Category Archives: Just fucking awesome

A Pact Plans EVIL Revenge on Crime Fighting Heroes! “Royal Warriors” reviewed! (88 Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Royal Warriors,” a Revenge Tale, Now on Blu-ray from 88 Films!

Hong Kong police inspector boards a Hong Kong bound plane on return from her vacationing in Japan.  She meets Michael Wong, the plane’s air marshal, as well as her across the aisle seat mate, Japanese native, Yamamoto, a retired cop returning to Hong Kong to retrieve his wife and daughter and retreat back to Japan to start their new life.  Also on the plane, an escorted criminal being extradited to Japan for prosecution.  When a criminal accomplice takes the plane at gunpoint, Michele, Michael, and Yamamoto spring into action and thwart an aero catastrophe with the two terrorists dead.  After celebrating their success of saving many lives, the heroic trio begin to depart their separate ways when suddenly Yamamoto’s car explodes with his wife and daughter inside.  The assassination attempt puts a target on the backs of all three of them as two war veterans swear vengeance for their slain combat brothers from the airplane hijacking.

“Royal Warriors,” also known in other parts of the world as “In the Line of Duty,” “Ultra Force,” and “Police Assassin,” is the 1986 Hong Kong police action-thriller from “Web of Deception” director and “Once Upon a Time in China” director of photography, David Chung.  Stephen Chow’s regular screenwriter Kan-Cheung Tsang, who penned Chow’s “Kung Fu Hustle” and “Shaolin Soccer,” as well as “Magic Cop” and “Intruder,” reteams with Chung on their sophomore collaboration following the comedic-crime film “It’s a Drink!  It’s a Bomb!” starring the Hong Kong humorist John Sham, and a denotes a shared three-way perspective of protagonist principals while simultaneously providing sympathetic seedlings for the principal antagonists who though are coming wrongdoings and murdering up a storm of people, a wartime conflict bond between them holds them a higher level of honor between close brothers in arms.  Dickson Poon and D&B Films produce the explosive and hard hitting with prejudice venture with John Sham (Remember him from earlier?) and Yiu-Ying Chan, serving as associate producer.

Michelle Yeoh plays Michelle Yip, the level-headed chopsocky cop returning from some rest and relaxation only to wind up on a dish best served cold “Royral Warriors” for Yeoh, who then under the less recognizable moniker Michelle Khan, is the risk-it-all action film for the actress still in the earlier days of her what would be a prolific international career.  Her breakout hit “Yes, Madam,” saw both Yeoh and also then newcomer Cynthia Rothrock punch and kick into silverscreen success as unlikely onscreen partners to take down a crime syndicate.  In the Yeoh’s next film, she rides solo but only in the actress category, being a third of the good guys, yet holding her own as a strong female, lead between another prolific Asian cinema actor Michael Wong (“Tiger Cage III,” “Dream Killer”) playing essentially himself as Michael Wong (not a typo), the plane air marshal turned love sick puppy for Hong Kong’s tough cop Michelle Yip, and yet another prolific Asian actor whose career in Japanese films started well before Yeoh and Wong and has been rising internationally amongst the ranks of American cinema in Hiroyuki Sanada (“Sunshine,” “Mortal Kombat”) playing retired officer Yamamoto, a revenge-seeking justifier on those responsible for killing his family.  The level of how these three come together in a post-incident instantaneous bond borders an idealistic way of an extreme shared experience.  Yeoh and Sanada offer a cool, collective approach with degrees of vindictive separation with a layer of compassion thinly in between with Wong providing calculated lighthearted measures of chasing Yip with infatuated eyes to break any kind of monotonous, stagnant composure between the other two, yet they’re seemingly different lives, connected ever so vaguely by being around law enforcement one way or another, doesn’t seem to thwart an instant relationship immediately after the plan incident.  What’s also odd, especially with Yamaoto, is there is more background to the villains of the story than there is with him, providing rewarding elements for reason why the two men are hunting down Yeoh, Wong, and Yamamoto and seeking deadly revenge.  Ying Bai, Wait Lam, Hing-Yin Kam, and Michael Chan Wait-Man are the pact-making, behind-enemy-lines soldiers of some unknown war from long ago who neither one of them will turn their back on a combat brother in need.  Through a series of none linear flashbacks, a union of honor between them is made and while respectable and moral during war, that pact turns rotten overtime outside the context of global conflict, suggesting ever-so-lightly toward a combat shock issue between the four men that builds a bit of sympathy for them even though blowing up a mother and child and shooting to shreds a whole lot of nightclub patrons in their misguided revenge runs ice through their veins.  Peter Yamamoto wears his sleeve on his shoulder and there is this uncertainty with his character, and his wife too, that something is amiss, creating a tension that goes unfounded and sticks out.  “Royal Warriors” rounds out the cast with Kenneth Tsang, Siu-Ming Lau, Jing Chen, Reiko Niwa and Eddie Maher.

