Sugar Hill

(This review has been re educated to make glorious benefit for Supreme Overlord Stacie Ponder. Ruler of Final Girlandia. Maker of most righteous Ludlow. All Hail President Kang Ponder.)

Sugar Hill opens with a frenzied, dynamically edited Voodoo Dance. And just as my brain is cross checking references, comparing it to the voodoo scenes in I Walked With A Zombie and Angel Heart, the camera pulls back and reveals the whole thing to be a put on. A sham, designed to entertain the mostly white patrons of “Club Haiti”.

Welcome to Sugar Hill a movie that is continuously smarter then it needs to be.

The film soon moves into boilerplate blaxsploitation. As the owner of the club is murdered by Mafiosos and his girlfriend swears revenge. Like I said, all standard Blaxsploitation stuff, along with outlandish fashions, a wakka chucka heavy score and ties so large they have their own gravitational pull.

However, to get her revenge she gets goes to her old neighborhood priestess to help her contact Baron Samedi, who raises an army of undead slaves for her, in exchange for her soul.

It is here that the film begins to decidedly diverge from the standard Blaxploitation movie formula.

The encounter with Baron Samedi, and his subsequent raising of the army of the irate dead is genuinely eerie in its matter of factness. The zombies themselves are legitimately creepy, draped in cobwebs, with Ball Bearing Eyes and eager grins, going about the evil deeds of their mistress with enthusiastic relish (And this is despite the fact that they bear an uncanny resemblance to the rasta aliens in Buckaroo Bonzai). That being said, in one of the film’s few major missteps they inexplicably decide to forego The Baron’s uber iconic appearance. ( In all other regards the actor does a fine job. And it's always interesting to see an actor rip into a role when they were given few other chances to do to just that. Given that Don Pedro Colley's other major roles were "Waiter With A Cake" in Herbie Rides Again, "Negro" in Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, and a reoccuring role in the back half of The Dukes Of Hazard I think it's safe to say that he never got to play on quite the same level of joyful malevolence.But imagine a film featuring an encounter with a clean shaven short haired Jesus.)

(Baron Samedi)

(A black guy in a top hat)

Unfortunately the actress potrarying Sugar is free of the burden charisma or acting skills, the actor who plays Detective Valentine, her foil, love interest, and provider of powerful filler, is if anything worse, laughably wooden. Like Ed Wood lead wooden. Together they leave a large and rather noticeable hole at the center of Sugar Hill. Though perhaps this is all for the best, had say Pam Grier and Robert Roundtree starred in the film it would have obliterated all need for any other film to ever be made.

Still, Sugar Hill does so much right that it is easy to forgive the things it does wrong. Particularly with the sliding scale that one usually judges exploitation movies. While carefully maintaining the balance of between the contradictory tones of fear in a horror film, and the cathartic nature of a revenge film. Sugar Hill is one of those rare films that manages to have its cake and eat it too. Right down to the way it completely lets it heroine off the hook, despite all the signals it sends that suggest otherwise.

I’ve wanted to see Sugar Hill since its bat shit insane trailer showed up on 42^nd Street Forever Volume 2. That trailer made the movie look impossibly fun. But the fact is that most exploitation movies only live up to a mere whiff of their potential.

Sugar Hill belongs to a rarified sub genre. That of the exploitation film that is exactly as much fun as the trailers and posters make it look.

31 Days Of Horror Day 31: Fright Night/Don't Look In The Basement

Phew.

I made it back home with my sanity still somewhat intact after a night of great horror movie debauchery at the great Aero Theater. A night spent with good friends, with good films in a great theater, what better way to celebrate Halloween?

What's more, I also finished yet another 31 Days Of Horror. When I appeared on On The Stick I was asked if I felt like I was running out of films to cover. Far from it. There's actually going to be a few bits of overflow in early November. Films I couldn't quite sandwich into 31 Days for various reasons. But which I wouldn't dream of not covering.

Still, 31 Days of one genre is 31 days of one genre. And I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was a bit fatigued, as I made it into the final week.

Of course all of that went away when I came in contact with the two afore mentioned movies.


