Special Silencers (Arizal) – Barry Prima, Eva Arnaz, W.D.Mochtar.
The political killer shrubbery splatter movie genre isn’t exactly over-subscribed. In fact, as far as I’m aware, ‘Special Silencers’ is the only entry in it, and it’s uniqueness is compounded since it adds mysticism and kung fu to the mix. if Jackie Chan was to direct a remake of ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ written by John le Carre, the end result might just look like this. Though on the other hand, it might not.
The final nail in this particular cinematic coffin is the presence of a bad guy who laughs manically. “Pah!”, I hear you say, “Every bad guy worth his salt laughs manically”, and you’re right. However, ‘Special Silencers’ now holds the marathon duration manic laugh record: 23.04 seconds, with barely a pause for breath. Try it yourself and you’ll begin to appreciate the recognition this feat deserves.
Although the film is definitely from the east, it’s exact home is obscure: sometimes it looks Indian, other times it could be from Hong Kong – I’ve even heard rumours it was directed by John Woo under a pseudonym! About the only clue is a reference to Djakarta, which strongly suggests it’s Indonesian. If this is the case, chalk up yet another unusual feature.
It all starts with a plot to kill Hamud, the mayor of a village, by chief baddie Gandar (who bears some resemblance to Saddam Hussein). In a swift flashback we see Gundar beating up his own grandfather after the latter has refused to hand over the Special Silencers, pills which should be used for meditation but which, when taken with food, also cause plants to grow in your stomach, rapidly leading to death by rhododendron.
Gandar pops one in Hamud’s tea because the mayor is trying to clean up the village, which would interfere with Gandar’s activities and plans to take over the place. The Mayor duly becomes his own floral tribute – judging by the phlegmatic reaction of his nephew Dayat, such an ecologically conscious death is an everyday occurrence in wherever-this-story-is set.
Hamud’s policeman brother, and daughter Julia are on the way to help their relative and when the car breaks down, Hendra, a passing hero, offers to help. The bridge to town is also broken and so Hendra rides off for assistance leaving the other two to a picnic, also containing some Special Silencers. Scratch one cop, unless plain clothes includes disguising your intestines as a herbaceous border. Julia, who’d been off to the river, washing, getting attacked by bandits, you know the sort of thing, comes back and faints.
Hendra returns, only to be attacked by Tonto, a henchman of Gundar’s. After some simple but effective kung fu, Tonto lands against a dead but pointy branch and proves that even non-living vegetation can cause serious arterial spurting. This leads to the following exchange between Gundar and Gumillar, his head henchman:
“Why did you leave Tonto’s body out there?” “Well, I didn’t have a saw.”
We leave Gundar complaining, “It’s a crying shame, Tonto was the last in a line of great killers”.
Hendra carries Julia back to the village – it turns out he and Dayat (the ex-mayor’s nephew, to save you the bother) went to school together. There have been a lot of unnatural deaths in the village lately. Then we get a maudlin bit where Hendra puts his arm around Julia and says things like “Regret will only make his soul restless”.
At this point, we can briefly discuss a sub-plot that wanders through the middle third of the film. Gumillar runs a protection racket, taking a percentage of the catch from the local fisherman (what he does with all these fish is not covered), or alternatively, their virgin daughters. We see one such girl sacrificing herself to save her family, getting pawed by Gumillar and committing suicide (spurt, gush, spray) in a series of scenes that manage to be simultaneously melodramatic, sordid and quite sad.
Hendra, on his motor-bike, is chased by a lorryful of thugs, and after they fail to respond to his challenge to “get down here and fight me”, he climbs up and drags them down. We get the line “Ayu! Sic him!”, which I only mention because the Dutch sub-titles at the time also read “Ayu! Sic him!”. After some more sub-plot (see above), Hendra and Julia are attacked by people leaping out of holes in the ground. The infinite supply of trained killers to be found in one small village suggest that in Indonesia the three R’s are reading, writing and Rkung-fu.
