The Ghoul (1975)

directed by Freddie Francis

UK

90 minutes

2 stars out of 5

____

A friend described this movie to me recently, and I thought "Surely, I have to have seen this already?" but could not recall a single thing about it. As it turns out, I had watched it at some point, since it was on the list I keep of every horror movie I've ever seen, but for whatever reason my brain decided not to retain any memory of it whatsoever. I'm thinking that may have been for the best, honestly.

The movie is set somewhere around the roaring '20s, and begins during a house party full of very contrived faux-flappers and their beaus. Everybody gets sauced and decides to have the world's most boring drag race using those new-fangled things they're calling "motorcars", but along the way, the couple in the lead run out of petrol and are stranded in a moor. After the man goes off to get more fuel, the woman wanders off, encountering a random creeper (played by a very young John Hurt) who smokes her in the nog with a rock and then brings her back to his weird shed full of caged animals. That's only the start, though: from there, the woman is "taken in" by a man (Peter Cushing) living alone in a large house with his Indian maid (played by Gwen Watford, a white lady with the whitest white lady name you could imagine). Mysteries and secrets abound!

...but does any of that actually make for an interesting movie? No, it does not.

This whole thing has such an odd vibe to it, and I'm sure it didn't help that I watched it as a VHS rip on YouTube (although I have to say it was a surprisingly decent-quality VHS rip). I would describe it as "dingy and sad". The wigs and costuming look cheap, the set decoration is okay but feels recycled from other movies, and there are only a handful of actors in the main cast, so the whole thing feels kind of desolate and unpopulated. For a horror movie, all of that could add up into a net positive: a movie set in a rambling old house on a fog-shrouded moor should be eerie and claustrophobic. But instead everything just feels like an obvious façade.

And then there's the racism. Oh, boy, is there ever. The movie treats Hinduism as some scary, evil "foreign" religion, and frames India as a whole in terms that make it sound like some terrifying wasteland full of depraved extremists that no one ever returns from alive. I kept hoping that the movie's deep-rooted xenophobia might get turned on its head, or at least that it would be commented upon at some point, but it's not. It's not just the characters who are suspicious of non-white people and their mysterious religious rites; it feels like it's the movie itself.

If there's any one redeeming feature to this thing, it's something that the movie may not even have been doing on purpose: its lack of explanation for the titular ghoul. I'm going to spoil it fully, because who cares? not I: Cushing's character had a son while living in India who, for totally unclear reasons, was some kind of obligate cannibal. There is absolutely no elaboration on why the son turned out this way or what exactly his nature was. How often did he have to eat human flesh? Why could he only eat human flesh? What made him this way? Was he under some kind of weird curse? We don't know. We just know that he is a ghoul who Cushing keeps locked up in a room due to a promise he made to his late wife. That mystery is the only vaguely intriguing thing about this otherwise severely boring and somewhat offensive film.

Fun if you want to see a very young John Hurt (who puts in a decent performance alongside Cushing among a cast of over-actors) but I wouldn't recommend it, at least not sober.

An Update Regarding Updates

As of this week I'm going to be switching this blog from a strict "every Monday at 8 AM" update schedule to a strict "whenever I write something decent enough to publish" update schedule.

The reason for this is mostly just that I'm finding it an increasingly frequent occurrence that I'm too busy/tired/cavernously sad to get a new review done in time. And, as I've said a few times, I've been running this thing for probably close to ten years (although I've deleted a lot of my older work) and have gotten precisely zero actual audience engagement. I like the idea of having a blog, but I think people might just not really have any interest in reading film reviews. Maybe I should have realized that ten years ago?

In the meantime, you can always find me on my other blog, which is much livelier than this one, and updates probably more often than it should. Ciao for now. See you whenever.

