Tag Archives: Hausu

Fascist EVIL Takes on Freedom of Expression! “School in the Crosshairs” reviewed! (Cult Epics / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“School in the Crosshairs” on a Cult Epics Blu-ray! Purcahse here at Amazon.

Yuka Mitamura is the smartest, most well-rounded student at her high school that’s embattled by a constant debate on whether physical edition and clubs are a necessary requisite for academic success, jeopardizing physical activities such has her best friend Koji’s Kendo club.  When Mitmura’s latent psychokinetic powers emerge, she struggles to cope with the change that’s out of her control and the new acquaintances with similar powers that show up in her life, such as with new female student Michiru Takamizawa whose sudden enrollment sees a quick rise in the ranks of school politics and sparks an insidious need for a totalitarian and fascist reign to control dissident and unapproved behavior within the school.  As an oppressive crack down on the total student body sparks a civil war amongst the students, Michiru and her mentoring demon Kyogoku aim to enslave the human race and it’s up to Mitamura, unknowingly Earth’s champion, to fight against the forces of evil. 

Adapted from the 1973 science fiction and fantasy novel “Psychic School Wars” by Taku Mayumura, “School in the Crosshairs” is every ounce those Japan famous hyper-intensity and colorfully assertive commercials with visual sparkle and great enthusiasm for their hawked products.  You know them well when they go internet viral.  The 1981 Japanese adaptation is helmed by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, director of “Hausu” and “His Motorbike, Her island,” from no script but rather from Mayumura’s novel as script.  Keeping faithful to nearly the entire novel and adding Ôbayashi’s variegated touch, “School in the Crosshairs” is a flamboyant Earth invasion in its divisive influence of the study body, especially between the studious academics and physical clubs.  Also known as “The Aimed School” and “School Wars” elsewhere in the world, as well as titled “ねらわれた学園,” ”School in the Crosshairs” is produced by “Island of the Evil Spirits’” Haruki Kadokawa, who also produced our last Japanese reviewed title, the traumatically powerful and wonderfully performed “The Beast to Die,” under his company Kadokawa Haruki Jimusho.

“School in the Crosshairs” circles around principal character in film and in book Yuka Mitamura as she juggles her newfound powers.  Between feeling like a stranger in her body as well as the weird visitations of her powers and of the otherworldly figure with a cap and green skin and having to not only rebel against an authoritarian rule overtaking her high school but also to save all of the world from that said otherworldly and powerful figure, Mitamura’s plate is undoubtedly full for a teenage girl.  Hiroko Yakushimaru (“Sailor Suit and Machine Gun”) comes to the role as a teenage girl herself at the age of 16-17 years old by the time of principal photography and seizes the high school melodramatics with ease as the carefree smartest kid in school.  Yet, finding Yakushimaru a formidable character stemmed by her performance is not so easily rendered in an indifference projection toward her newfound abilities; Yakushimaru is unable to really compel audiences with body language or even in her dialogue on why the teen has to soul search cope when she discovers she’s different.  We get more out of Ryôichi Takayanagi (“His Motorbike, Her Island”) as the quasi love interest and Kendo club leader Koji as his kendo tournament matches and failings in academics that affect his beer story-owning family dynamics are heavily emphasized and given more weight against a floundering leading lady character with superpowers and uses those powers to put Koji in good standing amongst the Kendo culture with win-after-win.  Not until the world starts to unravel at the hands of fascist student leader and fellow telekinetic Michiru Takamizawa (Masami Hasegawa, “The Tragedy in the Devil-Mask Village”) and her despot leader, the manipulative demon Kyogoku (Tôru Minegishi, “Main Line to Terror”) in a technicolor brilliance of a cosmic showdown held within the interdimensional layers but even then the last gasp of defeat has lackluster strength after a mountainous buildup of dictatorship control and potential student civial war.  The cast fills out with Keiko Mitamura, Noriko Sengoku, Yûsuke Okada, Kôichi Miura, Hiromitsu Suzuki, Macoto Tezuka, and Kôichi Yamamoto.

