Masters of Deadly Serious Killing Systems Presents: Five Element Ninjas

I started writing about this earlier this week and it ended up turning into a whole new blog post about how much I hate comic book movies. How do these things relate? Well, the main reason I'm sick of comic adaptations despite being avid reader simply has to do with how empty and cut and dried most adaptations feel. And it's irritating given how prevalent they are that you think there'd be so many cool variations but nope it's all the same shit.

This relates to Kung Fu movies perfectly because while the Shaw Brothers literally produced hundreds of films, the best of them were constantly re inventing the genre by throwing in all kinds of crazy ideas. Those who know the Shaw Bros will probably have been introduced by way of the amazing 36 Chambers of Shaolin and while its a dazzling piece of cinema it's actually pretty straight forward in terms of content and gives no indication to the kind of weirdness the studio would occasionally delve into.

Five Element Ninjas is the perfect middle ground between the brothers unleashed Id and their more traditional underdog stories. It all starts out typically enough with a fight between two rival schools. Lesson 1 about Kung Fu movies, there can't ever be a friendly rivalry between two schools, one always has to go overboard and try to kill all the students of the other school....

So here, one school loses miserably and as penance employs the assistance of the Five Element Ninjas. These guys are a band of ninjas who take their style from the well...five elements (Gold, Water, Earth, Wood, Fire) they're like the planeteers only mass murders. Yeah I haven't mentioned anyone's names because they really don't matter and that's not a criticism because every character is simply comes down to how these characters choose to kill people....if only real life was that awesome. But, each of the five elements  have their own arsenal of authentic weapons that the movie pauses to highlight. The weapons and the different elements make the whole thing feel like a video game, where characters keep advancing and collecting new shit. You always hear critics praise films by pointing out how the setting is like a character, well here the weapons are characters. Anyone seeking to write a martial arts script needs to watch this just to understand how many awesome death machines your characters can fiddle with. 

The sole survivor of the loser school trains with a new master and devise several techniques to destroy the element ninjas. And then shit gets really crazy as the methods of killing people get more and more elaborate, scratch the video game analogy because maybe it's more like a musical (there's some angles highlighting the symmetry of the fight formations that feels like something out of Busby Berkley)  especially as our hero and his team become a unit and start splattering blood everywhere, its really a sight to see. I love pictures that try to ground themselves in reality but have such a other worldliness to them you forget there's no magic or anything involved. Yeah, this is all goofy as hell but that's why it works. It's not afraid to be loud, violent and kind of obnoxious but hey, I wish I could say that about the countless comic adaptations we're subjected to every year. Five Element Ninjas may be light on plot but its kinetic picturesque approach to action reminds me of what I love about comic books more than any comic book film does. A film that paints in broad strokes but still manages to shake you up. For a film that really just seemed to have been made to showcase weapons it takes a lot of risks.

Name me one comic book film that has this level of visual inventiveness. You can't.

Five Element Ninjas comes a lot closer with some smoke and mirrors.

DEADLY SERIOUS KILLING SYSTEM  #1: While there's tons to choose from. My choice has to be the fishing move performed on one of the main bad guys. Each of the fighters employs a Kusarigama that looks like this:

 To grapple one of the villains limbs and proceed to rip him apart into five pieces, yeah it goes there.

3 Horror films that will blow your mind!!! But also probably ruin your life....

So with Halloween rapidly approaching, it's time to highlight several of my new favorites that I've discovered in the recent weeks. Let's begin.

The Boxer's Omen (1983)

 Now this is what I'm talking about! Get ready for some next level shit! I'd say this would make a great double feature with the cult masterpiece House (1977) or the Shaw brothers own Battle Wizard (also 1977) but re thinking it I would be seriously concerned about the effects that double feature might have on a person's sanity.

