Christmas time again...

HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

[And if you feel like reading my interview with the guy above and hear his thoughts on children as a dramaturgical tool, then get yer'self over to the ConstructingHorror site right now]

Django Kill ...If You Live, Shoot!

Django Kill… If You Live Shoot!
Original Title: Se sei vivo spara
Directed by: Giulio Questi
Italy / Spain, 1967
Spaghetti Western, 117min
Distributed by: Blue Underground

There are two main plot devices that make for a great Spaghetti Western: Greed and Vengeance. If you know how to use those ingredients the right way you will probably have made a movie that we still enjoy to this day.

Guido Questi’s Django Kill ...If You Live Shoot! is a very entertaining Spaghetti Western featuring the great Tomas Milian [Sergio Corbucci’s Compañeros 1970, Umberto Lenzi’s Almost Human 1974, and Stephen Soderberg’s Traffic 2000] as “the Stranger”. Note that he’s called the stranger in the movie and not Django, as the re-titling would have one believe. In fact this movie has nothing to do with Corbucci’s 1966 classic Django, (apart from being in the same genre), as it’s once again merely a distributors trick to cash in on the success of the previous movie. This is unfortunate and it’s understandable that Questi, dislikes the Django re-naming as his film is a completely different kind of movie even though it uses the same sort of plot devices. But Questi has a few tricks up his sleeve to push this one a bit further than the common Greed and Revenge motifs, and the main protagonist; Milian, has a change of character throughout the movie.

Through an eerie opening sequence, where two Indians find the Stranger clawing his way out of a grave, back story is explored in a series of rapid and forceful flashbacks as we are brought up to date with the stranger, now coming back to his health. We understand that the Stranger was double crossed by his one time partner Oakes [Piero Lulli – Tonino Valerii’s My Dear Killer 1972, Mario Bava’s Kill, Baby… Kill! 1966] who massacred the half-breeds (Milian among them) and left them all in a shallow grave after a heated discussion about his reluctance to divide the stolen booty with them. So instead he kills them all and steals the bags of gold that they have swiped from a Welles Fargo Wagon. Back to now, the Indians heal the stranger and prepare his tools of vengeance, the few pieces of gold that the Stranger had on his person have now been molten down into Golden bullets – “It is your gold, the gold you died for!” “Gold bullets better than lead, go deeper!”– the Indians explain. All they want in exchange is that the Stranger tells them of the happy hunting grounds he has seen on the other side of the river of life. The dialogue is almost a religious text as their wisdom is spoken – The Stranger must use his knowledge of the other side wisely in his choices to come ahead.

At the same time Oakes and his band of outlaws ride into the town that the Indians call – the unhappy place, where the unfriendliness of the town is set through the use of a few small and subtle images; the two children fighting, a young boy being forced into submission under the boots of his “Uncle Max, the married couple fighting behind their windows… The men almost look scared as they enter the saloon, and damned right too as in only a matter of minutes saloon owner Bill Temblar [Milo Quesada – Mario Bava’s initial Giallo, The Girl Who Knew Too Much 1963 and Jesus Franco’s Night of the Bloody Judge 1970] has noticed that Oakes is a wanted man and that they are holding a large amount of gold. After rallying up the towns folk the gang are all shot down and strung up to warn off other intruders. Oakes looks as if he’s going to get away, but then the Stranger and his two Indian companions arrive. The Stranger (who Oakes thinks is a ghost) shoots Oakes but doesn’t actually kill him; instead he meets a fate much worse. Mr. Sorro and his band, all dressed in black, arrive. He stops the townsfolk from stringing up Oakes, and orders the town doctor to get the bullets out of him, as he wants to know all about the gold. And when the old doc pulls out a bullet of pure gold from the groaning, wounded Oakes, they go crazy tearing him apart to get to the golden bullets.

It’s a sinister little sequence that not only introduces the two antagonists’ Temblar and Ackerman, but also establishes the subplot with the Mexican bandit Sorrow’s gang, who also want a piece of the gold. [Sorro played wonderfully by Roberto Camardiel] It’s also the scene where the young Ray Lovelock [Amando Crispino’s Autopsy 1975, Jorge Grau’s Let Sleeping Corpses Lie 1973, and Umberto Lenzi’s The Oasis of Fear 1971] is introduced into the movie as Evan, son of Bill Temblar. Further there once again is a reference to Milian having returned from the dead – “You’ve come back from hell! – Go On! Fire, you’re supposed to be Dead!”

Keeping Sorro out of the loop, the gold is now divided between the two companions, Temblar and Ackerman [Francisco Sanz – also seen in Grau’s Let Sleeping Corpses Lie 1973, Amando de Ossorio’s The Blind Dead 1971], the stranger left without his share. But this is a Spaghetti Western and greed soon raises its ugly head once again as Temblar and Ackerman argue over the gold. The gold is the tool that everyone in the own needs to get out and start all over again.

The movie takes an interesting turn here, as Milan is “played” by all parts, Templar wants to befriend him to get protection from Ackerman and Sorro, Ackerman offers up his house, and wife Elizabeth [Patrizia Valturi – Antonio Margheriti’s Naked You Die 1968] in his request that the Stranger protect him from Templar and Sorro, and Sorro wants the Stranger to join his merry band and become one of his companeros so they can steal all the gold from Ackerman and Temblar.