Pushing a few of the acting and character flaws aside and off the table, “School in the Crosshairs” is essentially manga embodied by live-action film.  There’s stellar mass group choreography near the beginning when the clubs merge for a rush invite to encourage recruitment, there is an extravagantly caped character in green makeup and a white afro wig, and there’s the painted-on-cell colorization I’ve mentioned a few times already that really ups the fantastical sci-fi features of Mayumura’s novel with a director like Nobuhiko Ôbayashi unafraid to get deep with saturation and long in experimentation.  Themes on fear of individualism, forced conformity, friendship, and the rise up out from that powerlessness feeling for what’s right showcase through metaphorical fascism, akin to the likes of the evil Nazi Germany party with a fear mongering nationalist’s convincing motivational speeches and confidence commands that seduce the ears of the waning high school minority, the academic kids, seeking alternative solace and a way to regain control as they are not as popular in contrast to those in clubs.  The Nazi tropes don’t end there as rounding up nonconformists, Nazi-like uniforms, and even a modified heil make their way into the overall story and that’s the darkest part in “School in the Crosshairs” light and airy jeopardizing of innocence and individuality. 

Catching a glimpse of Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s pre-“Hausu” filmmaking brilliancy is now as easy as catching “School in the Crosshairs” on a North American Blu-ray release from Cult Epics.  The dazzling high-definition and an equally impressive, supplemented release is AVC encoded onto a BD50 with a 2K transfer and restoration of the original 35mm print and presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  The “School in the Crosshairs” restoration visuals need to be seen to be believed in a newly graded touch up that offers a glassy darker side within the fascism themes and a richer color palette to make the hued pinwheel spectrum a living, breathing character between good versus evil.  The grain comes through naturally on nearly all scenes with some of the shadowy moments favoring less delineation through the consistent optical texture.  The composited effects are boldly vibrant inside a creative streak that’s idiosyncratic only to Ôbayashi and are implemented into the live scenes with precision that doesn’t make it awfully clumsy or clunky.  Cult Epics made sure to cover any and all viewer’s at-home audio setup with three Japanese language options:  an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 Stereo, a Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, and a DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround Sound.  Each carry their own weight and attributes with the LPCM 2.0 and DTS-HD 5.1 similar in fidelity, but the DTS offers an expansive girth that fills in the left and right channels of interdimensional ambience with laser strikes and gameshow tonal keys.  Dialogue is constructed through ADR that carries a level and balanced layer field and holding its own against the fantasy ambient that sometimes rises to meet the dialogue decibel; however, dialogue is clean and clear without any issues in clairaudience.  Newly improved English subtitles are optionally availably.  The set is quite complete, and likely comprehensive, with the physical and encoded special features.  Film critic Max Robinson offers a feature parallel commentary track, Phillip Jefferies provides a video essay on Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s body of work in Sailor Suits and Sound, an Ôbayashi film poster gallery, and the theatrical trailer.  Physically, the clear Blu-ray Amaray case keeps inside the reversible cover art with both sides featuring the Japanese poster arts and housing that package is the limited edition cardboard O-slip with a fantastic compositional design by Sam Smith.  Inserted inside is the back cover unlisted, 22-page booklet full of black and white as well as color adverts, feature stills, characters bios, and other writings but all in Japanese, no English.  The 90-mean feature comes no rated and is region free.

Last Rites: More so now than ever in the current political climate, freedom of expression endangerment is the critical theme for Ôbayashi’s “School in the Crosshairs,” a color melange of resistance against the forces of evil hard to differentiate looking like our friends, family, and the everyday student.

“School in the Crosshairs” on a Cult Epics Blu-ray! Purcahse here at Amazon.

EVIL Doesn’t Take Rejection Well. “Village of Doom” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Collector’s Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Village of Doom” now on Unearthed Film’s Collector’s Edition Blu-ray!

