipino schoolchildren went into a frenzy after seeing a man they described as the devil under a tree in their schoolyard, police said on Thursday. “He is a gigantic man who has horns and a tail,” 12-year-old Marilyn Umpat told reporters. Classes were called off at the height of the mass hysteria in a classroom of a Manila elementary school on Wednesday, and the children were rushed to a nearby Roman Catholic chapel, where the priest dabbed holy water on them and said prayers. School officials planned to have the tree blessed and perhaps hire an exorcist.

Japanese students score a perfect zzzzzzzzzzz

Tokyo – Two students flunked a Japanese university entrance exam but later won places after complaints a supervisor’s snores drowned out the questions, a university spokesman said on thursday. The test consisted of English comprehension questions relayed by loudspeaker but a number of students insisted the broadcast was inaudible because of a storm of snoring and nose-blowing in the room, said a spokesman for the university. After parental complaints, university authorities looked into the case and decided to admit the failed pair to make sure they were not treated unfairly.

No condoms please, we’re Singaporeans

Singapore – Strait-laced Singapore unbent a bit on Friday and decided to allow its first sort-of sexually explicit musical — but only if the audience dressed properly and no-one tossed any condoms on stage. Singapore’s Ministry of Information and the Arts & Home Affairs Ministry agreed to allow the opening of “The New Rocky Horror Show” despite earlier misgivings. The show is about a transvestite scientist from outer space trying to create an ideal man. Officials had been upset by a report in the Straits Times, which said condoms would be tossed on stage.

Up, up and away with the cash

Hong Kong – A daredevil Hong Kong robber is preying on one of the high-rise colony’s most familiar modes of transportation — the lift. Riding on top of elevators in public housing estates, the robber stops them between floors and threatens to pour in gasoline and set the passengers on fire unless they hand over their valuables, the Sunday Morning Post newspaper said. He then opens the inner doors from above, grabs his loot and hops out onto the next floor without his victims ever seeing his face. The robber has struck a half-dozen times in the past month, netting HK$56,000 (£5,000).