“36 Chambers of Shaolin: The Final Confrontation” Theatrical Poster
AKA: Drunk 8 Blows, Crazy 8 Blows Director: Ulysses Au-Yeung Jun, Lee Yeong Cast: Gordon Liu Chia-Hui, Chin Yuet-Sang, Eagle Han Ying, Wong Yat-Cho, Kwon Il-Soo, Hyeon Kil-Su, Choi Jeong-Il, Chang Mi-Hee, Kim Jeong-Jung, Kim Wuk, Kim Ki-Ju, Park Seong-sik, Kim Il-chung Running Time: 75/84 min.
By Paul Bramhall
Call me a masochist, but nothing beats trying to untangle the mystery of an obscure Korean kung fu movie. I’d like to say I’m not alone, but let’s face it, I am. 36 Chambers of Shaolin: The Final Confrontation is one such mystery. Clocking in at a lean 75 minutes, on the surface it’s the English dubbed version of the Korean kung fu movie Drunk 8 Blows, Crazy 8 Blows. However the original version clocks in at 80 minutes, and then to add a layer of additional confusion, there’s another international title of The Shaolin Drunken Monk, which (according to the Tai Seng DVD) clocks in at 84 minutes. It’s fair to say that The Shaolin Drunken Monk is actually the most popularly known title of the production in question, however the UK Moon Stone distributed DVD that I viewed went under the 36 Chambers title, and indeed is also the title card shown during the opening.
So in any case, 36COS: TFC (as I’ll refer to it here on in) is a legitimate version of the movie, seemingly clocking in 9 minutes shorter than The Shaolin Drunken Monk, which itself clocks in 4 minutes longer than the original. This is why I love these movies. Outside of the identity crisis that many such productions suffer from (through no fault of their own), here Shaw Brothers star Gordon Liu finds himself in one of a trio of Korean movies that he starred in during ’81 and ’82. The others being Raiders of Buddhist Kung Fu, made during the same year, and Fury in Shaolin Temple, made a year later. 36COS: TFC has an ace up its sleeve though compared to its counterparts, in that Liu was accompanied this time by his long-time collaborator and teacher Lau Kar-Leung.
Whenever Liu and Kar-Leung worked together, a certain kind of magic happened, creating many a kung fu classic (usually under the Shaw Brothers studio) that still hold up today. When they worked on productions individually, I’ve always been of the (some have told me controversial) opinion that the spark was often missing. You only need to check Liu’s miscasting in the likes of Godfather from Canton, or Kar-Leung’s left of field directorial debut The Spiritual Boxer, to see proof of this in action. So while Kar-Leung is neither in the director’s chair nor in front of the camera for 36COS: TFC, he is on fight choreography duty, which if you only had the choice to put him in one position, is exactly where you’d want him to be.
Directorial duties fall between popular Taiwanese director Ulysses Au-Yeung Jun, responsible for the likes of Valley of the Double Dragon, and Korean director Lee Yeong, who surprisingly spent most of his career helming melodramas. However any discussion of the director’s influence will quickly go out the window, once whatever it is that constitutes 36COS: TFC has bombarded your eyes and ears for more than a couple of minutes. Incomprehensible editing, mind bending dubbing, and questionable acting are the order of the day, and for those that have seen more than one Korean kung fu movie, then most likely it’s exactly these elements that you’re checking in for. The good news is you’ve come to the right place.
As with many of these productions, any plot description that attempts to make sense of what’s going on will be impossible to match up with what actually takes place onscreen, however for the sake of coherency, I think it goes something like this. When Gordon Liu’s character was still a child, Eagle Han Ying and his power craving cronies kill his parents, who are masters of a kung fu school. The child is captured; however Han Ying’s innocent daughter takes pity on the boy, and they become friends. Skip forward a number of years (doesn’t matter how long, just know it’s long enough for Gordon Liu to become Gordon Liu), and Liu kidnaps the now grown up daughter (played by Chang Mi-hee), in an attempt to lure out Han Ying so he can take his revenge. For added drama, Mi-hee eventually recognizes who her captor is, and the two become involved romantically (Stockholm syndrome anyone?), complicating Liu’s need to kill her father and complete his vengeance.
If the above sounds remarkably straight forward, then don’t panic, there’s more! The boy manages to escape Han Ying, and ends up under the tutelage of a drunken master (played by Hyeon Kil-Su, the earring adorned villain of Magnificent Wonderman from Shaolin). Most bizarre though, is a parallel plot that involves another of Han Ying’s enemies, a One Armed Boxer clone played by one-hit wonder Wong Yat Cho. Quite what the relationship is between Yat Cho and Liu is never explained, however Liu seems pretty upset when Han Ying is stomping his head into the ground during the finale, so my guess is in the original version they know each other. Yat Cho’s disability may be inspired by Jimmy Wang Yu, but it’s also apparent that he visited the same barber Casanova Wong was frequenting in the early 80’s.
His one armed fist thankfully packs a mighty punch, frequently sending anyone that looks at him the wrong way several feet through the air. Speaking of barbers, Liu’s hair length has a tendency to change from scene to scene. In some it looks like he’s just come back from a session with a Gillette Mach 3, looking very much the “bald headed bastard” that he’s frequently referred to as, and in others, he’s well on his way to having a full head of hair. One inexplicable decision in 36COS: TFC, is that whole sections of Fury in Shaolin Temple, made a year later, have been inserted into the runtime. From shots of Liu busting out the moves under a waterfall that the titles play over, to scenes of him training in the temple kitchen. The temple sequences are particularly out of place, as it completely contradicts his solitary training with Kil-Su. Suddenly he’s making a huge vat of rice, and washing countless bowls, but for who!?
Thankfully the action in 36COS: TFC more than compensates (or should that be compliments?) for the ridiculousness of everything else. Stripped of the usual martial arts philosophy or comedic themes that Lau Kar-Leung imbued his most famous works with, here he’s given a chance to choreograph Liu as a blood seeking vengeance seeker, and it makes for a welcome change. As expected, the choreography is joyously sharp and crisp, incorporating one-on-ones as well as one-versus-many scenarios. The fact that Kar-Leung is also working with a cast of Korean boot masters, and of course the prerequisite drunken boxing that’s eventually utilised to see off Han Ying, ensures that the fight action remains of a high level throughout.
The other significant plus that 36COS: TFC has going for it is the promise of a Gordon Liu versus Eagle Han Ying finale, and it’s a promise that is delivered upon for the most part. Han Ying usually looks razor sharp even in the most low budget productions, so to see him let loose under the guidance of Kar-Leung is at least worth the price of admission. While he isn’t in action for most of the movie (the majority of his screen-time has him sat down unleashing a barrage of curses), whenever he does decide to unleash, it’s worth the wait. At one point he delivers a painful looking flying bicycle kick, and his fighting style involves a series of mantis like joint locks, that he does a convincing job of conveying as being difficult to shake off.
While Liu’s ultimate deferral to the feminine style of drunken boxing to defeat Han Ying comes off as a little too derivative of Jackie Chan’s similar routine from Drunken Master, 3 years earlier, it’s still a worthy confrontation. Combine the plentiful fight action with the dubious dubbing and eclectic editing (my favorite of which has a scene randomly start with Liu jumping down from a temple roof, with no context or reason whatsoever), and you’re left with an admittedly brief but satisfying slice of old school kung fu goodness. The best conditions to watch 36COS: TFC can be summarised by a line from the drunken master himself – “Eat, drink, and be merry…as merry as hell.”
Back in September, rumors were running wild that Jet Li (League of Gods), Donnie Yen (Kung Fu Jungle) and Wu Jing (Wolf Warrior II) would be getting together for a project. It looks like those rumors were true, plus more (plus less)…
The project is a short film titled GSD, or Gong Shou Dao, which is derived from and influenced by Taiji, kung fu, and martial arts. The meaning represented in Chinese characters roughly translate into “martial art” that is based on “guard and defense” (via JL.com)
GSD stars Chinese billionaire/Tai Chi practitioner/founder of Alibaba Group, Jack Ma, Jet Li (also acting as the film’s producer), Sammo Hung, Donnie Yen, Wu Jing, Tony Jaa, Yuen Woo-Ping, Ching Siu Tung, Jacky Heung, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, boxer Zou Shiming and wrestler Asashoryu Akinori.
Gavin Lim, director of the acclaimed-short film Subtitle, is getting ready to unleash his full feature debut with Diamond Dogs, a martial arts thriller starring Headshot star, Sunny Pang.
A stage three cancer diagnosis leaves deaf and mute Johnny with little to lose when he is lured into a deadly underground social experiment. Funded by the uber rich, it pits fighters against one another in a test of animalistic aggression and adrenaline. Johnny’s fight to the top is brutal, fueled by the sole desire to exact revenge on the man who caged him in (via FCS).
Diamond Dogs will be making its debut at the Singapore International Film Festival later this month. Until then, check out the film’s Trailer below, which is reminiscent of Jet Li’s Unleashed/Danny the Dog:
Director: Jang Hoon Cast: Song Kang-Ho, Thomas Kretschmann, Yu Hae-Jin, Ryoo Joon-Yeol, Park Hyuk-Kwon, Choi Gwi-Hwa, Um Tae-Goo, Jeon Hye-Jin, Ko Chang-Seok, Kim Na-In Running Time: 137 min.
By Paul Bramhall
An interesting element of Korean cinema has always been how much the film industries output reflects the political climate of the time. When the nationalistic Park Geun-hye was elected in 2013, a slew of patriotic themed movies filled the theaters, from the saccharine laced Ode to My Father, to the bombastic The Admiral: Roaring Currents. However by the time she was caught up in a number of controversies, from the handling of the Sewol ferry disaster, to sharing government documents with the daughter of a cult leader, so too the film industry changed its tone to reflect a lack of trust for those in authority. Instead of rousing patriotism, movies like Veteran and Inside Men painted an ugly picture of those in power, and Korean audiences lapped them up.
The controversy Geun-hye got caught up in led to her eventual impeachment in early 2017, which resulted in Moon Jae-in being elected as president. A former student activist and human rights lawyer, Jae-in has seen a Korea which is more self-reflective, and the latest Song Kang-ho vehicle (no pun intended), simply titled A Taxi Driver, is arguably a result of current attitudes. The movie takes place over a couple of days during The Gwangju Massacre (May 18th – 27th 1980), one of the most traumatic events in modern Korean history, and the turning point for the countries eventual return to democracy in the late 80’s.
Before getting into the movie itself, it’s important to give some context in regards to what led to those fateful days. Park Chung-hee (the father of Park Geun-hye) had led Korea as an authoritarian dictatorship since 1963, torturing his opponents and restricting civil liberties. When he was assassinated in 1979, many hoped for a return for democracy, but instead a general by the name of Chun Doo-hwan executed a military coup and seized power himself. Citing fears of North Korea infiltrating the South, Doo-hwan imposed martial law, shutting down universities and any political activity, which included dispatching troops to various cities to enforce curfews and alike. In short, one dictatorship was exchanged for another. In May 1980, a group of pro-democracy students in Gwangju took to the streets to protest the military rule, which led to dire consequences.
