Tag: Japan

Directed by Kenta Fukasaku [Other horror films: Batoru rowaiaru II: Chinkonka (2003), XX (ekusu kurosu): makyô densetsu (2007)]

I believe this is either the third or fourth time I’ve seen this Japanese film, and I still find it a pretty enjoyable ride. Known as Black Rat (if it’s known at all – even though I first saw this in 2013, it still seems like a somewhat obscure film), this is an emotionally-packed film with a few things going against it, but ultimately ends up quite memorable.

Ever since I first saw this one in 2013 (and if you’re wondering why I’m sure about that date, it’s due to the fact I left a comment on the Horror Movie a Day blog’s entry), it felt like a special movie. I didn’t fully know why at the time – I just knew it was a solid emotional ride, and I enjoyed it immensely, and that’s still true, but there’s more to it.

This was directed by Kenta Fukasaku, the son of Kinji Fukasaku, the individual who directed Battle Royale. Kenta finished directing the second Battle Royale after his father died of cancer, and more importantly, wrote the screenplay for the 2000 classic. I bring this up because there are pieces of humor within Black Rat that remind me strongly of Battle Royale, and if you know how much a fan I am of Battle Royale, you’ll know that such a resemblance bodes well.

Plot-wise, the movie is simple. Six friends (Ryota, Kanako, Takashi, Kengo, Misato, and Saki) get a text from Asuka, a friend of theirs who committed suicide a month and a half previously. The text tells them to come to a classroom at midnight, and when they do, a killer in a rat mask takes them #down.

None of that is particularly impressive or noteworthy, to be sure, but what pulls the movie together, and gives it a hell of a lot of feeling, are the flashbacks scattered throughout the film, giving a deeper look at all of the friends, their relationships with Asuka, and how they hurt her in various, and sometimes unintentional, ways. It’s a Japanese slasher, which is rare enough, but it’s also a very strong film about friendship and how bonds can fall apart, sometimes in tragic ways.

Unfortunately, the film isn’t well-documented on IMDb. Eight cast-members are listed, but only four are credited, being Rina Saito (Asuka), Misaki Yonemura (Misato), Makoto Sakamoto (Takashi), and Hiroya Matsumoto (Ryota), leaving four cast-members without a credit, being: Haruka Shimizu, Mika Shimizu, Shôta Miyazaki, and Rihoko Shimomiya.

Here’s what I know – three of the uncredited individuals are women, leaving the sole male, Shôta Miyazaki, as the one who played Kengo. As for the other three (and if you’re wondering where the eighth cast-member comes from, it’s a sister of one of the characters), I don’t know who played who (Kanako, Saki, and the sister are the only options), which is a damn shame, as I can’t properly give credit to Kanako’s actress, who I rather liked.

Really, the only issue I had with any of the performances would be Makoto Sakamoto, who played a rather timid and cowardly character, almost to the level of parody. He just didn’t seem like a real person, and that sort of hurt.

And to be fair, it’s not the only problem with the film. Some of the special effects (such as an electrocution and an explosion) were a bit shaky, and there were some choices made toward the latter half of the film that felt quite questionable. Also, I’m not the biggest fan of the last scene.

Even so, there’s a lot going in Black Rat’s favor. Among them would be the shorter runtime, as the movie clocks it at around 76 minutes. It doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, and it still manages to use quality emotional flashbacks to great effect throughout the film, and I think it was done fantastically.

Also, some of the kills early on, or more specifically, the set-up to the kills, are great. You know how I mentioned the humor reminding me a bit of Battle Royale’s? It’s during these scenes where that comes up. The killer gives a character a chance to block a soccer goal – if the character can save the goal, they won’t be killed (or so the killer insists). Well, of course the block isn’t made, and the killer does a cute little dance before they take a baseball bat to the unathletic fellow.

