Indie Kaiju Film Roundup, part II

Tokyo Abandonment Order Garateia (2016)

directed by Okuno Kengo/students and alumni of Osaka University of Arts, Film Department

Japan

17 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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So this was made for no other reason than sheer excitement over Shin Godzilla coming out in 2016, and it really shows. I was absolutely into Garateia from minute one because the love for the genre is so obvious. It doesn't try to distance itself from Godzilla; it is its own thing with its own newly-invented creature, but it features the Godzilla hotel, and basically instead of being a direct homage to Godzilla it's something more like a statement of "we wouldn't be here if not for this". It specifically references Shin Godzilla in the way most of the human characters are government or military officials convening to try to figure out what to do in the impossible scenario of a kaiju invasion, but it does get a little weird with it too, especially at the end.

For a 17-minute short I was very impressed with how Garateia manages to pretty much re-invent itself every other minute, constantly throwing in new ideas and going in directions you couldn't foresee even as it gets towards the finale. There's a moment that I absolutely love, where Garateia confronts the model Godzilla on the Gracery Hotel. That idea is so incredibly interesting to me: The real, live kaiju looking at a fictional version of itself. And there's not many memorable individual human characters in this, as is par for the course in kaiju film, but one line from a single defense force member is kind of sticking with me. It ends up being not a coordinated squadron, as the military would prefer, but instead a single woman who lures Garateia into the only area where it can be "safely" bombed with minimal risk to the human populace, and as she stares the creature down, she says "After this, what do I do?" Again, that is so interesting to me; the acknowledgement that life after you risk losing it is going to look different from the way it was before.

Another thing I appreciate is that the weapon of choice against Garateia is the good old "Rods from God", one of my favorite (hell, probably my favorite, I'm not much for real-world weaponry) scrapped bonkers U.S. military ideas. God, would I love to see an actual Godzilla film where they try to do that to him. For what it's worth, it does nothing to Garateia - I'm not going to spoil the ending, because it's another of this film's many exciting moments, but it takes more than some puny metal rods launched from orbit to confront this creature.

I'll just end this review by saying that the Garateia suit is also absolutely gorgeous. The miniatures are surprisingly good as well, especially the Gracery. My only complaint is one that I have about a lot of indie kaiju films, which is that it's just a wee bit too dark for my liking, something that I suspect was done on purpose to hide some of the rougher edges (as if I don't adore those rough edges) on the suit. All in all this could easily be a full-length film project.

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Gwanggong vs. Alien (2011), directed by Chung Man Leung

Hong Kong

16 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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This is a very loose remake of the movie War God, which I've seen and enjoyed quite a bit. Despite its short running time, not only does it do some really interesting things with the concept of the original film, but it also becomes solidly its own, original creation. It is definitely a send-up of the Chinese Communist government: The People's Liberation Army's idea for fighting off a sudden alien invasion is to send three pilots from Hong Kong, mainland China, and Macau out inside a giant mecha Lei Feng (by complete coincidence I watched this on Learn From Lei Feng Day) to fight it. But at the same time, they publicly maintain that there is nooooo alien invasion, the government has everything under control. Party higher-ups broadcast as such even while the alien is clearly visible behind them.

In addition to being a political satire and a tribute to a classic film, this is also a tribute to Ultraman. The opening credits make this fairly clear as well as the fact that Guan Yu is essentially Ultraman in everything but name and appearance: He comes to Earth and merges with a human who has died while protecting others, but is only able to maintain their bond for a short length of time (in this case the time it takes to burn one incense stick). I really have to appreciate a film that takes a group of different ideas ranging from political commentary to film appreciation to figures out of folklore, looks at them, and says, you know what could unite all of these topics? Ultraman.

The effects are surprisingly good for a short film from 2011. There are no kaiju but instead two different mechas (I'm counting the alien as a mecha because it just looks like one) and both are very good suits. The alien especially is, I would argue, easily of the quality of anything from a recent mainstream toku series, albeit maybe a bit more bare-bones. I love its design, though. I couldn't think of any reason or symbolism behind it looking like a bird until just a little while ago I realized that it might be in reference to China's attempted eradication of sparrows as part of the Four Pests Campaign that led to famine and an incredible death toll - but I could be making that up.