The Curse of the Ghost (1969)

directed by Kazuo Mori

Japan

94 minutes

3 stars out of 5

____

As evidenced by other adaptations I've reviewed on here, I'm a HUGE Yotsuya Kaidan fan. This particular version eluded me for a long time, and it was one that I was very interested in due to Akiji Kobayashi (best known either from Ultraman or Kamen Rider, depending on if you like Ultraman or Kamen Rider more) playing Naosuke. I have to say I'm not the biggest fan of the English title because it takes the emphasis off of whose ghost we're talking about here: the original translates to Ghost Story of Yotsuya: Oiwa's Ghost.

In the role of Iemon we have Kei Sato, who should have been fairly perfect for it considering his track record of playing various yakuza baddies and scumbag samurai - he's just got one of those good villain faces - but I think he plays it almost too casually. There is something interesting in an Iemon who does his evil deeds with a kind of matter-of-fact boredom, which is what Sato delivers here, but I just feel like his performance is a little too flat at times when it could have been more intense. Kazuko Inano plays Oiwa and does a very good job, her theatricality as Oiwa's ghost making up for the flatness of Sato's performance. Kobayashi is good as Naosuke, he's definitely got the voice to play a kind of shady, rascally type of guy, but again, aside from Oiwa, nobody feels like they have all that much going on here.

The best part of any Yotsuya Kaidan adaptation is the way things descend slowly down an irreversible path of violence and misery. It starts when Iemon and Naosuke commit near-simultaneous murders, and becomes locked in place when Iemon makes the decision to kill his wife so he can marry Oume. Everything after that - if the movie does what it should - is a guilt-ridden nightmare, the viewer dragged into Iemon's visions of Oiwa's phantom tormenting him. What I really enjoyed about the way Curse of the Ghost executes this aspect of the story is the score. It's not music per se, but a kind of unsettling, rhythmic pulsing noise that pervades much of the film. At times you can forget it's there, but when things start ramping up, it almost has the effect of making you feel like something is behind you. The composer for this score seems to have been Ichirō Saitō, who has a very high pedigree; he's credited with the music for such renowned films as Ugetsu, Sound of the Mountain, Floating Clouds, and Late Chrysanthemums. I think his work on Ugetsu is particularly relevant to what he does with Curse of the Ghost.

All in all I wouldn't say this was my favorite version of the story; it lacks the depth of character of Kinoshita's adaptation or the sheer sweaty terror of Nakagawa's, but it hits all the beats and it has a very convincing Oiwa. Even a Yotsuya Kaidan adaptation that just does the bare minimum is still a Yotsuya Kaidan adaptation. If I may steal a quote from Letterboxd user Rui Ozpinhead that sums up how I feel: "It's hard to completely mess up due to the quality of the source material."

Operation Crazy Hong Kong (1963)

directed by Toshio Sugie

Japan

93 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

____

Also known under the objectively more boring title Crazy Cats Go to Hong Kong.

Usually a film or television series tends to get more formulaic as it goes on, but with the Crazy Cats movies I've seen, it seems like the opposite is true. These earlier entries are, at times, virtually indistinguishable from each other except for a specific "hook" (in this case their trip to Hong Kong). This isn't a point against the films: they may be formulaic, but it's a good formula.

As with most of these, Hitoshi Ueki plays a guy who is trying harder than anybody has ever tried to not do work. The joke here (unstated, but implied by the lengths Ueki goes to) is that, in figuring out ways to weasel his way out of going to work and paying his tabs, he's actually doing a lot more work than if he just held down an office job without complaining. Ueki here has the same vibe he usually does; he's a carefree, roll-with-the-punches type of guy whose zeal for being irresponsible is infectious.

In the first half of the film, Ueki and some restaurant owners who he owes money to dream up a scheme to open a Japanese restaurant together in Hong Kong, the catch being that if they're successful, they'll all forgive Ueki's debts. The other restaurant owners consider it a fun idea, though ultimately just an idea, but Ueki is all for it, pulling connections to get himself endeared to a businessman from Hong Kong and a few other wealthy people who can finance the restaurant. But once the crew assembles and opens their restaurant, they find that just serving food isn't attracting many customers. It takes a stint in jail following a promotional parade-slash-public-disturbance for them to realize that people don't just want to sit and eat, they want to be entertained. All of this culminates in what is very much the central scene in the entire film: a live jazz performance where the Cats act like absolute fools to impress a stony-faced businessman who never laughs.

