Ichi the Killer

I like the word sadomasochist. I don't know what it is about that word, but it just rolls off of the tongue so smoothly. Whatever it is, I don't think any other word can accurately describe the main antagonist in this film. Now the reason why I'm referring to him as an antagonist rather than a villain, is because I feel that in order to be called a villain, there needs to be a good guy. However, I felt that this film lacked that so called "good guy" since everyone in it was depraved and guilty of some wrong doing. It can be argued that Ichi and his gang are in fact the good guys but I don't think thats the case and I'll expand on that a little later.

That guy on the movie poster above? His name is Kakihara, and he is one of the most brutal enforcers for the Anjo gang. When boss Anjo goes missing, he makes it his life's goal to investigate his disappearance by any means necessary. What he doesn't know, is that Ichi savagely murdered boss Anjo the night before and had a clean up crew dispose of the evidence. Jijii, who is part of the clean up crew, the Anjo gang, AND Ichi's gang feeds Kakihara false information making him believe that a fellow enforcer named Suzuki was the cause of Boss Anjos disappearance. Kakihara kidnaps and tortures Suzuki by hooking his flesh with steel hooks and hanging him from the ceiling. He then proceeds to pour hot oil on Suzuki's back and head before being informed that hes torturing the wrong person. The following day, he apologizes to the rest of his gang by slicing off the tip of his tongue and offering it as a tribute.

In another part of the city, we get introduced to Ichi,
(This is Ichi)

who turns out to be the exact opposite of what everyone makes him out to be. He's an extremely socially awkward, severely anxious and sexually confused person who freezes anytime someone tries talking to him. Whenever he's at home he spends his time under a blanket staring at what looks to be Tekken 3 on his television. His friend Jijii continously reminds Ichi of his childhood and how badly he was bullied. He also reminds him of the time his best friend was raped and Ichi did nothing to stop them. He uses these stories to brainwash Ichi and turn him into a hyper violent killing machine, using him to wipe out the majority of the Anjo gang.

Before watching this movie, I looked up a bit of background information to see what I was getting myself into, and the one thing that stood out the most was how sadistically violent it was. Apparently, when it was screened at the Toronto Film Festival, barf bags were handed out to the audience as a joke. One person ended up using it, while a second person fainted. People weren't lying, it was really violent and gory and one scene in particular had me cringing a bit. It was the scene where Kakihara cuts off his tongue. The plot was cool, and towards the end of the film I felt extremely bad for Ichi. Jijii completely FUCKED him up and the poor guy was suffering on a daily basis. Like I stated earlier, there were no clear "good guys" in this movie. The Anjo gang members dealt in violence, gambling and prostitution. Kakihara just did things for the love of pain, and Ichi and his gang dealt strictly in blood. Jijii's goal was to use Ichi to eliminate gang activity, and to pit them against each other. Sounds like a noble act, but in the process he destroyed an innocent mans life. Ichi, though it wasn't really his fault he was so messed up, killed both the innocent and the guilty.

The only thing I didn't like about this movie was the amount of characters that were introduced at the beginning, who then kind of just dissapeared towards the end of it. Im not very used to japanese names, so keeping track of all the different characters was a little challenging. Other than that, I really enjoyed watching this. Now that I think about it, it was a really funny movie with a shit load of violence sprinkled on top, so there is no reason not to watch it. Plus, Kakihara is one bad ass villain. (See those scars on the sides of his mouth? He can take those piercings off and he can open his mouth twice as wide to chew your face off.)

Hell is only a word. The Reality is much, much worse.

So I decided to lay off of the foreign movies for a bit (for like an hour and a half) and watched Event Horizon at the request of a friend. Normally I am a bit cautious when it comes to movie recommendations, but I have to admit that this one was actually pretty good. Aside from the cheesy dialogue and the completely unnecessary comic relief character, everything else was entertaining.

