The world of exploitation film ripped open and laid raw for you to experience. From 70's grindhouse to current underground, it is all here. So ripe you can practically smell it.
FEMALE TEACHER: DIRTY AFTERNOON (1981) D. Ketchitaro Negishi IMPULSE PICTURES/SYNAPSE FILMS 2.35-1 Anamorphic Number eight in the Nikkatsu Erotic Films Collection from Impulse pictures treads on the potentially hazardous "horny teacher" sub genre with quite unexpected results. What appears to be a simple, and pretty normal, sexploiter ends up being something altogether more serious.
A High School Teacher named Sakiko (Yuki Kazamatsuri) gets a call during sex from the police station. One of her students is in big trouble. She heads down to find waifish Sueko (Ayako Ota) being held for prostitution. They have a frank conversation as to why Sueko likes sleeping with strangers and part ways. But Sakiko begins to care for the girl and does some research on her backgroud, when she isn't nailing her own boyfriend that is. But in digging up the past, some memories that she would prefer to be buried come to the surface. Sakiko remembers being raped at a construction site by a guy with paint thinner on him (from huffing it). She begins to obsess over the rape and how it has affected her current, somewhat loveless relationships.
SPOILERS AHEAD
But Sakiko discovers that the person she fingered for the rape and had put away is most likely NOT the person who did it. Seems someone else was raped after this man when to jail for a short while. She also discovers the person whom she did put away is Sueko's disabled father. Soon a bond forms between the woman and the Father as he slowly goes crazy.
BLEEDER (1999) D. Nicholas Winding
Refn Import DVD 1.85
After I saw the movie DRIVE this
year I became a little obsessed with seeing other films from director
Nicholas Winding Refn. I had previously seen BRONSON (2010) which I
was very impressed with, and had caught up with his Viking epic VALHALLA RISING (2011) just before seeing DRIVE. But I had not seen any of
his older films from when he was primarily still working overseas. So
I took a plunge and placed a large order from Amazon UK (grabbed some
other dvd's I had been looking for too) and picked up this one and
his PUSHER trilogy. This was the first of that bundle I watched and I
was suitably impressed.
BLEEDER is a street level drama about
a group of friends and how their lives change when the core couple of
the group become pregnant. Leo (Kim Bodnia) and Lea (Live Corfixen)
have discovered they are going to have a baby, but Leo really lacks
the maturity to handle the situation. He hangs out with his video
store owning buddies Lenny (Mads Mikkelson who went on to play the villain in CASINO ROYAL) and Kitjo (Zlatko Burik) watching movies all
night long, or trailing behind Lea's fairly dangerous brother, low
level gangster Louis (Levino Jensen). Louis is not crazy
about Leo anyway and he can sense that he is unhappy about the new
situation. But as things progress, Leo begins to slip into a sort of
psychosis, growing more and more reckless and dangerous, making bad
decisions as if to purposefully cause problems for himself until it
hits the middle of the film and a huge problem that will impact them all.
The second
tier of the story is less tense, and what I suspect is more personal
to the director. Lenny, who is obsessed with movies and practically
lives at his job at the video story has fallen for the pretty girl
who works at the greasy spoon diner around the corner. The problem is
that he has no personal communication skills at all. All he can do is
talk movies. His friends are used to him, but in the real world his
is awkward, even backward to the point that he might even be
suffering from Aspergers or mild Autism. His only connection to the
real world is through what he knows in the thousands and thousands of
movies he watches. So he struggles to connect to this girl, who is
actually not too different than he is, because she loves books in
much the same way.
The first part of the story grows
increasingly tense as the characters play out the situations until it
reaches the last act of the film and why it is called BLEEDER. It is
not what you think, I guarantee it, and it is far more disturbing
that you imagine, But it is thankfully tempered by the second story
of Lenny's quest to connect with this young lady.
The movie is told with a constant
roving camera, almost always on a steady cam, but never obtrusive,
and like his later films, using modern music as a way to punctuate
the proceedings and introduce characters and give them an immediate
voice. This was Refn's second feature film but his vocabulary was
already in place.As his acting company, almost all who were in PUSHER and return here playing mostly very different characters than in that film.
One thing that I will say I have found
a little frustrating with his films is that they tend to be a little light on the female character's motivations. He simply doesn't write
the most detailed females. His male characters are always fully
developed and complex, while his females are always kind of by the
wayside, or just plot mechanics to move things forward. With that
said, BLEEDER is the one film of the bunch I have watched of his work
that suffers the LEAST in this aspect with the two female characters
being pretty close to fully formed here. Much more so than the women
in BRONSON and PUSHER for sure.