The Boxer's Omen is one of the Shaw Brothers later efforts. It was released in a period that saw a whole new wave of Hong Kong filmmakers, that would inevitably cast the brothers productions into obscurity. They responded by upping the amounts of sex and violence to appeal to a whole new generation. And boy do they! The film unfolds like a typical heroes journey with the brother of an injured boxer setting out to avenge his sibling. To do this, he undergoes an elaborate training process guided by monks. Pretty standard fare for Kung Fu movies but then it takes a fuckin turn as our hero gets wrapped up in conflict with evil wizards. From here on out the film piles up horror ingredients that are enough to overwhelm even the most devoted fans. Every step of our heroe's journey is a film in its own right, a symphony of splatter and influences from other genres for example, the influence of Argento's lighting and Fulci's gore are ever present, as well expressionist set pieces from Universal's heyday of horror. The film is also loaded with influences from folklore including the presence of a Leak, a vampire-esque  demon that floats around in the form of a disembodied head (check out the excellent Mystics in Bali). Look out for that kitchen sink!!!!!

But what makes the horror/kung fu synthesis so effective is, when you see an American underdog film there's a few training montages and then our hero kicks ass. That's more or less what happens here but here the transformations and tribulations of the training are all literalized. When a character undergoes a dramatic change they always have to face down their demons that happens here too only....they're actual demons. The transformation from zero to hero feels like a Rocky montage and/or Katy Perry song and more like something from a Cronenberg movie. The heroes body (well pretty much every characters body) is subject to all kinds of gooey explorations in the quest to become a bad motherfucker. The character's mindsets are literalized too, the film has some very psychedelic takes on Buddhist concepts as our hero approaches higher planes of conscientiousness. The film in a lot of ways actually reminds me quite a bit of Myazaki film, not in its content obviously, but the sense that characters can transform at any number of moments, it kept reminding me of  Eisenstein's quote about animation being like fire and being constantly changing. In any case The Boxer's Omen is a dizzying cinematic experience.

Possession (1981)

Here is a film, where reading the synopsis will prepare you for nothing that unfolds. Mark (Sam Neill) learns that his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) has become restless and eventually unfaithful. Sounds like some soap opera shit. No.No.No.No...Imagine all the worst insecurities that emerge when a relationship ends, all the resentment, the insecurities the full blown anger, we've all been there. This film offers up all the worst of that, magnified and presented without much context and shot in a way where the viewer feels like a ping pong ball being batted back and forth by two insane characters.

Now if this was a romantic comedy you would have the characters hashing out how relationships work, and trying to give the audience a few words to take away. In this film there is one or two attempts on the characters part to actually sit down and rationalize what the hell is going on, but these attempts usually result in the characters, cutting themselves, getting into fights, melting....etc everyone in the film functions like some unleashed id where nothing is held back to the point where things become horrific and ridiculous at the same time.

Now in horror films especially with Lovecraftian horror there's always that sense of what's forbidden, this knowledge that will we will be better off not confronting or even knowing it exists. Well that's pretty much what is going on here only instead of knowledge involving science, or ancient cults its to desire that's forbidden, its venturing into the ugly world of relationships that's gonna unleash horrible monsters and no, without spoiling too much I'm not being figurative there's monsters.....with tentacles. And the tentacle monster isn't going to eat anyone he is just going to be the one to make the guy feel insecure and sexually inadequate.The fellas know what I'm talking about....  

Now if this starts to sound a little bit ridiculous, that's right on track. Because even if the movie gets progressively insane and uncomfortable it also gets to a point where everything becomes darkly comedic. The excess of everything actually allows the viewer to laugh and how everything collapses over seemingly mundane relationship. In the end it all becomes very cathartic, just be ready to shower afterwards.

The Cremator (1969)

When looking at something like the Holocaust, the most unsettling question is how it happened. How so many people were made to adapt a mindset that lead to the deaths of millions. The scary part is that when something is so convincing we can only wonder if anything of the magnitude were to happen again would we even be able to recognize it? The Cremator is a film that's practically a first person film from the point of view of a character so delusional its scary.The film deals with a protagonist named Karl who's so enthusiastic about his work at the crematorium, he's convinced that cremation is beautiful form of liberating souls from any earthly confines. Karl is happier than a pig in shit when the Nazis begin to occupy Czechoslovakia and allow him to put his beliefs into practice.