And the last thing this packed short manages to incorporate into its plot is the idea that Guan Yu survives only because the people believe in him, that he alone isn't anything, is just an idea, a deification of an ordinary man, but he's given weight by the continued proliferation of his image and legend. This is such a creative, fully-fleshed-out short - the director only has one credit on imdb, but I'm not sure how accurate that is because imdb is not the greatest for primarily non-English-language projects and people. If anybody knows of anything else this director has done, please let me know so I can see it.

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The Specter (2005), directed by Junya Okabe

Japan

41 minutes

2.5 stars out of 5

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Of the three films in today's roundup, this is definitely the one I felt the least enthused about. It is good, but never felt involved in it in the way a good short film can get you to feel even in just a couple of minutes - and this one runs for 41 minutes. This was produced by Konami, that Konami, Silent Hill Konami, and boy, does it show.

The fairly simple plot of this short is that, prior to it, during a period of increasing attacks on Earth from hostile aliens, a defense organization was formed from countries on Earth as well as allied aliens. The short itself focuses on an agent of this organization, nicknamed SPECTER (and played by a Timeranger), as he does Men in Black-type stuff while attempting to stop an invading alien from stealing important plans from a scientist (said scientist is totally fine to throw his assistant under the bus about it). You don't need to worry about that too much, because this is mostly something to be watched for the special effects.

In the opening couple of minutes, this is far more of a CGI showcase than one for practical effects, and it does continue that way throughout the rest of the film, but I feel like The Specter's good point is that it's a great example of how CGI and practical effects can work alongside each other. There's something that I love so much about this specific point in computer-animation history - maybe it's because this is the way video games looked when I was growing up, so I have some nostalgia for it. But I think I like it because the technology was not quite there to make things look basically photorealistic the way it is today, so any time CGI was used, you were going to be able to see that it was CGI, and instead of trying to hide it, a really good filmmaker - like the ones who made this - can use CGI as art. I think of all the older films where the effects were achieved by drawing directly onto the film strip. Good CGI should feel like that, not like it's horning in on everything or being used for cheap entertainment.

Most of the practical effects are concentrated around the invading aliens' makeup and facial prosthetics and I really liked this. There's a crowd of aliens shown at one point and from what I could tell (watching this in trash quality on YouTube did nothing to help it, by the way), even though they were all members of the same species, the makeup crew put in the effort to make their faces all slightly different - like humans. The leader of them uses this wacky device to turn itself into a gigantic rage-beast, which was a high point of the film effects-wise, and he pilots a mecha in this state, another nice blend of CGI and prosthetics. 

But then this short just ends. Or, really, it doesn't "end" so much as it just kind of stops happening. Factors like rough subtitles auto-translated from Chinese and bad picture quality kept me from getting fully engaged with the plot, but I felt like I was left hanging when I had just started to want to see more. This director seems to have also made a short film where Zatoichi fights a bunch of cyborg ninjas, which I need to watch immediately.

A Chinese Ghost Story (1987)

directed by Tony Ching Siu-Tung

Hong Kong

98 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I love Hong Kong horror movies, but I always come up at a loss when I try to review them because usually the "complexity of plot" to "comprehensibility of subtitles" ratio is so imbalanced that I have no idea what's going on. But as it turns out (and as I probably should have known from the start), this is really a very different animal from the type of movie I was thinking of. It's absolutely nothing like your average Shaw Bros outing; with far higher production value and a more mature humor, this is more along the lines of a historical romance than a goofy schlocky horror movie*.

Our main character (played by Leslie Cheung!) is a tax collector who's very poor, with no worldly possessions except the pack he carries around for much of the movie. In classic horror movie fashion, when he asks around for a place he can stay the night with no money involved, he gets the old "Well... there's that weird old temple that's supposed to be horrifically haunted..." and, having no real choice, ends up staying at said temple. This is a gross oversimplification of a movie that already has a surprisingly simple plot. Most of the appeal comes from how well an old story is executed, visually. The cinematography is beautiful and much more relaxed and subtle than I was expecting - for example, I liked the visual tricks employed to make the protagonist stick out of the faceless crowds that he is often in, like how even with no knowledge of the film we would be able to tell immediately who the main character was just from the fact that he's carrying around that huge bindle all the time. The running joke where everyone talks about him behind his back and shuts up as soon as he turns around to look at them was very funny. He also ends up shoved against a shop display selling hell money and gets the ink, and the inscriptions, smeared all over his back, which later is our first tip-off that the girl he falls for might not be entirely human. This is another example of the subtle visual clues this movie is good at deploying.