As part of the In the Line of Duy series, a strict criterion needs to be met:  Police Action, check.  Martial Arts, check.  A Level of High Intensity, check.  And a Female Heroine, check.  “Royal Warriors” meets and exceeds the bar with another bar, a no holds bar, of spectacular stunt work done by the Hong Kong standard way of action now, think later which looks phenomenal on camera and the resulting footage.  Hoi Mang’s martial arts choreography showcases a fast-striking combinations that cut traditional sparring with melee improvisation dependent on the surroundings, moving the action left-to-right, top-to-bottom by never staying in the same place and expanding the field of play with collateral damage of bystanders and family.  A couple of components are missed between that focused innocence and whiplash of violence.  For example, the playfully amorous affections between two of the characters are not poignantly shattered like precious stained glass when one is suddenly offed.  There are other examples of once a downspin cataclysm occurs, the aftershock of loss and change does not rear its ugly head.  “Royal Warriors” just pushes forth, continuing pursuit, in a rage of retribution and righteousness. 

88 Films releases “Royal Warriors” onto an AVC encoded, 1080p high definition, BD50, presented in the film’s original widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1.  If you own the “In the Line of Duty” four film boxset, the version in the boxset contains the same transfer as this standalone, standard version that stuns with a new 2K restoration from the original 35mm print.  When I say this restoration stuns, I mean it.  A clean-cut natural gain, color balanced saturation, and with all the detail trimmings laud 88 Films’ work, as such as with the rest of their higher definition catalogue in the older Asian film market.  Range of atmospherics challenge with a different lighting scheme and mise-en-scene cinematography, such as the pink and purple warmth of a nightclub glow or the brilliantly lit restaurant ferry boat.  Skin and texture tones cater to a slight darker pastel but is consistent through-and-through without appearing to unnatural.  The restoration does have a positive to a fault, revealing stunt equipment during the fast-paced fighting, such as the exterior stone ground turning bouncy with creases when Yeoh vault kicks one of the Japanese yakuza members to the ground.  The release comes with four, count’em four, audio tracks:  a Cantonese DTS-HD 2.0 mono theatrical mix, a Cantonese DTS-HD 2.0 alternate mix, an English dub DTS-HD 2.0, and an English dub DTS-HD 5.1.  Of course, I go with the theatrical mix to comply with the original fidelity as much as possible with any films using ADR for an immersive experience within the original, intended language.  the 2.0 mix keeps a midlevel management of the voluminous aspects to bombastic range but never muddles or mutes the tracks.  Dialogue comes out clear with a microscopic static lingering way deep in the sublayer but, again, has negligible effect on the mix.  Special features content includes an audio commentary by Hong Kong film expert Frank Djeng, missing airplane inserts which are spliced out shots of an inflight plane exterior, and the Cantonese and English trailers.  The standard edition comes pretty standard but does feature the new character compilation artwork of Sean Longmore on the front cover with the reversible sleeve featuring the original Hong Kong poster.  The disc is individually pressed with Michelle Yeoh doing what she does best in most of her films, kick butt.  There are no inserts or other tangible bonus content.  88 Films’ North American release comes with a region A encoded playback, not rated, and has a runtime of 96 minutes.

Last Rites: 88 Films’ “Royal Warriors” Blu-ray release captures Hong Kong cinema impeccably with monumental stunts, hard-boiled police work, and permeates with color, detail, and a cleanly, discernible audio mix. In the Line of Duty, “Royal Warriors” is the first, and foremost, cop crusading caper that began it all.

“Royal Warriors,” a Revenge Tale, Now on Blu-ray from 88 Films!

Sacrifice and Intestines Make Great EVIL Slashers! “Ikenie Man” and “Harawata Man” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Ikenie Man” Available on DVD Home Video!

“Ikenie Man”

Four university friends involved in a movie making club trek deep into the remote, phone service-snuffing forest eager to make their esteemed stamp on the slasher genre, or rather just the director does, as frustrations build between them, exploding furiously into an inability to find cohesive creativity, and their lead actress quits and walks off location in a fit of distaste for horror and their Prima donna director.  Idea and idea between the rest of crew of how to recoup their film from being a total failure and loss has been rejected by the nitpicking auteur looking for that novel concept to make him famous until he and the crew stumble upon a group of eight campers who all conveniently fit into conventional tropes of horror characters.  A plan quickly arranges to use their masked and knife-wielding movie villain to scare the unsuspecting campers with guerilla filmmaking tactics but there’s more to these seemingly innocent young campers than what meets the eye. 

A meta horror self-aware to all the necessary components that make a great horror movie becomes upended in a topsy-turvy tumbling machine of all the aligning mechanisms you thought you knew about a horror story.  Yu Nakamoto (“Phone of the Dead,” “Teacher! It’s a Slit-mouthed Woman!”) writes and directs the meta, self-deprecating, indie Japanese horror-comedy “Ikenie Man.”  Ikenie, translated literally to the word Sacrifice, is used to describe the in-story director’s deranged masked killer the direct himself portrays and finds himself at the sharp end of a knife, barbed wired baseball, razor edges of a chainsaw, and etc.  The 2019 released film is an open-faced hotdog of an absurd horror comedy, slathered with gory ketchup, and self-produced by the then 28-year-old, Hiroshima-born Yu Nakamoto as his sophomore short feature length film under his indie credited production company of Nakamoto Films. 