Tsugio Inumaru is considered the smartest young man in his village.  Illness took the life of his parents, and he raised by his grandmother and lives off her land’s income, looking after him and dreading the day Tsugio becomes drafted as a soldier in war service, which bestows great honor from the villagers.  While husbands are away serving their country, bored and lonely housewives and bachelorettes desire the carnal company of the men remaining and with Tsugio’s youth and his own sexual yearnings bubbling to the surface, he’s prime Kobe beef for the hungry village women.  When Tsugio’s health examination reveals a tuberculosis diagnosis, he’s acutely shunned by the villagers, drying up his sexual escapades, as well as potential betrotheds.  Rejection by his village, and even his country, sends the young man into plotting a massive killing spree, targeting all of those who’ve forsaken or scorned him to a life not worth living. 

In the Tsuyama outskirt village of Kamo of 1938, 21-year-old Mutsuo Toi cut the village’s electricity, strapped flashlights to the side of his head, and took a mini arsenal that included a Browning shotgun, a katana, and an axe to 30 villagers, including his grandmother, in an act to revenge killing for being rejected socially and sexually because of his tuberculosis diagnosis.  What is known as the Tsuyama Massacre, Mutsuo Toi’s cold and merciless act of carnage was the basis for Noboru Tanaka’s “Village of Doom.”  The pinkupsloitation director of “Rape and Death of a Housewife” and “Angel Guts:  Nami” helms the Japanese, semi-biographical tale, penned by Takuya Nishioka (“Tattoo,” “Female Teacher:  Chain and Bondage”), that follows closely the bullet point events of Mustuo Toi but with different named characters and a strong pink eiga touch.  “Village of Doom” is one of Kazuyoshi Okuyama’s (“R100,” “Self-Bondage:  All Tied Up with My Own Rope”) first produced ventures and is a production of the Fuji Eiga and Shochiku Eizo Companies. 

While Mutsuo Toi is not directly portrayed, his downward spiraling steps are indirectly followed by Tsugio Inumaru, played by the late Nikkatsu actor Masato Furuoya.  Furuoya’s relationship with director Noboru Tanaka is well established within their director-actor collaborating context with Furuoya having roles in Tanaka’s previous credits of “Rape and Death of a Housewife” and “Angel Guts:  Nami.”  There’s a blanket of comfortability within Furuoya who must treat his character as one-part pink paramour and one-part biographical massacrer, seducing with a tantamount tease of fantasy and authenticity.  Furuoya’s beleaguered performance is a jagged mountainous range of emotions from confidence and compassion to hormonal desires, to the stressed misgivings from cold shoulders and bad fortune mishandled by Tsugio’s own sense of worth to his himself and the village that has turned its back on him.  In keeping with the simulated practice of Yobai, the night crawling sexual escapades amongst young men and women, typically unmarried men and women, Tanaka portions heavily toward Tsugio’s internal grievances with the suddenly thrusted into the primitive and stimulated needs of a young man’s novice sex drive awaken with a morsel nude photograph.  Furuoya’s costars are the collective antagonist from the perspective of Tsugio with their geniality turned hostility of the TB diagnosis.  Sexualized warmth and freedom run rampant, peppered in between with subdued duty to village and country, that cradles an shy Tsugio’s into his manhood but when his manhood is threatened and the village neglects and rejects his contributions, Tsugio’s acute ostracization from within the only community circle he’s ever known disfigures his rationality into revenge.  The cast is surprisingly pink vet lite with the actors coming from other Japanese oriented popular subgenres like samurai films, erotic but tasteful comedies and romance, and horror with Misako Tanaka, Isao Natsuyagi (“Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion,” Kumiko Ôba (“Hausu”), Shino Ikenami (“Evil Dead Trap 2”), Midori Satsuki, Yashiro Arai, Renji Ishibashi, and Izumi Hara (“Island of the Evil Spirits”).