Karl embodies the twisted and backwards morality Nazism would come to represent, every line of dialogue he speaks as well as every interaction he has is drenched with self righteousness. He declares himself a family man, he does not drink or smoke and he's fond of appreciating the beauty of everyday life (the film opens with him reminiscing about meeting his wife at the zoo years ago). Those who interact with him are similarly affected as they find things like boxing barbaric but think nothing of Karl praising Hitler as an effective leader.

The look of the film is unlike anything you are likely to see, utilizing some fierce editing, fish eyed lenses, superimposition, and even some cut out animation. This all encompasses the point a view of a very delusional mind where the craziness gradually starts to compound. The film reminds me a bit of American Psycho where instead of the yuppie mentality The Cremator  deals with high society superiority (Karl spends a good amount of time discussing how proud he is of their bathroom) and how easily that thought process can turn to something destructive. Karl's voice-over sounds almost more like manifesto being read, and his dialogue feels indistinguishable from his monologues, the effect is that you rarely get the sense that he's considering anyone else's point of view....expect when a colleague with Naz sympathies arouses his suspicions about Jewish blood in his family line. Then the film's dark comedy really comes to light as Karl begins to unravel his family values.

There's always been an aestheticism to concept of fascism, and what's great about seeing the film from Karl's view point is you get to experience the associations and parallels with death that he creates on a daily basis. The film unfolds like a trip to a morbid museum where Karl serves as your guide One of the best scenes in the film takes place in a wax museum with Karl being highly amused at the carnage they replicate. Did the Nazis turn everyone to be like them or did they just trigger something that was always there? Meeting Karl makes that question all the more unsettling...and its funny. A horror film unlike any other.

Dying Breed

Seth Rogen did a stand up piece about how playing GTA brings out a really dark fucked up side of you. Being a horror fan sometimes does the same thing. In a interview Stephen King talked about how he gets morally queasy over the idea of audiences rooting for carnage. Well I'd hate to disappoint you Stephen but here we are. I'm not only craving violence in this film but I want someone to be turned into a meat pie! But that's entirely the film's fault....just look at the poster:

How can someone not....ya know. Dying Breed is an Australian horror film that follows a lot of American conventions but has plenty of distinctly Australian qualities and does a bang up job including Australian folklore. Well actually it's not really folklore, it's straight up science. The motivation for our protagonist Nina and her friends is not a crazy weekend of pot smoking and fornicating (well that does happen). Its for the purposes of science, Nina is trying confirm the alleged sightings of the extinct Tasmanian Tiger (which has actually occurred). The second piece of Australian history that's at the film's core is the story of real life cannibal Alexander Pearce who inhabited Tasmania when Australia was used as penal colony for the UK. The implication is that the cannibals that inhabit the story are all Pearce's descendants.

Despite 'Breeds' clever efforts a lot of the film still feels familiar. The story of Pearce only provides context but in the end there isn't much to distinguish the film from any number of man eaters in American horror films. The film's emotional core is what is really special. Nina's personal intrest in finding the tiger is especially important because it was her deceased sister who uncovered the creatures paw print. Nina is the girl with a past, her sister disappeared during the expedition and apparently underwent a very gruesome demise. The theme of the film is how something survives by staying hidden. Couple with the ambiguity that surrounds Nina's sisters' death, there's an impressive sense of dread about the unknown.

The Cannibals also have motives that are actually more sinister than simply eating everyone. The Cannibals in part seek to preserve their subhuman species and the most nihilistic aspect of the film is the revelation that Nina's sister was actually used to for the monsters breeding process. Unfortunately most of this unfolds in a pretty conventional fashion once everyone starts getting killed off, there's some fun variations with their being disagreements among the clan (that should have been the film, a family of cannibals debating how to carry themselves in the 21st century).