Doo-hwan ordered his troops to deal with the protestors using any force necessary, which saw many of them clubbed to death in the street. Outraged by the senseless violence being witnessed, within 2 days a protest of 200 people had become more than 10,000. Gwangju went into lockdown, with the military sealing off anyone coming or going from the city. The news stated that a group of communist sympathisers and gangsters had been causing trouble, which the military were controlling with minimum casualties, while in reality hundreds of pro-democracy protestors were violently murdered. It’s one of the darkest events in recent times, and perhaps not the most likely setting for a mainstream blockbuster, however it’s certainly not the first time for it to be featured on film, with the likes of May 18 and Peppermint Candy also using the traumatic days as a backdrop.
One of the most interesting stories to come out of the Gwangju Massacre, is that of a German journalist stationed in Japan, Jurgen Hinzpeter, who after hearing of the impending strife, smelt a scoop and flew to Korea a few days before the massacre began. Posing as a missionary to enter the country (foreign reporters weren’t allowed in at the time), Hinzpeter convinced a Seoul taxi driver by the name of Kim Sa-bok to take him to Gwangju, with the intention of filming an interview with the protestors. As it turned out, he’d become one of the key people to report the truth behind the Gwangju Massacre, with the footage he took revealing the true nature of how the military were senselessly killing civilians. A Taxi Driver is based on the story of Hinzeter and Sa-bok, using their very real story as a framework to construct a very mainstream blockbuster.
A Taxi Driver is the 4th movie from Kim Ki-duk’s former assistant director Jang Hoon. After making his directorial debut with 2008’s excellent Rough Cut, Hoon would go on to work with Song Kang-ho for his sophomore feature Secret Reunion, in 2010. Here reuniting after 7 years, Kang-ho makes the perfect anchor for what’s easily Hoon’s most commercial production to date. As a down-on-his-luck taxi driver, Kang-ho’s character ticks all the boxes – a wife who died from an unnamed illness, a single father to an 11 year old daughter, behind on his rent, and a landlady who looks down on him due to his profession and financial instability. Basically, he’s the archetypal Korean everyman that’s become so popular over the years, but thankfully with an actor as talented as Kang-ho in the role, as an audience we’re fully invested in his predicaments.
While grabbing lunch in a taxi driver’s eatery, he overhears another driver say their next booking is to take a foreigner to Gwangju for a hefty sum, a sum which would be ideal to clear his rent backlog. Seizing a moment of opportunity, Kang-ho grabs the fare instead, and so an awkward relationship begins between him and his stern faced passenger, played by Thomas Kretschmann (King Kong, Wanted). Having an English speaking actor in any Asian production is a daunting prospect, as all too often the exchanges can seem stilted, an example perfectly showcased by Han Suk-kyu and John Keogh in The Berlin File. Even Liam Neeson didn’t come away completely untarnished from Operation Chromite, despite having minimum interaction with the Korean cast. Thankfully no such issues exist in A Taxi Driver, and the language barrier that Kang-ho and Kretschmann experience feels perfectly organic, with the pair sharing a natural chemistry with each other.
Despite knowing the traumatic events that Kang-ho and Kretschmann are literally heading towards, Joon deserves credit for still eliciting laughs from their journey to Gwangju, thanks in no small part to Eom Yoo-na’s nuanced script, as the pair try to figure each other out. The fact that both are headed there for self-gratifying reasons also puts an interesting slant on things, with Kang-ho simply wanting the fare so that he can get going back to Seoul, and Kretschmann looking for the all-important scoop. Needless to say, A Taxi Driver sets itself up to cover a broad amount of territory, both in terms of the journey itself, and the tones invoked. Mainstream Korean cinema has a tendency to pour on the melodrama, even in movies billed as comedies (just check out the recent I Can Speak), and with subject matter such as that which is being covered here, gunning for the tear ducts is a given.
However Joon successfully keeps a steady balance throughout, with the expected tonal shifts flowing into one another rather than jarring against each other. The beginning of the massacre itself is handled particularly well, seen through the eyes of Kretschmann, Kang-ho, and a young activist played by Ryu Jun-yeol, the horrors inflicted are played straight and unflinching, making it a harrowing sight to witness. With a 135 minute run time though, towards the end proceedings do begin to feel slightly bloated. A scene which was likely included to make the movie appeal to as wider audience as possible, that features a completely unrealistic car chase between the taxi drivers (led by the always reliable Yoo Hae-jin, fresh from starring in Confidential Assignment) and the military, could arguably have been removed all together.
This is a minor gripe though, and despite its commercial nature, Joon does a remarkably effective job of capturing the essence of how ordinary lives get caught up in historically tragic moments. It’s as refreshing to see a Korean production that doesn’t rely on the Japanese as its villains, as it is to see one that doesn’t shy away from portraying the atrocities that it inflicted upon itself. Setting a movie such as this against the Gwangju Massacre could potentially be construed as insensitive, however Joon provides us with a tale that both respects the truth, while also delivering an engaging character drama through Kang-ho and Kretschmann’s relationship. Like most taxi rides, it may not be perfect, but all in all A Taxi Driver is one fare that’s worth coughing up for. A tip is optional.
CJ Entertainment, South Korea’s leading entertainment conglomerate, announced today that the company will produce a feature film adaption of best-selling French nonfiction book The Vanished for the U.S. market.
The Vanished deal comes on the heels of CJ Entertainment revealing its plan last month to produce and release a minimum of 20 local films overseas in more than 10 languages annually by 2020. The deal also marks the second French novel adaption for CJ Entertainment in the US, following the 2013 hit film Snowpiercer, directed by Bong Joon Ho and starring Chris Evans, Song Kang Ho, Octavia Spencer, Ed Harris, and Tilda Swinton, which CJ adapted from the French graphic novel titled Le Transperceneige.
Written by Léna Mauger and Stéphane Remael, The Vanished tells the powerful true story of the disappearance of people in Japan. Every year, nearly one hundred thousand Japanese vanish without a trace. Known as the johatsu, or the “evaporated,” they are often driven by shame and hopelessness, leaving behind lost jobs, disappointed families and mounting debts.
In The Vanished, the authors uncover the human faces behind the phenomenon, including those who left, those who stayed behind and those who help orchestrate the disappearances. The quest to learn the stories of the johatsu weaves its way through: A Tokyo neighborhood so notorious for its petty criminal activities that it was literally erased from the maps; Reprogramming camps for subpar bureaucrats and businessmen to become “better” employees; the “suicide” cliffs of Tojinbo, patrolled by a man fighting to save the desperate; and desolate Fukushima in the aftermath of the tsunami.
Cityonfire.com received the above press release from CJ Entertainment.
On November 10, 2017, CJ Entertainment will be releasing Heart Blackened to theaters. The film is a South Korean thriller directed by Jung Ji-Woo (Fourth Place).
A man (Choi Min-Sik of Oldboy and Admiral: Roaring Currents) who has everything risks it all in order to protect his daughter, who becomes a suspect in his fiancée’s murder.
Heart Blackened also stars Park Shin-Hye (The Beauty Inside), Ryoo Joon-Yeol (A Taxi Driver) and Lee Honey (Fabricated City).
The film is a remake of Fei Xing’s 2013 Chinese film, Silent Witness. For more about the current trend of Asian remakes of Asian remakes, don’t miss our recent feature: Made and (& Remade) in Asia.
“Buddhist Fist and Tiger Claws” Korean Theatrical Poster
AKA: Yong-ho’s Cousins Director: Lee Hyeok-Su Cast: Charles Han Yong-Cheol, Hwang Jang-Lee, Nam Chung-Yat, Park Ae-Kyung, Han Kyung Running Time: 95 min.
By Paul Bramhall
Buddhist Fist and Tiger Claws is about as perfect an example of Godfrey Ho tampering that you’re likely to come across. A 1981 Korean production titled Yong-ho’s Cousins, directed by Lee Hyeok-su, it became one of the many Korean kung fu flicks that were picked up by Ho and Tomas Tang for overseas distribution through their Asso Asia company. At best, under Ho and Tang these movies would be given an English title, an English dub, and a new set of opening credits citing Ho (or one of his many aliases) as the director. At worse, they’d be given all of the above, and then also be re-edited into completely different plots than the original movie, or even have newly shot ninja footage inserted into the runtime to be passed off as a completely new movie.
In this case, Ho’s meddling has it sat somewhere in the middle. While there’s no new ninja footage randomly inserted, the original version Yong-ho’s Cousin’s has been completely chopped up and dubbed to resemble a very different beast than it started out as. The original involved a pair of Korean independence fighters that steal a horde of Japanese gold. When the pair meet an untimely end, half of a map which shows where the gold is buried ends up in the hands of one of the fighter’s sisters, while the other ends up in the possession of Hwang Jang Lee. Step in Han Yong-cheol, who also plays an independence fighter looking for his fallen comrade’s sister, and who ultimately gets embroiled in the search for the gold. Then you have Ho’s version, which strips the plot down to make Hwang a mischievous card sharp who’s after the gold, and ends up partnered with Yong-cheol to find it. That’s pretty much it.
It isn’t the first time one of Hyeok-su’s movies has been bastardized by Ho’s confusion inducing editing, with another production featuring Hwang Jang Lee from the same year, Chunyong-ran, being given the same treatment and released under the title of Hard Bastard. What’s most interesting about Buddhist Fist and Tiger Claws though, at least in terms of its western marketing (which is exactly the audience it was edited for), is its heavy leaning on the presence of Hwang. In fact, the Silver Fox himself is not the main star of the piece, but rather he plays a supporting role to Han Yeong-cheol (who takes center stage on the original poster). Yong-cheol was the leading action star when it came to Korean kung fu flicks in the 70’s, and even over 40 years since he first appeared onscreen in 1974’s Manchurian Tiger, it’s easy to see why. Six foot tall, handsome, and with a confident swagger, even dubbed into English his screen presence and charisma still shines through.
In many ways, the pairing of Yong-cheol alongside Hwang in Buddhist Fist and Tiger Claws can be seen as a handing over of the torch from one kicking legend to the other. By 1981 Hwang had already become a seemingly permanent fixture in Hong Kong movies as an indestructible villain, with enough classics to his name that they run into double figures. For Yong-cheol on the other hand, this would be the last movie he appeared in, and unlike his Korean contemporaries such as Casanova Wong and Kwan Yung-moon, he never felt the urge to hop over to Hong Kong and apply his formidable kicks there. Just 7 years earlier, Yong-cheol played the lead in one of his best movies, Returned Single-Legged Man, horrendously chopped up and released in the U.S. as The Korean Connection. While Yong-cheol played the title character, here Hwang was a nameless lackey, so for him to rise to co-star status by the time of Buddhist Fist and Tiger Claws is to be admired.
Interestingly Hyeok-su, who would continue making action movies all the way up to his final picture with 2002’s Quick Man, cast Hwang in similar roles both in Buddhist Fist and Tiger Claws and Hard Bastard. Playing distinctly against type compared to the unstoppable villain roles he’d become accustomed to playing overseas, in both productions he plays comically inclined swindler type characters, who tend to run away from confrontation just as much as they’re likely to get involved in it. Fans of the king of leg-fighters may be thrown off by such portrayals, and indeed 1981 itself is a unique year in the boot masters filmography. Apart from his comedic turns in Hyeok-su’s productions, he’d spend part of the year minus his trademark beard (including here), and also make his directorial debut with Hitman in the Hand of Buddha.