Young Evan sees that his father’s new lady, Flory [Marilù Tolo also seen in Tonini Valerii’s My Dear Killer 1972, Sergio Martino’s Murder in an Etruscan Cemetery 1982, and good old Calvin Floyd’s The Sleep of Death 1981] is simply interested in his father because of his new found wealth (this will be shown several times during the rest of the movie) and punishes her by slashing her dresses. Expensive dresses that his father presumably bought her. He then begs Milan to take him with him, no matter where, just away from here. See, everyone wants’ out of this town.

Evan ends up being kidnapped by Sorrow’s gang in an attempt to extort his father out of the gold, but the Stranger steps in and saves Evan, for this time, and get’s an invitation to Sorrow’s ranch in the procedure. Milian later gambles with Sorrow and saves Evan yet again when Sorrow tells his men to shoot the kid after Temblar refuses to pay the ransom. But for some unknown reason, Evan steals a pistol from one of the bandits the next morning and takes his own life… Now at first it seems illogical, then you try to figure some sort of reason out, and it has been suggested that Evan is gangbanged by the bandits during the night and it is with the shame of this ordeal that Evan chooses to take his life. Sure there is enough to support such a claim, the looks Sorro’s men give Evan, and the way they play with Evans hair, but it’s still kind of far fetched. I opt for the answer that Evan refuses to be yet another pawn in his fathers games, to be a victim of his greed - and the simple fact that he’ll be returned to the one place he’s struggled so far to escape from.

Back in town Ackerman and Temblar fall out with each other, as Ackerman refuses to pay half the ransom demand for Temblar’s son. A ludicrous demand to make, which terminates the little friendship that was between the two men, as they both start plotting how to trick the other out of his share. Milian brings the body of Evan back to his father and gets into a fight with him – possibly because he’s so frustrated and angered that his father’s greed has led to the boy’s death - a boy who the Stranger saved several times previously. Instead, Ackerman, who offers up his wife in return for protection, houses the Stranger. And protection he gets’s as the Stranger fends off Sorro’s men who try to claim the gold later that night. After the Stranger get’s his rocks off with Elisabeth that is.

Flory still in lust for all the gold, even Ackerman’s share, convinces Temblar to hide his gold in Evans coffin to keep Sorro’s gang from finding it as they search his house. Ackerman’s final diabolical plan is set in motion. As Temblar returns from Evans funeral Ackerman shoots him in cold blood with the Stranger’s gold bullet pistol, framing him in the process. He then rallies the towns’ folk to find and kill the Stranger, who flees right into the arms of Sorro’s gang who wants to know where the gold is and sets about torturing the Stranger. But ironically it’s love that brings about the downfall of the vile Ackerman - Elisabeth devastated that her lover and possible rescue from the terrifying town – told you that everyone wants’ out didn’t I – sets herself alight with a box of matches resulting with the whole house going down in flames. As the townsfolk gather to watch, yeah watch there’s not to many trying to extinguish the fire, Ackerman tries to salvage the one thing he holds dearest, his gold. But it has all melted in the immense heat and instead of retrieving the bags of loot he if drenched in a pour of molten gold. It reminds me of the South American Indians pouring molten gold down the throats of the conquistadors to settle their thirst for gold.

There’s plenty of gritty violence in the flick, not perhaps as harsh as it would become over the years, but for a mid sixties Spaghetti Western it kind of takes the trophy; Mass execution, close range shots to the head, torso’s torn apart by human hands, scalping, torture by bats, iguanas and a mole and people burning to death. Heavy stuff to unleash on an audience accustomed to the old bang bang-fall down action of the genre. And it’s intriguing that Guesti seems to have a fetish for the transportation of dead bodies. There are plenty of scenes where dead people are moved from one location to another in scenes reminiscent of those seen in war journals where soldiers are moved to and from safety.

The characters are fiendish, holding no respect for anything but themselves. This is proven by the montage where Oakes gang walk into town, the way the town’s folk execute all of Oakes gang, the way they hang them up afterwards, the cynicism of Lori when Evan is kidnapped, Ackerman murder of Temblar, the way he pimps his sister on Milian, the way he manipulates the towns folk to go after the Stranger and his Indian helpers. The coldblooded remarks made by the town people as Ackerman and Elisabeth die in the flaming house. It’s all driven by egocentrism and greed that leaves a devastating wave of death and violence in its way. The Stranger escapes, terminates all the Mexican bandits in one bang, and rides into town just in time to witness Elisabeth die in the flames of the burning house. Instead of claiming his revenge, reclaiming the gold or getting the girl, the stranger rides out of town empty handed in a rather low key ending to this excellent classic Spaghetti Western.

The idea of Milian’s religious aura, like an after death Lazarus presence if you prefer, is evident throughout the movie, and I can’t really shake it off. And even though Questi denies it in every interview he gives about the movie, it’s in there. The religious symbolism can’t be denied. You can even go as far as claiming that Milian even looks like Jesus on the cross in his minimal loincloth, all oiled up for torture by Sorrow’s gang.