The film ends on an incredibly dark note. But as dark as it is it actually has me a little upset that things didn't actually go a little further and just show us somebody getting turned into a goddamn pie! Now because the movie didn't hold up its end of the bargain I have to sit here feeling like I'm some kind of sociopath? Fuck that.

Motel Hell (1980)

Now here's a film where the emphasis on melodrama works. Here's a film that doesn't go the lengths make the killers inconceivable or any kind of enigma. It's a film  that actually forces you to spend time with these freaks and the result is something more absurdly uncomfortable than outright frightening. The film revolves around the brother and sister team of farmers/motel owners/meat smokers...is there a most sinister combination of jobs a character in a horror movie can have? But what's fun is film follows them along pretty much the whole time. At the start of the film a girl and her boyfriend are in an accident. In a delirious state the girl remains with farmer Vincent and eventually decides to stay by her own accord.

Now in case you haven't figured it out, farmer Vincent is a cannibal yeah that's where we're at with this.  He and his sister abduct drivers and use them in their sausage but the process they use is really something else and for a movie that's mostly pretty goofy there's some really horrific sound effects. Now here's what really makes this film special. The girl actually falls for the killer! On top of that Farmer Vincent's brother is the local sheriff who has no idea the rest of the family has chosen in career in human meat. A funky love triangle starts to emerge between the girl and the two brothers....and some how the girl chooses the cannibal and decides to get married to Vincent. Is there a shittier friend zone scenario? The girl would rather fuck your older cannibal brother, life's a bitch.

Now this runs a little too long, but there's a series of sudden shifts in tone that really make this film a trip. First when our main girls tries to bond with Vincent's sister they decide to go tubing together and the transition to this scene that begins with the fatass sister canonballing into the lake. There's also a pair of victims whom the film spends an unusual amount of time establishing, they're a pair of swingers who destroy much of the hotel room with a whip and hope that farmer Vincent will join in their three-way....not making this up.  My favorite weird variation is when Vincent is preparing the meat for harvest he uses some oddly psychedelic techniques to relax the meat before the kill.

While the film drags a bit, the climax really seals the deal. If there is one movie trope I want to see more of its chainsaw fights...yep the film goes there. And it all takes a really melodramatic turn and I'm not talking 1950's Douglas Sirk Melodrama I'm talking Dudley Do Right levels where the leading lady is strapped to a conveyer belt that slowly moves towards a meat saw. Motel Hell functions mostly as fun parody of Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre but also manages to stand on its own as with legitimate scares.

Castle Freak (1995)

Stuart Gordon is one of my favorite figures in horror. He's responsible for 3 of my favorite horror films, Re-Animator, From Beyond and Dolls and those are enough for him to be at least as well known as Carpenter or Craven. He's one of the only horror figures who really makes me geek out (I don't mean masturbate). His films have a whacky energy combined with picturesque splatter and some surprisingly dark insights to humanity. That all being said, his 1995 Castle Freak really should fit with these to form some crazy four part saga. And while it has of Gordon's  signature qualities you can tell that he doesn't much real interest at the heart of the screenplay.

Gordon works best with the Lovecraftian brand of horror, all about forbidden knowledge and humans venturing where they shouldn't. Castle Freak revolves around a shaken family learning that they've inherited and old castle. The family isn't exactly in the condition to enjoy a vacation together. The father played by Jeffery Combs is a drunk who killed his son and blinded his daughter a while back because he was drinking and driving. The mother, played by Barbara Crampton hasn't given him the time of day since. Combs' family whom he inherited the castle from has a equally fucked up history where Combs' bastard  brother has been kept and tortured in the Castle by his mother to get back at her husband for running off with some whore.

Unfortunately it's really the family melodrama that sinks the film. It's not suited for  anyone involved including the two leads who are usually a blast to watch, but they both do their best when they're going off on the rails. Crampton's shift in the superior From Beyond is maybe the greatest freakout of any 'final girl' in any horror film. But here she's limited to Marge Simpsons' worst qualities saying 'Hmmm' to everything. Combs doesn't fare much better but when you finally get to see him get smashed, then he starts to have some fun.