At this point, the phone rang and I got distracted. I don’t think I missed much, save a minor character being killed by having snakes dropped on him. I returned just in time to see Dayat walk on top of a man-trap that could hardly have been more obvious if there’d been a neon sign saying “Here is a vicious, poisoned, man-trap” above it. He struggles back to the village, and Hendra & Julia take him (all three on the same bike) to a nearby holy-man who cures him and says “You’re out of danger”, adding as an afterthought, “And alive”. Well, I suppose death DOES count as being “out of danger”…
Hendra heads off on his motorbike to tell the police all that’s been going on, leaving Dayat and Julia vulnerable to capture by the bad guys. And this is exactly what happens, despite some nifty fire-extinguisher-fu by Julia. Dayat gets a Special Silencer, Julia is tortured by being made to smell Dayat’s old shoes and getting white mice thrown at her, and Hendra is captured and whipped to the great amusement (23.04 seconds) of Gundar.
His use of the Special Silencers for meditation has made him invulnerable to normal weapons. Hendra finds this out when he escapes and attacks the bad guy with a sickle prompting the immortal line:
“You bastard! You took my leg! Give it back now!”
Perhaps not quite “invulnerable”, but certainly a lot less bothered by it than the other people who lose appendages to the sickle… Then, a sudden voice-over tells us that evil invulnerable people can be wounded with bamboo and before you can say “chrysanthemum”, Hendra does the deed and all the Special Silencers Gundar’s taken simultaneously sprout, producing enough flora to stock a medium-sized National Trust property.
Poking fun at foreign ways isn’t something I like to do. But if Indonesia, or wherever ‘Special Silencers’ was located, is really like the movie, then it’s one place I’m crossing off the list for my next holiday!
Produced, directed, re-animated, written and imported from Japan by Arthur Baker.
This languished under the TV for ages, under the mistaken assumption that it was a barbarian women film. However, that was eventually dispelled one Sunday evening, when I found out it was actually Japanime. This was a pleasant surprise, at least until the titles – seeing ‘Pandora – An Erotic Trilogy’, I got the feeling this was going to be dodgy anime.
And I was 110% right. Why it’s called ‘Pandora’, and what happened to the other two parts, I haven’t a clue. However, the first section is a cross between ‘The Exorcist’, ‘Dolls’ and, oh, any randomly selected Traci Lords movie. Those easily offended (or even those that are difficult to offend) might care to skip the rest of this, as should those with religious convictions [insert own joke here].
It starts innocently enough with a man, Paul, driving through a forest. Or at least, repeatedly through the same bit of forest – the animation is on the budget side. He comes across a trainee TV evangelist, Brother Robards, who was delivering a videocassette of Christian special-effects when his bike broke down. Paul, being a friendly sort, gives him a lift and tells him tales of the haunted forest they’re in, saying that it’s outside the realm of God. The van then hits a tree but fortunately, a passing coach, driven by someone who looks like The Master from Doctor Who, takes them to a castle. On arrival, the place is full of china dolls plus Maria, the mistress of the house and Beth, her maid-servant. Paul and the priest are shown to their separate rooms. Then things start to get decidedly dodgy.
Necessary digression. The Japanese have a severe taboo against depicting pubic hair – naughty bits are fine, just not hairy ones. Other anime tastefully blur the offending region (though on a 9th generation NTSC conversely, everything looks a bit fuzzy). ‘Pandora’ simply doesn’t let its characters have any pubic hair, as we discover when we see Maria playing with herself in front of a mirror. The lack of hair and the usual anime tricks of huge eyes, etc, make her look about ten: even though it’s relatively tastefully done – we see something that looks more like a crushed rose dripping nectar than anything gynaecologically accurate – it still makes uncomfortable viewing.
She then moves in to seduce Brother Robards (with no problem at all – he is a trainee TV evangelist!), starting by having him tongue her pussy and proceeding apace to the point where Maria is energetically astride the reverend, all shown in great detail. The truth is then revealed – she’s actually a demon (something of a relief compared to the alternative that this is just animated kiddie porn) who wants Brother Robards to father Satan’s child. Her demonic powers include the handy ability to change shape so that she can lick his dick while still sitting on top of him (leaning backwards through her own legs in a loop, should you be wondering). Brother Robards’ sperm proves too weak to make it up into Maria’s womb (?) so he gets his head torn off.
