As a European hipster, I'm naturally attracted to foreign movies, and Japanese ones in particular. That's basically the reason why the other day I rented two DVDs at my local store. I should have stayed home.Actually, the first movie wasn't that bad. "Suicide Circle" (by Sion Sono, 2002) retraces the events following the mass suicide of 54 teenage girls who jumped in front of a train in the Shinjuku station. The police starts investigating, and begins to suspect some foul play as more suicides take place, and strange hints pop up on the web. Would there be some connections with a famous tween idol band ? Enough for the plot.
The movie is rather uneven, to say the least. Some scenes are gratuitously gruesome, such as the opening sequence, where the Tokyo subway gets flooded by the blood of the schoolgirls (fake blood must have represented a significant portion of the film budget), or when puppies are trampled on to death by a peroxided singing maniac on platform boots. On the other side, some elements of the story are worth pondering, for example the critiques of fads, formatted pop culture, generation gaps... if they were developed and not skimmed over.
However, the biggest turn off remains the abstruse plot. The last 15 minutes do not solve anything and raise actually more questions: who is behind the band ? Behind the suicides ? Behind the script ?
No, we have a real winner with Kibakichi, by Tomo-o Haraguchi (2004). The back of the DVD says it all: "half man, half werewolf, all samurai". Bingo !
It starts like a regular samurai movie a la Yojimbo. A lone traveler is attacked by ruffians, but quickly dispatches them ad patres with his mad skillz. Our hero (Kibakichi) then meets a foreboding blind beggar, fights ninja turtles and eventually finds his way to a small village inhabited by yokai. These flesh eating monsters, disguised as humans, are all but one big family lead by a guy looking a lot like James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom. The yokai have a deal with a rising element in the local human clan: get rid of yakuzas and you'll get a nice place where you can leave in peace instead of being hunted down. Of course, the audience can guess straight away that the humans are double-faced: they wear long black leather uniforms that must have been designed by Hugo Boss in the 30es, which is always a bad sign. Kibakichi, as a true lone traveler, decides to leave, but quickly returns to fight alongside the yokai as they are attacked by the Gatlin-gun-carrying humans. Little did they know that Kibakichi was in fact a werewolf ! After growing himself some hair and fighting a betraying cyclops, Kibakichi eventually kills the human leader, who explodes (never carry a grenade when you don't have a head). End of the movie. I voluntarily forget some side plots.
This movie is really terrible. The genre confusion (samurai + latex monsters + gun-wielding badasses), the ridiculous costumes, the ultra-cheap special effects (remember the tunnel of horror in the local funfair ? same thing), the 2c message of tolerance towards our friends the monsters, the mandatory sex scene (where as a bonus the girl transforms into a giant spider), the 15 minutes of explosions... So many reasons to complain that I don't know where to start. So I won't. And I'll skip the sequel.
Anybody has a spare brain ? Mine melted...
2 comments:
I still remember the daikon/finger chopping bit from Suicide Club, though, and I saw it years ago, so there is something to be said for the strength/weirdness of its images.
Mmh. I'm not sure that weird or gory images are sufficient to make a movie. Take "Un chien andalou" for example, it's less a movie than animated paintings.
What bothers me with "Suicide Club" is that relies mostly on shock imagery to affect the audience. Less gore, more plot would have been probably more disturbing and effective.
I'm too old fashioned.
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