The emphasis of the film really should've been on the contrast between the now blind, daughter who's shaken upbringing has left her as fragile as can be. There's a sub genre of horror films I like to call 'lost girl films' where unlike slasher movies, the threat facing the girl is in is less direct. The girl is often naive and not even  prevalent  to the danger she is in. In these films they wander through a horrific world in an almost dreamlike state. The excellent Lemora A Child's Tale of the Supernatural and Valerie and Her Week of Wonders  are the defining examples. Gordon's Dolls falls into this catagory as does Mario Bava's Lisa and The Devil. This is the route Castle Freak should have gone. The monster attacks in a oddly sexual manner, its first victim being a prostitute that Combs character brings home. Gordon brings a great vulnerability to really gruesome looking creature. There's a weird Beauty and the Beast quality that should've been the focus. The best sequence in the film is where the creature abducts the daughter to presumably have his way with her, Crampton steps in and starts to remove her own clothes and begs the creature to take her instaed. The sexual dynamics at work here are really unsettling and climax really should have drove that home. But instead everything comes to a head with a lame fight on the roof. Castle Freak is still certainly worth watching if only for some great moments but for those who haven't seen any of Gordon's other work get it out of the way so your expectations aren't too high.

Monster on Campus (1958)

Jack Arnold's Monster on Campus doesn't quite work. It's disappointing because Arnold feels genuinely interested in the subject matter.  Jack Arnold, best known for Creature From The Black Lagoon was a standout amongst sci filmmakers of the 50's. Most of his work didn't embody the kind of anti intellectual hysteria we think about when we think about the atomic age. With Arnold's films there was a sense wonder even when dabbling in horror. The opening sequences of Creature From The Black Lagoon recounts how evolution works and the underwater segments of the film stand among the moments of true beauty in the universal monster canon. But Monster on Campus is the forgotten Universal monster and its too bad because the creature looks great but it just never finds its place amongst the theories the film puts forward.

As with most 1950's horror films, you can probably guess the plot with mad libs. Some nonsense with a scientist, radiation, and somebody turns into something scary. This film deals with a cocky college science professor experimenting on a prehistoric fish. Anything that comes in contact with the fish's fluids begins to revert back to its prehistoric ancestor. So far so good. Our scientist is constantly discussing the challenge that faces man is its own primal instincts and how potentially dangerous we all are. He even mentions this to his class and freaks his own students out in one of the film's stronger moments. The problem is, this thesis is talked about more than its actually explicated.

And all the groundwork is there, the professor is actually kind of an asshole, and his relationship with women is questionable to say the least. The implication that he is struggling with his own issues would be daring but its never brought to the forefront. The monster's first attack promises us lots of great stuff that the film doesn't quiet deliver. When the professor is exposed to the radiation that's in the fish's preservation fluid he reverts back to a brutal neanderthal state. When he first changes, his own home is destroyed  and a picture of his fiancé is torn in half and the women he maybe had a thing for is killed. It seems like in a sense when he turns that he's acting on oppressed instincts. Some reviews of the film talk about its anti institution mentality the film has and again it's hinted at but never really executed well.

There's certainly a coldness to the university scenes that feels intentional, our professor is some joyless ahole who sucks the wonder out of science. But we don't get to see the creature turned lose on that world in the way that would be really satisfying in fact the climax doesn't even take place on the campus. At the end of the day Monster on Campus is a nice offshoot of the universal monster canon with some great effects that doesn't quite take off but you should still see this because the monster throws and axe into a guy's face.

Alucarda (1977)

When Salvo Zizek compiled his top ten films for Sight and Sound he included that piece of shit 'Hitman'. His explanation was that he was opting for complete anarchy and that he was not compromising for the sake of 'good taste'. Fair enough. If I assembled a list for sight and sound it would probably go.