Fright Night, is one of those heartening films that remind you that no matter how thoroughly you've scoured a genre, you've never seen everything. For whatever reason I'd never viewed the horror comedy classic until now and was thoroughly delighted to find it a great little movie. On Par with the likes of Army Of Darkness full of interesting wrinkles (I reserve the right to do a more indepth review of it later. Right Now I'm bushed) as well as some of the greatest practical effects I've ever seen.




The Aero also makes it policy to usually program in some horror movie to which I genuinely have no idea how to react to. (In this case with Blood Birthday as well, two). Whether The Children, the film that features a paunchy country good ole boy sheriff chopping the arms off of small radioactive children or Demons (No explanation necessary).

Of Don't Look In The Basement, I'm not going to say anything, since everyone deserves to walk into this one unspoiled. I will only say that it was one of the most batshit crazy things I've ever seen on the big screen (And remember I've seen The Candy Snatchers) and it worked the audience into a lather not very much seen outside of Pentecostal Prayer Meetings.

The rest of the festival was good as well, the well meaning and ambitious, but ultimately not very good Candyman, the aforementioned Madness of Bloody Birthday, as well as Phantasm, and Cementary Man, a movie I have never liked but I now realize makes perfect sense under extreme sleep depravation.

But beyond all that, I must return to those first two movies. If after 31 Days of force feeding horror, I can still be reached, entertained, and truly delighted, there is no other word for it, by two horror films as polar opposite as those two, well then the genre really does have magic. And I'll happily truck through 31 more days as long as I can.

Thanks for everyone who did 31 Days with me. Particularly those who the feature has introduced to the site. Here's hoping you'll stick around. It's going to be a great November...

Until next year, Happy Halloween, lets close the way we opened...

31 Days Of Horror: Day 27: The Unseen #47: The Fifth Cord

Why’d I Buy It?: Given to me during the closing days of the great Insomniac.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: No real reason. I decided to give The Fifth Cord a shot because even if Hugo Stiglitz ain’t doing it this year, “There’s always room for Giallo!” (Har Har). I don’t really know. I’d always heard that The Fifth Cord was kind of a seminal Giallo film. Containing all the elements of the genre….

How Was It?: True to form does assemble most of the things that you think of when you think of Giallo. Black gloves, eurosleaze, intricate plots which hinge on odd gimmicky details (in this case The Zodiac), brutal murders, sex, stylistic excess, creepy women of a certain age, Franco Nero.

Unfortunately the only genre typical element it leaves out of the mix is the fun.

I have to admit I’m a bit disappointed with The Fifth Cord. Call it over build up, but I expected a lot from the film. Instead I found the murderous set pieces underwhelming, the cast almost perversely unlikable and unengaging and the mystery sailing beyond merely incomprehensible, as in most (bad) gialli, and instead falling into the giddy reaches of flat out apathetic gibberish. With an ending guaranteed to make you go “Wah?”

The story follows Nero, as a drunken newspaper writer assigned to cover a string of brutal murders across the city. Things quickly go pear shaped when it turns out that all the victims where at a party Nero attended earlier. And in true Gialli fashion he’s being set up for the kill.

Franco Nero who is normally a guaranteed great time at the movies, gives the most tremendously charisma free performance I’ve ever seen him give. Playing an alcoholic, woman beating, asshole. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting a dark anti hero at the center of your film but the movie expects us to view him as unabashedly heroic. He stumbles through the film in a stupor like an Italian Tommy Wiseau.

The film looks beautiful, which is kind of what tends to happen when you have Vittorio Storaro shooting your film. (Also in the film's plus column a score by Ennio Morricone. The film has nothing if not a top notch crew)



But even then much celebrated decadent look of the picture proves to be a hindrance at times; no real life creeps into the movie even when it’s at its most vicious. It’s hard to be that upset when viewing a murder when instead of thinking something along the lines of “Oh no they’re dying.” All you can think of is how relentlessly formal the shot you’re looking at is. (Truth in criticism there is one spectacular suspense piece shot almost entirely from floor level that does deserve mad props).

But Gialli depends on more then exotic euro sleaze. There’s a certain fleetness, both in style and narrative that makes a fan of the subgenre forgive the expected occasional blasts of nonsensical incomprehensibility. And at the end of the day The Fifth Cord just doesn’t have that, nor the rooting interest in the cast that the genre thrives on.