Paul, meanwhile, is canoodling in the kitchen with Beth. Maria surprises them and drags Beth away for punishment, shapechanging to become a well-endowed man. Not so much in quality as quantity, she’s in a 100% penis over-supply situation. We’ll draw a veil over the rest of this painful scene, pausing only to note that Beth doesn’t have any pubic hair either. After a tasty meal of what’s left of Brother Robards, Maria tries Paul for size, despite his efforts to prevent her (the dialogue reaches new heights – lines like “Stop trying to force me to have an erection! I refuse to let it stand up, you whore of Satan!” would be bad as subtitles, as spoken dialogue, they’re hysterical). Their humping and licking is abruptly terminated by Beth delivering an axe between the shoulder-blades to Maria. She’s barely fazed by this and is soon chasing the couple through the castle, aided by her animated dolls. They end up in Brother Robards room and his Christian special effects video-tape suddenly attacks Maria and winds itself round her. Then the castle goes on fire. Why all this happens, I’ve no idea but Beth and Paul escape, pausing only to make passionate love in gratuitous close-up as the castle burns in the distance. Of course, there’s the obligatory surprise ending, which will not be a surprise to anyone who’s seen ‘Dance of the Vampires’.
The feeling this was a one-man operation is increased by the dubbing – whoever Mr.Baker got to do Beth’s voice delivers every line in the same monotone, whether it’s “Oh, I’m getting so excited” or “Please don’t hurt me any more. No, not your chamber”. Even “Please don’t double-dong me” is said in a voice reminiscent of a speaking clock. The translation has other interesting moments:
“I’d never want anything to harm the beauty within you”
“It’s not nice to fuck with Mother Nature”
“I never thought having sex with a TV minister could be this hot”.
The problem with something like ‘Pandora’ is that it poses more questions than it can answer. Taken in isolation, it’s perverse and shocking but several things distinguish it from pornography. There can be no denying the effort, relatively speaking, that went into it – simple though the animation may be, it’s still more expensive and time-consuming than your average porn movie, shot over a weekend in a motel room.
It also has a story which shows significant amounts of imagination, even if this is mostly in the how-tasteless-can-we-get area: blasphemy and cannibalism are not features in hard-core sex films as far as I’m aware! It’s closer to ‘Hellraiser’ than ‘Deep Throat’, really, with it’s distaste for religion, demons from hell and hints of variant sexuality.
Though using terms like ‘variant’ may be wrong. We see ‘Pandora’ through a filter – someone not knowing about the pubic hair taboo might well be outraged by some of the images. It’s really an alien artefact – imagine the difficulty a Japanese person would have interpreting a video of a Test Match – and enforcing our own morals on it to condemn it will not work.
I don’t claim artistic merit for ‘Pandora’, but I do claim cultural merit; a society is defined by its extremes and this undoubtedly gives a better insight into Japanese culture than “Tora! Tora! Tora!”. Anyway, this agnostic finds it difficult to truly dislike any movie that has a TV evangelist 69-ing what looks like a prepubescent schoolgirl. I’ve always been keen on subtle religious satire…
Regular readers of this ‘zine will be aware of my predilection for one of the above exports and so will not be surprised to learn that the latest piece of investigative journalism for TC is on the topic of ‘mail-order brides’, a subject which has the added attraction that it can be investigated quite adequately from the comfort of your own home.
Of course, the term ‘mail-order bride’ isn’t entirely accurate. While an interesting concept, it’s not technically feasible, if for no other reason than your average letterbox is not big enough to accommodate even a small Thai without some chainsaw modification to either the letter-box or the girl. And imagine the unpleasantness if you went away on holiday for a couple of weeks just before the latest package from your Bride of the Month club arrived. You’d return to find a very hungry, highly irate, brown-paper parcel – not exactly the best way to start a relationship.
Sorry, I’m fantasizing again (not unusual when the subject of cute Orientals arises). The business in exporting women from S.E. Asia to Europe originally started in West Germany, when male tourists started to discover the fleshpots of places like Bangkok and decided they’d appreciate a home delivery service. At one point, it was estimated that over 2% of all W. German marriages were arranged by such marriage brokers, though the recent opening up of Eastern Europe has probably led to a decrease, due to the ready availability of impecunious women closer to home.
Similar bureaux have sprung up in Britain, of varying reliability and responsibility. The opportunities for con-merchants are obvious and don’t need to be spelled out – no regulatory body exists for these companies, many of which inhabit a twilight world, advertising in the back of the Sunday Sport. I went slightly up-market, to “Loot”, London’s leading small-ads paper, got distracted by the adverts for pinball machines, detoured into the car section (“That’s cheap for a Pontiac Firebird…”) and finally reached the appropriate section, selected a company and sent off for details.