One thing that can’t be denied though, is the entertainment value derived from watching Yong-cheol and Hwang strut around in their fantastically 70’s style wardrobe, despite it already being 1981. Bell bottom pants, oversized collar disco shirts, and blazers that look 2 sizes too big are the order of the day, and the visual appeal of throwing flying kicks in such attire can likely be appreciated more now than it could at the time of its release. While Yong-cheol had made his fair share of contemporary set movies, including Strike of the Thunderkick Tiger from the same year, Hwang on the other hand had mostly been cast in period pieces, and very rarely got to let loose in a modern day surrounding. This would change as the decade progressed, with appearances in the likes of Bruce Strikes Back and Where’s Officer Tuba?, but by then the bell bottoms were out, and 80’s style nylon tracksuits just didn’t have the same appeal.
Hyeok-su had spent most of the 70’s directing Korean kung fu movies, working with the likes of Casanova Wong, Dragon Lee, and Eagle Han, and sure enough for fans of the genre there are plenty of familiar faces to enjoy in Buddhist Fist and Tiger Claws. From Kwon Il-soo as a black leather blazer wearing assassin, to Kim Ki-ju as a cane wielding villain. The main villain of the piece though comes in the form of Nam Chung-il, who never once takes his sunglasses off, even when he’s in the middle of throwing down. The finale, which appears to take place in a gravel pit, has Yong-cheol taking on Ki-ju, before both Hwang and Chung-il show up, which sees it segue into a two versus one showdown against the latter. I admit that even for me it was strange to see Hwang paired up with another hero to take out the bad guy, as so many of the movies he appeared in involve 2 or more protagonists needing to team up to take out his usual villain character.
However it should come as no spoiler to say that, true to form, events culminate in the righteous Yong-cheol having to throw down against a backstabbing Hwang. To see two legends of the Korean kung-fu movie face off against each other is one of the main reasons to watch Buddhist Fist and Tiger Claws, and it should come as no surprise to say that the confrontation is suitably scrappy and raw. Those looking for Hong Kong style choreography have definitely come to the wrong place, but both sides definitely get their licks in and show off some brutal kicks. Like always, Hwang dominates the fight, the viciousness of his kicks unable to be tamed even for the screen, with Yong-cheol spending most of it on the defence, until the two of them are sent tumbling down a mountain of gravel while still going at each other. As expected, ultimately Yong-cheol makes a comeback, but there’s certainly no doubt left at the end of it as to how Hwang gained his formidable reputation.
Ultimately Buddhist Fist and Tiger Claws is an entertaining snapshot of early 80’s Korean action. The suits are sharp and action is raw, even if not as frequent as some may like. However much like Hong Kong’s Chow Yun Fat, Han Yong-cheol has a level of charisma that allows him to carry a movie by himself, so when you throw in Hwang Jang Lee, things are never going to be that bad. While it lacks the goofier elements that made me so endeared to Korean kung fu flicks – there’s no bizarre instances of wirework or outlandishly whacky characters – for those that like their action served poker faced, shortly before being kicked in it, there’s plenty to enjoy here.
Veteran Hong Kong director/writer Jeff Lau (Treasure Hunt) is currently putting finishing touches on Assassins and the Missing Gold (aka Heavyweight Assassin), a martial arts film starring Max Zhang (SPL 2), Ada Choi (Fist of Legend), Andy On (Outcast) and Hung Yan Yan (Double Team), who is also handling the film’s action choreography.
Assassins and the Missing Gold is about a group of assassins attempting to track down a stash of hidden gold, according to SD.
Black Eagle: Special Edition | Blu-ray & DVD (MVD Rewind)
RELEASE DATE: February 27, 2018
The MVD Rewind Collection have announced an upcoming 2-Disc Blu-ray/DVD release for Black Eagle, a 1988 actioner starring Sho Kosugi (9 Deaths of the Ninja) and Jean-Claude Van Damme (Kill ’em All). The film is directed by cult director Eric Karson, who helmed Chuck Norris’ The Octagon and Olivier Gruner’s Angel Town.
One of the US Air Force’s most modern tactical aircrafts, a F-100 with a new laser guidance system, crashes into the sea near Malta – a region where the Soviet forces are highly present, too. The CIA immediately sends out their best secret agent Ken Tami (Kosugi) to salvage the system before it falls into enemy hands. To ensure his loyalty, they bring his two young sons to a nearby hotel on the island. Ken Tami’s tough opponent is KGB agent Andrei (Van Damme).
The film also stars Kane Kosugi (Zero Tolerance), Shane Kosugi (Pray for Death), Doran Clark (The Warriors), Bruce French (Mission: Impossible III), Vladimir Skomarovsky (Martial Outlaw) and William Bassett (Black Dynamite).
Special Features:
High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations of the main feature
Original 2.0 Stereo Audio (Uncompressed PCM on the Blu-ray) and Dolby Digital 5.1
Includes 93 minute theatrical version + 104 minute uncut extended version of the film
Sho Kosugi: Martial Arts Legend (HD, 21:26) (featuring new 2017 interviews with Sho Kosugi and Shane Kosugi and more)
The Making of Black Eagle (HD, 35:50) (featuring new 2017 interviews with Director / Producer Eric Karson, Screenwriter Michael Gonzalez and stars Sho Kosugi, Doran Clark, Shane Kosugi and Dorota Puzio)
Tales of Jean-Claude Van Damme (HD, 19:20) (Brand new 2017 interviews with cast and crew tell stories about working with the legendary action star)
The Script and the Screenwriters (HD, 27:14) (new 2017 interviews featuring Michael Gonzales, Eric Karson and more)
Asian Horror has become a popular sub-genre for horror fiends in recent years with the arrival of directors like Takashi Miike, Chan-wook Park, and the Pang Brothers. With a few notable exceptions, the horror cinema from Hong Kong and China has some difficulty attracting world audiences, partly due to censorship in their own film industry and also due to the tendency to rely upon comedy and folktales that don’t always translate so well to audiences overseas. By comparison, South Korea’s horror cinema is almost instantly relatable to foreign audiences, because it often focuses on universal character traits like grief, revenge, and madness. South Korea’s horror films even manage to sneak their way into high art film festivals, places that would usually snub their noses at the genre if it came from almost anywhere else. But South Korea’s booming film industry is young. As a Westerner, it’s difficult to track South Korea’s horror cinema to before the late 90’s with any kind of helpful insight. Japan, however, is another story. And that’s the story I’m going to attempt to tell today.
Teinosuke Kinugasa’s A Page of Madness (1926)
Japan’s film industry dates back to the silent era. There was at least one year in the Golden Age of Japanese Film (1950s-60s) where Japanese studios outdid their Hollywood equals in terms of film output. And many of these films (but by no means all) made their way to foreign shores for audiences to discover over the years. Today, the Japanese film industry has slowed down, but that’s not to say that the country is lacking in master filmmakers. And more than a few of those filmmakers cut their teeth in the horror genre.
There are three types of film that Japan has always produced with regularity and skill; the family drama (think Ozu, Naruse, and more recently Koreeda), the sci-fi spectacles (think Godzila, Ultraman, and Gamera), and the horror film (think creepy dead girls with black hair crawling out of television sets). I’m going to be focusing on the essential horror films to come out of Japan over the years, starting with the silent era and then working our way up to modern film.
My goal in writing this piece is to share some of the best and most influential Japanese horror movies with the crowd. Your list of movies and your observations may be different from mine, and that’s cool. If I overlooked any horror classic, then please join in on the discussion by leaving a comment.
“A Page of Madness” Japanese Theatrical Poster
A PAGE OF MADNESS(1926 – Teinosuke Kinugasa)
A low-budget silent film from former kabuki onnagata actor Teinsokue Kinugasa, A Page of Madness is a stylish trip into insanity that could be considered Japan’s answer to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).
A man takes a job as a janitor in a gloomy insane asylum so that he may be close to his wife, who is now an inmate. It’s his past treatment of her that edged her towards madness and compels his guilty conscience to watch over her now.
With no intertitles, it’s not an easy film to follow. Originally silent films in Japan had a live narrator in the theatre, but the narrator’s text has been lost. Actually, we’re lucky we can see any of the film at all. Originally thought lost for forty years, director Kinugasa eventually discovered the film in a shed’s can of rice. However, even that discovery was incomplete, as there are many minutes of the film that will likely be lost forever. What survives is a surreal, impressionistic art film that’s both somber and disturbing. Whether the film was originally easier to follow and gave audiences clearer answers, we can only guess.
The film was a big box office success, though, and proved that audiences were open to more avant-garde pictures at the cinema. In the years after A Page of Madness, director Kinugusa would win a foreign film Oscar and Grand Prize at Cannes for his dark historical drama, Gate of Hell. Writer Yasunari Kawabata would go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. And assistant cameraman Eiji Tsuburaya would become the godfather of Japanese special effects.
“Godzilla” Japanese Theatrical Poster
GODZILLA (1954 – Ishiro Honda)
I hesitated to add Godzilla to this list because it’s more of a sci-fi film. But take a moment to watch the original film and maybe you’ll see why I considered it essential when discussing Japanese horror.
Less than a decade after the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Toho studios created a monster that was the living embodiment of nuclear holocaust and unleashed it upon Tokyo. The result is a dark, somber story of survival in the face of radioactive oblivion. Additional subplots, like the tragedy of the Lucky Dragon fishing boat that strayed too close to an American nuclear test and the ‘radioactive tuna’, add to the paranoia of the time.
The original Godzillamay not scare audiences like it once did, but consider the anxious audiences watching it so shortly after WWII and you can imagine how it scared theatregoers in 1954.
“The Ghost of Yotsuya” Japanese Theatrical Poster
THE GHOST OF YOTSUYA (1959 – Nobuo Nakagawa)
There’s something comforting about seeing favorite horror tales remade again and again through the ages. We love our many variations of Dracula, Frankenstein, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, etc. In Japanese film, they return to the ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan over and over again. As the story goes, the samurai Iemon wants to marry the lovely Oiwa.
However, Oiwa’s father doesn’t approve, so Iemon kills him. Much to Iemon’s chagrin, this marriage doesn’t bring him the money and stature he was imagining for himself, so he decides to poison his wife and pick a new bride. In the end, the ghosts return to haunt Iemon for his murderous, greedy ways.
It’s an old-fashioned ghost story with no extra filler. Others may have a different favorite adaptation of the tale but I always come back to Nakagawa’s film. It’s a creepy, beautifully filmed horror drama. Nakagawa would return to the horror genre frequently during his career with other similar tales about curses and damnation, with films like Jigoku, Snake Woman’s Curse, and Black Cat Mansion.
Other Yotsuya Kaidan adaptations include Keisuke Kinoshita’s two-part The Yotsuda Phantom (1949) with Kinuyo Tanaka, Shiro Toyoda’s Illusion of Blood (1965) starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Kinji Fukasaku’s Crest of Betrayal (1994) with Saki Takaoka, Takashi Miike’s Over Your Dead Body (2014) featuring Ko Shibasaki, and there is even apparently an anime adaptation.
“Jigoku” Japanese Theatrical Poster
JIGOKU (1960 – Nobuo Nakagawa)
Also known as The Sinners of Hell, Jigoku provides viewers with just about the most pitiless depiction of Hell that cinema has ever seen.
The film begins a little slow with an ensemble cast of characters engaging in murder, adultery, and vengeance. Things get more interesting after our characters start to die. Shiro, the closest thing we have to a hero, goes to Hell where he finds out that he has a daughter who is drifting down a river to the underworld depths. It becomes the father’s quest to navigate Hell and save his daughter’s spirit from a terrible, never-ending fate.