That performance really was the highlight for me. Everything else proceeded as expected; there were the requisite jokes and the usual guest actors (although I was quite happy and surprised to see Kingoro Yanagiya and Jimmy Lin Chong), but then that performance hits, and it's just such a perfect showcase of the talent this band had for physical comedy. No, the jokes are not that original, but they do them so well. Maybe that's why Crazy Cats kept making successful movies together for such a long time: they had a niche and they were the best at it.

I still wouldn't recommend this one over their much grander "Crazy Cats go to [location]" films such as Mexican Free-For-All or Las Vegas Free-For-All, but it's pretty solid. And beautiful as a little snapshot of Japan and Hong Kong ca. 1963, as well.

(I also have to mention that Eitaro Ishibashi and Senri Sakurai are pretty much canonically a gay couple in this. They're depicted in a very stereotypical and I suppose somewhat offensive way, but still. I'll take what I can get.)

Red Lion (1969)

directed by Kihachi Okamoto

Japan

117 minutes

4.5 stars out of 5

____

A "here's the new boss, same as the old boss" movie for the ages.

I've watched this movie many times and consider it a favorite (it actually seems to get better every time I watch it, which is always a good quality for a movie to have) but I've never written about it before because with certain movies, especially ones grounded in historical events I'm not terribly familiar with, I feel like I'm not smart enough to say anything coherent about them. But this particular movie, despite being jidaigeki, very clearly has things to say not just about the state of things as they were at the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, but also as they were in the 1960s and, I would argue, perennially.

To give a very broad overview: after the Shogunate is abolished, Imperial troops called the Sekiho-tai are tasked with spreading the message of the change in power across the country, stripping officials of their previously-endowed statuses, and convincing the populace of the wisdom and superiority of the new system of governance. Red Lion follows a very low-ranking member of these troops named Gonzo (Toshirō Mifune) as he basically charms his way into getting appointed as an official representative and is tasked with liberating his small, back-country hometown and its people. But while Gonzo has an optimistic vision of this new state of affairs as a peasant's dream - a system where poverty will be eased and the common people will no longer be under the boot of their previous rulers - the truth is that although the names and faces may change, the influence of governmental power on the lowest rungs of society remains the same.

And that last point is really the crux of this entire movie, and the reason why I like it so much. Gonzo is so, so genuinely convinced that this is really it: this is the time when people like him will finally get their day in the sun, when life will no longer be back-breaking labor just to live at a subsistence level under heavy taxes levied by rich men. He believes in this so thoroughly. He is such a deeply earnest man - and, yes, as the movie reminds us, a little simple, but if anything the viewer is urged to envy that about him, to admire his lack of jadedness. Gonzo is so wrapped up in his idea of a utopia - and his joy at playing a part in ushering in that utopia - that he's blind to the reality of his situation.

I really think that this is one of Mifune's best roles. As others have said, for him it's a bit of a... maybe the opposite of a face-heel turn? A heel-face turn? It's a rare example of an actor who is instantly recognizable managing to ease flawlessly into a role that requires him to act like a bumbling, simple, pure-hearted country bumpkin. Nothing about his performance here comes off forced: not his infectious physicality, not his stutter, not his zeal for collective liberation. And it's not just Mifune, either: this movie works as well as it does because it has a fantastic ensemble cast, from Minori Terada as Sanji the pickpocket to Nobuko Otowa's small but compelling role as Oharu, a freed prostitute. I also have to mention the comedic elements of the film as well, because besides being an effective societal commentary, the movie is also funny as hell (I want to study Yūnosuke Itō's line delivery in a lab).