Also, Follow Up With “Harawata Man” on DVD Home Video!

“Harawata Man”

One year after the terrifying ordeal in the woods, the university movie club has evolved with the departure of the director and lead actress after graduation.  The two remaining members are joined by newcomers with an actor, actress, sound engineer, and camera operator to work on another masked slasher, titled “Harawata Man.”  When directed to meet up and shoot inside an abandoned manufacturing plant, the crew praises the location’s creepy atmospherics, but they run into another film crew shooting simultaneously on a project of their own.  Mistaken as the hired assistant crew members, they jump at the opportunity to work on a bigger-scale film until an actress is brought into the scene, sat in the middle of the room, and is bludgeoned to her actual death by the story’s plastic apron killer.  The opportunity of a lifetime just became a snuff film nightmare they can’t escape.

“Harawata Man” sequentially follows on the heels of “Ikenie Man” by taking place one year after the events of the first film and moving the setting from one genre-staple setting of the thick woods to the next best location of an abandoned factory.  Released the same year as “Ikenie Man,” one could deduce that both “Ikenie Man” and “Harawata Man” were shot essentially back-to-back with some down time in between productions and that might explain the mark of no return of some principal characters that didn’t, or couldn’t, appropriately fit into the new story, which would align with the absence of the titular “Ikenie Man.”  Harawata translates to the ever-delicate word Intestines describes the story’s small indie film crew’s killer who rips out the victim’s guts.  “Harawata Man” is a less meta than its predecessor film by relying more on its comedic context as another Yu Nakamoto Film production. 

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So, because I do not know the Japanese alphabetical language of hiragana, katakana, and kanj and there’s limited information on IMDB.com, as well as other referential sources, the cross reference of cast to characters is not obviously clear.  Instead, going through the character carousal to understand motivations and journeys has become a forced prudence.  “Ikenie Man’s” setup is an expositional setup from the indie filmmaking foursome to run through what us genre aficionados already know:  character tropes, emblematic motifs, and traditional character arcs, such as the rise of the final girl.  “Scream” had highlighted and called out the trade ingredients of recipe elements to make Grandma’s stew that much more appetizing to a new, inexperienced market of up-and-coming fans.  The franchise’s sequels to follow leaned into the rules of subsequential follow ups with each tweaking just a little to make them worthwhile.  Nakamoto flips the script for more campy devices into an un-genre-like routine that sees the virgin killed right away, the nerd is secretly a jock under his four eyes wear, and the only masked “killer” in the story turns out to be the unwilling hero.  “Harawata Man” takes a step back toward more familiar plot grounds of an independent film crew winding up into unfortunate chanceful circumstances and having to defend themselves against sociopathic snuff filmmakers.  However, it’s the way the misfortunate film crew becomes fortunately favored is how they use slasher rudiments to defends themselves that dips the toes of this sequel into the meta pool, taking on the role of maniacs and omnipresent killers who slice and dice with authority and the snuff filmmakers run, yell, and scream for their live becoming the hapless kill fodder.  Yûta Chatani, Maki Hamada (“Tokyo Gore Police”), Tomoaki Saitô (“Phone of the Dead”), Yasunari Ujiie, Yûko Gotô, Marie Kai, Tanabe Nanami, Tsugumi Sakurai, Sumre Ueno (“Ghost Squad”), Yû Yasuda (“Rise of the Machine Girls’), and Shigeo Ôsako (“Grotesque”) are the cast listed.

As far as Japanese gore films go, Nakamoto films are lite when looking at the niche genre as a whole, paling in comparison to such films as “Toyko Gore Police” or “Audition,” but that doesn’t stop “Ikenie Man” or “Harawata Man” from decapitation, severing, eviscerating, and perforating at will with fountainous blood splatter, one of the better absurd keynotes seen in gory J-horror that goes back to Japan’s samurai films of yore.  Gore certainly dangles the carrot of catching these films on either the preferrable home video or, dare I say it, Tubi, but Nakamoto refuses to make it the focal backbone of his films; instead, the story’s meta comedy goes hard with assurances toward every genuine horror fan out there will recognize Nakamoto’s admiration for the genre.  “Ikenie Man” and “Harawata Man” not only spoof horror but also adapt into a new breed of that line of thinking that reminiscent of how “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil” brought upon role reversals through character perception.  Plot paths switch to an unrecognizable gear, much like the films’ official synopses try to mislead with a generic framework, but these new directions still sate that blood thirst to keep interest, tone the black humor to be less wincingly slapdash, and keep the pacing fair, drive practical-effects with intent, and the intense horror-comedy upright in a saturated genre market.