Beautiful
To give Siam Introductions their credit, they replied in swift order and seemed to be totally above-board. A dozen A4 pages of newspaper articles (giving both praise and criticism), unsolicited testimonials and a piece by director Charles Black. Operating on the principle that the best way to find out about the problems involved was to go through it himself, he was his own first customer, and went over to Thailand to find himself a bride. This he did – he and Deer have now been happily married for six years and have a four year old son.
The crucial question is, to quote a certain film, “How much for your daughter?”. Well, Siam Introductions do a package deal:
Your return flight to Bangkok : 450
Airport tax : 25
Your wife’s ticket (one-way!) : 250
Her medical : 20
Your hotel: 14 days at 13.50 per day : 189
The marriage (inc.visas, passport, etc) : 250
TOTAL : 1184
Not bad (and slightly less than the Pontiac Firebird!). However, there is the trifling matter of Siam Introductions’ fee. What would seem reasonable to you? £200? £500? £1,000? Nope. Try eighteen hundred pounds, although you do get your money back if no marriage results. Even if the fee on the other side is significantly lower, you don’t have to arrange many matches in a year to take in a tidy sum.
Examining
Examining the piggy-bank, I found it to be just a little short of the three grand required to pursue this investigation to it’s full extent (but as of next issue, TC will cost ninety-five pounds a copy!). Still, there was the slightly cheaper alternative of a video – 250 girls and a travelogue for a tenner – which I could just about afford, so I sent off my money. I must say I did consider the possibility of a rip-off, but such things do not scare a brave investigative journalist (though they do make a more cowardly one think about the benefits of operating from a PO Box) and in any case, the tape soon arrived…
Click. Whirr.
t’s definitely an uncomfortable experience, seeing what really amounts to adverts for human beings. Most of the girls unsurprisingly seem nervous, which is ok – who wouldn’t be? – but occasionally there’s one frozen with fear like a rabbit caught in headlights, and THAT makes the flesh crawl. You feel sure there’s a story there, and it’s not pleasant, whatever it is. With a compere who sounds like Joel Gray from ‘Cabaret’, and some of the worst music heard outside an elevator, it was simultaneously utterly cringe-making and horribly, unstoppably addictive. The tape might well be the ultimate in short attention-span TV. Don’t like this girl? Hang on, there’ll be another one along in fifteen seconds. Nice travelogue though.
Desperate
The women were a fairly broad cross-section. Most seemed to be in their middle 20’s, with the minimum and maximum 18 and 47 and education ranging from elementary to university graduate. Despite this, it was possible to come up with three blatant generalisations:
Most Thai women are employed as ‘company workers’ (whatever that means), ‘traders’ (ditto), seamstresses or hairdressers.
They age quite well, it was hard to predict how old they were from their looks. The harsh lighting didn’t help, but most were acceptably cute and some would definitely have merited a second look (as well as some form of prolonged examination, preferably from close range). Certainly, they were no worse than the people you see in adverts for Dateline…
Thai girls have no feet. Each segment followed a similar pattern -close up of face, pan up and down body – but you rarely got to see below the shins. I’m no foot fetishist, but by the end of the tape even the sight of an ankle was almost sufficient to send me into uncontrollable paroxysms of excitement and start me salivating like Pavlov’s dog. This totally destroys the myth that “what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over”. Perhaps the feet are imbued with erotic significance in Thailand (which kinda fits in with some of the tales I’ve heard about Bangkok!), much as in China, a lady’s neck used to have to be kept covered.
Gratuitous
Morally, I have definite qualms about it, although the basic idea seems reasonable, with both parties getting what they want. A survey of Filipino women who’d signed up with marriage agencies showed that their main reason was to send money back to their families and there can be little doubt that the standard of living here is higher. In return, the man gets… well, to quote Charles Black: “She is happy to attend to my every need, she cooks, cleans and washes for me and does everything with such obvious care and attention and really does please me”. It would appear that the notion of sex equality still hasn’t reached the distant corners of the world, like Chislehurst, Kent.
