Thermonuclear
heatwave meltdown in effect, but no
summertime-popcorn-Propaganda-Machine-brainwashing here at LERNER INTERNATIONAL,
no siree!
These five films are
thought-provoking and controversial, yet brush against the Genre Zone quite
successfully—after Blind Beast, we
look at the recently released Upstream
Color, the long-awaited follow-up to cult favorite Primer; then Larry Cohen’s 1977 exploitation biopic The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover,
best watched if you put yourself in a late-1970s mindset. We conclude with
reviews of lost early-1980s UFOlogy masterpiece Wavelength and its abducted aliens; finishing with Kuroneko, another Japanese film, with
bloodthirsty yokai seeking revenge.
Blind Beast (1969;
Yasuzo Masumura) WOW, what a film!
“Why can’t touching be an art
form?!?"
An insane blind sculptor
kidnaps a young model that he’s become obsessed with—in order to recreate the
“perfect “ female form in Yasuzo Masumura’s unique erotic horror masterpiece Blind Beast. The madman cries out, “A
new art form, by and for the blind!”—and he means it!
The sculptor’s studio
is a converted warehouse full of oversized, fabricated body parts: he’s created
walls of eyes, ears, arms, breasts, legs, and so on. The blind man is aided
(and spoiled) by his overprotective mother, and the two of them have a very
codependent relationship, bordering on the incestuous—which his devotion to the
kidnapped model disrupts to the core.
At first the model
resists the sculptor’s attention, but after driving a wedge between mother and
son, upsetting their creepsville dynamics, the model gets a case of Stockholm
Syndrome, aided by some borderline brainwashing—and Blind Beast leaps into kink overdrive, a “descent into a non-human abyss.”
Grueling, bleak and
brilliant, this film is just as obsessive as its characters. I don’t know the
film’s production history, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the studio was
expecting a much tamer “naughty nudie-cutie.” We watch the actors playing the
sculptor and the model live out their characters’ kinky obsessions, giving
110%, practically blistering the screen with warped, unbridled passion. Intense
stuff, very recommended.
Aided by a simple
cinematographic style that uses the frame well, the film gets very
philosophical, intense and perverse as it explores madness, eroticism and
art—while in a semi-surreal hothouse environment that is nowhere near academic.
I get the feeling that this movie must be a sacred text to S/M devotees, and it
would not surprise me if the film has a very loyal following in the BDSM
community. There are no whips or chains or corsets, but Blind Beast becomes all about dominance and submission, and how the
leadership in such relations can bounce back and forth between participants.
I first learned of Blind Beast from Steve Erickson’s awesome 2007 novel Zeroville,
one of my favorite and often-read books. The movie is one of the films that stand
out particularly to “cine-autistic” protagonist Vikar, and I was fascinated.
Meanwhile, director Masumura also helmed 1958’s Giants & Toys, a superb satire on corporate capitalism focusing
on rival candy companies, and although it is a comedy, both films examine
aspects of national character that Japan once preferred to keep hidden.
ALSO RECENTLY
WATCHED…
Upstream Color (2013;
written, edited, produced and directed by Shane Carruth) Winner of the 2013 WTF
Award, hands down!
Carruth is very
post-modern-lit in that he only gives us just
enough information to make educated guesses. I think the film is a metaphor
for alien abductees—or victims of sexual assault?—I don’t mind the film’s cold
formalism, but the film is distanced enough from its audience already. I can
appreciate making an audience work hard, but there’s a point crossed where the
work goes from idiosyncratic to inscrutable.
Comparisons to a
Jodoworsky/Tarkovsky mash-up come to mind with this synopsis: Ingesting the
blue-gunk of a specific type of maggot enhances the uni-mind, but the Thief
uses this psionic power to coerce people into signing over their property and
money, with the victims completely blanking out the experience, returning to
ruined lives—much like UFO abductees.
After she’s been
swindled/infected by the Thief, the woman’s life is saved by The Sampler through
a surgical procedure involving a pig. The Sampler is doing lots audio and
biological experiments on swine, while at the same time travelling through
space and time to experience the lives of others (and the reference to that
movie about East Germany is intentional: often The Sampler comes across as an
even more affectless Stasi agent, or possibly a dour Time Lord—perhaps a
metaphorical interpretation of an “ultraterrestrial” (who says the aliens have
to be from outer space, or have almond eyes?).
After his pigs give
birth, The Sampler drowns the piglets in the river. Their corpses infect the
orchids on the riverbank, which then turn blue—and infect the aforementioned hallucinogenic
maggots.
The woman later meets
the man (played by director-everything Carruth), and it seems he’s had similar
time-loss/life-ruining events. Soon, they are sharing memories…
And that’s as far as
I’m going. There’s an Aspbergers-esque humorless attention to detail to Upstream Color that is utterly
fascinating: you never think that Carruth doesn’t have a plan—it may be a goofy
plan, or an intense one, but like with his previous film, 2004’s Primer, he knows what it is. This is a dense film and surprisingly
emotional, however, and will take a lot out of you. Recommended, with
reservations.