Now available from Wild Eye Releasing is “Ikenie Man” and “Harawata Man” on DVD, encoded on a MPEG-2 compression DVD-5 with upscaled 1080p resolution. Curious enough, the opening company credits list both films as part of the Raw & Extreme sublabel but the physical cases list no such notation in what appears to be a regular Wild Eye Releasing title. Presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the uncredited same camera and unlisted cinematography process by Yu Nakamoto is used for each production with “Ikenie Man” using gel filters to get a nice wide variety of primary glow splashed along character faces during night and light fog sequences. “Harawata Man” forgoes a colorful visual tone for more key lighting in a darker, basement dwelling. Picture quality and detail from the digital capturing translates fine from original print to reproduction with adequate compression of a short feature film with virtually no extras encoded. A LPCM uncompress Stereo 2.0 lines both audio tracks with fair fidelity in a clean and prominent pitch-accented Japanese language, balanced between two very contrasting scores of an energetic synth and “Halloween”-esque piano tracks of “Ikenie Man” compared to the generic stock of hurried, lower keyed tones that pale against Nakamoto’s first score. Depth is good and the range of sounds, such as the ripping of the chainsaw or the thwacking of kicks and punches, have a mixed realism that plays into the comedy side of the horror-comedy. Between hectic moments, you can recognize the unfiltered growling of a generator in the background in “Ikenie Man” to be able to shoot in the woods, a little indie film audio easter egg to discern. English subtitles are forced on both Japanese tracks and while the pacing is good and there are no misspellings, you can tell the translator is not a native English speaker as the written grammar is more literal and unnatural. Only trailers grace both films’ bonus features, but each individual physical set comes with new original compositional poster art front covers from Japanese artist Kit Nishino, staying the tried-and-true course of Wild Eye Releasing’s outrageous physical media facades, as well as the reversible sleeve contains the original Japanese poster art. Both discs are pressed with their respective primary cover arts and there are no inserts included. The Wild Eye Releases are region free, not rated, and have brief, under 60-minute runtimes of 52-minues for “Ikenie Man” and 46-minutes for “Harawata Man.”

Last Rites: Yu Nakamoto’s small but mighty meta slashers make a good double bill, an on its head combo of a run amok head decapitations for the sake of playing the reverse card to mix things up on a respectable homage, comedy, and horror scale that gives Wild Eye Releasing’s “Ikenie Man” and “Harawata Man” more than just the self-referential mediocrity treatment.

“Ikenie Man” Available on DVD Home Video!

Also, Follow Up With “Harawata Man” on DVD Home Video!

Sleep Studies Tap into an EVIL Dimension! “Shadowzone” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Remastered Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Shadowzone” Available Now on Blu-ray!

The accidental death of a test subject during a highly immersive REM sleep project deep underground of abandoned nuclear fallout shelter resulted in the dispatch of a NASA investigator, Capt. Hickcock, to determine if the accident was a fluke or project negligence by the scientist staff.  The skeleton crew are eager to assist Capt. Hickcock with whatever he needs to wrap up his investigation and get back to the extreme deep sleep research aimed for NASA deep space pilots, but Hickcock is not so easily persuaded the research adds up, questioning the data that possibly lead to a volunteer’s brain to fatally hemorrhage.  A male and female volunteers rest in deep stasis sleep and while testing the lengths of the project’s capacity on the male subject, to sate Hickcock’s review, they inadvertently open a door to a parallel dimension through the unconscious mind and something has come through.  The facilities radioactive sensory system locks down the entire complex, trapping the captain, scientists, and staff with an unknown, and deadly, creature that will stop at nothing to return home. 

One of the few Full Moon productions to go outside their bread and butter of runt creatures and murderers, “Shadowzone” branches out with parallel dimensions and antagonistic alien creatures with molecular modifying capabilities in one hell of a star-studded, claustrophobic creature feature from the turn of the decade in 1990.  J.S. Cardone (“The Forsaken,” “8MM 2”) writes-and-directs cloistered camp of unseen terror that uses scientific research on REM, rapid eye movement, sleep research as the foundational base for breaking through the barrier of our existent and tap into another’s without cause or concern, until whatever comes out bites them.  Shot in and around the Griffith Park of Los Angeles, “Shadowzone” is produced by the master of dolls and everything small, Charles Band, as well as longtime collaborating producer Debra Dion and Cardone’s wife, Carol Kottenbrook, under the Full Moon Entertainment production company.

For a Full Moon production in the 90’s, “Shadowzone” had some unexpected star power between James Hong, the prolific Hong Kong-American actor who was a household name in the cult realm having been villainous black magician Lo Pan in John Carpenter’s “Big Trouble in Little China” as well as having roles in “Blade Runner,” “Revenge of the Nerds II,” and “Tango & Cash,” and Louise Fletcher, an equally prolific actress and a best actress Academy Award winner for her detestable Nurse Ratchet role in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a wicked performance that suited Fletcher very well in her career with natural way to express a sarcastic tone.  Hong and Fletcher are not necessarily portraying bad guys in “Shadowzone” but they’re no heroes either as scientists eager to explore the unknown by ripping a hole in the plane of existence and both veterans of the trade give their best in this low run but highly thrilling Full Moon creature feature.  Hong and Fletcher are joined by an eclectically charged cast that while don’t have the recognizable charisma of established names, they each contribute a valued service in the parts portrayed, especially with David Beecroft (“Creepshow 2”) in the protagonist lead of the outsider Captain Hickock, investigating in toward the unknown.  Beecroft plays a suitable military-esque high ranking officer with a semi-relaxed demeanor that goes against the grain of the stereotypical stern and regimented leader you usually see in low-budget horror and sci-fi.  “Shadowzone” fills out the cast with bodies for the interdimensional meatgrinder with performances from Shawn Weatherly (“Amityville 1992:  It’s About Time”), Lu Leonard (“Circuitry Man”), Frederick Flynn (“The Forsaken”), Robbie Rives, Maureen Flaherty (“Bikini Traffic School”) and the always underscored, underrated, and understated horror supporting actor, Miguel A. Núñez Jr. (“Friday the 13th Part V,” “Return of the Living Dead”).