Right now BLEEDER is the
hardest of his films to see, but it is for certain worth the effort.
THE ROAD (2009) D. John Hilcoat Dimension Films 2.35
This adaptation of the much-loved Cormac McCarthy book about a father and son surviving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland has been a long time coming. First announced for release in October 2008 the studio claimed it was not ready due to massive amounts of special effects shots left to do. It was reset for a year later, but bumped again to be released during Oscar season during the winter. Then the Weinstein brothers, in their infinite wisdom, decided to roll the movie out in 100 theaters with little to no fanfare, and quietly added a few more in the following weeks as reviews came in. Basically, they dumped the movie.
In some ways, it's understandable. This is a hard film to categorize and even harder to sell. The trailers for it were downright misleading, opening with shots of some sort of global cataclysm, actively showing the world ending. Sort of a darker, more realistic version of the Roland Emmerich movie 2012. Problem being such footage isn't in the film and never was. The entire story of the movie takes place AFTER these events - long after, with the events themselves never names or discussed. The trailers also make the film look like some sort of action, horror hybrid piece. While the movie is indeed horrifying, it most certainly is not an action piece, and not really a horror film either. It's a brooding drama about survival, sustaining life and teaching your young to be a better person than yourself. The story is about preparing your child for the big, scary, ugly world, while not becoming the monsters you want to protect them against. All the apocalypses in this story are really personal ones.
Viggo debates using one of those all important last bullets.
The story begins ever briefly with Viggo Mortinson waking up in his bed to an earthquake. His pregnant wife (Charlize Theron) enters the room, chaos can be heard from outside in the world. We realize this is in fact a dream of a life long before as he's asleep on the cold ground next to a child. They are wrapped in a plastic sheet and filthy to the bone. Clearly they have been here a while.
Then my main bugaboo with the film begins: a narration/inner monologue from Mortinson that explains far too much of what's happening. As he and the boy awaken, the narration tells us there was some apocalypse, though doesn't say what kind, and that everyone died off. Those who were left became scavengers and cannibals, while food, gas and most importantly, shoes, became the only commodities left to fight and search for. This is over a montage that shows the two of them walking around trying to find food, gas, as well as lots of shots of their ragged shoes. They find an old barn that holds a family that have hung themselves, and when the boy asks Viggo why they did it, he replies "You know why. To be together." Moments later, Viggo is showing the boy his revolver and reiterating to him that they only have two bullets left, one for him and one for the son. He shows him how to put the gun into his mouth to successfully kill himself if the time comes.
There is a very strong "Lone Wolf and Cub" vibe going on in the later part of this film.
But mostly they wander about this broken wasteland of gray trees, dank water, and forever rain and snow. They survive on bugs, the sparce remains of picked-over carcasses, and the occasional one soda that was wedged into an ancient machine. All the while, the father tries to explain things to his son as to why they must continue on. Why they must get to the south. Flashbacks show us that the mother wanted them all to commit suicide together years ago to avoid the nightmare before them, but the father refused. So she left him, walked into the cold and presumably died. Now he and his son are sort of doing the same, but fighting the elements to try and survive. Often, the boy seems to want to die - he wants to see his mother again, he's tired of being cold, hungry and alone. He's also very aware that he's the only child left in the world, since the other ones were eaten by roving packs of people who have turned cannibal to get by. When they meet a group of such feral survivalists and the father is forced to use one of the bullets to save his son, there is a paradigm shift in their relationship. The son sees a savagery in his father awaken that he is uncomfortable with. A willingness to resort to violence that he previously thought separated them from "the bad guys".
Eventually, the movie becomes a trial of which one of the main characters is going to die first, since both of them are clearly ill. At this point, the entire movie becomes a bleak spread of hopelessness that's hard to get through. The final curtain call of the film feels like a nice positive wrap up, until you connect a couple of dots from earlier and then it really isn't at all, at least that's how I read it. Movies do not come any more bleak and ravaged as The Road.
But in a way, they don't come as beautiful either. There are moments of unique tranquility throughout the film. This is a rare movie that allows itself the chance to often just be quiet and exist in the world it has created. The vistas while father and son watch the horizon smolder and burn, the miles and miles of fallen dead trees. Many empty houses, alone on a clear landscape in a dead sky. These almost painterly like canvases are punctuated with moments of humanity, like when the duo find a waterfall and plunge in nude and laughing to get clean. Or when they finally stumble on the mother load of food and supplies and hole up for a while and Dad proceeds to smoke some pot and drink some Jack Daniels. Or when the son gets exceedingly upset when he thinks he's seen another little boy in a burned out apartment window, but the father knows this is impossible.