My favorite scene, though, is the killer giving someone a chance to get 100 points on a karaoke song – if they can get the required points on the song, they’re free to go. Of course, they flub the song (being tied down and cut with a boxcutter can put a damper on my singing also), but during the performance, the killer is waving their arms along to the song (again, because this movie isn’t documented well, I don’t know the song, but it’s damn catchy, and the chorus, which goes “Everybody, let’s live for love” is fun).

Neither of these scenes are explicitly comedic, and given the scenario, no one was laughing, but they were both fun, especially the karaoke sequence, and more than that, quite unique.

Asia has largely never been big on slashers, especially since the surge of both Japanese and Korean movies beginning in the late 1990’s. Hong Kong had Dream Home in 2010, and South Korea gave us To Sir, With Love (also known as Bloody Reunion) in 2006, but for the most part, there’s a dearth of modern-day Asian slashers. Black Rat is one of the few Japanese slashers I’ve seen, and for that fact alone, it’s unique, but add on the other stuff I liked about it, and it’s big news.

I get the sense I enjoy Black Rat a lot more than most people. It’s an obscure movie, sure, but many of the reviews I have read on the film (including the one linked above by Horror Movie a Day) have been mediocre, and the film has only a straight 5/10 on IDMb (EDIT: or did when I wrote this on October 21st, 2021, as it now has a 4.7/10). I guess it just hit the right spots for me when I first saw it back in 2013, and seeing it with fresh eyes, it largely still does.

8.5/10

Directed by Hajime Satô [Other horror films: Kaidan semushi otoko (1965), Kaitei daisensô (1966)]

Commonly known under the catchy title Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell, this Japanese film is a vibrant and occasionally interesting movie. It has solid anti-wars themes, and a fantastic ending, but it’s also not the most engaging film out there.

I’ve seen this one twice now, and I guess one of my main issues with the film isn’t even entirely with the film itself. The production company, Shochiku, have certainly made worse films (X from Outer Space) and less coherent films (The Living Skeleton), so this one is certainly a palatable movie. Comparing it to other Japanese movies from the time, though, such as Matango from just five years earlier, and even The H-Man from ten years earlier, and it just doesn’t hold up.

No doubt the story has some strong elements, but I don’t think one of them is the space vampire. The special effects around the silvery slime using human beings as hosts is great, and the way to get into the body (via a vertical slit in the forehead) is classy, but that was really the least interesting portion of the film.

More so, the movie’s about what people will do when placed in an exceptionally stressful situation. To be sure, it was stressful before the alien – people on an airplane have to deal with both a hostage takeover and an unrelated bomb threat (talk about getting on the wrong flight), and that was all during the ten minute cold open before we even get the movie’s title. And so we have this group of people from different walks of life trying to survive from threats on multiple sides.

Of course, some of these individuals are more antagonistic, such as the hijacker (Hideo Kô) and this asshole of a politician (Eizô Kitamura), and others are more the generic hero, such as co-pilot (Teruo Yoshida). Others are the flies in the ointment, such as the psychiatrist (Kazuo Katô) who is more interested in seeing how people react to the situation than anything else.

Performances all around are pretty decent. Like I said, Teruo Yoshida tends to be a bit on the generic side, but there’s others, such as Kazuo Katô, Hideo Kô, Masaya Takahashi, Nobuo Kaneko, and Kathy Horan who bring plenty of flavor to the film.

What’s more striking is the somewhat heavy-handed anti-war message the film carries. There’s an American woman who is going to pick up her dead husband from Vietnam, and she does occasionally get emotional about the stupidity of war. Another suggests that because of mankind’s tendencies to fight unnecessary wars, it’ll attract the attention of alien lifeforms, making us an easier target (reminding me of the Nine Inch Nails song ‘The Warning’, which is a banger).