31 Days Of Horror Day 26: The Unseen #46: Don't Look Now

Why’d I Buy It?: Picked it up at the Hollywood Video IS BURNING DOWN!!! Sale.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: I know… FUCK I KNOW!!! (Pt. 3). In a bit more of a serious vein, I’m not the world’s biggest Nicholas Roeg fan. I doubt I would even place. I mean I love The Witches, and in general Roeg is fine, but I’ve always felt that he’s a director very much of his time and place. Take The Man Who Fell To Earth; David Bowie being hassled by the Olde Timey German Farmer only he can see and he and mate fucking in a vat of oatmeal, might have seemed mind blowing and profound back in the seventies. Now it just seems kind of silly. Particularly when compared to Walter Tevis’s sensitive novel. (In all fairness I haven’t seen Performance and Walkabout).

How Was It?: A moving bracingly human horror story. But you already knew that.

It would take only the faintest of nudges to make Don’t Look Now not a horror movie at all. Though it undeniably becomes one in the final ten minutes, and it contains both psychic interludes and a tense disaster on a scaffold. The core of the movie; a grieving couple simultaneously drawing together and tearing each other apart in a foreign city in the wake of their daughter’s death. Their tense relationship exacerbated by the wife’s new found slightly daffy spiritualism brought on by an encounter with a psychic and her husband’s unrelenting despair. Sutherland at first tries to encourage his wife's new found serenity, but it's obvious that it's eating at him. In one of the film's best written scenes he spits out "It's like she's become her whole self." with unmistakable bitterness.

This conflict would be at home in any respectable drawing room drama. Think Ordinary People written by John Updike, into which a homicidal dwarf keeps intruding.


Though perhaps I’ve said too much..,

But in spite of its sensitivity and self conscious artistry, Don’t Look Now remains a vicious horror movie. And it’s because of its unlikely literary streak, not in spite of it. Ultimately, Don’t Look Now is the story of a man who literally chases his grief until it kills him. And if that’s not a horror story then brother I don’t know what is.



The film doesn’t deal in scares, it deals in dread.

Not enough can be said about Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie’s performances, which anchor the movie in a deep and painful emotional bedrock even whenever the film threatens to tip into outlandish.

Coupled with Roeg’s masterful compositions and Anthony Richmond’s gothic cinematography (Roeg did some of the uncredited handy work himself here) of a dark and malevolent utterly haunted Venice, the film creates a disturbing portrait of haunted minds stretched to their breaking point. It’s true that not much happens in the traditional hack and slash sense in Don’t Look Now, but the palpable sense of menace the film provides is far more distressing. Perhaps the key is that Roeg never indulges in the usual genre hysterics. The murders that permeate the film are never displayed in long loving giallo set pieces, but instead act as a mournful backdrop to the film. Seen almost exclusively in aftermath. Like the fact that we spot the small figure in red far more times then Sutherland does, it just underlines that his doom is already written.

The unease permeates every level of the film. Take the scene where Sutherland attempts to describe his situation to a wormy police inspector. I doubt anyone can make it through the scene without squirming. But why? There’s none of the usual Hitchcockian reasons. There’s no immediate danger to the protagonist. He’s not under suspicion, there’s no real consequence to his actions. And yet there is a horrid sense of unease to ever frame of the sequence.

And in the nigh indescribable final time shredding montage Roeg’s technique pays off in spades. With a jolting, unrelenting blast of pure cinema. It’s a haunting film. In all senses of the word.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 25: The Unseen #45: Phantasm

Why’d I Buy It?: Well it’s fucking Phantasm isn’t it?

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: I know… I KNOW (Pt.2)

How Was It?: Well it was fucking Phantasm wasn’t it?

Phantasm is a pretty great, thoroughly strange little film. The only horror film that bases itself off of the fear of Extra Dimensional slavers who moonlight as undertakers who appear in your dreams. And also their Jawa slaves. That I know of anyway.

It tells the story of a pair of siblings living together after their parents death. Things are interrupted when one of the older brothers friends dies. This second brush with mortality as well as an encounter with a plucky indie rock fan with a terminal illness leads him to complicate his life before ultimately learning to love his brother and comes to terms with-. Oh wait, no, that’s every indie movie since The Garden State. In this one a Tall mortician turns the the deceased friend into a dwarf and sells him to another dimension for slave lavor. The tall mortician also likes throwing deadly sapient silver balls at people.