I mentioned that Milian's "the Stranger" has a change of character, well its partially true at least. After taking his revenge, without actually killing Oakes, he goes into a remorseful and very passive mood. He only shoot’s his gun a few times and there’s never a deadly shot released, well one, the one that kills Sorro, but considering that Sorro is the main antagonists, it’s only fair that the hero get’s to off the bad guy and his black shirted bandits. After all it’s Sorro who kept the town in fear and drove it’s inhabitants to be the dark characters that they where. The Black Shirted men are most likely political critique against the fascist paramilitary groups of Italy (camicie nere) that Questi fought against as a young anti-fascist partisan during the second world war, and probably what inspired some of the atrocities that take place in the film. This is why the passive character puts an end to the bandit gang in such a violent manner, being forced to put an end to the grip of fear Sorro holds over the town.

The movie has some extremely forceful editing by Franco Arcalli, [the masterful editor of such classics as Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist 1970, Vittorio De Sica’s A Brief Vacation 1973 and Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter 1974] He really splices the heck out of this movie and in the more rapid sequences the images stay for only a four-five frames before blasting on to the next image. It’s ferocious and effective and brings frenzy with it. Many of the action sequences, like the Strangers explosive escape from Sorro’s prison are so violently edited that it’s almost impossible to see what we are being shown, but after a few sequences of rapid cuts the image is all to clear and it’s a innovative way of showing the carnage instead of just landing in shots of corpses and intestines. This is also how Arcalli brings the back story into the movie, with small almost incoherent glimpses that eventually come to reveal the necessary information. Now this isn’t just a postproduction gimmick that Arcalli came up with, as he also co-wrote a number of screenplays too. I can’t say how much he wrote on the movies, [Bernard Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris 1972, and 1900 1976 to name a few] but I wouldn’t be surprised if he during the writing hadn’t already started to edit an imaginary movie in his head. I’d also say it’s a fair bet that Donn Cambern had seen Arcalli’s style found here in Se sei vivo spara when he edited the transitions on Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider 1969.

Upon it’s premiere in ’67 the film did decently but then voices where starting to be heard about the violence and tone of the film, so down it went and after being submitted to the censors two of the most violent scenes – The townsfolk tearing out the gold from Oakes body, and the scalping of the Stranger’s Indian helper where snipped out. But don’t worry as they are reinserted for this Blue Underground release. Obviously cuts like this are the sort of cuts that don’t necessarily damage a movie’s narrative, but it does harm to the vision a director had, as he wanted those scenes in there. But at the same time cut scenes of violence help the film in a way as it creates a buzz about that removed stuff, which soon becomes like a holy grail of missing material. Much like the legendary piranha sequence from Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust 1980 – always rumoured to be missing, but eventually it was revealed that they never even shot the sequence. Remember Se sei vivo spara has been called the most violent western ever and perhaps that’s not the case, but the violence is sadistic to say the least.

Guilio Questi’s Se sei vivo spara is well worth checking out, it’s very interesting and almost has an arty approach to the classic Spaghetti Western formula that brings movies like Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo 1970 to mind. Tomas Milian is an almost unique protagonist in this movie as he takes his passive approach to the actions in front of him, but when he needs to react he reacts big time – the dynamite attached to the horse that rides straight into Sorro’s gang is possibly the most aggressive put on screen. The movie also holds a strange aura due to that “after death” thing, and several scenes could have been found in a EuroGoth movie. Elisabeth with her pancake makeup and Ackerman’s demise certainly has a Edgar Allan Poe / Andre de Toth's House of Wax 1953 feeling to them to say the least. So do yourself a favour and check out this oddity, you may end up with a new favourite cult classic on your hands.

Image:

Widescreen 2.35:1 / Anamorphic 16x9

Audio:

Dolby Digital 2.0 English or Italian Dialogue with English Subtitles Optional.

Extras:

Theatrical Trailer, linear notes by William Connolly – Spaghetti Cinema editor, Poster and stills gallery, and the 25min featurette Django, Tell! Where Questi, Lovelock and Milian talk about the movie.

R.I.P. Dan O'Bannon

Sad news tonight as I read on several pages that the great screenwriter and director Dan O'Bannon has passed away after battling Chron's Disease for 33 years. O'Bannon has always held a special place in the world of film for me as he was one of the first screenwriters that I noticed all those years ago when I started paying attention to movie credits sometime after seeing Alien on vhs - which definitely shaped me and a generation with it. His movies and screenplays where always an added attraction when watching movies growing up, his dialogue and characters where so believable they could be people I knew. Heck, just take a look at the movies he wrote, it's like a greatest hits compilation tape of fabulous movies.

The Return of the Living Dead is one of my favourite flicks as it perfectly combines the Romero universe with the music that I love (Roky Erickson, Cramps, The Damned), puts a comic spin on it and brought something new to the genre. It made us laugh at a rather humourless genre, the zombie movies. It proved that when doom is pending, there's still time to laugh, rock out and face the apocalypse with a smile on your face.

John Carpenter's Dark Star 1974

Ridley Scott's Alien 1979

Gary Sherman's Dead & Buried 1981

Gerald Potterton's Heavy Metal 1981

John Badham's Blue Thunder 1983

O'Bannon's fantastic The Return of the Living Dead 1985

Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce 1985

Hooper's Invaders From Mars 1986 (great one to fall asleep to)

Paul Verhoven's Total Recall 1990

O'Bannon's The Ressurected 1992

Christian Duguay's Screamers 1995

Peter Svatlek's Bleeders 1997 (which Ninja Dixon likes)

The animated blue print on how to nuke the Death Star, the adventures of Ellen Ripley - the Alien and the Predator mashups...