At the same time, I like to think that most people would be against war. I mean, obviously not those who support capitalism – capitalism without war is untenable – but most people, I think, wouldn’t have a problem saying that war is a negative thing, and if it can be avoided, it should be. I suspect few knew that better than Japan, as they were still recovering from the devastation the USA caused their country with the atomic bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

I also want to add that, without giving anything away, I loved the hell out of the conclusion. I’ve seen this before, as I said, but I honestly didn’t remember much in the way of details, and so the finale here really hit the right spot in about three different ways (none of which I can fairly expand on). It was the finale that kept on giving, and the final shots were A+.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell is a nice-looking movie. The color schemes, especially during the opening (an airplane flying in a blood-red sky is rather striking). It’s just that, funnily, the so-called “Body Snatcher from Hell” is the least-interesting portion of the film, and while there’s enough here to keep things going at an okay pace, and the message is a solid one, when I think of other Japanese horror films, it’s just not quite as good or as memorable.

7/10

Directed by Higuchinsky [Other horror films: Nagai yume (2000)]

Based on a manga, this Japanese film is quite different. It’s not a film I can easily compare to others, and while I don’t think it really transcends into greatness, I can say that Uzumaki is an experience worth having at least once.

Known as Spiral, I first heard of this one via Wizard magazine. See, along with being a fan of horror movies, I’m also a comic book collector, and back in the day, I’d pick up the odd issue of Wizard. In one of these, there was a countdown of 25 scariest scenes from comics books, and the magna Spiral was referenced. It sounded intriguing, but not being a magna guy, I didn’t expect to ever read it. Shortley thereafter, I found out there was a movie based on it, and so I was interested from hello.

As such, I’d have expected the movie to feel a little more unsettling. Certainly the base plot is, being a small town is slowly taken over by an obsession with spirals (or as a character say, the town is cursed by spirals). Things start slowly at first, such as collecting items that possess spirals, or videotaping snails (their shell patterns are all the rage), but as the film goes on, it gets to the truly bizarre, as some of the kids design their hair in impossible spiral patterns, a woman cuts off her fingerprints (spirals, man), and humans slowly turn into snails for some reason.

There are potential answers hinted at, at least in the vaguest sense, but an unfortunate accident befalls the individual with the answers (which, at least in part, revolve around a nearby lake, called Dragonfly Pond), and so everything is left open-ended. To be honest, I don’t know if the finale here is entirely satisfactory – no doubt it’s creepy at times, but satisfactory? Not so much. Even so, which such a unique plot, it’s hard not to feel at least a little bit charmed by it.

Only four performances ultimately really matter, and all of them did well. Leads Eriko Hatsune and Fhi Fan did well, and I thought they complimented each other throughout (I particularly enjoyed Fan’s character’s serious disposition). Masami Horiuchi’s character gets the closest to figuring things out, but he doesn’t get the chance to let others know, and for the creepy factor, Ren Ôsugi did great.

As you might be able to tell, Uzumaki is a bizarre movie. I don’t know if it’s as bizarre as it could have been, and things do move quite quickly toward the ending, but it’s still creepy, and has a pretty good atmosphere, along with, of course, a memorable idea.

I’ve not read the manga, and let’s be honest – I probably never will. Magna’s just not my thing. At least we have this, though, and while Uzumaki isn’t a great movie, and again, I don’t think the finale really gives the whole film justice, but it is a movie I won’t soon forget, and I at least think the idea here is among one of the most interesting ideas I’ve seen in a horror film.

7/10

Directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa [Other horror films: N/A]

I’m a decently consistent guy, or at least I feel like I am. I’m not a fan of experimental films, and never really have been. Kurutta ippêji, better known as A Page of Madness, is certainly experimental, and despite perhaps being an important film, I find it a struggle to get into, and personally just can’t recommend whatsoever.

When it comes to silent films, I have a decent track record of enjoying many of them, and even the ones that are a bit light on traditional horror elements (such as Pikovaya dama), I can give a good shake. There are some experimental silent films I have struggled with – the two that come to mind are La chute de la maison Usher and Schatten – Eine nächtliche Halluzination. I could sort of get into Warning Shadows, because at least I could follow the story, but The Fall of the House of Usher wasn’t easy for me.