This is an odd little movie folks.

With it’s long take sequences played past the logical breaking point, cheery music interludes, and occasional bracing blasts of surrealty, Phantasm resembles nothing so much as a splatter punk film made by Richard Linklater (I mean check the scene of Reggie and the elder brother just hanging out on the porch playing music). It’s dreamlike, bordering on lackadaisical.

This paired with the same strange “Hard R Kid’s Film” Feel of the People Under The Stars, makes this feel like the sort of movie one would conceive if one had a giant doobie sticking out of one’s mouth.

I was prepared for how crazy Phantasm would get, but it’s unabashed indieness was a nice surprise. The film was shot over the course of two years by an extremely game cast. And in every frame it is obvious that it is a labor of love. It has that handmade feeling, akin to Evil Dead and the better films of Charles B. Pierce that make the film really endearing. I mean, for all the gore, bodies drained of blood, and extra dimensional beings who bleed yellow goo Phantasm is a strangely mellow movie.

The cast does a fine job. The most famous being Reggie, the ice cream man/demon slayer. I love that Reggie isn’t made into some Ash like super warrior. But instead plays the role of as a kind of dim bulb townie really good at taking things in stride. Whether they be Evil Insects who sprout out of severed fingers and survive a garbage disposaling, or Tall Undead Necromancers who Scream “BOOOOOOOOYYYYY!!!!!”

Don Coscarelli shoots with his trademark mix of warped imagination, wit, style deadpan charm and matter of fact plotting. If the film proves anything, it’s that he’s the perfect man to bring the blue collar horror madness of John Dies At The End to the big screen.


While I can’t say that it has become an all time favorite. Phantasm is a thoroughly winning little film. Charming in just about every way.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 21: The Unseen #40-41: Lisa And The Devil/House Of Exorcism

(For those new(ish) to Things That Don't Suck The Unseen is a column where I examine the horrors of The DVD's that have made it into my collection without being viewed ooooooohhhhh!!!

In all seriousness, I'm guilty as anyone, when it comes to being a know it all on Titles viewed. So It's nice having a column all about reinforning the idea that I always have more to learn. So for the next week, it's going to be all Unseen All The Time. In order to give the red headed stepchild of a column a chance to catch up against my shameful neglect of it.

I'll just go ahead and say this now, there are going to be some bonafide classics coming up over the next week that I am flat out embarrassed to admit I haven't seen. But that's always part of the fun of being a cinephile isn't it?)





Why’d I Buy It?: Came In The Mario Bava Boxset I purchased.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: Didn’t make the first the cut for my first Bava binge. Just never quite got around to it. Also I have a weird pet peeve about films that have two definitive cuts. And while it’s obvious that Lisa And The Devil is the preferred cut, just because House Of Exorcism is a bad Mario Bava movie doesn’t change that fact that it’s still a Mario Bava movie.

How Was It?: Depends which version we’re talking about. Of course.

Lisa And The Devil is as rumored, a latter day masterpiece, sumptuously styled, hallucinogenicly plotted, and more then a little personal. House Of Exorcism is on the other hand a borderline nonsensical Friedkin rip off so shameless that it makes Beyond The Door look like a piece of great artistic integrity.

Both film’s follow Lisa, an American Tourist who undergoes a profound spiritual crisis after encountering Telly Savalas, first in mural;


then in physical form.


Now Savalas has been known to cause spiritual crisis’s in many situations and sexual crisis’s even more.

(I mean how could you not?)

But in this case, things are made even more acute, by the fact that Telly is the Devil. The Lord Of Lies enjoys carrying around mannequins and lemon suckers, and also tormenting the souls of those that is damned.

Sevelas does this by having Lisa and a series of strangers undergo an ennui soaked spiritual fugue/rash of giallo killings, in an old manor in Lisa And The Devil. And by having her put on pancake makeup and swear at a Priest like a fifth grader who has just learned how in House. This footage was shot when the producers looked at Lisa And Devil and suddenly realized "Oh shit. We funded an art movie." followed by "We better put some exorcism in our Satan movie." Said footage was then shoved the cheap exorcism scenes in under the flimsiest of pretenses. Believe it or not, Lisa And The Devil is the more effective of the two.