“Village of the Doom” is a two-toned down spiral to build up only to crash down the hopes of an impressionable young person.  Similarly seen in later works like Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant” where the visually intense, raw, and viscerally slicing culmination of enough-is-enough points back to the series of occurrences that significantly mile mark every step lead to the slaughter.  Set inside a valley surrounded by green mountains, the idyllic and rural riverside village impresses more backdrop tranquility than doom with slower pace and dutiful lifestyles but like most cutoff societies, the slow, insidious corruption of morality courses with infectious infidelity under the guise of Yobai, upends rightful justice and trades in for lynch mobs, and wanes promises for easy streets and exploitation run out dates that run its course for one but not the other.  All these aspects have relevant translatability to today’s cliques and inner circles that oust the unusual to where a sense of belonging feels hopelessly frustrating.  The isolation is so engrained that it highlights, in a very matter-of-fact way but does speak to it quite a bit, is the incestuous relationships between related villagers with the instances of Tsugio and cousin Kazuko’s flirtatious meetups and talk of marriage as well as Tsugio accidental arousal around his cousin’s aunt.  This adds to the tension and the corruption of that old idiom of don’t shit where you eat and the evident sourness spoils relationship ties when family is important to lessen the blows of life’s subsidiary problems.  For Tsugio, who is already dealt a bad hand with both parents deceased and his illness, the whole village rots what’s left of his innocence and ambitions and, in turn, aims to exterminate those who’ve foiled his purity.

A wicked, notorious true crime story now for the rest of the world to visual in “Village of Doom” on Blu-ray, courtesy of Unearthed Films on their Unearthed Classics sublabel.  The new Collector’s Edition Blu-ray is format encoded onto an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50.  The picture is tempered with the muted colors, or rather the scaled grays, of an archaic Japanese village coupled by the browns and straw hued housing set amongst in and surrounded by a sea of green foliaged valley, and while objects are delineated nicely without any saturation bleeding or compression issues, the colors don’t necessary pop.  What does pop are the textures of the same articles mentioned above.  The groves of thatched wooden abodes are remarkable deep, the greens, though seamless, are nicely touched upon in the foreground, and skin consistencies vary person-be-person within idiosyncratic personal brackets with dynamic sweatiness and emotion-delivery contouring to accentuate.  The Japanese LPCM 1.0 mono has no problem discerning elements.  Though all funneling through a single channel, the dialogue and ambience works together thanks to the clean, more immersive ADR.  Mashanori Sasaji’s tests the soundscapes of traditional Japanese drum rhythms of Oo-daiko with then modernized synthesized notes to create a forebodingly, entrancing composition.  With any post-production voiceover work, dialogue is very robust, and the synchronized English subtitles offer an error-free and organic translation.  The original audio file is compressed cleanly with no issues with crackling, hissing, or any other damage for noting. Unearthed Film’s 17th spined Classics title supplements with an audio commentary by Asian film experts Arne Venema and Mike Leeder, a look at the Tsuyama Massacre in Dark Asia with Megan: Case #57 Japan’s Darkest Night, a promotional gallery, and the theatrical trailer. The Amary Blu-ray case is housed in a cardboard O-slipcover featuring Mutsuo’s iconic night-crawlin’ getup on Masato Furuoya’s Tsugio in colorless black-and-white. The case has the same image used for the cover with no reversible sleeve and the inside does not contain any tangible inserts or materials. The disc is pressed with not the same image but the same head flashlight Tsugio, this time looking right at you in unison with his shotgun barrel. The not rated feature has a runtime of 106 minutes and is region A locked.

Last Rites: “Village of Doom” depicts the same sad story that strikes the hearts of today’s mass shootings, spurred by the dispel from those in proximity, intimate, and friendly. “Village of Doom” is a true classic of casted out carnage relit by Unearthed Films to retell the notorious narrative of Japan’s deadliest mass killing ever.

“Village of Doom” now on Unearthed Film’s Collector’s Edition Blu-ray!

EVIL Lies in Ancestral Ties! “Dogra Magra” reviewed! (Radiance Films / Limited-Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Dogra Magra” on Limited Edition Blu-ray! Purchase Here!