Films don’t get much bleaker than Jigoku. While the storytelling on the mortal plane is occasionally uninteresting, the film has achieved classic status thanks to its bizarre horror visuals. You won’t soon forget this vision of Hell.
Jigoku is also remembered as the film that killed the Shintoho studio with its big budget and lackluster box office. In truth, Shintoho was going out of business and Jigoku was something of a last hurrah. That the film didn’t make much money certainly added to its legacy as a studio killer, though.
“Matango” Japanese Theatrical Poster
MATANGO (1963 – Ishiro Honda)
A professor, a skipper, a singer, a student, a writer, and a playboy on a pleasure cruise get battered by a storm and shipwrecked on a deserted island. There is no animal life on the island to sustain their hunger. Birds fly towards the island but then quickly avert course. The only things to eat are the giant mushrooms that grow near the center of the island. Eating the mushrooms ensures survival but it also surrenders your humanity. Fungus begins to grow inside you, making you monstrous.
In Matango, you are what you eat. Paranoia and madness kick in as the survivors turn on each other in a desperate attempt to survive. With the cast of character types and the paranoia mixed with body-horror, Matango is like Gilligan’s Island meets The Thing. The English title of Attack of the Mushroom People suggests a campier story, but it’s actually quite dark and sinister, complete with ambiguous unanswered questions.
The film caused some controversy in Japan upon its release because the mushroom infected people were said to resemble the radiation burns on survivors of the atomic bombs.
“Onibaba” Japanese Theatrical Poster
ONIBABA (1964 – Kaneto Shindo)
The literal translation of ‘Onibaba’ to English is ‘Demon Hag’ and if that doesn’t get you interested in the movie, then perhaps nothing will.
Onibaba is a film about abandoning your humanity and becoming a demon. Set in Feudal Japan, two women stalk and murder wounded samurai so that they can sell their armor to survive the war. When a man joins the women, greed and jealousy begin to fester, fracturing the unit. Later, the older of the two women (a brilliant Nobuko Otowa) dons a dead samurai’s demon mask to frighten the younger woman. But once the scare is over, the mask won’t come off.
Onibaba is an interesting mix of samurai drama and erotic horror. Kaneto Shindo, the writer of over a hundred productions and director of forty-five, was one of Japan’s most challenging and original filmmakers. Onibaba is one of Shindo’s only horror films but he shows a great understanding for the genre.
“Kwaidan” Japanese Theatrical Poster
KWAIDAN (1965 – Masaki Kobayashi)
A horror anthology set in Japan’s past from the country’s angriest political filmmaker, Masaki Kobayashi (The Human Condition).
The first story, featuring Rentaro Mikuni, has shades of Ugetsu and Yotsuya Kaidan as a samurai abandons his wife to marry a rich woman. When he returns to his wife, he finds things changed in unexpectedly dark ways.
The second story is a visually vibrant tale about a woodcutter played by Tatsuya Nakadai who is lost in a blizzard and is saved by a spirit who asks him to make a deal.
The third and best story has Katsuo Nakamura as a blind monk unknowingly spending time with ghosts every evening. Kwaidan is worth watching for the third story alone. And the anthology ends with a short about a samurai who sees a ghostly reflection in his cup of tea.
Kwaidan may not appeal to horror hounds who demand a fast-pace, gore, or bunches of scares, but as an arthouse anthology it’s tough to beat. Beautiful to look at and with lots to think about, Kwaidan is one of the best examples of classic Japanese cinema, and highly recommend it to those in the mood for something stylish and eerie.
“Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell” Japanese Theatrical Poster
GOKE, BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL(1968 – Hajime Sato)
An airplane hijacking gets interrupted when a UFO flies over the plane, killing electrical systems. The pilots manage a crash landing on an uncharted desert island. From there, the passengers attempt to find supplies to survive until a rescue team can find them. But then they discover the hijacker, now with a gross cut down the center of his head. Inside the cut, the hijacker hides an alien parasite that is now controlling his mind. What follows is a survival horror story mixing in alien vampirism and some downbeat twists right out of The Twilight Zone.
Some of the film is heavy-handed – for example, the nervy American, Mrs. Neal, always has Vietnam on her mind – but it’s pretty good fun. A fine mix of science fiction and horror. The epilogue, which I shall not spoil, has one helluva twist.
“Blind Beast” Japanese Theatrical Poster
BLIND BEAST (1969 – Yasuzo Masumura)
One of Japan’s most famous authors of all time was Edogawa Rampo (it’s a pen name meant to sound like Edgar Allen Poe). His work has been made into many memorable films like Gemini, Rampo Noir, and Horrors of Malformed Men.
Blind Beast is Rampo’s tale of a blind sculptor and his mother who abduct a beautiful woman so that the artist may sculpt her. The sculpture soon grows to gigantic size.
Directed by master filmmaker Yasuzo Masumura (Giants & Toys), the film is sleazy, uncomfortable, and visually impressive. Unforgettable horror.
A sequel, directed by Teruo Ishii, was filmed in 2001 titled Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf. It was to be the final film made by Ishii and many friends and students of his work appeared in it, including Shinya Tsukamoto, Tatsuro Tamba, Sion Sono, and Lily Franky. However, cheap production values (it was filmed on video and supposedly shot at Ishii’s home) hurt the final product.
“Horrors of Malformed Men” Japanese Theatrical Poster
HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN (1969 – Teruo Ishii)
Controversial and bizarre, this fever dream of a film was banned in its native Japan because of the country’s rules against showcasing deformity in film. It’s the rare case where more people in the West may have easier access to a Japanese film than the Japanese do.
In the film, a medical student escapes from an insane asylum, adopts the identity of his doppelganger, and searches for a mysterious island that’s run by a mad scientist and his malformed men. Like a Japanese exploitation film version of Island of Dr. Moreau. It’s not always an easy film to like but you kind of have to admire the absolute craziness that’s captured on screen.
Teruo Ishii would make another noteworthy horror effort the very next year with Blind Woman’s Curse, which is similarly macabre and delirious. Both films feature Tatsumi Hijikata, who was not an actor but a dancer, and he moved his body in strange ways that Ishii used to create a feeling of unease in the audience.
“Portrait of Hell” Japanese Theatrical Poster
PORTRAIT OF HELL (1969 – Shiro Toyoda)
Portrait of Hell exists in the strange, rarely traveled territory between the prestige picture and the horror movie.
A headstrong Korean painter (Tastuya Nakadai) is hired by a samurai lord (Kinnosuke Nakamura) to paint a portrait of Hell. Our painter accepts the challenge, partly because he knows it will be controversial but mostly because of a rivalry with the samurai lord. Problem is, the Korean artist can only paint what he sees, so he must first inflict great suffering on those around him in order to properly depict the torments of Hell. He tortures his assistant, he terrifies his loved ones, and he pushes himself to the edge of madness to create his masterpiece.
It’s dark and unsavory but there’s a theatricality to it that prevents us from tumbling down into that well of despair with the characters. Nakadai and Nakamura are both excellent and director Toyoda’s visuals create disturbing wonder.
“House” Japanese Theatrical Poster
HOUSE (1977 – Nobuhiko Obayashi)
Absolutely bonkers, hilarious, and endlessly creative, House is definitely in the running for the strangest movie of all time. Telling the story of schoolgirl Gorgeous and her classmates who decide to spend some time at Gorgeous’ aunt’s country home. The aunt is very welcoming, but things quickly start to get weird. We soon learn that the aunt is actually dead, her cat is evil, the house is haunted, and they all want to eat the girls alive.
Carnivorous pianos, man-eating lamps, blood surfing tatami mats, and flying heads are just a few of the batshit crazy sights that Househas in store for you. Whether or not you’ll like the film is impossible to guarantee. But I do think it’s a movie that all serious film buffs need to seek out. You will never forget the first time you saw House.
“Evil Dead Trap” Japanese Theatrical Poster
EVIL DEAD TRAP (1988 – Toshiharu Ikeda)
Evil Dead Trap is a slasher film with a real nasty streak. A late night TV show host receives a snuff film in the mail, apparently filmed at a nearby abandoned facility. The TV host takes a film crew to investigate. It’s not long before the crew starts getting killed off one by one. Soon, our host is the only one left, and it’s up to her to unravel the mystery in a hope of making it out alive.
Slashers were beginning to grow stale in the States around this time but Evil Dead Trap plays fresh and inventive. The film spawned two sequels, neither of which quite measure up to the original.
Director Toshiharu Ikeda continued to dabble in the extreme both on the big screen and in V-Cinema, with pink revenge films in the Angel Guts series as well as the dark thriller The Man Behind the Scissors before his untimely, mysterious death in 2010. Evil Dead Trap’s writer, Takashi Ishii, would go onto create the Gonin series of action films.
“Tetsuo” Japanese Theatrical Poster
TETSUO: THE IRON MAN (1989 – Shinya Tsukamoto)
You won’t find many cooler, stranger horror films than this. Tetsuo, a cyberpunk nightmare that I’m sure made Lynch and Cronenberg proud, is independent writer / director / editor / producer / cinematographer / star Shinya Tsukamoto’s big arrival on the world stage.
In the film, a salaryman (Tomorowo Taguchi) accidentally strikes a ‘metal fetishist’ (Shinya Tsukamoto) with his car. The salaryman dumps the body but the victim survives and comes back for revenge, forcing small bits of metal into the salaryman’s body. Soon, the metal begins to grow, taking over the salaryman and making him into something monstrous.
This film influenced animation, music videos, horror movies, and sci-fi but interestingly did not necessarily predict what kind of director Tsukamoto was going to be. He is remembered as a cyberpunk filmmaker because Tetsuo remains his most popular film but there is no hint of cyberpunk influence in other later, unrelated films.
Tsukamoto would return to the Tetsuo universe of metal in sequels, though. Neither Tetsuo II: Body Hammer or Tetsuo: The Bullet Man are quite the film that the original was, but they’re both interesting, weird movies in their own right.
Other Tsukamoto horror films worth exploring include the Rampo adaptation Gemini, the Sam Raimi-esque Hiroku the Goblin, the disturbing character drama Kotoko, and the dream diving Nightmare Detective films (Nightmare Detective 2 is actually superior to the original, if you ask me).
“Battle Heater” Japanese Theatrical Poster
BATTLE HEATER (1989 – George Iida)
A hilarious horror comedy, Battle Heater (aka Electric Kotatsu Horror) asks the immortal question of what would happen if a household appliance became sentient and tried to eat people? It’s like an abandoned Stephen King idea, but funnier.
The item in question is a Kotatsu, which is a Japanese heating blanket/table for sitting on the floor, having a meal, and/or taking a nap. In the film, a lovable loser takes the haunted heater home, plugs it in, and unknowingly unleashes a hungry horror upon his apartment complex.
The film is filled with a colorful cast of characters, like the cute girl next door, the murderers upstairs, the punk rock band who practice at all hours, and the Akira Emoto engineer who takes on the heater like Ripley squaring off against the Xenomorph Queen. Add in a cool rock & roll soundtrack and you’ve got yourself an unforgettable late night movie.
Battle Heater was the first theatrical film for writer/director George Iida. He would return to horror themes again with underrated serial killer thriller Another Heaven, the apocalyptic Dragon Head, and the much maligned original sequel to Ringu, Rasen.
Before we go any further, I want to add some honorable mention for films from the 50s-80s.