What surprised me about Lisa And The Devil wasn’t how strange and arty it was. I had been well prepared for that. No what surprised me was how unadulteratedly lurid and vaguely trashy so much of it was. From a piece of vehicular homicide so gleefully perpetrated and filmed that I was actually taken aback. To one which is almost matched in delight with a candlestick bludgeoning late in the game.

And if Lisa’s ambitions and opaque surrealism sometimes cross the line into self parody, there are just as many where the dream logic tone just works. Most notably in the film’s climax upon a Ghost Airplane, that manages to be well and truly freaky.

Sevalas makes a game Old Scratch and Bava obviously put a lot into it. House Of Exorcism is just the same but less so. Aside from the tacked on Friedkin impersonation, the remainder of the film is just a strangely reedited chateau encounter. A re edit which strips away the dream logic and leaves in its place, absolutely no logic.

House Of The Exorcism may not make any less narrative sense then Lisa And The Devil. But it does lack that lunatic gleam of conviction to carry it through.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 20: Nosferatu (1979)

Decade’s before Gus Van Sant tried his cheeky little post modern expiriment with Psycho, Werner Herzog did much the same thing remaking FW Murnau’s Nosferatu on the same locations.

In all fairness unlike Van Sant Herzog was never attempting a shot by shot remake, he makes some significant changes, both to the story and in the style. He wanted to recapture the feeling of decay and menace so paltable in the original. A laughable idea from anyone else, from Herzog another entry in his “just crazy enough to work” file.

Nosferatu does make a tempting target. It is after all one of the finest movies ever made, and has never dipped into the realm of camp. It’s power enough to make it one of the few silent movies that is remembered by “civilians.” But Murnau and Herzog were such opposites as directors.

Murnau was the master of artifice, the one of the first to realize that a studio was more then just a convenient place to shoot but a place that could manipulated until it was no longer something like reality, but something more so. The finest user of the crane this side of Scorsese. The Master of the close up.

If Murnau composed in close up even in his long shots, then Herzog is the master of the level thousand yard stare, even when his camera is six inches from his subjects face. If Murnau’s style depended on the studio’s flexibleness, Herzog’s depends on his subjects and settings inflexibleness, the “voodoo of location.” Murnau figured out what artifice is for; Herzog desperately seeks ecstatic truth, even when he’s just flat out making shit up.

It’s an odd mix that produces some interesting frisson.

Though the story is mostly the same in the broad strokes some interesting changes have been wrought both by Herzog and just the advancement of film itself. Color and sound change the film more then I would expect it to. Particularly in our attitudes towards the count (Klaus Kinski in the most subdued performance he ever gave for Herzog. Yep an undead demonic creature whose lived for centuries really brought out the subtle in Kinski). Max Shrek’s count was so buried beneath layers of makeup so thoroughly inhuman, that it’s simple just to look at him and think “Monster.” That’s why hearing him speak, in precise Teutonic tones, is such a shock. Speech is a humanizer in a way intertitles aren’t, and Kinski’s Orlock instantly becomes more decrepit, pathetic and sad than simply monsterous.

Not that he’s not frightening, he’s just an entirely different kind of frightening.

As always in Herzog, the imagery is astounding. The endless stream of pallbearers bearing pine coffins that cross against our heroine, the opening montage of mummies, the plague ship with its blood red sales heavy in the water, the 11,000 rats (all painted grey because Herzog could only find white mice) who stream through the streets.

Nosferatu does have a few problems. The movie is well, let’s just say a little bit slow. Herzog took the movie from 91 minutes (in it’s most complete prints) and extended it to 110. Most of that extra time is taken up with people wandering around staring at things. An image that if do not have an affinity for you will soon find maddening. It’s a film that is dependant, to say the least, on you synchronizing with its wave length. Also, though most of the changes that Herzog makes to the text work for his own purpose, the strange “Gotcha” ending is not one of them.

Unlike its ancestor Nosferatu may not be a perfect film, but like its predecessor, it is a haunting one.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 14: Carrie

It’s a shame that the King didn’t think up the title Misery until Fifteen years after Carrie. It would have fit perfectly.