A young man wakes up in an asylum cell, unable to remember how he got there, his name, and doesn’t even recognize his face.  The asylum supervisor, Prof. Wakabayashi, has been overseeing his condition ever since the suicidal passing of former experimenting director, Dr. Masaki, nearly a month ago.  Disoriented, the young man is toured around the hospital grounds where Wakabayashi tells him the tragic tale of a 9th century man who kills his bride the day before their wedding day to capture the stages of her decomposition recorded onto a sacred scroll.  Distancing himself from the possibility of being murderous man, Wakabayashi informs him he is Kure Ichiro, the direct descendent of the groom and he enacted the very same events his ancestor committed long ago.  When the sudden reemergence of Dr. Masaki covertly corners Ichiro in his office, Masaki divulges his and Wakabayashi’s theories about Ichiro’s case but how the events came to fruition just may be plain and simple murder. 

Nature versus Nurture and the psychosis that ensues when discussing Pre-World War II context of Empirical Japan and their either inherent tendencies to repeat a violent past or to be triggered, poked, and prodded toward repeating history is the surmised and experimental plot of writer Yumeno Kyūsaku and his psychoanalytical novel “Dogura Magura.”  The title rearranged to “Dogra Mogra” is used for the film adaptation of Kyūsaku’s novel with the script written-and-directed by the avant-garde filmmaker Toshio Matsumoto (Japan’s “Demons” of 1971).  Matsumoto cowrites the script with Atsushi Yamatoya (“Story of David:  Hunting for Beautiful Girls”) written primarily from the distressed perspective of the protagonist Kure Ichiro only to switch hands when the experimenting Masaki enters the fold.  Shuji Shibata and Kazuo Shimizu inpendently produce the 1988 film under production companies Katsujindo Cinema and Toshykanky Kaihatsu AG.

Principal players of “Dogra Magra” boil down to a three-prong outfit centered around Kure Ichiro and his theorized amnesia.  Before being the lead voice actor in “Prince Mononoke,” a decade earlier Yôji Matsuda was waking up with an inexplicable unawareness of who he was or what he had done as Kure Ichiro.  Matsuda feigns forgetfulness with shock and surprise, that will too place audiences in situational darkness, with the young Ichiro arousing in a powerful moment of unfamiliarity.  A shaken, discombobulated Ichiro becomes the object of obsessional mark between two theoretical and experimental-competing psychoanalysts in Prof. Wakabayashi and Dr. Masaki, played respectively by a collectively calm and bearded Hideo Murota (“Rape and Death of a Housewife,” “Original Sin”) that emits a sense of academia and medical security and reason and a hyenic-laughing, bald and glasses-wearing Eri Misawa who is more maniacal and unconventional to the likes of a mad-scientist   Yet both men have motivation that stirs the enigmatic pot of Kure Ichiro’s plight, stemmed from the very same source that drives the brutal murder of his beautiful bride one day before their wedding that eerily follows the footsteps of his macabre ancestral history.  There’s an inarguable difference between Wakabayashi and Masaki’s approach handling the curious case of Kure Ichiro; Wakabayashi’s hides in the clandestine shadows that aims to subvert the thought dead Masaki’s work whereas Masaki, under his blunt-force mania, is straight forward, almost apathetically.  In either case, both psychoanalytical professionals are indifferent to the crux of human life by focusing solely on whether either one of their theories is correct in an odd game of deception and death.  “Dogra Magra” rounds out the cast with Kyôko Enami (“Curse, Death & Spirit”) and Eri Misawa.