Once he gets to the temple, the protagonist - whose name I have not been using because I've seen it Romanized in many ways and I don't know which one is the right one - finds that the rumors of it being haunted are true, but the nature of the haunting is more faceted than the townspeople seem to think, and hey, who's this really pretty but kind of weird girl who lives at the temple, who's very pale and freezing cold all the time?

The character who I am tentatively calling Nieh Hsiao-Tsing (and please forgive me if this is a mangled spelling) was a bit of a surprise to me because, honestly, I'm sorry that I keep comparing this to movies that it has nothing to do with, but I've been watching a lot of Shaw Bros lately and I'm used to women having a status lower than furniture in these films. Generally a woman in a bad HK horror movie is not allowed to have desire except as a joke; bawdy old women and prostitutes are typically the only time a woman is seem expressing her own wants and needs. But the first time we see Nieh Hsiao-Tsing, she's falling all over our protagonist, begging for him, oblivious, to warm her up. It is clearly in line with her character as a lonely being who hasn't felt normal human touch for a long time, but to me it was notable to see a woman who so clearly knows what she wants and in fact makes the first move. He doesn't have to woo her, or convince her of anything. The romance is two-sided and entirely consensual.

Another character who stood out to me was Hsiao-Tsing's captor, who the subtitles called "The Old Dame". From what I could tell, she was a kind of ancient, malevolent tree spirit who fed off of energy from living humans. What I liked about this character was that she (I'm relying on mangled subtitles here - the other characters could very well have been avoiding pronouns altogether when talking about the Old Dame) has aspects of male and female and this is not presented entirely as a joke. Crossdressing is another thing I run into frequently in HK horror and it is always strictly for a cheap laugh, some guy in garish makeup and women's dress acting lewd and we're all supposed to think it's the funniest thing ever. This character is a man in makeup, but she is not treated as inherently funny. Her voice is dubbed to very interesting effect where at random it switches between a higher and deeper register. This character's gender is never explicitly brought up, but I understand there are many beings in Chinese mythology who have aspects of more than one gender or do not have a gender at all. It's just not very often that I see that depicted in what is almost approaching a respectful manner.

Moving on. Like I said, this is primarily a love story, but it's one done in a way that feels genuine, not rushed, and has that element of star-crossed love that does usually get to me regardless of my pretensions. It's not that original - I think most people could name, or at least are familiar with, a story or two where a couple is in love but one is unaware that the other is a ghost. That A Chinese Ghost Story takes place in a Daoist setting makes this more complicated and, in my opinion, more tragic, because it means that the kindest act our protagonist can do for the girl he's fallen in love with is make sure her remains are properly interred so that she can finally reincarnate - whereupon he'll never see her again, because her soul will now be in the body of someone who could be anywhere in the world. It's a twist on the typical ending to these stories of just having to accept that you can't be with someone, and I don't know if it's comforting or even more sad.

There are still action scenes in this, and some zombie skeletons and various ghouls, you know, that kind of thing, and they're all great. Most of the comedy relief not delivered by our protagonist himself being so good-hearted and innocent comes from a somewhat rowdy monk who also hangs out at the temple. Midway through the movie he bursts into what I can only describe as a hip-hop song and dance number about Daoism for no apparent reason. Also, whenever he does some epic action move, the transformation sound effect from the original 1966 Ultraman would play, which was driving me absolutely crazy. I think my favorite thing about this film was the cinematography, but it's got everything, rolled into one: A good love story, a little spookiness here and there, awesome practical effects, nice soundtrack, and humor that never feels like it's hitting you over the head. I wonder if the sequels manage to maintain this level of quality.

*please note that I deeply love goofy, schlocky Shaw Bros movies as well.