All these movies would have been so much lesser entertainment if not for the mind, pen and craftmanship of the amazing Dan O'Bannon. One of the greats has left us, and will be missed.

Strangely, only a few hours ago I posted on the ministry of fear project that I worked on during this year. Well one thing is for sure, without Dan O'Bannon bringing his friends over from the abandoned Alejandro Jodorowsky's DUNE project, the Alien monster as we know it would probably look completely different as the visual genious H.R. Giger was one of the talents O'Bannon met, and took with him from that production. Giger talked fondly of O'Bannon and remarked several times during the time I spent with him in Switzerland of what a talented man O'Bannon was.

R.I.P. you magnificent entertainer of many late night viewings, tonight I dream of rock'n'roll zombies, aliens and bow ties.

Friday Night Fulci Cameo #2

Guinea Pig 2 - Flower of Flesh and Blood.

Guinea Pig 2 – Flower of Flesh and Blood
Original title: Chiniku no Hana
Japan, 1985
Horror, 42 min
Distributed by: Unearthed Films

This past year took me to an all time high in my profession. I work with TV productions and was offered a once in a lifetime opportunity early on in 2009: to fuse my knowledge of genre cinema with my profession. I was asked to come aboard a project that SVT (Swedish National Television) where going to produce, called Skräckministeriet (The Ministry of Fear) working as a researcher and content advisor on the show which was to focus on the cultural aspects of horror. Even though I normally work in postproduction with a larger responsibility like keeping track of plots, subplots and the overall dramaturgy of the narrative, I couldn’t refuse this exceptional offer. And I have to say it’ was one of the most rewarding times of my professional life. I finally had a use for thirty years of watching films, reading books, comics, magazines, playing video games and watching even more movies in a professional context - a smorgasbord of horror and the fantastic.

I don’t know that there has ever been such a eclectic and fascinating variety of substance shown on Scandinavian television previously, and event though I feel that we could have probed deeper, and exposed more areas of the horror world, I have to admit that the show came out exceptionally well. There was a lot of stuff that hasn’t been on the tube before I can assure you that.

The original deal was that I’d be going to Japan to do the Japan episode (happy dance with Jazz hands attached), but this didn’t quite work out, perhaps to the better, as I could stay impartial to the content and focus on preparing the reporter who went on the fun and facts. (And Jane did an amazing job to be honest. I would probably have been gobsmacked and lost for words) Instead I got to spend three days in Switzerland with the artist H.R. Giger, showing that his art is so much more than just those Alien 1979 monster designs. I also spent a rainy afternoon with John Ajvide Lindqvist discussing children as a dramaturgical tool to highlight some of my own cherished moments and segments from the show. But I the one small segment that I’m the most proud of is the one from episode four - the Japanese Horror episode.

When I was asked the question “What is the most vile, evil and disturbing thing ever to come out of Japan?” My spontaneous answer was – "The Guinea Pig films!" I never thought in a million years that there would be a TV show in 2009 that would interview Hideshi Hino and discuss the infamous Flower of Flesh and Blood… but we did, and we showed clips too, even if the original ones in the show where exchanged at the last moment, actually a mere few hours before the show aired, we did show clips, and there was blood.

Needless to say, with today’s standards the most of the seven Guinea Pig films are not as shocking as they used to be. The realism and documentary video style photography [which isn’t an added trait to sell the realism, as the movie was shot on video for the J-Video market] are common traits of the grimy low budget horror flick as home filming equipment gets cheaper and cheaper. The excessive violence is common genre fair nowadays after the meaningless torture porn films have finished diluting the cesspool of hard-core gore films with their ridiculous plots and cheesy setups. The kids have seen it before, but back then... Holy Bloodbath Batman!

You have to acknowledge that Flower of Flesh and Blood still packs a punch, and will leave you with a profound feeling of unease. I’d say that this is because the film lacks the needed breathing spaces between the carnage. It would be like a rollercoaster without the suspenseful build as the chains crank that wagon up the initial back before the first drop. It’s all screams and ferocious action to the max. We need our moments of relief for the horror to sink in, but that’s not what Flower of Flesh and Blood or the Guinea Pig series where about, it was all about shock value and freaking the fuck out of the audience - and it succeeds. It is still a disturbing movie, even with the knowledge that Hino is a happy and gentle man and not the sinister monster you would believe the mind thinking up this atrocity would be.

If you may have forgotten or perhaps not even seen the film, here’s a quick rundown of Flower of Flesh and Blood for y’all. Starting with a random shot’s of people in a city milieu, the camera singles at one young woman. [Kiagara Yûgao] She walks the street and the shot of her is someone’s point of view. She is stalked by a car, which a man gets out of and chances her through a park finally catching up with her and sedating her with the old chlorophyll hankie to the face gag. Cue title sequence - Dip to black. We now see the young woman in a room, gagged and tied to a bed. There is a drip drop audio track to set the eerie ambience. She’s obviously in a dark, damp underground chamber. She hears a strange grinding sound, struggles for a while and then realises the noise is coming from a man [Hiroshi Tamura] - the stalker, now dressed as a samurai sharpening his small scythe. He turns towards her, lifts up a chicken and then decapitates it, blood spurting all over as he shakes the body of the animal over her. Then the movie starts to get freaky. The samurai gives her a tranquilizer and when she falls into a seduced state he gets to work cutting her up bit by bit, limb by limb, in a twenty five minute orgy of vileness, grime and hardcore gore that still today is amazingly authentic and difficult to stay unaffected upon viewing.