An attribute for audiences to become lost in “Dogra Magra’s” ethereal can be contributed by Toshio Matsumoto’s accosting avant-garde disorientation that swallows Kure Ichiro past, present, and future, plays tricks on his mind and eyes, and that also fishes patiently for a conclusion that rarely seems apparent.  The experimental qualities of “Dogra Magra” seep out of the tap of dark comedy and amnestic thriller and into a basin of spreading horror and exploitation.  “Dogra Magra’s” surreal storytelling and interesting, visceral visuals often reminds us of an old-dark house film a decade prior with the Nobuhiko Obayashi film, “Hausu,” and while not based in satirical foreplay like “Hausu,” “Dogra Magra” begins to unravel more questions than answers with a fleeting sense that nothing is real, nothing is as it seems, and maybe perhaps were all stuck in Kure Ichiro’s herded and scrambled mind that may or may not be his inherent, innate doing after all and that changes the narrative entirely.  Themes of historical repetition, ancestral culpability, forgetting the past, and empirical brainwashing are churned intrinsically into “Dogra Magra’s” constitution as well as within Japanese legacy with a formidable and prophetical proposition for no hope on horizon through a chimerical lens of learning and growing into the truth.

Radiance Films continues to starkly highlight underscored and wayward films from around the globe and “Dogra Magra” is no exception with a beautifully curated Blu-ray release.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 features the original widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1 filmed by cinematographer Tatsuo Suzuki.  The Radiance print for the limited-edition Blu-ray is pulled from the original 35mm elements and transferred in Hi-Def by producer Shuji Shibata and supervised by Tatsuo Suzuki.  The stunning upgrade leaves nothing to the imagination with a starkly harsh color grading that appears rawer than air or bright, leaning into grayscale more with darker tones of a greenish-yellow to accentuate the morbid, maybe even grittier, side of this tale, but often has naturally flourishing landscapes, such as the beach cove and the asylum yard that provides a good stretch of depth when not filtered through a POV celluloid handheld.  What’s a real winner here are the textural details that emerge through a blanket of consistent, healthy stock grain with dust and dirt retained to an extreme minimum.  The Japanese LPCM Mono mix disperse a sure-designed composition between natural audio elements layered upon or spliced with the incongruous tunes of one going through a hallucinogenic and dissociative state.  Dr. Masaki’s maniacal laughter has a sharp authoritarian jest that makes it even more frighteningly surreal.  Dialogue withholds that same sharpness and clarity throughout channeled through a single output, harnessing all the action into a funnel but clearly distinct.  English subtitles are optionally available.  The static menu’s special features store an achieved commentary track from late director Toshio Matsumoto, a 2003 interview with the director, programmer and curator Julian Ross’s visual essay on the cinematography Dogra Magra Through the Eyes of Tatsuo Suzuki, a featurette Instructions on Ahodara Sutra on the subject of the chant used in the story, a still gallery of production sketches, and the trailer.  A 51-page, color book weighs the Blu-ray package with contents that include a director’s statement from 1988, exclusive essays and an interview by Hirofumi Sakamoto Late-Period Toshio Matsumoto and Dogra Magra, Jasper Sharp The Pen is Mightier than the Sword:  The Life of Atsushi Yamatoya, and Alexander Fee and Karin Yamamoto Memory traces:  Interview with Producer Shuji Shibata, and rounding out with transfer credits and release acknowledgements.  The reversible sleeve is housed in a clear Blu-ray Amaray with new illustration compositional art and the original, more traditionally composed, Ukiyo-e artwork on the reverse.  Encoded only for regions A and B, Radiance Films’ limited-edition release to 3000 copies has a runtime of 109 minutes and is not rated. 

Last Rites: “Dogra Magra” psychosomatic surrealism is mind games on methamphetamines and Radiance Films does the 1988 Japanese picture justice rekindling its worth to the world of cinema.

“Dogra Magra” on Limited Edition Blu-ray! Purchase Here!

Is Your Home this Evil? House (Hausu) review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Japanese horror isn’t something I pride myself on having a lot of knowledge of or contain much material about, but I do find enjoyment in what I come across even if the resemblance to an anime style becomes apparent in the storytelling.  I’ll be straight forward with you right here and now, I’m not a fan of Japanese anime.  No, sir.  Can’t say that I am.  However, my latest venture into the J-horror sends me back in time to the groovy year of 1977.  The film is called House and no, not the Steve Miner feature from ’86.  Also known by it’s Japanese name Hausu, House is a simple ghost tale with ambitious and groundbreaking special effects that dared much of the decade to catch up with the times.

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