Where does “Shadowzone” fit into the grand Full Moon scheme?  Before the company solidified itself in the mid-1990s with miniature maniacs invading the majority of projects and their respective fast-tracked sequels, Charles Band took chances on other tales of titillating terror from all sides of the complex cinematic prism.  Sci-fi oddities, like “Trancers” and “Robot Jox,” of the legacy company Empire, took footing on beyond dystopian while more classical horror centric productions, like “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “Re-Animator,” provided a wider berth of subgenres under the phantasmagoria.  “Shadowzone” takes a little bit from both the horror and the science fiction tropes, coupling the scientific research of new age technology that rips a hole in the fabric of space and time to introduce an unimaginable, supernatural creature that virtually goes unseen as it morphs into the subconscious fears of the people it hunts down one-by-one.  What audiences will enjoy is the medley of figures this particularly nasty being can warp into when going for the kill.  What audiences will not enjoy is the sorely underutilized creature potential that’s left more to the imagination than to screentime.  All but one kill is off camera and in two of those instances, the creature isn’t even in frame as a burst of blood splatter becomes the demising indicator.  This shortchanging affects “Shadowzone’s” longevity for repeat viewings with no outstanding or satisfying purge of fated characters in an otherwise underground and dark corridor deathtrap of otherworldly proportions.

Full Moon Features continues to toot their own catalogue with remastered, high-definition releases of their older features with “Shadowzone” being one of the latest and greatest to be remastered onto a new Blu-ray.  The AVC encoded, 1080p, single-layer BD25 offers a soft, metallic palette to a harsh subterranean laboratory where shadows run thick, and lighting is keyed on exact spaces and people for effect. I quite enjoy the softness of stark industrial that does not even relieve primary color as this remastered version sees no color correction, but rather color reduction retainment of a sunless, cavernous crypt.  Healthy grain against the details brings more attention to the textures, especially when we do get the see the true form of the being in a bone-chilling scene of its final war cry moment, a scene that will often haunt me because solely of its A/V compositional construction.  The matted visual effects don’t hold true to original first look during its brilliancy dissimilarity when compared to the rest of the film’s cold tone.  The English language LPCM 5.1 and 2.0 disperses through the multiple channels to convey echo location of the front and back while the 2.0 does the job to channel audio layers through with a balance for differential treatment, especially separating Richard Band’s less than jaunty score that’s replaced with more common composition of intensifier notes.  Nothing overtakes the dialogue layer that runs clear and prominent without any hissing or crackling.  English subtitles are optional available.  Other than the original theatrical trailer, the only other special feature is Full Moon feature trailers.  If it’s not a Jess Franco sexploitation special, these remastered releases of originally Full Moon produced titles receive a touched-up version of the VHS cover art and, fortunately, “Shadowzone” already had an eye-catching art, gorgeously illustrated to the point of what to expect.  Like usual, there are no inserts or other tangible bonus materials included.  The disc is pressed with almost a lenticular look of the toothy creature in a scientist coat.  The 63rd title to be released from Empire has a new Blu-ray that comes rated R, has region free playback, and a runtime of 88 minutes.

Last Rites: “Shadowzone” definitely has the feeling of a little film that could, and for a better part it it did with fantastic casting, an isolating atmospheric tomb, and a transmogrifying creature of our personal stress inducers. The Remastered Blu-ray caps off the success with high definition not from this world.

“Shadowzone” Blu-ray is Here to Stay and Is Coming For You!

A Boy’s Imagination Can Conjure Up EVIL Death and Sex. “Viva La Muerte” reviewed! (Radiance Films / Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Viva la Muerte” Limited Edition Won’t Be Around Long. Grab Your Copy Here!

At the peak low of the Spanish Civil War, naïve adolescent boy Fando doesn’t understand what is happening between the Catholic-blessed fascist takeover of his country nor exactly why his father was arrested and what has since happened to him.  He stumbles upon letters written by his mother suggesting that she had something to do with his sudden arrest because of his parents’ rival principles paralleling their nation’s bloody conflict of dividing beliefs.  Fando asks his remaining family questions, especially pelting his mother with detailed inquiries, about his father, death, and the fascist opposition, and while he’s lives under the draconian rule of a fascism reality and his family who abides it closely, the inquisitive boy intersperses his new, complex reality with his own way of comprehending, filling in the blanks with his vivid imagination of childish macabre, oedipal maturing, and an uninhibited interpretation of the evolving revolution surrounding him.   