Geranium
On the other hand, it’s perhaps a little like commercial surrogacy – my distaste may have less to do with the theory than the practice of someone making money out of it. It seems exploitative of both sides, and the way that many of the women put down ‘housework’ as one of their hobbies suggests a certain element of desperation. Do they go into it with their eyes open? According to a caseworker in London who’s worked with them, “I think many of the men want a Filipino or Thai wife because of the stereotype of what these women are supposed to be like – gentle, sweet, loving and submissive and full of traditional values. And so they’re expected to serve the man in every way – domestically, emotionally and sexually”.
Fish
Yet, apparently, most of the marriages do succeed, with a divorce rate that’s much lower than our national average of 1 in 4. Charles and his wife provide an “after-care” service to help couples through any rocky patches, which obviously must be of some help, but cynics may suggest the prospect of having to return to Thailand (where divorce is still a stigma) and admit failure is sufficient incentive to make the wife put up with almost anything. The brief courtship (if there’s one at all – at some agencies, the first time the husband sees his wife is when she gets off the plane) certainly can’t provide much idea about lifelong compatibility.
It’s not for me, but then I’m not in my mid-40’s, as the average customer apparently is. Maybe in another twenty years I’d consider it! The evidence suggests that, just like most relationships, whether it works or not depends almost entirely on the people involved. I have to confess approaching the subject with a ghoulish sense of fascination – mondo marriage? – which probably meant I wasn’t going about things in the right spirit. But, hell, if all I wanted was slavish devotion, undying obedience and a limited grasp of English, I’d buy a cocker spaniel.
As a general rule of thumb when it comes to trash cinema, it’s Hong Kong for live-action and Japan for animation, but occasionally Japan produces a film with real people in it that delivers the pizza. ‘Gunhed’ certainly is worth watching, though I kept having to remind myself that it wasn’t just very good animation, as it has all the elements of some anime: large weaponry, enormous robots and explosions that dwarf both. This feeling of unreality isn’t helped by the fact that the comic of the movie has already been published here, so that it feels more like a movie-of-the-comic rather than the other way round.
Virtually all the characterization is done through action, with little in the way of an initial set-up. A voice-over gives the basic facts: in the year 2005 Chiron-5, a massive computer controlling an industrial complex on an island, went rogue and declared war on humanity. Twenty years later, Chiron-5 is dormant and a team has been sent to try and reclaim the island. Before you can say “influenced by ‘Aliens'”, they’re trying to fight their way through the automatic defence system.
And coming off seriously runners-up. Damage and power loss means this is merely the BACK-UP defence system but it rapidly proves itself capable of shrinking the team, thanks in no small amount to it’s bio-droid which combines the power of a machine with the cunning of a human. This first third has a heavy cyberpunk feel with the characters looking like refugees from Chiba City, switching from English to Japanese almost at will. This is cool, and has the added benefit of meaning that the story isn’t too hard to follow, even in it’s original Japanese version.
Before too long, the team is sliced ‘n’ diced down to two, Brooklyn (a mechanic who can fix anything) and Nim (a bounty-hunter picked up on the way). Her appearance came as something of a surprise – in the comic, she looks about 12, in the movie she’s definitely not (conclusively proved thanks to her penchant for tight-fitting costumes!) but one thing that’s faithfully transferred is the large weaponry she wields.
The remainder of the story has the pair struggling to reach Chiron-5’s core and stop it turning itself into a nuclear reactor – the only reason it went dormant was to wait for humanity to develop Texmexium (wince!), a nuclear fuel which it wants to use to destroy the world. Brooklyn rebuilds a GUNHED (Gun UNit/Heavy Elimination Device) left over from a previous assault and it starts charging up the 400 storey central building which houses Chiron-5 while Nim, aided by two children who are the descendants of the team that originally maintained the computer, runs interference against the bio-droid. A nasty twist is that after it’s original bio-droid was destroyed, Chiron-5 builds a new one using the corpse of one of Nim’s colleagues as an ingredient…
There are plenty of other memorable moments as the story unfolds, notably GUNHED’s use of a novel fuel and Brooklyn wielding what may well be the largest gun ever carried by a single character! Overall, it’s highly enjoyable stuff, if scarcely mind-taxing – the effects and sets are mostly very impressive, save the odd squirm-inducing model and it’s definitely a loud movie, that should ideally be seen in 70mm Dolby stereo, or since this is virtually impossible, perhaps on laser-disk with a top-notch hi-fi system (all contributions gratefully accepted). However, it is due out in the States this summer and who knows, perhaps it’ll follow ‘Akira’ across?