Fair enough, it is a haunting movie; almost plot less with the sole aim of nauseating you with those outstanding effects. But there are many giveaways that expose the move as a fictional piece and not the often thought real deal. There are several cut away's and continuity shots that wouldn’t be there if you where to kill someone on tape. Lighting, sound effects and sometimes cue music are heard at amplified, “edited” levels.

The samurai talks into the camera explaining the woman’s state of seduction and what he is about to do. This also adds to the illusion that it’s “for real”. But someone committing murder wouldn’t talk straight into the camera undisguised and never be caught for his crimes.

Nudity! There’s a naked woman on the table that I’m slowly disassembling, then I’m not going to make sure that her pubes and soft parts are hidden away now am I. There won’t be no sheet or entrails laid to avoid any unnecessary crotch shots would there. This is only so that the Japanese censors wouldn’t get in there with their infamous blot out spots, fuzzy blurs or digital pixilation. You don’t want that fucking up your illusion of carnage now do you?

And that chicken? Well if you know what happens when you chop the head of a chicken you’ll soon see though that illusion.

Today we obviously know that the Guinea Pig movies are factious works, but keep in mind most people who saw this film saw it back in the days of video and most likely on a second or third generation copy, before digital there was quite a loss of quality for each step beyond the source material you got. It easy to understand how someone would think this was for real if you've ever enjoyed a shaky, distorted several generation video copied movies where shoddy quality adds to the delusion. I remember being completely blown away the first time I saw it, as we kept rewinding the umpteenth generation VHS copy over and over again to re-watch the scenes to see how the hell they had made those realistic effects… or where they? Well if you where fortunate to have knowledge of Japanese and had a copy or even an original that was intact all the way to the very end of the credits you would have been able to read Hino's disclaimer pronouncing that the film in fact is a work of fiction.

It would be wrong to say that the movies are plot less, because there is a plot. In later instalments the films actually utilised rather interesting plots and stories in their narratives. Especially in Hino’s second film of the series, the rather poetic Mermaid in a Manhole 1988 (a better film if not the best of the series), and even the hilarious black comedy He Never Dies 1986, has a story, even though it’s a sinister one with the focus on the outrageous special effects. Flower of Flesh and Blood also has a plot of sorts, even if it is disturbing – The Samurai ‘s goal is to turn the young woman into a flower of flesh and blood! There’s almost a diabolic savant guard installation/performance art manifest going on there.

There are a lot of rumours about this film, among them, that Hino received a package in the post containing authentic video and photographs of a real murder. Horrified he supposedly turned it over to the cops, but not being able to get it out of his system he made his own video of the shocking images he saw. It’s a great tale, but like many “real snuff” tales it falls on its own illogical claims. If there where such a tape and it disappeared into the vaults of the police, it would resurface at one point or other as the makers would want it exposed wouldn’t they. Secondly that story is the fabricated pretext scrolled before the movie. We call it a set up. The true story is that Hino was so angered and disappointed that his manga wasn’t selling, so when producer Satoru Ogura [Seijun Suzuki’s Pistol Opera 2001, Princess Raccoon 2005, and Takashi Shimizu’s soon completed Shock Labyrinth 2009. Ogura also wrote, produced and directed the first Guinea Pig film] came a knockin’, offering Hino to direct a movie, he used all his bottled up aggressions and frustrations to depict his darkest inner demons, basing it on his own manga. See, who said that depression is a bad thing. Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs 2008, Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist 2009 and Hideshi Hino’s Flower of Flesh and Blood 1985. Due to budgetary restrictions he had to come up with a way to make his movie as cheap as possible, so the answer was one camera, one angle, and one scene.

The films obviously caused a stir when they first where released, becoming huge successes at the time in Japan. The two initial movies, released on video by Orange Video House earned more money than E.T. 1982 on home video. Japan Home Video bought the rights and continued producing and releasing entries into the series, with Hideshi Hino returning in 1988 to direct Mermaid In a Manhole also based on one of his own Manga, and once again becoming one of the top ten releases in Japan that month.

The one about Charlie Sheen seeing the tape and freaking out because he though it was for real and going to the MPAA who later went to the FBI is true, and one can wonder if the film would have had the same impact overseas without this fortunate event happening. Sure genre writers like Chas Balun (who incidentally copied, think generation loss, and supplied a co-worker with the infamous tape to start with), Thomas Weisser and Stanley Wiater where writing and praising these films at the same time, but the Sheen incident surely propelled the films into the notoriety they have. I’m amazed that someone working in the film industry would think that the film is for real. Sure it’s hardcore, but real? Come On!

