Geung see sin sang
I'm not going to lie to you guys. I first learned what a jiang-shi is thanks to Hsien-Ko in the "Darkstalkers" video games. I wasn't always as big of a folklore nerd as I am today. I'm sure that character – who is awfully adorable for being a rigor-mortis infused, qi sucking, hopping corpse – was a lot of western people's introduction to the concept, a figure in Chinese ghost stories comparable to the Eastern vampire or zombie. Of course, the reason Capcom thought to put a jiang-shi into their monster fighting video game series is because they were a common presence in eighties Hong Kong martial arts movies. The visual clichés of the creature were solidified then: The Qing dynasty era burial robes, the paper with holy symbols stuck to their heads, the stiff-armed and hopping gait, the blueish grey skin and little fangs. While Sammo Hung reintroduced the concept to Hong Kong cinema in 1980's "Encounters of the Spooky Kind," it was 1985's "Mr. Vampire" that truly kicked off a wave of martial arts horror/comedies about the monsters. The film – which Hung produced – spawned several sequels and a whole batch of imitators, making these distinctive Chinese ghouls a prominent part of the international mythic bestiary.
In the early days of Republic-era China, Master Kau uses Taoist magic to relocate corpses to new graves for rich clients who hope to please the spirits of their ancestors. The reanimated bodies are kept under control by magic scrolls glued to their foreheads. Otherwise, they would become wild, breath-sucking jiang-shi. Kau's clownish assistants, Man-choi and Chau-sang, often get into mischief. The group is hired to relocate the ancestor of a rich businessman, Mister Yam. Kau is distressed to find the body hasn't decayed in twenty years, a sign that it's going to become a vampire. Kau attempts to keep the hostile spirit under control but Man-choi and Chau-sang's incompetency soon leads to the hopping vampire getting loose. The group attempts to get the supernatural terror back under control. Romantic rivalries, more magic, a horny ghost, and lots of kung-fu ensues.
And when those stunts and jokes are this entertaining, who can complain? As in many of the films of Hung, Jackie Chan, and their collaborators at Golden Harvest, "Mr. Vampire" smoothly combines acrobatic martial arts and physical slapstick comedy. The action scenes are endlessly inventive and fast paced, constantly showing off the skills of these performers. A sequence where Kau and his students ensnare the vampire with a net of enchanted thread is fantastic, playing out like an elaborate ballet of stunt work and action. The finale features Chin Siu-ho, as Chau-sang, effortlessly running up walls, leaping over props, and using chairs and tables as weapons. An earlier scene, where the hero is nearly branded and has to juggle the buffoonish police officer while fighting off another revenant, shows off how adapt the movie is at getting both thrills and laughs out of these action scenes. Mostly because the film is equally good at both elements. An earlier scene, where Chau-sang mistakes the daughter for a prostitute, got a lot of laughs out of me. As did the Marx Brothers-esque bodily possession sequence. The totally physical performance does lead to a few overbearing gags. Ricky Hui mugs furiously as Man Choi, especially during an inexplicable moment of homophobic gaggery. Overall though, the stunts and comedy work perfectly in sync to create a consistently entertaining motion picture.
A wild horror/comedy circus of a film, "Mr. Vampire" rarely slows down. Something crazy, cool, or funny is happening on-screen nearly every minute of its runtime. Lam Ching-ying, as Master Kau, remains an ideal straight man throughout and somehow manages to make a unibrow intimidating. Much the same way "Encounters of the Spooky Kind" did, the movie gets right into the action and ends the minute after the threat is resolved. I've got to respect economic storytelling like that. "Mr. Vampire" is considerably smoother than Hung's earlier supernatural kung-fu comedy, with more likable characters, funnier gags, and cooler gimmicks. In other words, this is the stuff of cult movie legend and exactly the kind of third-eye stimulating madness I seek in Hong Kong movies. After years of grainy bootlegs and subpar releases, the movie finally has a lovingly restored Blu-ray release, so check it out right away. [9/10]
Who mourns for the VHS gimmick box? If you're of the right age, to have wandered video stores during their hay days, you know what I'm talking about. In the eighties and nineties, any goofy feature on the VHS box, to make your title leap off the shelves at customers, was a worthwhile investment. Horror movies were especially fond of these. Boxes with embossed covers or lenticular holograms were always a good bet. Some went further and decorated their cardboard sleeved with monsters with blinking eyes, monsters that roared, or monsters that propositioned you. Low-budget Canadian horror movie "Hemoglobin" was written by the same team who made "Alien," based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft, and starred Rutger Hauer. You'd have thought that would've been enough to sell the movie but its distributor had another thought. They cut out four minutes of nudity, retitled the film "Bleeders," and stuck a plastic sleeve full of squishy fake blood on the front of the box. Maybe this was the right instinct because, seventeen years later, that box gimmick is still the main thing people remember about this movie.
Three hundred years ago, the Van Daam family got kicked out of Holland because they loved incest too much. The family eventually settled on an island in the Northern Americas. In the modern day, last of the bloodline John Strauss arrives on the island in hopes of finding an answer to the mysterious blood disease that is slowly killing him. Instead, he finds a dead end small town where the biggest new story is that the local cemetery is being dug up, due to cheap coffins causing bodies to fall out... That's what everyone in town thinks is happening. In fact, a clan of inbred, mutant dwarfs live under the island and have been feeding on the town's dead bodies for centuries. Now that their food supply is being removed, the monsters are coming above ground for fresher meat. John Strauss, his devoted wife, and the alcoholic town doctor investigate and discover that John has a very predictable connection to these damnable creatures.