“Viva la Muerte,” aka “Long Live Death,” is the 1971 surrealistic war horror from then debut filmmaker Fernando Arrabal.  Arrabal, who went on to modest yet esteemed career with such arthouse films such as “I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse,” “Car Cemetery” and another Spanish Civil War set drama “L’arbre de Guernia,” also wrote the film that cemented his contributions to the surrealistic performance art movement known as the Panic Movement.  Though Arrabal was born in Spain and tells the story of the Spanish Civil War, the filmmaker had lived in France where the movement’s genesis began solely as street shock performances alongside fellow filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (“El Topo”) and writer/actor Roland Topor, the latter had penned the novel of inspiration for what would be Roman Polanski’s “The Tenant.”  Eventually, the Panic Movement slid into cinemas and the French production/language “Viva la Muerte” was designed to not only exhibit chaotic, childlike account of the Spanish Civil War but also shock audiences with bizarre imagery.  Isabelle Films and S.A.T.P.E.C. fund the film under the producing credits of Hassene Daldoul and Jean Velter.

What better way to express an arthouse film than with arthouse performances from a blend of European actors and actresses from the French and Spanish territories.  “Viva la Muerte” couriers a perception through the eyes of a preteen child, a young boy of approx. 10 years of age, in Fando played with infatuation innocence and a model of child-to-adult growth in Mahdi Chaouch.  Fando’s virtue through the Spanish Civil War becomes shaped by not only the sudden loss of his father but also the quick onset of maturity being left and lifted as the man of the house.  Fando slips into a mix of fantasy and disdain for his mother, played by Spanish actress Núria Espert, surrounded and shaped by a political conflict climate as he interprets every statement she makes regarding his father’s irresolute fate between imprisonment and execution and every desirably suggested aspect of her action that drives him to internally create visuals of sex and death.  In the effect of one’s different self is the subtle infusion of the aunt whom Fando lives with for a while, a role by French actress Anouk Ferjac (“Hallucinations sadiques”) and mirrors the mother in appearances and in the same taboo risking amorous ways that creates thick, nearly line-crossing, sexual tension between adult woman and male child, especially topped by its incestuous nature.  Unknowns Jazia Klibi, Jean-Louis Chassigneux, Suzanne Comte, and Ivan Henriques as Fando’s dissident father round out the cast with a sense of authenticity for real world conflict. 

Arrabal’s “Viva la Muerte” becomes a beaconing example of merging stern reality with liberal imagination.  Though starkly apposition in film styles and surreal contrasts against the backdrop of a new world and bleak order of a fascism regime, reality and fantasy do blend to a degree as Arrabal sought to have one and the other bleed into one another to evoke questions of motives and symbolize with child caricaturizing the authoritarian oppression.  The overtly sexual fantasies of a naked mother and aunt in the presence of the boy can be egregiously sensed outside the dreamlike context with paused moments of starring and awkward touching.  Same can be said about Fando’s father’s demise as the boy goes through an array of grotesquely creative possibilities regarding father’s fate with most often being death and while Fando is spoon-fed lesser punitive measures by his mother, the chances of the father being alive after being arrested are likely zero based off earlier graveside executions of military firing squads for those with strong ideology opposition.  Fando’s mother plays a hefty role in his deadly, warped thoughts and just not sexually either as her role in his colorfully constructed explanations pin her as the chief executioner after reading her letters to the church about his dissident behavior.  Catholicism, or rather the Church, plays a huge role in shaping young Fando’s personal arc.  Religious imagery of his mother as the virgin Mary, a priest blessing fascist swords before battle, and also the same priest having his manhood violently removed and fed to him represents a way to explain how Catholicism has essentially failed stand against the violence to which, later exhibited in the story, molds Fando as a trouble instigator or rebel in his Catholic nun run school for the Church’s complicity in his father’s death.  Fando’s rejection of the Church confirms his character’s growth from the story’s beginning of his extreme self-penancing and opposition to such aberrant thoughts; thoughts that are not just sexual in nature but also incline themselves to be dirty, literally, with skin-covering mud and scat in playful mirth to signify enjoyment equates to being sinful and filthy.  Arrabal really does give you lots to unravel and the panic really starts to set in, hence his Panic Movement.