However, I do applaud
Carruth’s continued use of the science fiction genre in new and eye-opening
ways, not only playing with the genre, but expanding it by showing new ways to
use it.
Hopefully, Carruth’s
next film won’t take another nine years…
The Private Files of
J. Edgar Hoover (1977; written, produced and directed by Larry Cohen) Originally released by
AIP: Always a sign of quality!
Using lots of stock
footage, this is an entertaining biopic; shallow and quick, but hardly anything
special—not especially now, with all the evil about Hoover that we’ve come to
know.
But it is a good
primer on the ogre-ish long-time FBI director—although too even-handed for my
tastes, like a TV movie trying to generate empathy for Hoover. I would’ve
preferred a more exploitative, and mean-spirited flick, something more like
René Cardona Jr. instead of W.-era
Oliver Stone. With the exception of a few scenes, Larry Cohen’s usual exciting
visual sensationalism and lunatic scripting is tampered down in this flick.
But star Broderick
Crawford really gets to shine in several moments, and sometimes it feels like
he’s channeling an evil Jackie Gleason. One amazing scene has a drunken Hoover
torturing the head waiter of his club with wiretapped information and Kipling
poetry. Of course, Crawford has an ugly mug like Hoover, but is a giant in
comparison: Hoover was a tiny man, about Danny DeVito size. (Personally, I
prefer Ernest Borgnine’s cameo as a prissy and malevolent Hoover in the
excellent but “lost” mini-series, Blood Feud,
about Hoffa (expertly played by Robert Blake) vs. Bobby Kennedy. Meanwhile, I
have no interest in seeing Clint Eastwood’s J.
Edgar, with an emoting DeCraprio in the lead. It looks like apologist-whitewashing
of history.)
In any case, Crawford’s
giving a fascinating performance, and it’s so much fun watch the way the crowd
reacts in some location scenes. There’s never any synced dialog, so we don’t
hear the citizens greeting Broderick Crawford and ogling the star, and you know
director-producer Cohen didn’t get any permits, just showed up and started
rolling. (Actually, they did “sort of” have permission in many locations: go
HERE for Larry Cohen’s memories of making the film.)
The last 30 minutes
of The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover
really pick up as Hoover, a twisted and oblivious closet-case, listens to
orgiastic wiretap tapes and boozes it up, crying and shuddering.
This picture has an
“all-star” cast, and is lots of fun for the game of “that guy,” but is also a
bit of a head-spinner as characters come and go in rapid succession. But Rip
Torn is good (as always) as the narrator/audience surrogate/observer of Hoover,
but he isn’t allowed to really tear it up, much like Cohen would allow
future-regular Michael Moriarty in later films.
Recommended, with
reservations.
Wavelength (1983; written
& directed by Mike Gray) Originally distributed by New World, but currently
in legal limbo, this is a lost sci-fi/UFOlogy masterpiece that deserves to be rediscovered.
(I learned about it via a fantastic essay at The Secret Sun, and watched it HERE.)
Don’t let this film’s
low, low budget turn you off—Wavelength
is overflowing with thought-provoking ideas as a self-destructive musician
(Robert Carradine) and a borderline psychic (Cherie Currie from The Runaways!)
join forces, with help from Keenan Wynn’s desert rat, to save some peaceful alien
“children” from evil CIA/USAF/NASA secret agents.
The movie wisely
keeps the aliens very enigmatic, and never “cute.” There is no exposition about
who or what they really are—all we know is that they’re telepathic, absorb
energy instead of eating, and their touch is deadly.
Almost more of a
criticism of the casually brutal military mindset that performs autopsies on
living creatures and has a kill-then-cover-up attitude, Wavelength gets points for showing the military-intelligence
community not as an infallible shadowy secret organization but as part of a
larger bureaucracy only interested in maintaining its control.
Wavelength uses existing locations to good
effect, and builds tension very successfully with its intelligent and
thoughtful script. It’s very much a proto-X-Files,
and delivers many unexpected twists and turns. This is a film worth hunting
down to see.
With music by
Tangerine Dream; and director Gray was also one of the screenwriters of The China Syndrome; he had recently passed away.
Kuroneko (Black Cat)
(1968; Kaneto Shindo) Not so much lost, as forgotten about—through no fault of
its own; its premier at Cannes was cancelled due to the 1968 Paris riots—this film
has been given a glorious re-release on disc by Criterion.
A fitting companion
to director Shindo’s previous Onibaba, Kuroneko
is a beautiful and moody ghost story that’s so much more than about the
supernatural; in fact, it’s a grim and scathing criticism of the macho samurai
ethos that is essentially cruel and selfish.
After a mother and
wife are raped and murdered, the spirit world allows them to stalk the earth as
shape-shifting ghost-cat-women, ripping out the throat of any samurai warriors
that cross their path. The region’s samurai overlord orders a
newly-commissioned warrior to destroy the “cat goblin demons,” but the young
man is the son and husband of the murdered women!
The story is a good
balance of the occult and the erotic, as man and yokai forge an unholy bond—but
the exquisite B&W cinematography by Kiyomi Kuroda is what really brings
this film to life.
Very highly
recommended.
COMING SOON! The Films
of June! (A little late…)
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