Even when you are the last brother on Earth you still have a hard time getting any respect.
There are horribly shocking moments too, mostly to do with the cannibalism which is not played down. There are guts strewn on a street, a basement full of emaciated, some limbless, people that are basically being kept as cattle, and sinks full of facial parts that have been stripped from bodies. It never goes full throttle into CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST fare, but is forthright enough to be very upsetting. Especially to those not sure what to expect.
My largest problem here was not the movie but how I saw it. I have been waiting over a year to see this and was really pissed when the release pattern was screwed up. So when it hit our local art theater I was relieved it was gonna play my town at all. But little did I know the theater would stick it in their tiny 50 seat auditorium where the screen is so small someone's home theater set up is probably more impressive. This is a movie where the cinematography is a character, but I was watching it on like a nine or ten foot screen, being projected so low that all the heads in front of me were now players in the movie too. This frustrated me so much that I never properly got into the movie. I felt completely distanced the entire time, like I was always outside the frame trying to get in. This is a movie that should have been big, overpowering and washingover me. Instead it was like seeing it as a postage stamp.
Still it is a powerful, incredibly acted, impeccably shot and directed film. Director John Hilcoat's previous films THE PROPOSITION and GHOSTS OF THE CIVIL DEAD are quit excellent work, and this, though not quite as good as those two, still carries on his tradition of top notch production. Only the narration (which I've heard IS partially in the book and partially created for the movie) is annoying and a misfire.
RAGE (1980) D. William A. Graham USA Home Video (VHS O.O.P.) 1.33 Made For TV
This made for TV drama is probably out of place on a blog titledExploitation Nation as there is really nothing very exploitative about it, though it does deal in potentially nasty material. David Soul, most known from Starsky & Hutch, plays Cal a blue collar man who is arrested one morning bright and early for rape. He is quickly tried and sent to prison for 30 years in a special correctional institute for sexual offenders that specializes in therapy and treatment. He maintains his innocence of course, even though he is befriended by the other inmates who are very open about being rapists. The thing is, they are RECOVERING rapists. See, they are all under the care of the head doctor Borski, played by James Whitmore, who is using experimental regression therapy and other psycho-analytical therapeutic techniques to get these men to confront their inner demons. In the process, figuring out why they committed the crimes they have. The supporting cast of thugs and rapists are played by some outstanding actors such as Yaphett Kotto, Craig T. Nelson, Tom Noonan, and a very young Robert Davi. Naturally our lead dude eventually relents that he indeed did commit the crimes he was accused of, and in fact, more than he was caught for. Then the movie begins the journey into his past to see what made him the man he is today.
Rageis a liberal humanist look at how to deal with monsters. As a character study it is an interesting movie that holds together thanks to earnest and heartfelt performances from the pretty much the entire cast. Even TV heavy Vic Taybackthrows in a few memorable scenes. But the problems are in that the psycho analysis that is supposed to explain why this man hates women and has become a rapist is pretty thin to say the least. The screenwriters really screw up in one scene by giving us a flashback to his childhood trauma that is almost laughable. Where as no other moment for any character provides any flashbacks to their pain. Instead we watch and listen to them acting out what happened and it is chillingly effective. But for the lead we instead are shown this cackling fat woman with a kid's hand being pushed towards her, and instead of it being horrifying, it is just kinda lame. Maybe its years of hearing child abuse stories in hundreds of other movies but this trauma seems so mundane that it would seem to hardly register on someones radar these days. NOOOO don't make me touch the fat lady!!!
The idea of humanizing a group of rapists for an entire movie as we see what makes them tick may seem like a bit of poor taste for a film. The movie unfortunately leaves the victims and women’s viewpoint pretty much out of it. Even the lead’s long suffering wife refuses to leave him, even after she is told the truth. The horror of rape is mentioned several times, but it is never really felt, as they all seem like pretty good guys just going through a rough spell in their lives. The movie really could have used a counter balance character of someone who was in there who really just got off on the power trip of the crime and could not be rehabilitated. But then that would fly in the face of the thesis of the movie I suppose. The therapy session scenes are kinda creepy too in that they are all touchy feely with the characters all rubbing and touching each other a little too much for comfort. I know if I was dredging up all kinds of memories about being molested as a child, the last thing I would want is some sex offender rubbing my naked belly.
So this movie is a bizarre little curio from a period when made for TV movies tried to tackle serious issues and attracted very good actors because of it. It is not a great movie, but it has some value. But its no I Spit On your Grave!