1. Meet me in saint Louis (Vicente Minnelli)
2. 8 1/2 (Frederico Fellini)
3. The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric  Pressburger)
4. The Searchers (John Ford)
5. ZazieDams le Metro (Louis Malle)
6. Mean streets (Martin Scorsese)
7. Playtime (Jacques Tati)
8. The General (Buster Keaton)
9. Eclipse (Michelangelo Antonioni)
10. Lola (Jacques Demy)

Pretty typical film snob fair but if I opted for total anarchy my list would be more like this.

1. Alucarda

2. Eight Diagram Pole Fighter
3. Fellini's Casanova
4. Bullet in the Head
5. Daises

6. Lisztomania
7. Battle Wizard
8. Paprika

9. Gremlins 2

10. Domino

Isn't the crazy list interesting? Pure anarchy, and that's what Alacurda is, this film is a motherfucker. I'm gonna talk about why Alucarda is crazy. I never liked the term ‘guilty pleasure’; if you like something why feel guilty about it? I love all the movies in my crazy top ten but what keeps them off my regular list? Usually it just comes down to consistency. The ten films I listed are almost constantly firing on all cylinders but when that's the case the film probably won't hit all its marks but when it does it's usually such a bold choice it's enough for the entire film to stand on.

Alucarda is no exception, the film doesn't have much of an arc and there's not really any stakes and the film's visual style is pretty inconsistent. But Alucarda is bold in a way that few horror films are and I'm not taking about content (though there's plenty of that too) I'm talking about how the film is packaged. Most horror movies, even the goriest ones, try for some precision when unloading scares. Alucarda never does. It's constantly punching you right in the face. The story is this: two 15 year-olds develop a mural attraction for each other, then fall in with Satan. They proceed to attack their convent. Now when I say they fall in with Satan you might think that it's a process...it's not. In The Exorcist we all know Reagan is possessed and the process leading up to that involves her playing with an Ouija board and its established that she's the one innocent in a house of assholes, that's how storytelling works in Hollywood. Not here, and for the record I was never sure what country Alucarda was from because this movie is so insane I can't even fathom its production process or even where it came from. But whatever the hell country this came from (Mexico) they never read any of those screenwriting books. Satan, in person, just waltzes into the story 15 minutes in and an orgy happens. There is a creepy guy who kinda leads them into this world but there are so few indicators of what anything means it’s still pretty abstract. In a way this nonsense is almost postmodern. Coming back to Zizek in his book on Hitchcock he separated modernism from postmodernism by stating that postmodernism there's no clear indicator of what given symbols mean. I don't know if it’s the right way to describe the film but the way each segment in Alucarda functions like a burst of energy without much indication of what set things is motion is very strange.

So what then, without its conventional plotting, does the film actually achieve? Well first of all, the relationship between the two girls is stripped down to essentials. They get undressed touch each other’s breasts even recite some nice words to each other. That's the relationship. In the midst of all the horrible shit that goes on in this film, it actually does an admirable of making being in league with the devil look enticing. There's  nuns in the film so wrapped up in their clothing that they look like tampons and the orgy sequence is actually composed like a musical number that feels a lot more involving than any of the ongoing prayers the two main girls must go through. There's another sequence where Alucarda is sent to confession and she goes on a rant about how Christianity cuts down on life experience, it'd actually be food for thought but then she grabs the priest by his balls it's not clear if she's trying to rape him or castrate him but you actually can kind of see where she is coming from.

Second, in the modern age full secular people, Satanic stories might not exactly hold up. However what makes Satanic stories work? Usually the devil isn't hitting you straight up. There's always a air of uncertainty where as soon as something becomes tangible it stops being scary. I was telling a friend that I was actually little disappointed demonic possessions weren't real and I think it'd be kinda cool if that was just another modern day hardships for our generation having to dodge demons. But it wouldn't be scary. Because as soon as something feels run of the mill then it's not scary. That's the other rule that Alucarda breaks. It hits you right away with demonic entities and its still unsettling. The movie tries to be ambiguous but everything is so in your face you know some satanic shit is going to happen someone will end up catching on fire.

Of course there's the possibility that none of this was intentional and I'm mistaking a stupidly made film for something subversive but that's for you to decide and that's the other great thing about guilty pleasures.