Adolescent rage was King’s first subject matter (predating even Carrie with the novella “Rage.” Which is now virtually unavailable after it was pulled in the wake of Columbine for... well... predicting it. The curious can find it in the old paperback versions of “The Bachman Books” Though beyond morbid curiosity there is not much to recommend it) and in an many ways it has served him the potent. It’s something that has powered book after book.

Everyone knows the story of pitiful Carrie White. That poor hopeless girl, who marked as an outcast from day one, and preyed upon by her peers until beaten down resentment gave way to, well their deaths and in the book the deaths of half the town.

It’s a story that I think, has the best chance out of King’s canon to be damn near eternal. Because as long as there are high schools there are those who are going to know what that furnace of rage that grows in your belly can feel like. And those who imagine what it would be like if they just let it explode (Or implode. Am I the only one to notice that the only difference between the rash of teen suicides that swept the country recently and the rash of school shootings that happened about twelve years ago is that this time the kids are turning their guns on themselves rather then others? I don’t know what this generational shift means. Or if it can even be termed as a generational shift. I just know that either way it saddens and disturbs the hell out of me.)



The point is that King has told a story, hell let’s call it a cautionary tale, that looks like it will sadly never be out of date. And De Palma matched him beat for beat. The difference is that King’s book is as blunt as the sledgehammer Billy Nolan brings down upon the pig’s skull, and De Palma’s film is as subtle and deadly as the invisible force Carrie creates.

Of course Sissy Spacek deserves as much if not more credit, for the way she brings the role of Carrie to life with such wounded pitifulness, that she instantly brings a whopping dose of humanity to the film. Erasing, along with Amy Irving’s benignness (no matter how badly it blows up in her face) the traces of the erector set clinicalness that infects some (not all) De Palma films.

Piper Laurie as the most seriously freaky Church Lady of all time (“And The Raven Was Called Sin” Jesus lady) though Marcia Gay Harding in The Mist sure gave her a run for her money (Hmm… now what to close out Stephen King Week with tomorrow?) One of the things that has always set De Palma aside from his New Wave contemporaries like Scorsese, Coppolla, Friedkin and even Altman, is here is a man with absolutely no love nor nostalgia for the Catholic Church. It’s not the last bastion of moral clarity; it’s a breeding ground for lunatics.

I’d argue that never before or since has De Palma’s virtuosity blended so unobtrusively with his subject matter.

Take the infamous split screen finale. What has to be the best use of split screen in De Palma’s career (and thus by extrapolation, maybe the best use of the split screen ever). Here he turns it into a kind of cinematic meat grinder. A meat grinder that runs on for a subjective eternity before it finally ends. Perhaps the finest thing I can say about it, is that I always forget that it is inter cut with non split screen shots until I actually watch it.



And that’s just one of the film’s set pieces. Think of any of them, the impossible dance, the closet, the cruifixition, the pig’s blood falling, falling, falling. All of these as hyper stylized, melodramatic and self aware as anything De Palma shot in a film like Dressed To Kill or The Fury.

And yet not once does it distract from the film. Carrie is as perfect a wedding of emotional, thematic, and stylistic content as I know.



One thing that King notes about DePalma’s version of Carrie in his utterly essential story of the horror genre "Danse Macarbe" (Seriously, if you don’t own it. Buy it. Now.) Should be very interesting to DePalma fans. Keep in mind, this is written pre Dressed To Kill. The accusations of misogyny that would dog De Palma for the rest of his career hadn’t even been articulated yet.

“ … in its film incarnation, Carrie belongs almost entirely to the ladies. Billy Nolan, a major- and frightening- character in the book, has been reduced to a semi supporting role in role in the movie. Tommy, the boy who takes Carrie to the Prom, is presented in the novel as a boy who is honestly trying to opt out of the caste system. In the film he’s little more then his girlfriend’s cat’s paw, her tool of atonement for her part in the shower room scene.

“I don’t go around with anyone I don’t want to,’ Tommy said patiently. ‘I’m asking because I want to ask you. Ultimately, he knew this to be the truth.”