A Better Tomorrow 1 & 2 (John Woo) + 3 (Tsui Hark) – From the director of ‘The Killer’, the first two could be considered as a single entity although they’re sharply different in style. The first concerns a gangster trying to keep his ‘career’ secret from his policeman brother and gain revenge for some treachery, helped by hitman Chow Yun Fat (HK’s answer to Rutger Hauer). It’s mostly solid, if slightly earnest, drama, that swings wildly from splatter to soap opera. Tt was enormously successful in Hong Kong, so naturally led to a sequel. Problem: Chow Yun Fat was blown away at the end. Solution: he had a twin brother in New York, who’s dragged in when a friend, trying to go straight, is framed for a murder. Cue a ‘Taxi Driver’ impression, a perfect mix of melodrama and tension and an awesome final 15 minutes, with more corpses than Highgate Cemetery, to which no description can do justice. This is Hong Kong cinema at it’s very best – go down your local Chinese video library now and beg them to give you a copy. Tsui Hark’s entry is a prequel to the first two parts, set in the last days of Vietnam; much of the film gives the impression of being shot in slow-motion, it’s stately and graceful, with the obligatory mega-kill finale. The three movies virtually define the ‘heroic bloodshed’ genre and should ideally be viewed in one session, as otherwise it’s easy to lose track of who’s taking revenge for who, on who! 7, 10 & 8/10 respectively.
Bloody Ghost (Yuen Cheung Yan) – At least, that’s supposedly the title – it was totally illegible on the video. No matter, this is high fun on a low budget, cramming in more plot elements than you can mention: bar hostesses who can do a mean Bruce Lee impression thanks to a pregnant & irate ghost they nicked from a gang leader who’s sent out a hitman to get it back. Oh, and dumb policemen in red underwear. This may not be as spectacular as some entries in the genre, it’s is just as enjoyable. 8/10.
Final Run (Philip Ko) – Burdened by too many characters who all seem to be related to each other, ‘Final Run’ suffers from a rare affliction in Hong Kong movies: an over complex plot. It, like so many others, has evil drug barons; that’s about all I really understood, thanks to perhaps the moat incomprehensible set of subtitles ever inflicted on the English language. You’re grateful when characters die, as it’s one less person to worry about – fortunately, the attrition rate is pretty high. Reasonable mayhem at the end, with Yukari Oshima doing her best. 4/10.
God of Gamblers (Wong Ching) – Chow Yun Fat is one of the few Hong Kong actors capable of gripping you without having to fly through a plate glass window to do it. Here (deep breath!), he plays the ultimate gambler (capable of throwing five dice and getting a total of four pips) who suffers amnesia after a blow to the head and falls into the hands of some low-lifes (with hearts of gold) who realise his potential but not the fact that the entire underworld is looking for him. Phew! It’s more unusual than your average revenge movie, yet also has enough action to keep things going. Chow Yun Fat is superb (as ever), both as the God and as the child he becomes following the accident, complete with a chocolate craving. Baccarat has never been more exciting. 9/10.
I Love Maria (Chung Chi Man) – Another Tsui Hark “production”, so it’s anyone’s guess who really directed it. Obviously heavily influenced by ‘Robocop’, it has the Hero gang using an ED-209 creature to try and take over the city, only to find their way blocked by the Maria of the title (definite shades of ‘Metropolis’) who was re-programmed by accident to the side of good. From here, things just get faster and faster. And faster. People, robots and cameras fly through the air with the greatest of ease, taking your breath with them, right until the climax in what looks like a power station. Wow. 8/10.
Men Behind the Sun (T.F.Mous) – In the last days of WW II, the Japanese developed bacteriological weapons: 731 Battalion, in occupied Manchuria, was a top-secret establishment for testing these on the local population. ‘Men Behind the Sun’ describes the activities that went on, in graphic detail, yet manages to avoid the pitfalls of other pseudo-historical docudramas. It devotes time to building the characters: although the sympathy is clearly with the victims, the Japanese are not sneering caricatures but real people who believed they were doing the best for the Empire. This makes it even more harrowing as they lose all human emotions towards their test subjects, or ‘marutas’ as they call them (in an effort to dehumanize them, just as the Americans called the Vietmanese ‘gooks’). Even though half an hour elapses before the first atrocity, this is no sanitised TVM, it’s a slow descent into hell. Great detail is paid to historical accuracy – we get victims’ names and ages, dates and places which contrasts markedly with the fast & loose approach of more exploitative films. There’s no morally sound, happy ending, either – this could well be the ‘Henry’ of war movies. It’s not a film to enjoy, or even to like (and so can’t be ‘marked out of 10’) but it’s undoubtedly one to be respected.