Kenji Mizoguchi’s UGETSU (1953) is an absolutely beautiful supernatural drama about the tragedy of man’s ambitions and can be considered one of the best films of all time. It’s a ghost story, but I just can’t consider it a horror film, so I did not originally think to include it. Still, you should definitely seek it out. Mizoguchi was one of the titans of Japanese film and Ugetsu might be his masterpiece.
Hiroshi Teshigahara’s THE FACE OF ANOTHER (1966) stars Tatsuya Nakadai as a businessman who is horribly scarred in a workplace accident. The businessman is then given a lifelike face of another man, and the mask begins to change his personality, altering his moral code in unsettling ways.
Kaneto Shindo’s KURONEKO (1968) is a ghost story filmed with dream-like black & white cinematography about two women who are murdered by samurai and return as vengeful spirits.
If you’re in the mood for something strange, check out the YOKAI MONSTERS trilogy (1968-69). Yokai are creatures that exist in Japanese folklore (the most well-known of which is likely the Kappa). In this trilogy of films, the Yokai haunt and occasionally help mankind. The second film, subtitled 100 MONSTERS, is my favorite of the trilogy.
Masahiro Shinoda’s UNDER THE BLOSSOMING CHERRY TREES (1975) is a slow descent into hell as a wild bandit captures a woman to be his wife, and then must murder and behead strangers in order to meet her needs. There is a moment at the end that is fricking terrifying.
I struggle to label Seijun Suzuki’s ZIGEUNERWIESEN (1980) a horror film, but others do consider it such so I feel the need to bring it up here. Zigeunerweisen may be the maverick filmmaker’s masterpiece, a weirdo art film about strange friends and the mystery of a German music recording. It’s almost impossible to describe the madness and the wonder found in Suzuki’s movie. After being effectively blacklisted following 1967’s Branded to Kill, Zigeunerweisen was Suzuki’s triumphant return to form and set the tone for the interesting, more artsy final stage of his career. Zigeunerweisen is also remembered as the first truly independent Japanese feature film.
Also worth mentioning are Kihachi Okamoto’s THE SWORD OF DOOM (1966) and Toshio Matsumoto’s DEMONS (1971), two pitch black samurai dramas that double as depictions of Hell on Earth. Both films feature despicable villains in the lead roles (Tatsuya Nakadai in Sword of Doom and Katsuo Nakamura in Demons), and we watch, horrified, as their violent rage takes them on a decent into madness.
“Cure” Japanese Theatrical Poster
CURE (1997 – Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
The film that made international film buffs sit up and take notice of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a director who would soon be known as one of the leading voices in the late 90s – early 00s ‘J-Horror’ craze.
A brooding, slow-burn serial killer horror movie, Cure is about an incomplete man who is able to will people into committing murders. The murderers have no memory of their crimes, just like the stranger has no memory of who he is, where he’s from, or why he’s doing what he’s doing. Koji Yakusho plays the cop who must sort through the unthinkable crimes and determine the identity of the killer behind it all.
Filmed with Kurosawa’s trademark sense of creeping dread, Cure is one of the most disquieting and memorable serial killer thrillers ever made. Some are going to argue that Cure is not a horror film; I say to hell with that. This film is disturbing, unnerving, and strange enough to qualify as horror any day of the week. An ambiguous finale, which would come to be the norm for Kiyoshi Kurosawa, leaves viewers asking all new questions as the credits begin to roll. Cure is a masterwork.
“The Ring” Japanese Theatrical Poster
RINGU (1998 – Hideo Nakata)
Based on a Koji Suzuki novel and directed by Hideo Nakata, Ringu is probably best remembered as crafting the formula on which many J-Horror imitators would be based. It also spawned sequels, crossover events, and remakes in Hollywood, South Korea, and as a TV mini-series. Some of these follow-ups were awful, some were legitimately solid films. But let’s take a step back and look at the film that started it all; Ringu is a good movie, guys.
Telling the tale of a cursed video tape that summons a ghost girl to kill the viewer seven days after watching it, it’s the sort of urban legend-type story that was made for the movies. Weirder and warmer than the Gore Verbinski remake (the best J-Horror remake of the period, by far), the original Ringu is a slow-burn horror story about trying to outlast a curse. It’s not a terrifying film, however I imagine that it may elicit a jump if the phone were to ring during the movie.
Ringu’s original sequel was Rasen, a strange story based on Suzuki’s text and directed by George Iida. Rasen was not a success at the box office or with critics, however. It was essentially erased when the studio decided to make Ringu 2 with Nakata and ignore all that happened in Rasen. Ringu 2 was better received by all, despite not actually being based on the original author’s story. The studio Toho then continued the series without Nakata. The best of which is the prequel, Ringu 0: Birthday, from horror director Norio Tsuruta (Premonition). Later films like Sadako 3D and the Ju-on crossover Sadako vs. Kayakoare fun but lack the creepy atmosphere of the original films.
The original Ringu remains the best of the long series. It’s an interesting story crafted by talented artists in a respectful way.
“Wild Zero” Movie Poster
WILD ZERO (1999 – Tetsuro Takeuchi)
Aliens invade earth, turning their human victims into ravenous zombies. Only one thing stands between mankind and total annihilation: Japanese rock band Guitar Wolf!
Directed and co-written by music video director Tetsuro Takeuchi, Wild Zero is a loud and crazy zombie movie that’s perfect for the midnight crowd. Other than the band members Guitar Wolf, Drum Wolf, and Bass Wolf, most the cast are unknowns. Our hero, Ace, must protect the girl with the help of the band as the zombies take over the town. Ace’s relationship with the girl is an unexpectedly strong part of the film.
A music fueled horror comedy isn’t the place you’d expect to find a poignant message of acceptance, but Wild Zero is not your typical movie. ROCK ‘N’ ROLL!!!
“Audition” Japanese Theatrical Poster
AUDITION (2000 – Takashi Miike)
The first Miike film to make my list is also the director’s best.Audition is a horror masterpiece, an unnerving, sick piece of work that will stick with you weeks after watching it.
A widower (Ryo Ishibashi) sets up a fake audition process with his film producer friend so that he may survey an assortment of lovely ladies with the idea of asking the right woman on a date. The widower’s plan works as he meets Asami (Eihi Shiina), an enchanting woman that seems perfect for him. They date and we see glimpses into Asami’s life that aren’t clear at first but tell the viewer enough to be wary. After pledging their love for each other, Asami promptly disappears. The love-struck widower tries to track her down, but most contacts lead to dead ends. The clues that do pan out lead to a mystery involving severed body parts and sadism. It all comes together with an unforgettable climax that ranks among the most shocking in the history of horror cinema.
Audition has fans—and detractors—the world over who have attempted to decipher the film’s intentions and meanings. It’s seen as both a feminist revenge film and a misogynist piece of trash (accusations of misogyny are common in the filmography of Miike). For my part, I think it’s a bit of both—and neither? The widower is a sleaze who went woman shopping and got more than he bargained for in the deal. But the film seems aware of this. The widower says, “I feel like a criminal,” and other parts have men complaining about the growing roles of women in the workplace. Asami operating on her own initiative is feminist but her motives and methods are monstrous. Can she really be called an avenger? Her past makes it clear that she became evil after being abused, but this does not necessarily excuse her actions (not all of them, at least).
As far as the director’s intent goes, Miike says that we’re all reading too much into it. Miike doesn’t even consider Audition to be a horror film or Asami to be a monster. In a Midnight Eye interview, Miike is quoted as saying, “She doesn’t commit a big crime, she just cuts the guy’s foot off.” Haha, that Miike. More than a decade since its release, the debate about Audition continues. In the meantime, if you’ve got the stomach for extreme horror, you should see it for yourself. It’s a horror masterwork.
“Versus” Korean Theatrical Poster
VERSUS (2000 – Ryuhei Kitamura)
Versus is what you get when you mix The Matrix with The Evil Dead, a crazy genre mash that shouldn’t work but manages to surprise you with its anything goes sense of entertainment.
Yakuza, samurai, and the undead collide in The Forest of Resurrection as a hero (Tak Sakaguchi) attempts to save a girl from the supernatural with his badass fighting skills. It’s rough around the edges – and has been called ‘so bad it’s good’ on more than one occasion – but if you can tap into its particular wavelength, you’re in for a treat.
Kitamura puts all his influences on screen in his most unfettered and honest film production. Versus reminds one of an early Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson horror film. And though it’s fair to say that Kitamura’s career did not entirely deliver on the promise shown in Versus, he remains an interesting filmmaker when given the right material (Godzilla: Final Wars was not the right material).
Kitamura frequently returns to horror genre both in his native Japan and in American film. Other notable horror works include the Clive Barker adaptation Midnight Meat Train, the dark fantasy samurai tale Aragami, and the 2017 thriller Downrange.
“Battle Royale” Japanese Movie Poster
BATTLE ROYALE (2000 – Kinji Fukasaku)
Is Battle Royale a horror film? I’m not sure if ‘horror’ is the first genre that comes to mind when I think of Battle Royale. However, I feel that a movie can’t massacre schoolkids for a dystopian government operated game without a bit of horror in there somewhere. So, onto the list it goes.
By now, you’ve undoubtedly heard of Battle Royale. A classroom of high school kids is dropped onto an island, given weapons, and instructed by their teacher (Takeshi Kitano) to kill each other or be executed. It’s Lord of the Flies with a machine gun.
Interpretations on what the film was attempting to say vary but the anxiety and the rage are always evident. The violent madness that Fukasaku used in his yakuza pictures is made even more disturbing when it’s children wielding the weapons. Battle Royale is, understandably, a controversial film. It received a rare R-15 rating in Japan and went without an official home video release in the United States for many years. Now, with The Hunger Games a genuine phenomenon (a series which people are quick to point out shares much in common with Battle Royale), Fukasaku’s film is being discovered by a new wave of fans around the world.
Fukasaku began filming Battle Royale II: Requiem but died from cancer after just one day of shooting, effectively making the first Battle Royale his final film. The sequel was completed by Kenta Fukasaku, Kinji’s son. Battle Royale II may be bold but it’s not very good — its intentions are muddy at best and gross at worst. Best to stick with the original film and the book on which it was based.
“Visitor Q” Japanese Theatrical Poster
VISITOR Q (2001 – Takashi Miike)
Visitor Q is Takashi Miike unplugged. A lurid, bizarre, NSFW piece of madness that perhaps best represents the sort of crazy shit that runs through the director’s head when he’s stuck filming a kid’s movie. Miike, who got his start in direct-to-video V-Cinema, filmed Visitor Q on digital video which served to make the film appear more real and intimate.
Visitor Q is about a father (Kenichi Endo) who’s failed as a reporter that decides to film a documentary about sex and troubled youth. Um, it gets pretty weird. He has sex with his daughter (a prostitute), films his son getting bullied (the son then bullies his mother), and welcomes a complete stranger (“Q”) into his home.
It’s a film about a family coming together via the most unthinkable means. And it’s quite possibly the most disturbing film of Miike’s career, which is really saying something. Thankfully, Visitor Q is blessed with a bizarre sense of humor, so at least we’re able to laugh while we squirm in our seats.
“The Happiness of the Katakuris” Japanese Theatrical Poster
THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS (2001 – Takashi Miike)
A macabre tale about a family running a bed and breakfast with the bad luck of having their guests repeatedly die on them. Fearing that the deaths will ruin their struggling business, they take it upon themselves to bury the bodies in the forest, which only leads to future sticky situations.