And unfortunately, this Japanese film is worse. Part of the problem is that the film doesn’t use intertitles. The aforementioned Warning Shadows didn’t either, but that story was easier to follow, whereas A Page of Madness, while somewhat simple in plot, just felt muddled and confused. To be sure, it was apparently not uncommon for Japanese silent films to eschew the use of intertitles (in Japan, there would have been live narration provided in the theaters by a benshi, or storyteller), but that doesn’t make modern-day consumption of this movie any easier.

Does the film occasionally have striking visuals and interesting use of avant-garde style? Very much so. Even more, Masuo Inoue gave what I imagine to be quite a good performance, despite the fact I didn’t really follow along with the story.

If I’m being honest, though, this was one of the hardest movies I’ve tried to sit through in the last couple of months. It’s perhaps not fair, but it’s true. A Page for Madness is only around an hour and ten minutes, but it felt like three hours, and when I say I almost dozed off at one point, I’m simply relaying facts, not trying to be cruel.

A Page for Madness is worth seeing if you want to see a classic piece of avant-garde, experimental cinema from Asia. I’ve always had a difficult time with experimental films, though – I despise Eraserhead, and always have – and though I’ve seen this Japanese film once and I don’t remember having that bad a time with it, this time around, I just couldn’t do it, fair or not.

3/10

Directed by Toshiharu Ikeda [Other horror films: Ningyo densetsu (1984), Yudono-sanroku noroi mura (1984), Ikisudama (2001)]

While generally a movie that’s well-worth the watch, this Japanese film, commonly known under the title Evil Dead Trap, is a bit of a mixed bag. While no doubt there are plenty of fantastically gory sequences and decent slasher-esque fun, the problem is that the conclusion, and in fact, the final twenty minutes, just don’t do a lot for me.

Certainly ending fatigue is a problem that some movies suffer, but I’ve not seen a case quite as bad as this in a while. Honestly, if the last twenty minutes were cut and the story tied up around 85 minutes in, Evil Dead Trap might have felt a decent amount more consistent and thusly an easier film to recommend.

Aside from the failures of the conclusion, though, I think the movie has a decent amount to offer. The plot itself feels like an almost-more coherent Videodrome (and while we’re on potential inspirations, some of the quick-moving camera shots are reminiscent of The Evil Dead), and follows, for the most part, a typical slasher set-up in a beautifully-deserted factory.

Miyuki Ono made for a decently strong lead, and especially toward the end, I definitely got the sense that her character regretted getting her friends mixed up in such a deadly and dangerous scenario. The other women (Aya Katsuragi, Hitomi Kobayashi, and Eriko Nakagawa) all had their strong points. While of iffy character, Masahiko Abe was decent too.

The design of the killer is pretty top-notch, feeling a little bit like the Fisherman from I Know What You Did Last Summer. Of course, this movie is a lot more off-the-wall (which shows most during the finale), but at least the killers’ designs are in somewhat similar veins.

And related, the special effects are quality. Just in the first five minutes of the film, we see a woman get one of her eyeballs slit open, with liquid gushing out. We see another woman impaled multiple times, and another gets a blade swinging down, colliding with the side of her face. You have a few people shot with crossbows, to be sure, and someone else gets garroted, which wasn’t particularly violent, but when the movie went that direction, it could be plenty gruesome, and I think it stands out well for that.

I also have to give a shout-out to the fantastic music here. It’s as decent as you’d hope from an 80’s horror film, and combined with the often stylish shots this movie went with, Evil Dead Trip, despite the ending, had a beautifully 80’s vibe.

After seeing this again for the first time in what has to be ten years, I had a pretty decent time with Evil Dead Trap, but I can’t pretend that the ending isn’t a let-down (and not just a small let-down, but a pretty big flop). Without the shaky conclusion, this movie could have been a rather high-rated piece of foreign cinema, but as it is, it’s probably just around a high average.