Magic Cop (Tung Wai) – When cops try to arrest a suspected drug trafficker, she ends up getting run over. However, the autopsy show she died a week previously. Fortunately, they can call on the services of Lam Ching Yin (from ‘Mr.Vampire’ – the one with the odd haircut), a combined cop/exorcist. His new partners are sceptical, until they see him in action, then they’re behind him 100%. Hiding, mostly, while he takes on Michiko Nishiwaki (rapidly rivalling Cynthia Khan as a favourite) who’s resurrecting the dead as her minions. I’ve seen ‘Zu’. I’ve seen ‘A Chinese Ghost Story’. I thought I’d seen everything. I hadn’t – my jaw spent most of this movie in my lap. A wonderful combination of cop thriller, black comedy and occult movie. 9/10.
Magnificent Warriors (David Chung) – The problem with watching films after coming back from the pub is that specific thoughts are lost, in favour of an alcohol-induced ambience. Preceded, oddly, by a trailer for itself, this one came across as being almost non-stop action, set in China between the wars, with Michelle Khan as an Indiana Jones figure, right down to the whip. The plot was something about the Japanese who were occupying China at the time. I remember enjoying it a lot but would have to watch it again to be sure of precisely why. This must be the cinematic equivalent of pop music; great fun while it lasts and evaporating as soon as it’s finished. I make no claims for it’s entertainment value if sober! 7/10.
Ninja Vampire Busters (Norman Law & Stanley Siu) – What looks like a typically exploitative Colourbox title turns out to be almost accurate, though ‘Kung Fu Demon Busters’ might be a better description. Or indeed, ‘Rabid Daddies’, as a 500-year old demon escapes from an urn to possess the head of one of Hong Kong’s more powerful families. Throw in elements of ‘The Exorcist’ (the ghost moves across to the young daughter), ‘The Thing’ (no-one’s sure who’s possessed), ‘Hellbound’ (monster runs amok in hospital), a hint of blasphemy, some Jacky ‘Chinese Ghost Story’ Cheung and you get a solid 90 minutes of fun. 8/10.
Pantyhose Hero (Samo Hung) – After two homosexual men are murdered, Samo Hung and Alan Tam assume the identities of gay lovers to try and track down what happened. With dialogue like “Oh no, now my bottom’s really for it”, this is not a subtle or sympathetic portrayal of alternative sexuality. However politically incorrect it may be to say so, it’s still (mostly) funny with both actors struggling to retain their decency and anal virginity. There are a few wasted opportunities, for example, an aphrodisiac spiked bottle of champagne isn’t as well used as it might be (???) and it also tries too hard to be too many things – comedy, romance, thriller, kung fu. What the hell, it succeeds on most levels, just don’t take your local bleeding-heart liberal to it. 7/10.
Tiger on the Beat (Liu-Chia Liang) – A seriously young-looking Chow Yun Fat is a seriously laid-back cop who finds himself teamed up with the same policeman who came seriously close to blowing him away mere days previously. ‘Serious’, in the superlative sense, probably sums up this movie better than most words, most notably in the final fight sequence which has a chainsaw battle that beats anything I’ve seen anywhere. Chow Yun Fat does other nifty work with weapons unlikely to pass the BBFC as he takes on…(all together now)…a gang of drug smugglers! While there might not be much new here, the execution is almost flawless making it one of CYF’s best. And that’s seriously good. 9/10.
Animation
Ariel. Ariel stands for All-Round Intercept and Escort Lady: pride of the Earth’s defence force, a four hundred foot tall “pink fairy” (to quote the trailer), though “female robot” might be more accurate. Controlled by three school-girls, the episode of this I saw had them fighting to save the Earth from a guy who wanted to destroy it, seemingly because he’d been spurned in love. Sounds fair enough to me. As ever, Tokyo gets trampled by the monsters he controls – until the pink fairy arrives… 5/10.