A remake of the South Korean thriller The Quiet Family by Kim Jee-woon, Miike’s Katakuris changes things up by telling the story as a musical comedy. Miike made The Happiness of the Katakurisat the most interesting point in his career where he was transitioning from Japan’s bad boy director to one of Japan’s most popular mainstream filmmakers. As such, the film has the same madness and energy we recognize from his earlier films, while also being mainstream enough for general audiences without ever feeling like a company product.
Despite its status as a remake, The Happiness of the Katakuris is a one-of-a-kind film. In a 25+ year career with 100 films to his name, The Happiness of the Katakuris ranks among Miike’s very best. Miike’s other horror credits worth watching include the J-Horror cell phone ghost story One Missed Call, the Asian horror anthology piece Three… Extremes, and the miniseries MPD Psycho.
Many other Miike films, though not specifically horror films, are nonetheless obviously the work of a horror filmmaker. The dark fantasy Izo, the cyborg actioner Full Metal Yakuza, the Lynchian crime pic Gozu, and the extreme superhero film Ichi the Killer show Miike using horror film sensibilities in other unusual genres.
“Suicide Club” Japanese Theatrical Poster
SUICIDE CLUB (2002 – Sion Sono)
54 high school schoolgirls hold hands, smile, and jump in front of an incoming train. That senseless loss of life is only the start. Boys jump off the roof of their school, nurses jump out the window, and there are whispers of a “Suicide Club” online cheering each other on. And somehow this all seems to be linked to pop’s newest girl group, Desert.It should sound absurd but we live in the real world and we know it’s more believable than we’d like to admit.
In the hands of Sono (one of the only directors who could make Takashi Miike look “normal” by comparison), Suicide Club is a shocking, nasty movie with a tough nut of a mystery at its center. What it all means and whether it achieves all it sets out to do is debatable. But you won’t soon forget the smiling, happy children jumping to their deaths or the detective’s quest to figure it all out.
Sion Sono directed a companion piece titled Noriko’s Dinner Table which takes place during the events of Suicide Club and ties up some of the loose threads of the original film.
“Dark Water” Japanese Theatrical Poster
DARK WATER (2002 – Hideo Nakata)
After Ringu became a huge hit — wherein director Hideo Nakata adapted a horror novel by Koji Suzuki — it must’ve made sense to repeat that formula for success.
Nakata returns to direct the adaptation of another Suzuki ghost story, Dark Water, a tale about a divorcee and her child moving into a creepy apartment with a leak upstairs. After investigating further, the mother uncovers a mystery about a missing child in the building. Then, her own child goes missing, and the search inevitably brings the mother to the vacant leaking apartment upstairs. More grounded and not as scary as Ringu, Dark Water is nonetheless an expertly made horror film. One moment in the finale is positively spine-chilling.
Dark Water, like Ringu and so many other J-Horror films, was remade by Hollywood. The remake was directed by Walter Salles and starred Jennifer Connelly. Salles’ Dark Water doesn’t quite measure up to Nakata’s film but it’s still a competent little horror movie.
Following Dark Water, Nakata’s star fell off a bit. He went to Hollywood to direct the sequel to Gore Verbinski’s The Ring, but The Ring Two didn’t have the same soul as Nakata’s originals or the style of Verbinski’s remake. His other works include the internet thriller Chatroom, the Death Note spinoff L: Change the World, and the horror films Kaidan, The Incite Mill, The Complex, and Ghost Theater.
Despite being pigeonholed as a horror filmmaker, Nakata never had any intention for his career to go that way. His next film is said to be a romantic comedy.
“Ju-On” Japanese DVD Cover
JU-ON: THE GRUDGE (2002 – Takashi Shimizu)
At the turn of the new millennium, the J-Horror craze was at its zenith. Ringu might be the first and most influential J-Horror film people think of, but Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-on is right behind it.
Unlike most haunted house stories where you can escape the horrors by escaping the house, Ju-on’s ghosts put a curse on all those who enter their home. The ghosts follow and torment their victims wherever they go, making them a bit like ghostly stalkers.
Ju-on features a familiar creaky ghost woman with long black hair, a villainous spirit that is a common sight in various J-Horror entries. But Ju-on’s more memorable ghostly apparition is the spirit of the young boy who screams like a cat and hangs out where you least expect him.
Time, imitations, and spoofs have weakened some of Ju-on’s scares, but the film remains an effective chiller today. The movie would spark sequels and remakes with a catalog that rivals some of the biggest horror icons – and a few of the movies are pretty dang entertaining. Ju-on: The Grudge 2 (2003) has some scares that outdo the original. Shimizu even directed the American remake, simply titled The Grudge (2004), which acts both as a remake and a sort of continuation of the original films. Further Ju-on and Grudge films were made without Shimizu’s involvement and failed to capture the style and the scares that the creator first brought to life.
Since Ju-on, director Takashi Shimizu’s career has had its ups and downs. His other horror works worth checking out include Marebito, Reincarnation, and Tormented.
“Noroi: The Curse” Japanese Theatrical Poster
NOROI: THE CURSE (2005 – Koji Shiraishi)
Found footage (or ‘first person,’ if you prefer) horror films inspire strong reactions from film fans. I’m of the opinion that what found footage lacks in cinematic flourishes it can sometimes make up for with visceral thrills. And while found footage horror remains pretty popular in the West, for whatever reason Japanese found footage films haven’t gotten many official domestic releases over here. That’s a shame because Japan’s found footage output is just as scary and, from what I have seen, generally more interesting than the vast majority of what we see in the US.
America’s found footage horror often depicts a family video gone horribly wrong, whereas Japan’s found footage horror is more often along the lines of an unaired broadcast, a fake documentary, or some recently uncovered creepypasta. (And it seems to me that Japanese filmmakers come up with better excuses for why their characters are equipped with cameras in the first place.)
Japan’s leading voice in the found footage horror scene is writer/director Koji Shiraishi, and Noroi: The Curse is commonly thought to be his best work. Noroi is the story of supernatural investigator who goes missing while tracking the clues about a mysterious curse surrounding a strange woman with a dark past. We begin the story, like The Blair Witch Project, already knowing that many of the characters we’ll soon meet are ultimately doomed from the start. Despite this, Shiraishi’s story remains endlessly thrilling because the characters are likable and the mystery is difficult to pin down.
Noroi, beyond being found footage and a ‘mockumentary’, is difficult to label without giving too much away. It plays like a special episode of Unsolved Mysteries, that creepy TV show which was responsible for more than a few nightmares in our youths.
When he’s not doing found footage horror (other notable films include Occult, Shirome, and Cult), you can find Shiraishi grossing people out with bodily dismemberment in films like Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman, Grotesque, and Teke Teke. For my part, I prefer Shiraishi’s found footage work to his gore horror.
Teke Teke and Carved could be the work of any number of other filmmakers ranging between Takashi Shimizu and Eli Roth, but Noroi and Occult are the distinct works of a particular filmmaker. Noroi, in particular, is chilling and unforgettable.
“Pulse” Japanese Theatrical Poster
PULSE (2006 – Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
A ghost story on an epic scale, Pulse is about the angry spirits of the dead finding a way into our world and overloading our reality. A story that might’ve been about personal life in death is instead made apocalyptic in the hands of Kurosawa, a director who by now was widely recognized as one of the finest horror filmmakers around.
Pulse is a creeping terror, mixing technological fears that were common in J-Horror with Kurosawa’s own anxieties about connection/disconnection. The way Kurosawa builds dread in Pulse is masterful.
Like many of Japan’s finest horror films, Pulse was remade for Hollywood audiences. Unfortunately, despite being co-written by horror master Wes Craven, America’s Pulse is a laughable impostor of the wonderfully creepy original.
For Kurosawa’s part, he would continue to make horror films throughout his career and to use his signature slow-burn style that he perfected in horror for other genres of film. Other fine Kiyoshi Kurosawa horror films include the strange saga about a tree called Charisma, the serial killer thriller Creepy, the slasher movie The Guard from Underground, and the ghost stories Séance and Retribution.
Cold Fish DVD (Salient)
COLD FISH (2010 – Sion Sono)
After she shoplifts from a pet store, a family man (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) forces his daughter take a job at the store to make it up to the friendly couple who own of the place. But the more he learns about the couple, the more he’s concerned about letting his girl work so close to them. Soon, the father gets dragged into a web of murder and intimidation. Seems the friendly pet shop owners are a pair of serial killers who chop up and dispose of corpses in the woods.
Cold Fish loses a little something in the final act when it departs from its true crime roots and goes into straight up horror territory. Uneven though it may be, Cold Fish is a film you simply cannot look away from.
Supporting actor Denden gives horror one of its most chilling performances as the pet shop’s co-owner. It’s among the best, most disturbing dramas about serial killers and human savagery ever filmed.
Let’s close things out with a few more honorable mentions spanning between the 90s and today.
TOMIE (1999-2011) is a J-Horror series about a high school girl named Tomie who drives her obsessive admirers insane.
Tetsuo Shinohara’s KARAOKE TERROR (2003) is a fun horror comedy about a rivalry between young punks and middle-aged women. Both groups take their karaoke very seriously and a misunderstanding leads to murder which in turn leads to a karaoke turf war. Best part is Yoshio Harada who wants to help the young punks defeat the ladies because he views middle-aged women as some kind of unbeatable threat to mankind. “People say that only cockroaches will survive when the Earth perishes. That’s a lie. It’s middle-aged women!”
Norio Tsuruta’s PREMONITION (2004) is about a man who finds newspaper clippings from the future which accurately predict tragedies to come. A solid supernatural thriller.
Masayuki Ochiai’s INFECTION (2004) is a gross little piece of body horror set in a hospital that’s dealing with a deadly contagion.
Sion Sono’s EXTE (2007) is a movie about killer hair extensions. It’s insane. It’s also really, really good. I don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes the universe just doesn’t make sense. A good movie about haunted hair extensions is proof of that.
Though it remains difficult to see in the US, Tetsuya Nakashima’s CONFESSIONS (2010) is thought to be one of the best and most influential horror dramas to come out of Japan in recent years. Confessions is about a school teacher who plots revenge against the students responsible for her daughter’s death. The film led a new wave of dramas about school horror and violence, including Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Penance and Takashi Miike’s Lesson of the Evil. Because of the unfortunate truth that America has a real problem with violence in our schools, these films would be viewed as extra controversial here, and so any official release seems like a far away possibility.
And Norio Tsuruta’s POV: A CURSED FILM (2012) is an enjoyable little found footage horror movie about a talk show that’s laughing their way through videos of ghosts until things start to get too real and the videos start to change after watching them.
Stretching from the silent era into the age of CGI and found footage, Japanese horror cinema always had something surprising to shock and delight us with. Japan’s horror movies remain some of the most influential on international cinema. From ghost girls and giant monsters, to psycho killers and mushroom people, there is something for everyone on this list.
And I know I’ve left some out. So, if you think I’ve overlooked some essential horror classic, join the discussion in the comments below.
“Vampire Cleanup Department” Chinese Theatrical Poster
Director: Chiu Sin-Hang Co-director: Yan Pak-Wing Cast: BabyJohn Choi, Chin Siu-Ho, Lin Min-Chen, Richard Ng, Lo Meng, Yuen Cheung-Yan, Siu Yam-Yam, Bonnie Chiu, Jiro Lee, Eric Tsang, Jim Chim Sui-Man, Stephen Au Kam-Tong, Hana Tam Hang-Lam Running Time: 93 min.