In the film, however, when Carrie asks Tommy why he is favoring her with an invitation to the Prom, he offers her a dizzy sun ‘n’ surf grin and says, “Because you liked my poem.” Which, by the way, his girlfriend wrote.

The novel views high school in a fairly common way as that pit of man- and woman-eaters already mentioned. De Palma’s social stance is more original; he sees this suburban white kid’s high school as a kind of matriarchy. No matter where you look, there are girls behind the scenes, pulling invisible wires, rigging elections, using their boyfriends as stalking horses.

Against such a backdrop, Carrie becomes doubly pitiful, because she is unable to do any of these things- she can only wait to be saved or damned by the actions of others. “

I’ve always thought that DePalma’s reputation for Misogyny is half earned at best. Setting aside for a moment the question of whether DePalma’s violence against women is exploitative in itself, or a commentary on exploitative violence against women. I think if you chalked up scene for scene all the violence that occurred against women, with occurrence’s against violence against women in other director’s careers, Francis Ford Coppola’s say, to choose a contemporary. I’m be pretty sure that they come up just about dead even. Like violence in general DePalma is penalized for doing it well.

Furthermore I don’t think any true misogynist could ever have made Casualties Of War. If there is a movie that portrays violence against women in general and rape in specific as a more cowardly and despicable action, then I guess I can only be grateful that it has escaped my knowledge.

DePalma really does get in some fantastic satire about the battle between the sexes. Most in small grace notes tucked away in the scenes. Note the nonchalant way an oblivious Ms. Collins says, “It was just her period for God sakes.” After the principle has just reacted to the menstrual blood on her shorts in roughly the same manner that Frankenstein reacts to fire. Or just look at the way a clever cut juxtaposes the way Sue Snell gets a favor from her boyfriend, with the way the odious Chris does. Or the way Sue hardly allows her boyfriend to speak an entire sentence in their talk with Ms. Collins.

But at the end of the day as incisive as it might be, the gender studies portion of the film, is just window dressing. Carrie speaks for everyone who have ever been an ostracized outcast.

I know she spoke for me.

And that should scare the hell out of people more then any psychic powers ever could.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 2: Burnt Offerings

I love haunted house films in theory, but more often then not, not in practice. Conceptually speaking, out of all the standard “Movie Monsters” the haunted house is the most potent. Our home is supposed to be the one place we’re safe. The one place we can take our armor off and truly be ourselves. “A Man’s home is his castle.” And the idea that that refuge could be malignant. Waiting patiently to hurt us badly in the places we’re most vulnerable, is a powerful one.

Unfortunately for every truly effective take on this idea, for every The Haunting, The Shining, and Poltergeist; there are ten movies which feature well heeled actors looking vaguely bored until someone in a sheet walks by.

So lets give Burnt Offerings some points for ambition. Though it’s not entirely successful it does have some ideas about what it wants to do.

The story is standard boilerplate, Reed and his family rent a country manner far beyond their ways and means, for only nine hundred dollars for the entire season. Little do they know the collateral will be their souls!!! (Shuddup it’s late). The result is one of those crazy ass, “Wait Wut?” casts that periodically popped up in the seventies. I mean Oliver Reed (“Oh thank God. He’s always Drunk and surly!”), Betty Davis, Burgess Meredith, and Karen “Cockeyed” Black all in the same movie? Jesus there must have been some days on that set. It rivals The Sentinel in quantity if not stamina.

Oliver Reed and Davis seem pointedly amused by one another. Davis gives a fine performance. At such late a date one must admire both the dignity that Davis composed herself with in the majority of her scenes, and the lack of vanity it must have took to let herself look so God awful in others. Seriously there are scenes in this where she looks like the crypt keepers mother. I’m talking decrepit. Unfortunately, Reed and Black have not an eighth of their chemistry. Understandable, as Black is one of the most phenomenally least charismatic actresses to ever have an underserved run of good luck.

The problem is that Burnt Offerings traffics very little in the way of boo scares. The horror is derived, supposedly from watching Reed’s and Black’s relationship fracture. Only we don’t give a damn about that relationship, and neither for that matter do Reed or Black. While Reed and Black seem so or less indifferent to each other that the fracturing of their bond feels like a forgone conclusion, not a tragedy.