Bafflingly, the story of the Strausses digging up his horrible family history often feels like it's playing alongside an almost unrelated second movie. Much like Full Moon's "Lurking Fear" from three years earlier, "Bleeders" is also a schlocky monster movie about a small town being overwhelmed by cannibalistic underground humanoid dwellers. The creature effects that bring the deformed ghouls to life aren't bad, their hunched and tumorous bodies being properly grotesque. Scenes devoted to the creature surfacing, attacking people at the docks, yanking victims through open graves, or pulling little girls underground is when "Bleeders" is at its most lively. This element peaks early, when Hauer's doctor enters into the tunnels under the cemetery. After a hurricane blows in and everyone takes shelter in the town lighthouse, "Bleeders" becomes a repetitive siege picture. Tension free attack scenes continue until the movie blusters towards an underwhelming climax.
Depressingly, this would be the final screenwriting credit of Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett in the former's lifetime. Considering the quality of the duo's output, and the obvious respect O'Bannon had for Lovecraft, it's difficult to believe "Bleeders" represents their original screenplay too much. I guess that's the difference between getting a Ridley Scott or Paul Verhoven to direct your script versus getting the guy who made "Witchboard III" to direct your script. Having now seen the film, I actually understand exactly why the distributors threw a cheap Halloween decoration on the box to help sell the movie. Despite its strong pedigree, "Bleeders" is a limp mess. It's held back by a weirdly split story structure, unappealing characters, and a general lack of dramatic tension in its execution. Lumpy, formaldehyde-slurping, subterranean hermaphrodites and a boozy Rutger Hauer go a long way but it's not enough to salvage this forgettable feature. [5/10]
Owing to shared custody weekends with my dad, and his Carl-like taste in music, I watched a lot of VH1 during 2001. Based on the success of shows like "Behind the Music" and "Storytellers," the network was continuing to drift away from just playing music videos into more music-adjacent programming at that time. They started to produce scripted movies and shows too. Such as "Strange Frequency," which was described as "the rock 'n' roll version of the Twilight Zone." Beginning as a TV film, thirteen half-hour episodes would spawn from the premise. I never watched it at the time but, considering the amount of folklore around the music world, it always struck me as a good idea for an anthology.
"Soul Man" revolves around Mitch, a much abused roadie for temperamental rock star Jason Armstrong. He also lusts after Nicole, his boss' main squeeze. While looking to replace a broken guitar, Mitch stumbles upon a piece of music written in blood. It's supposedly the last song composed by Jimi Hendrix, on the night he died. Legend has it that playing it successfully can summon the devil. Mitch does so and, afterwards, is approached by a manager from Iscariot Productions. Later that night, Jason injures his hand and Mitch is asked to fill in for him. The resulting concert turns Mitch into a star overnight and wins Nicole's heart. That's when he figures out who his manager actually is. Soon, the shredding roadie is in a contest for his very soul.
The script is rushed. The budget is low. There's a lot of close-ups of someone's fingers rockin' on the guitar, while the actor's faces appear in a totally different shot. Despite its obvious flaws, I still kind of liked "Soul Man." Mostly because of its leads. Roger Daltry acts as both the show's host and plays the Devil. Probably because I watched too much "Highlander: The Series" as a kid, I'm abnormally fond of Daltry as an actor. The devil is exactly the kind of hammy role he excels in. He even gets to put on a hick accent in the double role of the music store owner. James Marsters, "Buffy's" Spike, is serviceable enough as Mitch. We only see a little bit of his considerable charm here, stuck in a fairly one-note part. It's also funny that the show so obviously uses a double for the guitar playing scenes, when Marsters is actually a decent guitarist in real life. Maybe I'm nostalgic for pre-9/11 basic cable schlock like this – check out the low-rise jeans the girls wear – but I kind of enjoyed "Soul Man." I would've much preferred VH1 pivot to shit like this than reality TV trash. I hear there's an episode with Eric Roberts as a murderous hippie? Oh sweet Satan, help me resist. [6/10]
Les quatre cents farces du diable
French magician turned cinematic pioneer Georges Méliès probably created the first horror film, 1896's “Le Manoir du Diable.” That short was simply about the devil pranking a guy inside a spooky house. Méliès would expand on this theme all throughout his career, the concept reaching perhaps its most ambitious form with 1906's “The Merry Frolics of Satan.” Two gentlemen visit an alchemist, who gives them a pill that he promises can grant any wish they might have. The two men request to travel around the entire world within a few minutes. Little do they know that the alchemist is actually the devil himself. They conjure a magical train that takes them all around Europe but each destination is fraught with misfortune, imps usually appearing to ruin whatever good time the two are attempting to have. After a calamitous journey through the heavens on a carriage pulled by a phantom horse, the devil whisks his victim away to the inferno below where he roasts him over a fire on a rotating spit.
Méliès made what are often known as “trick shorts,” little films devoted to nothing more than displaying camera tricks and simple contraptions to achieve the earliest possible version of cinematic special effects. This meant they were light on narrative. “The Merry Frolics of Satan,” at 22 minutes long, is among Méliès' longest works. That doesn't mean it has much more in the way of narrative. This is essentially a series of set pieces, the travelers beset by a new supernatural mishap everywhere they go. Every scene features some loopy slapstick, usually achieve through large paper prop interacting with the actors. This results in scenes of people being knocked about by an enormous telescope or a phantom hand. Or a lengthy sequence of a set of briefcase being unfolded into the miniature train. That stunt is topped later, during a scene where rampaging imps and a pair of monkeys fold up the tables and chairs people are dining on and yanking them away.
No comments:
Post a Comment