Limited to 3000 copies, “Viva la Muerte” arrives to the U.S. on its first Blu-ray release here in the States from Radiance Films.  The beautiful, new 4K restoration scan, with the collaboration of director Fernando Arrabal, pulled from the best elements of the original 35mm negative, 35mm French sound negative, and 35mm interpositive negative fathoms a rich spectrum of a diffused color palette on the AVC encoded, dual layer, BD50, presented in a high-definition 1080p and in the original European aspect ratio of 1.66:1.  Reality scenes are grounded by natural lighting, brighter contrast of the mountainous desert landscape, and a thorough macro-examination of the details and textures that pop the imagery between the grandfather’s bloodletting scene on the shaved portion of his fibrous head to the wet-slick and soapy naked Fando as he stands to get scrubbed down in the bath.  Blacks are solid without signs of a weaker compression encoding.  The surreal imagery switches gears, harshly, from 35mm film to an interlaced videotape, changing and reducing the quality down significantly but with the tape image is heavily colored in mostly primary colors to denote an artful way of imaginary explanations in Fando’s head.  No other issues arise from the video portion, retaining Radiance Films’ attention to detail and respect intact for their culturally valuable and extensive catalogue.  The French language uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mono track fairs well from a virtually damage free preservation.  A slight background hiss or hum can be found as the only audio blemish to note.  ADR dialogue is clean and clear throughout and with usually any post dialogue recordings there’s a bit of enclosed reverberations that don’t synch well with the scene that should sound airier.  Optional English subtitles synch fine and are error free with seemingly proper translational grammar.  Special features include an audio discussion between Projection Booth podcast’s Mike White, esoteric and horror film writer and former Video Watchdog contributor Heather Drain, and filmmaker-writer Jess Byard whom provide commentary overtop of the feature but not in synch with watching feature, a feature-length documentary on Arrabal by French novelist Xavier Pasturel Barron that contains interviews with friends, family, and fans of the director, an exclusive interview with cinema historian David Archibald, a new cut trailer from Radiance, and an image gallery.  Radiance continues to impress with the encoded special features and, not to be outshined, the physical features are also a bright light that reflects the essence of the Panic Movement with a clear, a millimeter thicker Amaray presenting the yellow and red background with provocative character imagery at the center that speaks the sex and death motif.  The reverse side has the same color scheme mixed up with an illustration of one of the characters displayed infamously in the film.  The insert contains a 35-page color booklet, bounded end-to-end with the strange and uneasy drawings of Fernando Arrabal, with a 1976 Arrabal interview by film critic and historians Peter Brunette and Gerald Peary and an exclusive essay from Sabina Stent.  Transfer notes as well as a complete cast and crew acknowledgement bookends the booklet’s main courses.  The disc is pressed in a solid, canary yellow with black lettering for the title.  Radiance’s 66th title comes region free release has a runtime of 88 minutes and is not rated. 

Last Rites: War is hell. For Fernando Arrabal, war is ambiguous and surreal. Radiance spotlights every ambivalent corner of Arrabal’s “Viva la Muerte” to light up its anti-nondescript digestion of one boy’s survival of his own maturity during a post-war fascist scrub, a task none too simple to undertake much like Arrabal’s storytelling.

“Viva la Muerte” Limited Edition Won’t Be Around Long. Grab Your Copy Here!

A Father Goes Looking for His Missing Daughter but All He Finds is EVIL! “The World of Kanako” reviewed! (Drafthouse Films and MVD Visual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Purchase “The World of Kanako” From Drafthouse Films and MVD Visual

A washed-up former lieutenant detective now working as a lowly security guard becomes the first person to stumble into the aftermath of a gruesome, convenient store triple homicide.  After being questioned by police who suspects him of being involved because of his manic-depressive disorder, stemmed by his historical violent behavior and ugly divorce that virtually left him with nothing but his medication, the indecorous alcoholic floating through life receives a frantic call from his ex-wife about their teenage daughter, who he hasn’t seen in years and has suddenly gone missing for nearly a week.  Eager to have his family back in his life, he takes on the responsibility of investigating his daughter’s disappearance but the deeper he digs into her whereabout the more of the ugly truth surfaces between his daughter and the criminal underworld where deception, prostitution, and murder tells a different story than the one in his muddled head. 

In 2004, novelist Akio Fukamachi wrote “Hateshinaki Kawaki,” the rummaging into a lurid and pulpy underbelly of crime network through the eyes of one charismatic high school girl and her former detective father pursuing answers to her disappearance.  Fast-forward a decade later to 2014, director Tetsuya Nakashima (“Kamikaze Girls,” “Confessions”) adapts the novel’s darkness into a visual descent into lunacy under the title “The World of Kanako” from a script by Nakashima cowritten with collaboration writers Miako Tadano and Nobuhiro Monma of “3 Year Pregnant.”  The adaptation retains fidelity to the original Fukamachi story filled to the brim with violence, yakuza, sordid themes, and coldness that translates effortlessly and is well received in the likes of Japanese cinema that has decades of trenchant crime films under its wing.  “The World of Kanako” is no different yet still stands alone as an engaging entry produced by Satomi Odake (“Himizu”) and Yutaka Suzuki (“Confessions”) under the production of Gaga Communications.