Even though I’ve never heard anything about it, and believe me, I would as some mates and I distributed the tapes at the time of this supposed rumour - If you own a big boxed video release with the a.k.a. title The Severing Samurai on the back, then congrats, that's one of ours. But still, there is a tale of a lawyer during the nineties watching the tape, then contacting the authorities who forwarded the tape to a forensic experts so that they could establish if it was for real or not.

Then there’s the poor sod in England who had his imported US Bootleg seized by the customs and charged for bringing snuff into the country. Obviously they realised that it wasn’t but the poor chap still had to pay a fine of six hundred quid for the offence.

Urban legends or not they are great tales to tell those not initiated as they start to watch this stunning piece of Japanese genre cinema.

But sometimes the truth is more haunting than fiction and in the late eighties several of the Guinea Pig titles where found in the gargantuan 5000+ video collection of serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki after he was arrested. According to police reports he’d even copied scenes from his favourite gore films while filming and photographing the atrocities he conducted. Moral panic struck hard and the Guinea Pig where spotlighted once again. But over time Japanese Culture was blamed and not the films themselves, although the movies where banned from being released again in Japan and still to this day are not available in Japan. It’s even forbidden to make a movie with the words Guinea Pig in the title. It was after this rediscovery of the movies that producer Ogura decided to make two more movies in the series and a compilation of the best gore and effect parts. The title Guinea Pig – Slaughter Special and this was what Chas Balun started that party tape for his co-worker with… yeah the Charlie Sheen tape.

The guy who created those convincing effects Nobukai Koga surprisingly didn’t shoot to stardom and fame, as one would expect. Sure he’s still in the industry, but to date he’s only worked on a dozen or so movies. I’d have expected this guys effects to be in demand all the time, but surprisingly not. Although he did follow up Flower of Flesh and Blood with Sogo Ishii’s industrial noise opus ½ Mensch 1986, the documentary about German industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten and Kazurp “Gaira” Komizu’s Entrails of a Beautiful Woman 1986 – a film that is indebted to the original Guinea Pig flicks. Koga worked with Ishii on several film including the impressive period piece ghost story Gojoe 2000.

The Guinea Pig films have for ages been public domain distributors (that fascinating loophole that my friends and I used J) favourite flicks and are still hard to find in Japan, but thanks to DVD there have been two official releases of the movies to date, one by the now defunct Devil Pictures of Germany and later by Unearthed Films of USA. Even these discs are becoming out of print, making the movies collector’s items once again.

As an added novelty Unearthed Films have hidden an Easter Egg version of the film referred to as snuff vision where the movie is presented in trashy VHS quality, with all the “narrative scenes” edited out so recreating that haunting feeling that this movie had when it first hit the screens of so many young gore hounds back in the day.

So to think that such a controversial film would be talked about, clips shown and all twenty years after the film first made its mark is rather unique and satisfying in more than one way. Hino’s manga certainly is great, his two films as a director equally impressive. Hino is proud of the movie, but ironically he in retrospect feels that it perhaps shouldn’t have been so violent and aggressive, the main ingredient that makes it such a renowned film.

Not only a fantastic Manga artist and filmmaker, Hino also is a maker of period correct samurai swords and holds a large collection in his humble home. During the interview he revealed that actually regrets making the Guinea Pig films and this because every time his neighbours feline pets goes missing they by default joke about the sword making horror artist that’s kidnapped their pet, turning it into cat sashimi.

Image:

Full frame 4:3

Audio:

Dolby Digital 2.0, Japanese Dialogue, with optional English subtitles

Extras:

Not really an extra but a the full lengths Making of Guinea Pig that shows the creative process and cheerful atoms on set during the making of the films, two text interviews with Hideshi Hino, the history of Guinea Pig, reproduction of the original Akai Hana Manga, image gallery and trailers for other unearthed releases.

Be warned this is the heavy stuff!

You can soon read my interview with John Ajvide Linqvist on the CONSTRUCTINGHORROR.COM site!

Island of the Fishmen

Island of the Fishmen
Original Title : L’isola degli uomini pesce
Directed by: Sergio Martino
Action/Adventure, 1979
Italy, 93min
Distributed by: Mya Entertainment

Sergio Martino. Say his name and many a genre fan, especially myself, will start salivating and ranting on about those magnificent Gialli he directed during the seventies. But Martino also directed a bunch of films beyond those initial Gialli, as he also made movies in the Comedy, Spaghetti Western, Science Fiction and Action/Adventure genres. One of these is the entertaining Island of the Fishmen.

Loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the story was written by Sergio and his brother Luciano Martino (who worked as a producer and director, but also wrote several movie scripts, among them some of the great Gialli and Spaghetti Westerns) and reworked by Cesare Frugoni [Mario Bava’s Rabid Dogs 1974, Ruggero Deodato’s Cut and Run 1985] and Sergio Donati [Sergio Leone’s For a Few Dollars More 1965 and Once Upon A Time in the West 1968]. This many writers could possibly cause a mumbled jumble of varied influences and a mixed bag of complications as storylines and subplots come and go. But I feel that they brought themselves together to write a highly entertaining little film, and anything relying on Lovecraftian mythos grabs my attention and is going to fall in good ground with me.