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)

directed by Roy Ward Baker / Chang Cheh

UK/Hong Kong

83 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I don't know how I made it so long without being aware that there existed a Hammer/Shaw Brothers co-production. Of course my immediate thought upon finding this out was "in what universe could that not be fantastic?" I was warned by other reviewers, however, that 7 Golden Vampires couldn't possibly live up to your expectations of it as a fan of either of those two studios, but I had to check it out anyway, and honestly? This kind of is fantastic. It's just also a little bit bad.

There's something that I genuinely love about the concept of this, and it's really a shame that Hammer never did anything else in this vein and that this movie seems to largely have been shelved and only known about by people who actively seek it out. Having familiar characters venture into other countries isn't uncommon ground for horror franchises that hit critical sequel mass - there'll sometimes be hokey films or episodes in which our heroes find themselves dealing with another culture's horror icons, but typically those installments are dealt with with less input from whatever locale they're visiting than is the case with 7 Golden Vampires. Not that this one isn't hokey as well, but the balance between Hammer and Shaw Brothers feels equal, and even breaks some stereotypes. Usually it's China who gets shoehorned into being the place with mythology and legend woven deep into its culture, and its people are assumed to be overly superstitious and mystical, but when Van Helsing tries to convince a room full of students that a vampire legend exists in their midst, the students' reaction is pretty uniformly "get the hell out of here with your European nonsense".

Fortunately, though, one guy has insider knowledge of this whole vampire business. David Chiang plays our lead from the Shaw Brothers side, and good thing he has a whole shedload of brothers (and one sister) who happen to know martial arts and are willing to defend Van Helsing, his boring-ass son, and some random rich lady as they investigate the vampires plaguing the brothers' hometown. I genuinely liked Chiang - apparently quite famous in wuxia and other movies from Hong Kong and China, there's just something about him that made him pleasant to watch even when he was not fighting, which is somewhat of a rarity; you don't usually find an actor who can do both. I just thought he had a lovely accent, I liked listening to him talk. But anyway, the rest of his brothers don't have a lot of impact on the plot other than as a magnet to attract big fight scenes to the main cast of characters were there otherwise might be none. They get to the town and it's predictably absolutely lousy with vampires, headed up by Kah, who is possessed by the evil spirit of the OG European Dracula.

This movie is noticeably more gory and contains more nudity than a lot of Hammer films; at least the earlier ones, anyway, they were getting pretty randy in the '70s. But the one big difference between this and the core Dracula series that spawned it is that there are a great many vampires in 7 Golden Vampires, whereas in Dracula, you just have the one head honcho and maybe a couple of young women he's turned, who generally always get killed along the way. 7 Golden Vampires is swarming with them, just crawling with vamps, rendering the concept of a vampire into something more similar to what the West might term a zombie. Each of them has some pretty gnarly makeup on, looking as gross and rotten as is possible, and they really just don't stop coming - the title references a select group of seven, obviously, but the fighting brothers' town is overwhelmed by their servants as well. I enjoyed seeing more gore and practical effects makeup than Hammer usually has on offer, even if it wasn't that great by technical standards. I'm specifically a big fan of that effect you see a lot in vampire movies where the vampire gets staked and they do a time-lapse shot of their body crumbling into dust, and there's a whole lot of that in this movie. When the head vamp finally gets served, we see the spear used to do the deed fall over and crack open his skull once he reaches the stage of crumbliness where the spear is no longer kept upright by being lodged in his flesh. I liked that. It's the little things.

So, yeah, I don't know what most people were expecting from this, but personally I was pretty satisfied because I went into it knowing it wasn't going to be a """genuinely""" good film. When you think about it, Hammer and Shaw Brothers are both studios where, after watching a certain amount of films from them, you know just about where to set your expectations: Hammer consistently gives out movies with much the same tone, especially the early ones; you learn to anticipate that kind of cheesy fake sound-stage Bavaria and historical inaccuracy, and with Shaw Brothers you know you can't expect knockout acting and intense, heartstring-tugging drama. So as long as you have some familiarity with everyone involved, I don't see why one can't enjoy The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires as much as one might expect to. It's certainly never boring.