Although Gonzo as an individual ends up unable to overcome the sheer power of the ruling class, the idea of liberation that he infects his hometown with survives beyond his death, as is implied in the final minutes of the film. This is, if we can call it "optimism", an unusually optimistic view for Okamoto, whose outlook tends to be a bit cynical - or, I guess, just realistic.

I'm sure this won't be the last time I revisit this movie, and I'm glad to see that there seem to be more positive reviews for it on Letterboxd than when I last looked. I think this is one of Okamoto's best, one of Mifune's best, and honestly, one of my favorite jidaigeki. Not only does the film have a deeply resonant moral, it's also just really, really fun.

Elves (1989)

directed by Jeffrey Mandel

USA

89 minutes

2 stars out of 5

____

"Are you asking me if I believe in elves? No... but God did."

Every year I get worse at watching Christmas movies. Sidetracked by other stuff, too busy (somehow I seem to always take on more projects than usual around the holidays), bored by every Christmas movie on offer, or just plain unwilling. I could have even seen this at a local bar/theater, but it's cold outside and I work weird hours. So I Elved at home, and I'm not really sure I fully understand what I experienced.

Elves is a movie that makes me philosophical about the nature of the American film industry as a whole. I watch a lot of Japanese movies (obviously), and I definitely don't want to fall into the trap of thinking everything made in Japan is automatically better, but it really does strike me that even the shittiest Japanese movie I've seen seems to be at the very least watchable in a way that bad American movies are not. A bad Japanese V-cin horror movie from 1989 made on a beer-money budget by a bunch of teenagers feels like it has more life in it than Elves. It seems like there's a proliferation of American movies that, like Elves, look like real movies on the surface, but are just so deeply bizarre in terms of plot, pacing, character writing, and acting that it amazes me people actually managed to cobble together enough money to get this done and make it look professional and still managed to be so bad at it.

The story here is that a teenage-ish girl unwittingly finds herself part of a plan put into motion before her birth to have an elf impregnate her and produce a race of superhumans that will carry out Nazi orders and bring the Fourth Reich to bear. Elves, the film posits, were the "little creeping things" designated by God to have refuge on Noah's Ark at the time of the flood. (Yes, I am serious.) (None of this explains why the movie only seems capable of showing one elf at a time.)

Fortunately, Julie Austin, who plays Kirsten, is one of the movie's 2 decent actors (the other is Dan Haggerty doing down-on-his-luck MacReady) out of a cast of people who seem only vaguely aware that they're in a movie. Elves was actually a lot more watchable because of her and Haggerty; you can kind of get away with a movie being bad if one or two of your actors take it seriously. Kirsten's life sucks so bad it's almost not believable: abusive mom, grandfather who turns out to also be her father, pervert mall Santa and a neurotic boss making her job miserable, weird little brother, et cetera. But she is one of the more likable characters, which is fortunate since she's also the protagonist. She does tank her respectability by calling the elf the F-slur in what should be her climactic moment, but I guess you can't set your expectations too high for this sort of thing.

I watched this as a really bad VHS rip on YouTube, which added to the charm but also made it flat-out difficult to see anything. What I could see of the practical effects left something to be desired. The elf was puppeted well, but something about its static facial expression (gargoylish; laughable) made it look goofy instead of menacing or even really interesting. I did enjoy that the movie immediately turns into a peyote trip when the elf finally gets killed, that was fun.

All in all I think I definitely would have been better off watching this in a bar. There are one-off quotes that are absolutely hilarious out-of-context, such as the one I opened this review with, but on the whole, watching this alone in your house totally sober is just you, alone in your house, sober, watching a bad Nazi elf movie. Whether or not that sounds like a good time is up to your individual taste, but for me, if I'm watching a bad Christmas movie, I want it to at least be fun, and this just kind of bored me.

Trigger warning for animal cruelty.

Please read my essay.

Or don't, it's up to you. But I'd like it if you read at least some of it.

Here.