Island of the Fishmen is not a horror flick, but more an Action - Adventure flick that rubs up against the Science-fiction/Fantastic genre. It starts with a boat drifting in the mist with a few men sat exhausted in the tight space. Quickly the tension between the few men onboard is set and we understand that the power structure is ruptured and they really don’t like each other. Then, strange creatures move in the water and the men are spooked, and to make things worse the boat starts picking up speed and smashes into the cliffs hurling the men into the water once again. Obviously the strange creatures in the water attack and we have an initial attack assuring us that the “fishmen” are not gentle dolphin like playthings. They are vicious killers.

Awaking on the shore of an island, Lt Claude de Ross [Claudio Cassinelli – a fine leading man indeed who died all to soon by a freak accident during the shoot of Martino’s Fists of Steel 1985. But his movies remain and among them you’ll find highlights like Massimo Dallamano’s What Have They Done to Your Daughters? 1974 and Martino’s previous film Mountain of the Cannibal God 1978 to name a selected few.] De Ross roams the island finding various crewmembers dead in the nearby swamp… And Martino starts playing visual gags with us to keep us confused about what sort of movie this is going to evolve into.

The short but great scene of de Ross looking over his shoulder screaming “No! No!” at the lurking – staggering shadow making the groaning noises definitely sets off the Zombie alarm, but in the next second de Ross screams “No José, don’t drink that, if you do you will end up like him!” pointing to the dead guy in the distance. It’s a grand little scene that is humorous, pokes fun at our expectations and at the same time sets up the friendly relationship between José and de Ross. And with every good note in this film there’s a negative contrast waiting. Finding death in the swamp leads to finding his friend José [Franco Iavarone]. Finding a second friend, Francois, leads to meeting up the other survivors, the ones in the beginning that don’t like de Ross. They make a clear comment that they are no longer his prisoners and they won’t take orders from him anymore (which brings a neat little bit of back story into the flick. – and it’s going to be dropped like this each time we need to understand de Ross further during the movie). From this point it’s easy to think that the film is gong to be a survival horror as the men start wandering through the marshlands and surrounding jungle. Alliances are tested in a rather tense sequence where José proves his alliance with de Ross against the others, and before you know it they walk into a cemetery that brings Lucio Fulci’s Zombie 1979 to mind, as José screams out “Don’t touch it! It’s Zombies, ZOMBIES!” de Ross calmly tells him to relax, zombies never existed. Again Martino taunts us concerning genre as there definitely has been enough Italian zombie set-ups established that all we need now is a groaning guy with clay n his face to jump start this baby.

Instead we get Amanda Marvin [Barbara Bach - from Paola Cavara’s 1971 Giallo, The Black Belly of the Tarantula featuring not one, not two, but three Bond Girls; Bach, Barbara Bouchet and Claudine Auger. Bach also featured in Aldo Lado’s creepy black magic Giallo Short Night of the Glass Dolls 1971. Obviously she’s probably most know for being the wife of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr who she met on set of Caveman in 1981] Anyway, Amanda saves the four grown men from a tiny snake with a perfectly aimed bullet from her rifle and delivers some valuable exposition. The Island is uncharted, it belongs to Edmond Rackham and that they would be safer returning to the beach.

As retraining to their point of start, the beach, would make for a shit movie, the men obviously push on forward and eventually find the mansion that Amanda and Edmond Rackham inhabit. Rackham [the great Richard Johnson – Robert Wise’s The Haunting 1963, Fulci’s Zombie 1979] makes his grand entry. He offers the men a place to stay and sees a use for the good-looking de Ross who apparently was the ships doctor! See, there’s more back-story laid out elegantly here. The movie takes a new turn into a more superstitious ground as the Rackham’s house maid Shakira [Beryl Cunningham] performs a voodoo ritual and Amanda pays a visit to the strange Fishmen creatures that don’t tear her apart but act friendly towards her as she offers them a strange milk like fluid. But they do chomp down on the wreck survivor who follows Amanda into the jungle attempting to rape her.

The entrance of Rackham sees the horror element fade out of the movie and shift more into a sci-fi / adventure area. Shakira performs Voodoo sacrifices for Mr. Rackham and José panics and flees the mansion after the last of the group is killed leaving him and de Ross the only survivors from the boat, and in his panicked flight he falls down into an underground cavern… De Ross goes after his friend only to have Amanda once again save him from deadly traps (which trigger the mental image of Charlie the pilot being nailed in Ruggero Deodato’s Last Cannibal World 1977.) and an attack by a Fishmen! Rackham and Shakira recapture the two men and force de Ross to drink a strange fluid that brings Zombie/Voodoo origin rituals to mind. Enter the Professor Ernest Marvin [Joseph Cotten – Yeah Orson Welles' 1941 Citizen Kane Cotton and Mario Bava’s Baron Blood 1972] who is in such bad shape that he has to be saved by de Ross. Remember he’s a doctor, and earlier Rackham made a note of how he could benefit from this. Underneath the island there is an advanced series of tunnels and labyrinths that leads down to ATLANTIS! Wow and we’re just gone halfway!