By Paul Bramhall
In 2017 the hopping vampire genre continues to hang on by a thread. After being a mainstay of Hong Kong cinema during the 80’s, when you never had to look too far to find a Taoist priest (usually Lam Ching-Ying) dealing with a member of the undead, by the time the 90’s came around it was a genre in the process of fading away. Like the hopping vampires themselves though, it didn’t stay dead forever, with director Juno Mak’s 2013 movie Rigor Mortis providing a surprisingly effective more serious approach to proceedings. It wasn’t an approach that would catch on though, and only a year later the genre was dragged back to the realms of banal comedy, with the release of the Yuen Biao starring Sifu vs. Vampire.
Which brings us to the latest entry, that comes in the form of Vampire Cleanup Department, the directorial debut of screenwriters Chiu Sin-Hang and Yan Pak-Wing. The pair deserve credit for crafting a tale which at least offers a new slant on the usual hopping vampire shenanigans, as we learn that Hong Kong has a secret government department who are solely responsible for removing vampires from society. The guide for our journey is a character played by BabyJohn Choi (who I’m assured is no relation to AngelaBaby), here in his first starring role after supporting turns in the likes of Shock Wave and SPL 2: A Time for Consequences. After surviving being bitten by a vampire, his apparent immunity leads him to being recruited by the VCD.
Much like Rigor Mortis used its casting choices to trade on the nostalgia of hopping vampire movies gone by, Vampire Cleanup Department opts for the same approach. Both Chin Siu-Ho and Richard Ng are brought back, this time as members of the same team, accompanied by the likes of Lo Meng, Yuen Cheung-Yan, and Bonnie Chiu. When you have a vampire busting team that contains members of the Venoms crew, the Yuen clan, the Lucky Stars gang, and Lam Ching-Ying’s apprentice, then the expectation for some old school yellow talisman paper waving goodness is understandably set high. However it soon becomes clear that Sin-Hang and Pak-Wing have other ideas in mind, and while the threat of a super vampire (who thought Sifu vs. Vampire would be influential!?) acts as a reason for Vampire Cleanup Department to exist, the reality is that it’s a love story.
The love story in question forms between Choi and a rare species of human vampire, played by Malaysian pop idol Lin Min-Chen, here making her movie debut. Human vampires, it’s explained, have the ability in some instances to still display human characteristics, but more importantly for the sake of aesthetics, also resemble their human form rather than a rotting corpse. After a series of events culminate in Choi secretly taking Min-Chen into his care, soon he’s teaching her how to walk instead of hop, and indulging in that old HK cinema trope of bringing her along for a family dinner. For many this will most likely seem like an insipid proposition, however onscreen the relationship, as manufactured as it is, maintains a degree of charm thanks to the pair having a likable chemistry between them.
There’s a running joke throughout involving the fact Min-Chen has swallowed Choi’s smart phone, which works even when it shouldn’t (both the joke and the smart phone), and watching Choi’s grandmother, played by Shaw Brothers starlet Siu Yam-Yam, interrogate the pair over their love life draws the desired laughs. In between scenes of the budding relationship is Choi’s training regime to become a member of the VCD, which sees him being taken under the wing of each respective member of the team. Apart from seeing Lo Meng prancing about in vampire makeup, and Yuen Cheung-Yan’s lectures on talisman use, the highlight of these are the sparring sessions he has with Chin Siu-Ho. Or as they’re referred to in the movie, vampire defence training. These scenes give some brief but welcome flashes of Siu-Ho’s kung fu skills, and are enough to make one wish he’d be given more of an opportunity to show them off.
However the influence of several Hollywood movies tends to intrude rather than entertain, with the whole VCD setup being reminiscent of Ghostbusters, right down to the sassy secretary. The introduction of a potion which also wipes people’s memories of the immediate past is also blatantly derived from Men in Black, even if it has been given a distinctly Chinese slant. The most obvious one though is the parallel between Choi’s character and Blade. It’s revealed that his mother died shortly after giving birth, having been attacked by a vampire, which is the result of his immunity to vampire bites, and also gives his blood the power to give life. While it’s true to say Choi’s personality is a world away from the brooding tax evader’s vampire hunter, the character traits are ripped straight from the same page.
Despite these similarities, Sin-Hang and Pak-Wing deserve credit for the variation they come up with in regards to the origin of the vampires. Both the super vampire and Min-Chen are resurrected from the bottom of a lake, and the belief is explained that in Chinese mythology water always conquers earth, so the fact that our villainous blood sucker came from the water to begin with doesn’t bode well. Choi’s stereotypical millennial laziness is also utilised in a comedic manner, such as instead of following his order to copy the vampire talismans, he takes photos of them with his smart phone. When the team suddenly find themselves in short supply during a confrontation, his failure to put brush to paper results in him asking if it’s possible to send them to the team via an app, with understandably disastrous results.
The lack of imagination on display in the super vampire’s design though is a disappointment, essentially looking no different to the one from Sifu vs. Vampire. Once more CGI black swirls are the order of the day, and while its appearance is suitably gruesome, the fact that it’s mostly achieved via CG makes me long for the days when being covered in factor 100 sun cream was considered a suitably vampiric look (Mr. Vampire 2, I’m looking at you). It’s a shame, as Vampire Cleanup Department heads towards a finale that pits some of the favorite faces from HK cinemas golden days against a member of the undead, but its generic appearance fails to generate any excitement for the showdown.
The action in Vampire Cleanup Department is handled by Tang Shui-Wa, and while he’s worked in the capacity of assistant action director on several movies, this is only the fifth time for him to go it solo, with none of his previous credits being particularly action orientated. The lack of experience sadly shows, as while the one-on-one sparring sessions between Choi and Siu-Ho are mildly diverting, the final confrontation that pits the whole gang against the super vampire is a distinctly uninspiring affair. To top it all off, one part of it is lifted wholesale from Blade 2, which only serves as a reminder that the finale of Guillermo del Toro’s sequel delivered a much more satisfying throwdown. I never thought I’d say a Hollywood movie is superior to a Hong Kong one when it comes to action, but it seems that day is here.
With that being said, it’s perhaps not a surprise that the most enjoyable aspects of Vampire Cleanup Department don’t involve the villainous vampire at all. A special appearance by Eric Tsang, playing a police officer, leads to a hilarious conversation with Richard Ng as they argue over who has the biggest head, and simply seeing the likes of Ng, Lo Meng, and Cheung-Yan share the screen together is a welcome sight. However coasting along on the good will of Hong Kong cinema fans can only get you so far, and clocking in at just over 90 minutes, the end product is ultimately so slight that it’s impossible to be too negative (or positive) towards it. Simply put, as a directorial debut Vampire Cleanup Department is equal parts pleasant and instantly forgettable, which probably explains why it was so difficult to review.
Director: Tony Liu Chun-Ku Producer: Chui Fat Cast: Moon Lee, Yukari Oshima, Sibelle Hu, Ben Lam Kwok Bun, Eddie Ko, Hsu Hsia, Lee Ho Kwan Running Time: 102 min.
By Paul Bramhall
The years spanning 1991 – 1993 burned the brightest for the Girls with Guns genre, a 3-year period in which an almost countless number of butt kicking femme fatales graced the screen. Names like Moon Lee, Yukari Oshima, Cynthia Khan, Sibelle Hu, and Michiko Nishiwaki became almost inseparable from the genre, one which could be argued wouldn’t exist without them. While the wave of hard hitting ladies had gained popularity with entries like Yes, Madam! and In the Line of Duty III from the previous decade, there was something in the air during the early 90’s that saw the genre explode.
One of the best things to come out of this era was the pairing of Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima. A Chinese ballerina and a Japanese action actress, the pair first appeared onscreen together as heroine and villain in the 1986 classic Iron Angels. The deadly duo would go on to co-star in a further 8 movies together, although interestingly their sophomore pairing wouldn’t come until a whole 5 years later, with all 8 of the subsequent features they’d appear in being made between 1991 – 1993. Their second time to grace the screen as a duo saw them on the same side, in the form of 1991’s Dreaming the Reality, helmed by director Tony Liu Chun-Ku.
One of the most consistent directors working in the genre, Chun-ku helmed everything from early classics such as Hell’s Windstaff and Tiger Over Wall, to zany 80’s Shaw Brothers efforts like the Bastard Swordsman flicks and Secret Service of the Imperial Court. By the time it was the 90’s, he’d become somewhat of a Girls with Guns aficionado, and sat in the director’s chair for half of the 8 Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima pairings from the period. In addition to Lee and Oshima, Dreaming the Reality also throws Sibelle Hu into the mix, an actress who came to embody the Girls with Guns genre, ever since she appeared as the commanding sergeant in 1988’s The Inspector Wears Skirts.
All three of the actresses, and director, would constantly be within each other’s orbits in the late 80’s/early 90’s. Both Sibelle Hu and Moon Lee starred in Chun-Ku’s Devil Hunters in 1989, in which Hu suffered serious burn injuries, when an explosion went off early before she could jump out of a window. In Dreaming the Reality you can see the scars she suffered on her hand, a reminder of just how dangerous stuntwork can be. The trio of ladies also featured in Chen-Ku’s The Big Deal and Angel Terminators 2.
Dreaming the Reality plays out as two separate storylines for almost half the runtime, each of which has a tone that varies wildly from the other, somewhat to the detriment of the production. The main storyline concerns Lee and Oshima as a pair of orphans, who have been raised as assassins by Eddie Ko, along with another orphan played by Anthony Cho. When a cop who’s been using Ko’s services reveals that his dealings have been exposed, and an Interpol agent is enroute to Hong Kong with a floppy disk containing all their transactions, Ko sends Lee and Oshima to intercept the disk and kill the agent, who’s transferring in Thailand.
Meanwhile, in Thailand, Hu plays a beer guzzling cigarette smoking bar owner (who naturally happens to be an ex-cop). Kind of a female prototype for Chow Yun Fat’s Tequila character in Hard Boiled if you will, which would come a year later. Hu has a brother played by Ben Lam, a talented martial artist who never quite hit it big the way he should of, who wants to be a Thai boxer. When Lam’s ambitions lead him to fall under the management of a Triad, played by Hsu Hsia (director of the likes of Kid from Kwangtung and Crystal Hunt), his change of heart to no longer fight doesn’t go down too well, and the usual chaos ensues.
For those familiar with the genre, it should come as no surprise that proceedings relocate to Thailand. Despite its popularity, the Girls with Guns flicks that populated the early 90’s landscape all came with cheap and cheerful budgets, and Thailand became a popular location that allowed the crew to get more bang for their buck, usually in a literal sense. Unfortunately the Thai setting also tended to result in one of two scenarios used to pad out the time – either extended travelogue sequences, or overly long Muay Thai matches.
Admittedly, the Lee/Oshima vehicle Kickboxers Tears also falls into the latter category, despite not having a Thai setting, however in Dreaming the Reality it’s particularly prevalent. Lam’s main match goes on for a whopping 4 rounds, which is about 2 too many. In many ways Thai kickboxing matches were to HK cinema in the early 90’s, what MMA is to modern day action flicks. Yes when it’s the real deal they’re pretty exciting to see, but as choreographed bouts, regardless of how authentic the techniques may be, they don’t lend themselves well to screen fighting, and are usually pretty dull to watch.