7.5/10

Directed by Kaneto Shindô [Other horror films: Onibaba (1964)]

Largely known as The Black Cat, Yabu no naka no kuroneko started off a decent movie, but I have to say that, after thirty minutes or so, I thought it began to drag, and it never really fully picked up steam again.

The film has a beautiful setting, taking place near a bamboo forest, and it looks quite stunning in black and white (which actually, on a side-note, surprised me, as many Japanese movies I’ve seen from the late 1960’s, and even before, have been in color), and the story has some emotional resonance to it also, to be sure.

For the first thirty minutes, showcasing the two women who are raped and killed, and then coming back as vengeful spirits to get revenge on all samurai, the movie was pretty solid. I thought they were going through their revenge pretty quickly, but that’s because their focus wasn’t there yet (a newly-appointed samurai who they both knew in their previous life), so that’s fine.

And the story that follows isn’t too bad, either, and like I said, even carried with it some emotional scenes, not to mention suspenseful scenes, such as the precursor to the final battle. I just personally found much of it boring beyond belief.

Kichiemon Nakamura was solid as the peasant farmer who, due to valor in battle, moved up to become a samurai. He was a good character, through-and-through, and him finding out that, after three years of being away from home due to his forced conscription, his house had burned down and family missing, was effective and saddening. I just wish I could say that either Nobuko Otowa (Onibaba) or Kiwako Taichi could have made more an emotional impact past the opening scene, but at least Kei Satô provided a little amusement.

Certainly this film had some moments that should have been a bit more of a tug on the heart, but they just didn’t hit me that way. Even toward the end, when Nakamura’s character figures out how to destroy the spirit of his mother, I just wasn’t getting that depressing vibe that you’d sort of expect out of the situation.

Regardless of that, though, the fact that I found the film boring is probably what’s most damning. Others may not see the film that way (many others, given the high rating this sports on IMDb), but I definitely did, and really, given the story rarely got me invested, I’ll have to admit to being disappointed with this Japanese film; it’s no doubt solid and moody at times, but I was just more bored than anything else.

5.5/10

Directed by Kinji Fukasaku [Other horror films: Fukkatsu no hi (1980), Makai tenshô (1981), Chûshingura gaiden: Yotsuya kaidan (1994), Batoru rowaiaru (2000), Batoru rowaiaru II: Chinkonka (2003)]

Here’s another of the many movies that I’ve seen before but remember virtually nothing about. In this case, it’s possibly because there’s honestly not that much to remember about The Green Slime, and the whole of the movie just comes off generically and easy to let go.

It’s a cheap science-fiction/horror that has a few okay ideas, but it lacks the heart of other movies around the same time (such as the Italian Planet of the Vampires), and it comes across as somewhat soulless. The actors and actresses put in fine performances (I guess the three best being Robert Horton, Richard Jaeckel, and Luciana Paluzzi), but their characters are just boring tropes, and so is much of the movie.

As to what could have been done to make the movie better, I couldn’t say. While watching this, I was vividly reminded of Queen of Blood, a 1966 science-fiction/horror starring John Saxon. Queen of Blood was also boring and torturous to sit through, so the fact that I found this a reminder did not at all bode well. I was about to say that the only thing better about this film was that it was in color, but after double-checking that, Queen of Blood was also in color. Maybe in three years, I’ll get to thinking this was black and white too.

To be sure, The Green Slime has some fun ideas. I think the design of the green organisms are delightful in an early Doctor Who special effects way. If they had been featured in a Patrick Troughton-era Doctor Who story, I may even have liked it. But in an hour-and-a-half film, I was just bored, and found the movie somewhat lifeless and dull. 

But hey, it does have a funky song titled “The Green Slime” played at the beginning and the credits, so that’s cool.

5/10