Now the sinister Rackham turns out to be a treasure hunter and the Fishmen are the original inhabitants of Atlantis… But there’s always a but, to get his hands on the treasures hidden in Atlantis Rackham has had Professor Marvin concoct a strange potion that he’s got the Fishmen addicted to. In return for the gold and treasures they get the drink… so now you know why Rackham so desperately needs de Ross to keep the Professor alive so that the Fishmen slaves keep busy at work. The twist comes suddenly; Amanda is the Professor's daughter, who Rackham holds captive. And as she can communicate with the Fishmen Rackham needs to keep Professor Marvin alive until all the treasure is salvaged, for Amanda is against the exploitation of the Fishmen and Rackham fears she would make them revolt against him if her father died. It’s greed that motivates Rackham, greed for the treasure, greed for Amanda’s love. In the professors secret laboratory de Ross finds out what happened to his mate José, and it’s apparent that the Fishmen are not the original inhabitants, but fiendish experiments!

In a rage de Ross tears apart the laboratory and puts the terrifying experiment José out of his misery. Ironically the José hybrid was the most successful specimen of Professor Marvin’s attempts to save the future of mankind. An amphibian creature that can take salvage in the depths of the ocean when modern man ruins earth. And the experiments are so controversial, that they only could be conducted on an uncharted island, out of sight, out of mind.

Needless to say Rackham busts into the room at this time, bringing death and mayhem with him as the film grinds up to it’s climax and to make things even more nail biting, the bloody volcano that the island sits on is coming to an eruption. The last twenty minutes is really just all action adventure, several leads are in pursuit and there are a lot of subplots rushing forth to their conclusion. But the road there is all great entertainment with a fantastic swashbuckler fight off and poetic justice served out to end it all. Splendid stuff indeed, and something I’ll be showing my kids in a few years time as I cradle them into the fantastic world of Italian genre cinema.

I guess that the easiest way to describe this film would be to call it a hysterical mix of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Island of Dr Moreau, Jules Verne - H.G. Welles, - H.P. Lovecraft science fiction, Atlanian myths and an episode of the hit TV show Lost. It uses the same sort of “cut the crap” narrative as Lost, and exposes only he necessary info needed to shift the value of each scene from negative to positive and vice versa. Neat work indeed. It starts right where we need to start, on the boat AFTER the shipwreck. We don’t have to see the prisoners board the ship, we don’t need to establish power positions on that boat, we have no interest seeing men scream and splash into the sea as he ship goes down. We start AFTER the situation that brought the men towards the island. Fragments of de Ross’ background are portioned out at the exact time it is needed as to keep his origin and back-story a mystery. Much of the events on the island are mysterious, and each time we think that we have a grasp on the main ingredient, Martino throws us a curve ball and introduces new elements of mystery – Cannibals, The mysterious Edmund Rackham, the Voodoo priestess Shakira, the Fishmen, the traps in the jungle, the underground caves, the secret experiments. You see it’s like a concentrated double episode of Lost but without that annoying ever-fresh cast.

Like many other EuroMovies, even this one was picked up by American distributors, re-cut, re-shot and trashed as it was turned into a stinker. Obviously Roger Corman was responsible for the reshooting, reediting and remarketing the movie as the appalling Screamers with Mel Ferrer and Cameron Mitchel in parts in an attempt to turn it into a more horror oriented flick.

Corman also did this with Pavel Klushantsev’s fantastic Planet of the Storms 1962 – Klushantsev, the director that Stanley Kubrick snatched his entire glorious Award Winning special effect tricks from for the 1968 film 2001 – A Space Odyssey. Corman reshot scenes with corny dialogue, a silly new plot and bikini girls selling it as something other than the masterpiece it was. These new versions where retitled and ”directed” by Curtis Harrington [Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet 1965 with Basil Rathbone in a new lead] and Peter Bogdanovich [Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women 1968 with Mamie Van Doren in the lead] the original cast where billed as ”archive footage”. Nice touch Roger. Luckily the Mya release (most likely the same source as the previous NoShame disc) makes sure that this is the intended Italian version without the Corman manipulation.

This is especially important when it comes to the score. Gone is the Sandy Berman stuff and back in is the original Luciano Michelini score full of its fuzzy guitars, swaying strings and vibrant beats. It’s wonderful stuff and at times the score is reminiscent of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s symphonic poem Isle of the Dead fitting to say the least. Even though Luciano Michelini isn’t a very known composer, you will probably have heard one of his pieces if you ever saw that Larry David show Curb Your Enthusiasm. That theme song is a Luciano Michelini composition.

The cinematography by Giancarlo Ferrando, who worked with Martino on more than a dozen of his films, is wonderfully accompanied by Eugenio Alabiso’s editing. He moves fast and there are a few wonderful scenes beautifully edited, usually with something happening outside of Cassinelli’s view, his turn/reaction/reveal, work like textbook examples of how to create the best results in the editing suite. Alabiso who edited Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 1966, Sergio Corbucci’s Companeros 1970, Umberto Lenzi’s Oasis of Fear 1971 and Martino’s Case of the Scorpion’s Tail 1971 to mention some of the 160 and counting great movies that he’s worked on.

I'll say it again; Island of the Fishmen is a marvellous piece of film that could easily play as a Sunday matinee for the whole family to gather around. It’s action packed, it’s scary in an innocent way, and it’s fun to watch.

Image:

Aspect Ration 2.35:1 (16x9 Anamorphic)

Audio:

English or Italian Dialogue, Dolby Digital Mono. Unfortunately there are no English subtitles on the Italian dub, but luckily

Extras:

There’s the original Trailer, a two-minute photo gallery and that’s it.