Thankfully the main plot of Lee and Oshima as the pair of assassins compensates for the slightly grating pairing of Sibelle Hu and Ben Lam as the quarrelling siblings. The movie kicks off with the characters still as children, learning to shoot despite their young age. Hilariously, the child version of Cho’s character then turns up and shoots the girls rabbit, which sends it flying into the air like a spring-loaded rocket bunny. It’s refreshing to see the deadly duo in such atypical roles, and there’s something undeniably cool about their Mark Gor inspired wardrobe and slow motion strutting, as they riddle their surroundings (and targets) with bullets. Naturally, a series of brief but hard hitting scuffles are scattered through the runtime, including a botched restaurant hit that has Lee and Oshima showing off their physical prowess, and a training sequence in which they face off against each other.
There’s an interesting subtext going on in the relationship between the pair, with Lee cast as the distinctly feminine, more sensitive femme fatale, and Oshima as the shorthaired straight talking tomboy. It’s never directly stated they’re in a relationship (it’s an early 90’s Girls with Guns flick after all, not The Handmaiden), however they sleep in the same bed, and when Lee states she wants to leave the world of bloodshed behind later on, Oshima’s reaction is one of a scorned lover. The influence of Dreaming the Reality’s blurred relationship dynamics can be seen in similar movies, such as Ching Siu-Tung’s Naked Weapon, however unlike Siu-Tung’s 2002 feature, don’t expect any shower scenes here.
It’s during the attempt to intercept the agent with the floppy disk in Bangkok that Dreaming the Reality picks up its pace. It’s a suitably cool scene, that features such brutality as Lee shooting off the arm of the agent who the briefcase is handcuffed too (and subsequently has Oshima running around with said briefcase, complete with the dangling limb). It’s during the escape on motorbikes that Lee is knocked down, and finds herself washed up on a riverbank with memory loss. She stumbles across Hu and Lam, mercifully bringing the plot threads together at just short of an hour, and they take her in as a worker at the bar Hu runs. Despite Lee suffering from dream sequences that see her on the run from the Thai police (hence the movie’s title), she still finds herself falling for Lam’s aspiring boxer.
As is par for the course for these movies, her memory does eventually come back, just in time for everything to go to hell. Action choreographers Lung Sang and Fan Chin-Hung, who also worked together on the likes of Fire Phoenix and Holy Virgin Versus the Evil Dead, construct a fitting finale for the genre, providing plenty of Girls with Guns. Lee and Eddie Ko get a satisfyingly impact heavy throwdown against each other, that eventually spills over into an area filled with explosive trip wires, adding a significant sense of tension to their exchange. Despite the strength of the action though, it’s impossible to shake the feeling that the extended sequences with Hu and Lam’s bickering siblings, knock Dreaming the Reality down a few notches from its full potential. Proof that a dream cast doesn’t necessarily mean a dream movie, for those that have already exhausted the best that the Girls with Guns genre has to offer, Dreaming the Reality is definitely worth a look.
After decades of muscle-bound mayhem, Arnold Schwarzenegger still continues to pump out the goods in a consistent manner. Although he may not be the box office sensation he once was in the 80s and 90s, he’s still giving the fans what they desire most: Action.
After a couple of serious outings (Aftermath, Maggie) – and fresh off his recent announcement to reunite with James Cameron for a future Terminator movie – Schwarzenegger gets back to blowin’ stuff up in Killing Gunther, an action/comedy that Lionsgate is releasing to Blu-ray & DVD on December 26, 2017.
Killing Gunther tells the story of Gunther (Schwarzenegger), the world’s greatest hitman. There are plenty of reasons to want to kill him: he’s arrogant, he’s a show-off, and he steals jobs. The assassin community is tired of it. Determined to retire Gunther for good, a group of eccentric killers from across the globe come together to set the perfect trap. But their master plan quickly turns into a series of embarrassing fails as Gunther always appears one step ahead.
Killing Gunther marks the directorial debut of Taran Killam (writer/producer of Brother Nature). The film also stars Cobie Smulders, Hannah Simone, Allison Tolman, Steve Bacic, Aaron Yoo, Bobby Moynihan, Peter Kelamis and the director himself.
Killing Gunther definitely isn’t the typical, straight action film you’d expect from Schwarzenegger, but it’s proof that he shows no signs of slowing down.
Director: Tsui Hark Cast: Kris Wu, Kenny Lin, Yao Chen, Lin Yun, Mengke Bateer, Wang Likun, Yang Yiwei, Wang Duo, Bao Bei-Er, Cheng Si-Han, Da Peng, Yeung Lun, Shu Qi, Zhang Mei-E, Xu Cai-Xiang, Lai Kai-Keung, Anthony Wong, Zuo Jing-Bo Running Time: 108 min.
By Paul Bramhall
It’s only been 4 years since Stephen Chow helmed 2013’s Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, the first movie in which he stayed completely behind the camera. Despite it being a relatively short period, it’s been more than enough time for the Chinese film industry to completely saturate the market with stories of the iconic Monkey King. Soi Cheang brought us The Monkey King and its sequel in 2014 and 2016 respectively, Jeff Lau delivered a third instalment of A Chinese Odyssey, and Derek Kwok (who co-directed Conquering the Demons) gave us Wu Kong. That’s not even touching on the animated versions. While audiences have likely become fatigued with the seemingly endless supply of adaptations, that thankfully hasn’t stopped Chow from going ahead with the intended sequel to his 2013 hit, and in 2017 it arrived in the form of Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back.
For those who thought a lot of changes were made in Soi Cheang’s The Monkey King 2 (which notably replaced Donnie Yen with Aaron Kwok as the title character, even though Kwok himself played a major role in the original), then JTTW: TDSB (as I’ll refer to it from here on in) will make them look minor in comparison. Chow remains on-board as both the writer and producer, but has taken the decision to hand over the directorial reigns to Hong Kong auteur Tsui Hark. On top of this, the cast has had a complete overhaul. Out is Wen Zhang as the monk, and in is Kris Wu, fresh from his stint in xXx: The Return of Xander Cage. Also out is Huang Bo as the Monkey King, replaced by Kenny Lin, who comes directly from playing the lead in Sword Master. Various other returning characters are re-cast, however to list every one of them would be superfluous.
The mention of The Monkey King 2 is intentional, as while Conquering the Demons adapted a rarely used chapter of the Journey to the West tale, the sequel puts us in distinctly familiar territory. Essentially it’s another spin on the same ground that’s covered in Soi Cheang’s 2016 sequel, which has the monk and his trio of demon disciples, one of which is the Monkey King, heading west to find the sutra’s they’ve been tasked with seeking out. Along the way they have to deal with a steady stream of demons that cross their path, as well as dealing with their own inter-personal relationships, which frequently border on murderous. In the hands of anyone else it would likely be a needless re-tread, however lest we forget JTTW: TDSB marks the first time for Hong Kong legends Stephen Chow and Tsui Hark to work together, automatically making it a milestone of Chinese cinema.
The simplest way to describe JTTW: TDSB would be to say that it’s The Monkey King 2 on steroids, a lot of them. Hark treats the screen like a canvas to go wild on, bombarding literally every frame with colour and motion, latching onto the fantastical elements of the story and cranking them up to 11. As an audio visual experience it’s a sight to behold, even more so in 3D, a medium Hark has embraced since first utilising it in 2011’s Flying Swords of Dragon Gate. I’m willing to say that Hark is the world’s best director at utilising 3D technology, and he’s stated himself in interviews that if a movie is shot in 3D, then it should be considered a 3D movie, not a 2D one. It makes sense when you look at his filmography, as he’s always been an early adopter of new technologies, and parts of JTTW: TDSB recall the CGI excess of his 2001 sequel The Legend of Zu.
With such an influential force of creativity behind the camera though, you can’t help but feel that Chow’s writing is often drowned out by the sheer volume of activity on screen. Chow might have stepped behind the camera for Conquering the Demons, but there was never any doubt that it was a Stephen Chow movie. The distinctive humour, the visual gags, and the perfect comedic pacing were all present and accounted for, and these elements are missing from Hark’s handling of the material. In a way it’s to be expected, JTTW: TDSB marks the first time for Chow to allow someone else to direct his own script with complete control, and the organic way he’s able to orchestrate laughs out of the most unlikely of situations is very much his own unique talent. However the end result is that it feels like more of a Tsui Hark movie than it does a Stephen Chow one, when most will have been hoping for the latter.
The changes in cast also aren’t favourable. Comedian Wen Zhang was the perfect fit for the nursery rhyme muttering monk from Conquering the Demons, and while Kris Wu delivers a performance that’s perfectly serviceable, he fails to bring the same offbeat goofy demeanour that Zhang did so effortlessly. The same goes for the Monkey King himself, and while in Conquering the Demons Huang Bo’s screen time is limited to the finale, he certainly left a memorable impression. Here Kenny Lin drops any primate like characteristics, and instead plays the human form of the Monkey King as a kind of brooding, twig chewing Man with No Name styled take on the character. Say what you want about how faithful his depiction is, but it can’t be argued that he’s probably the coolest Monkey King to grace the screen.
The presence which is missed the most in JTTW: TDSB though is Shu Qi’s short tempered demon hunter. In Conquering the Demons the relationship between Zhang and Qi provided the emotional core of the story, along with several of its most laugh out loud moments, and arguably Qi stole the show whenever she was onscreen. While she does appear in a handful of brief cameos (as a memory from the first instalment), the female characters in the sequel, played by Yao Chen and Chow’s latest muse, Jelly Lin, fail to bring the same level of spunk and charm. Instead it’s the relationship between Wu and Lin, as the monk and Monkey King respectively, which the focus is turned to, as both wrestle with an underlying need to inflict pain on the other. The dynamic is handled well, however there’s the inescapable feeling that the same relationship was explored in The Monkey King 2.
The fact remains though that if you’re able to put aside the fact that Chow’s influence has been significantly dampened, then there’s a lot to enjoy JTTW: TDSB. The sheer scope and scale of the various battles that take place are often jaw dropping, orchestrated by the pairing of Yuen Tak as action choreographer, and frequent Hark collaborator Yuen Bun as action director. Together the Yuen clan luminaries have taken the chaos of Hark’s imagination, and crafted it into a visual assault of action creativity. Much like League of the Gods, applying old school action talent to orchestrate new school digital action proves to be a winning combination, and the combat on display in JTTW: TDSB sets a new bar for just how breathtaking these scenes can be if handled correctly.
If Hark is to continue to be involved in the series, it would be great to see him co-direct with Chow. There are brief flashes of Chow’s trademark humour on display, which draw the desired laughs, however there are also moments that are easy to feel would be hilarious in Chow’s hands, but Hark seems unsure how to deliver the punchline. The perfect melding of the two would have Chow’s comedic timing, accompanied by Hark’s flair for visuals, which here peak in a finale that sees the Monkey King transform into a full blown King Kong style kaiju made of rock. While it might be missing the emotional connection of Conquering the Demons, what can’t be denied is that as a feat of pure spectacle, JTTW: TDSB more than delivers. For some that’ll be enough, for others, there’s always the sight of a pig demon and spider demon getting it on.
In The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful, Madame Tang (Hui) colludes and mediates between the government and the private businesses for the benefits of her all-female family. One case does not go according to plan, and an entire family close to Madame Tang fall victim to a gruesome murder. Ambition, desire and lust eventually change Tang’s relationships with her own family forever.
The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful is directed by Yang Ya-che (Orz Boyz) and also stars Ke-Xi Wu (The Road to Mandalay) and Vicky Chen (Liquidator).
The film opens on November 24, 2017. Don’t miss its Trailer below (via AFS):
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