The film interweaves the past and present with a bi-story to help unearth cruel intentions from what starts off as a seemingly routine plotted mystery with a degenerate, deadbeat father looking to make recompences using his investigative skills to find his daughter to quickly spiraling recklessly into an abyss of bombshell revelations.  Yet, Akikazu Fujishima continues his crusade out of his own self-pity to a more deserving, rewarding, and if not, diverting objective that reveals just about as much of his cataleptic state of being than the exhuming of his daughter’s disappearance from out of the criminal underground.  Veteran, international actor whose had roles in such films as “Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Pulse,” and “Babel,” Koji Yakusho gives a conscious performance of a flawed man with flawed tactical awareness charging headfirst and sternly stubborn into a complex web where the giant carnivorous spider of seediness hides behind the veil.  At the opposite end of the casting table is then newcomer Nana Komatsu (“Destruction Babies”) making her filmic debut in a past timeline as the titular Kanako, paralleling her father’s story by accompanying fellow high school student and constantly bullied narrator of the historical account in Hiroya Shimizu (“The Outsider”).  Kanako’s story unfolds a yakuza narrative that’s nasty and perverse while shepherding in Kanako’s role that teeters upon the audience’s perception throughout.  What Akikazu fleshes out and discovers is the reason for all the mayhem that has, more-or-less, started with him, retorting whatever sliver of moral intentions he had begun with with the fact we can’t change who we are and the children we raise in a Darwin nature or nurture, or perhaps in this case both, environment.  Akikazu and Kanako meet a variety of unsavory characters along the way that ends shockingly and cynically, completely obliterating the happy family and happy ending conventionalities.  Satoshi Tsumabuki (“Tomie:  Re-Birth”), Asuka Kurosawa, Ai Hashimoto (“Another”), Fumi Nikaidô (“Lesson of the Evil”), Aoi Morikawa (“The Killing Hour”), Miki Nakatani (“Ringu”), Mahiro Takasugi (“12 Suicidal Teens”), Munetaka Aoki (“Godzilla:  Minus One”) and Jun Kunimura (“Ichi the Killer”) portray some of those uncharacteristic archetypes.

Stylish, pulpy, and darkly themed, “The World of Kanako” has a modern grindhouse pastiche of the hardboiled Japanese noir.  The story is a wrecking ball of all good ideals and hopes, a genuine cynical representation of an unpleasant situation.  An 80/20 mixture of live action and animation splice ins, Kanako’s world is certainly represented as a chaotic coup d’état over pedestrian storytelling and dissects the human condition to test family ties, reveal lost bonds, and really scrutinize hereditary genetics.  The film’s opening is a flurry of converging images, past and present, live and animation, and narration, soundtrack, and bits of dialogue that open with the gruesome convenient store murders of three people, seemingly strangers, setting the stage and tone for the rest of the Tetsuya Nakashima’s film that’s bleak to the dying core.  The rapid editing style doesn’t incur fluff or filler moments in a slimmed down for exactly what we’re supposed to experience.   While Akikazu Fujishima may not be the best example of a hero, a loafer with anger issues, physical abuse tendencies, glutton for food, alcohol, and manic-depressive pills, a rapist, and perhaps even engaging in incestual pedophile, the protagonist majority pushes forward with relentless determination and beyond the scope of being a good father to find his daughter, but for what purpose is about as ambiguous as the imbalanced human mind and Akikazu mind sizzles with insanity that affects his legacy to the point where he feels responsible for taking care of his own.  On the flipside of the protagonist narrative, Kanako begins as a savior of bullies, working to remove the threat from those too weak to defend themselves only for them to be exploited by that defenseless and vulnerability when the yakuza and more extremists take from their emotions and bodies.  

Tetsua Nakashima speaks an entirely new language in “The World of Kanako,” derived from a mix of the compellingly twisted story of “Old Boy” and the appalling violence of filmmaker Takashi Miike.  Drafthouse Films and MVD Visual re-release “The World of Kanako” on a high-definition Blu-ray.  The 2024 release comes with AVC codec on a dual-layer BD50 and presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  The various animation styles spliced into the live action coupled with some choice primary color grading in the opening gives “The World of Kanako” a very nostalgic touch of passé pink films of the 1980s and slight arthouse surrealism feel to the likes of Nobuhiko Obayashi (“House”).  The mixture doesn’t meld into one another with detrimental effect and leaves a stark impression between the formatted visuals that creates definitive delineation.  Details also don’t bleed in the sharp textures of character faces and clothing with objects being distinct and well defined.  Darker scenes are enshrouded in intentional shadow amongst grittier interiors to better understand the gritty context, losing some details but no issues with compression, such as blocking or banding. Two audio options are available, and both are in Japanese with a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Presented with fidelity, “The World of Kanako” produces no issues with either audio track with a clear and absolute. The ambience denotes a nicely spaced standard fare of common routine movements and actions around the environment setting. Outside of that, punches and kicks knock with an authenticity and same goes with gunshots and the hit-and-runs during more tense and thrilling heights. Yes, there was a lot of hit-and-runs with Akikazu behind the wheel for most of them. English subtitles synch well and appear to be error free. Bonus features a making of featurette in Japanese with English subtitles, an equally as long interview with principal leading actress Nana Kamatsu, an interview with Akio Fukamachi, and the theatrical trailer and teaser for the film. Physical features pale in comparison to Drafthouse’s first release that came with a 11″x17″ folded mini-poster and color booklet with essays and acknowledgements. This re-release favors the slimmer model with no tangible goodies inside. The standard Blu-ray Amaray has a stark front cover image of Kanako starring forward with a blood smear behind her; the disc is also pressed with this image. The Not Rated presentation has a runtime of 110 minutes and has region A playback.

Last Rites: Welcome to “The World of Kanako,” a savage acceptance of responsibility down the rabbit hole of malfeasance. Family ties be damned as one father takes it upon himself to ensure the deed is done right by his own destructive hands.

Enter “The World of Kanako” On Blu-ray Now Available at Amazon!