If Clive Barker's Hellraiser, and Sunshine by Danny Boyle met and had a baby together, then Event Horizon would be the result of that unprotected coitus. In 2040, maybe a bit earlier, the brilliant Dr. William Weir (played by Sam Neil), developed a space ship, which he named The Event Horizon, that is capable of traveling at near light speed. He created a machine that essentially bends space and time allowing us to travel from one point in the universe to another in an instant. The machine inside the ship creates a small worm hole which "teleports" the ship to the second location. On its maiden voyage however, the ship goes missing and for seven years, nothing is heard from the crew. In 2047 a distress beacon is picked up, and The Lewis and Clark is sent out to investigate. On board The Lewis and Clark is Captain Miller (played by Laurence Fishburne), Dr. Weir, Peters, Starck, Cooper, and and the rest of Miller's Crew. Once they find the Event Horizon, they go on board and start to investigate what actually happened to the previous crew, since no bodies seem to be found other than a frozen corpse a disembodied hand, and an audio recording that says "Liberate Tutemet Ex Infernis", which apparently is a grammatically incorrect way of saying "Save yourslef from Hell" in Latin. While on board, the portal opens by itself and sucks in one of the crew members. He is pulled out by the crew but is left in a catatonic state, this also causes the gravitational drive to send out an electromagnetic pulse which damages the Lewis and Clark and forces the crew to live off of the Event Horizon while they undergo repairs. While on the ship, the crew begins to experience violent hallucinations while Dr. Weir develops an unhealthy obsession with the ship.

I try my hardest not to spoil any movies I talk about, because I honestly want people to watch them so I try not to ruin the fun. So without going into too much detail, what happened to the ship, was that it was successful in its first voyage, however they did not end up in their desired destination. They had opened a portal to a universe of unimaginable pain and chaos. They discovered that other universes do in fact exist, but we do not belong there. The universe that they encountered was hyperviolent and cruel, and caused the crew to become cannibalistic sadists.

Aside from the corny lines and forced CGI, it was made in 1997 so most of the CG was still in its infancy and it looks a little dated. It was a lot of fun to watch. There was a good amount of violence and gore, but it wasn't in your face "LOOK AT THIS SHIT" type of gore. It was fast, and left a lot to the imagination. I even went back to freeze frame on the part where they find the ships video footage too watch all the torture. The comic relief character I was talking about? Yeah, completely unnecessary. He played a pretty big role in the plot, however I feel like it was completely unnecessary to make him that goofy. Whenever he was on screen and said something, I just shook my head and said "Why would you say that?". Then I remembered that this movie was made in the 90's, so I let it fly. Fishburn was ok, although a bit lame, but the over all concept behind the movie was what really sold me. If you like space madness, hallucinations and violence, then give this movie a try.

The City of Lost Children

The City of Lost Children

Released in 1995 by directors Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, The City of Lost Children is a surrealistic fantasy film set in an unnamed port city, in which children seem to be vanishing into thin air. One, played by Ron Perlman, is an ex-sailor turned street performer who loses his best friend in a fatal stabbing during one of their performances. That night, One is attacked by a group of men referred to as the "Cyclops", who then proceed to kidnap his adopted little brother. One chases after them, but fails to catch up to their vehicle, and instead runs into a gang of orphans called The Thieves Guild, who are sent by the conjoined twins known as the octopus to steal money and jewelery from the unsuspecting people around town. Later, One finds himself working with the thieves guild where he meets Miette, a little girl who may have information on the possible whereabouts of the kidnapped child.

Far away on an ocean rig, there is a scientist named Krank (played by Daniel Emilfork) who lives with a small woman named Martha, his six identically cloned brothers, and Irvin who is simply a brain living in an aquarium. Due to his inability to dream, Krank is aging at an alarming rate, so in order to stop this he has built a machine that can suck out the dreams of children. He and his clones pay the Cyclops' in body augmenting equipment, to steal children for them. The children are then transported to the rig and hooked up to the machine where Krank invades their minds. The only problem is, that these poor children are so scared that all of their dreams are nightmares, which are useless to Krank. Throughout the film, Krank is figuring out a way to give these kids happy dreams, however he continuously fails miserably, until he meets One's little brother who is not scared of the terrifying scientists. Krank concludes that this is the child that he is been looking for and attempts to take his youth.