Dream Hunter Rem. It’s well known that anime heroines all have eyes like saucers, but Rem truly takes the proverbial ginger snap – she could use dustbin lids for shades. The cuteness is enhanced by a mini-skirt that won’t stay dead, but is at odds both with her car (a rocket launcher equipped Metro City) and her large sword (with a capital F). Like a modern day Captain Kronos, she faces all manner of occult nasties – the episode I saw had a headless samurai who eventually finds his skull and immediately grows to such a size that Ariel (cf.) would have problems. Despite the sword, the problem is not solved by chopping it into small chunks, which is a nice change. 8/10.
Guy. Certain themes recur repeatedly in Japanese animation. ‘The Thing’ would seem to inspire a number of films where people turn into the sort of creatures H.P.Lovecraft described as “indescribable” (usually just before he spent several pages describing it). This is a good example: there’s something unpleasant in a mine that makes you go icky and start ripping heads off bodies. Spectacularly messy, with a helping of sex as well, including some rather nasty stuff with a gun barrel. 6/10.
My Neighbour Totoro – On the other hand, the gentler sort of anime: no space-ships, no monster robots tearing each other apart and absolutely no tentacles doing unpleasant things to anyone. Director Miyazaki has turned out some great stuff in the past (‘Laputa’ and ‘Warriors of the Wind’), and this is even better still. It’s like ‘The Railway Children’, perhaps with overtones of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, as a young girl (no sniggering please, this is strictly legit) moves into the countryside when her mother has to go into hospital, and meets the mystical inhabitants of the forest. None of whom have tentacles. About the only frightening thing is that I enjoyed it so much “despite” it being all gentle and nice. Complaints about TC going soft are acceptable only from people who’ve watched this and not gone gooey! 9/10.
Once Upon a Time– An ultra-rare item, anime released here without being entirely mutilated, this ranks as the most depressing animated movie I’ve seen. Beautifully done though, with characters who possess more depth than many live-action films, and a harsh condemnation of war that pulls surprisingly few punches for it’s ‘U’ certificate. Ignore the naff cover and the very naff trailers for other MY-TV cartoons, get to the main feature and you’ll be hooked. Worth far more than the 4.99 you’ll pay, if you can find it. 8/10.
Patlabor. Another favourite anime theme is the characters in mechanised body armour (a primitive version of which Ripley wore at the end of ‘Aliens’, or see ‘Robojox’ – if you must) fighting wars, each other, or as in this case, criminals. More than that I can’t really claim to have understood: there’s a lot of running around before we get to the interesting bit: a battle in which the villain appears to demolish most of the police force. ‘To be continued’ apparently, though it’s not a prospect I view with enormous enthusiasm. 3/10.
Pop Chaser. The setting here is part Western part sci-fi: the heroine rides into town in her battle armour and finds the place strangely deserted. In the local saloon she finds this is due to a gang of outlaws led by Zack – that night, Mai, one of the saloon girls, asks for her help and they indulge in some tasteful lesbian love. The next day, Zack kidnaps Mai, only to find her a bit too much of a lap-ful and after lots of explosions his gang are defeated. A pleasant mix of soft-core sex and violence. 8/10.
Robot Carnival. A compilation film of eight parts, done by different animators, loosely linked by the theme of ‘Robots’. As with all such things, the results are variable but there is only one dull segment, a terribly New Age sequence with lots of clouds. The rest are mostly good to very good and there’s one incredible piece about an inventor who builds a female robot only to find her falling in love with him, which has to be one of the most moving pieces of animation I’ve seen. If any anime deserves a wider release, it’s this one. 3-10/10.
Vampire Hunter D. The title is about as far as my understanding goes: the hero, who may well be a vampire himself, travels about an alien world (complete with dinosaurs) taking on various nasty critters, helped by a female he rescues on the way. Nice opening sequence of a dinosaur hunt that goes wrong and thanks to the striking visuals, this is an example of a film that’s always interesting even if you don’t know what the hell’s going on! 7/10.
Wings of Oneamise. Unusually deep anime, more ‘The Right Stuff’ than ‘Top Gun’. Set on another planet, where one nation is on the verge of getting into space. I was expecting the usual techno-overkill (not that I dislike techno-overkill, I hasten to add!) so it was a pleasant surprise to see that it remained low-science and concentrated on the characters involved who, for example, worry about the worth of the project when the money could be used for “better” things. Intelligent and engrossing. 8/10.