Much of the films creepyness comes from the variety of skewed angles chosen to film the villains. I noticed that whenever One, Miette, or any of the kids were on screen alone, the camera was still and "normal". But whenever any villain stepped foot into the frame, the camera would warp, bend, or take very dramatic closeups giving them a more sadistic and disgusting look. Take a look at Krank during one of his nightmares...

Or this one, where he is confronting one of the children about his nightmare...

There was also a dream sequence, in which a gang of Santa Claus invade a childs dream and everything becomes warped and confusing, it was like a mushroom trip gone bad. That scene actually gave me a bit of nausea, but I think that was the whole point, to make me uneasy.

Daniel Emilfork did a fantastic job of playing the sadistic villain Krank. I particularly enjoyed his facial expressions throughout since he has such a unique looking face, combined with his long and slender limbs and the skewed camera angles, he just oozed evil. Perlman did an excellent job as well, considering that he didn't know a single word of French. According to the films Wikipedia page, director Marc Caro had to phonetically recite all of Perlmans lines in order for him to deliver them correctly. The children did an excellent job as well, even though half of them were being tortured by an evil Santa.  

 Theres a lot more to talk about when it comes to this film, however I find it difficult to say anything else without spoiling the rest of it. Do yourself a favor and watch this movie, its really good.

Black Sunday on a Tuesday Night

Now that the spring semester is over and I have a little more spare time on my hands, I decided to visit my IMDB movie list to check out a couple of movies that I've been meaning to watch. Unfortunately, a majority of the movies on that list are either extremely hard to track down, a little too expensive (like The Holy Mountain by Alejandro Jodorowski, which is listed at 45 dollars on amazon), or just not available in any source for immediate viewing. So when I logged on to Netflix and saw that Black Sunday was up for streaming, I jumped at the chance to watch it, before it got taken down for whatever reason.

Black Sunday, also known as The Mask of Satan, Revenge of the Vampire or La Maschera del Demonio, is a 1960 Italian horror film directed by Mario Bava. Starring Barbara Steele and John Richardson, this film is about a vengeful witch known as Asa who lays a curse on her brothers blood line for having her and her assistant burned at the stake in a 17th century Romanian town. Two centuries later, she is awakened by Dr. Thomas Kruvajan (played by Andrea Checchi) and his assistant Dr. Andre Gorobec (played by John Richardson) while exploring an ancient crypt. Outside the crypt, they encounter Katia (Barbara Steele) who lives in a nearby castle with her father Prince Vajda (Ivo Garrani), and her brother Constantine (Enrico Oliveiri). Upon Asa's awakening, shenanigans ensue as her assistant known as Javuto begins terrorizing the poor family living in the castle. A battle between the Doctors, and the satanic duo ensues, as Asa attempts to suck out Katia's life force in order to come back to life.

Without giving away too much of the film, the introduction was probably one of the coolest I've seen and it did a really good job at setting the mood for the rest of the film (You can choose to watch it at the end of the post, or you can just watch the trailer if you feel like this will ruin the movie for you). The cinematography was really great too, it involved a lot of great shots of ruined monasteries, gothic castle hallways, haunting shadows cast by tree branches, and an excellent use of darkness giving an eerie feeling of someone constantly watching you. Like when you go to the bathroom late at night, and you feel this odd presence in front of you, and your brain is convinced that there is someone just out of arms reach waiting to drag you off into the dark. The only thing that kind of pissed me off was one of the fights between the doctor and Javuto. A mortal is fighting one of Satans henchmen, and he is able to put up a fight using only his fists? Were his fists magically infused with the power of Christ or something? Aside from that, Black Sunday was a really entertaining film, even if you are not a fan of black and white horror, its still a pretty fun movie to watch late at night.

Black Sunday: Opening Scene

 

Black Sunday Trailer