In the meantime Burnt Offerings none too successfully walks the fine line between deliberately paced and slow. Alternating scenes of the couple half heartedly arguing with a few genuinely disturbings scenes. Most courtesy of a creepy ass grinning Chauffer, but also including a particularly disturbing scene, in which Reed almost drowns his son in the pool, without seeming to realize what he’s doing. His horseplay crossing from jolly to malevolent without the boundary between the two ever really being clear.

Things heat up in time for a climax whose unrelenting grimness after a relatively staid preceding two hours is more likely to invoke an arched eyebrow then terror.

At the end of the day, Burnt Offerings is a noble, but unsuccessful effort. I give it points for trying, and I’m glad I watched it. But I won’t be in any hurry to see it again.

EDIT: As I am want to do after finishing my review I perused the interwebs to see what other reviews said of the film in question.

That's how I came across this little gem from Ebert.

"Burnt Offerings" is a mystery, all right. What's mysterious is that the filmmakers were able to sell such a weary collection of ancient cliches for cold hard cash. That's why they're rich and the rest of us are poor.

I love it when he gets catty.

The 25: Part 16/17: Aguirre The Wrath Of God/ A Personal Journey Through American Movies With Martin Scorsese

(The twenty five is an examination of the twenty five films that made me a cinephile. These aren’t necessarily what I consider best movies, nor are they necessarily my favorite. Though in some cases they are both. Instead these are the films that made the biggest most indenialable impression on me. Films that if they hadn’t hit a certain way at a certain time I would not be the same film goer that I am today. They’re the twenty five.)

So the I was around fifteen, I’d explored world cinema, the American classic style, and even had begun to dip my toe into the wild world of cult movies. I was beginning to feel pretty cocky about my vocabulary. What more was there to see?

There is no more dangerous time for a cinephile then the time when he first begins to fool himself into thinking he knows something. It’s a pattern I’ve seen countless film fans fall into, the happy complacency with a few hundred films to revisit. Only occasionally making room for the odd contemporary film.

It’s death for a student of film. And if you’re extremely lucky you get to see a few films that let you know just how small your palate is.

And that’s why no matter how disparate these film’s might appear, in my mind their intrinsically linked. No two films so violently expanded my horizons. And thanks to them, the day I stop seeking new experiences at the cinema, the day I’m convinced I’ve seen all it has to give, will be the day I’m lying cold in my grave.


Of the two, Aguirre is perhaps the easiest to understand as a shock to the system. I had just fallen under the tutelage of Ebert’s grandfatherly prose, and was drawn to the film by his Great Movie essay. I don’t know what I expected… No that’s a lie, I do know what I expected because the Hollywood version of Aguirre The Wrath Of God is depressingly easy to imagine.

One can picture it now, the scenes of the frightened conquistador’s trembling in the jungle being picked off one by one by an unseen force. A Predator-lite, with plenty of ambient sound, tense low angled shots, and frenzied character actor’s screaming “WHERE ARE YOU!!” into the jungle, a handsome, perhaps gone slightly to seed leading man in the role of the charismatic Aguirre, desperately trying to lead what remains of his conquistador’s out of the jungle, as a budding romance kindles between him and his deceased captain’s wife, and his plucky daughter learns to live in a man’s world. This is before the climatic battle between himself and the Indian tribe in which he gains their grudging respect. Ending up cleansed in his struggle for survival from his nasty imperialist impulses.

You know, some horseshit like that.

What I got was a mixture between holy man’s vision, and delirium induced vision of ants crawling out of one’s skin. A meditive journey into death and madness, filled with unforgettable images, and “ecstatic truth”. To say it was nothing like anything else I’d ever seen before, would be an understatement. As our doomed legion drift’s farther down the river each either reverts to base and cruel animal nature, or into philosophic abstraction. Until the unforgettable ending scene in which Kinski struts around a sinking raft amid a pile of corpses, talking about marrying his (dead) daughter, while he squeezes monkey’s in his fist.

And Oh Kinski, what have we here, bulging eyes, and thick, sensuous, rotten lips drawn into a rictus, remembering you’re supposed to have a hunchback perhaps 40 percent of the time.

But it wasn’t just the madness, it was Herzog, whose style of filmmaking was so different from anything else I’d ever seen that it may have well as been. To say Herzog lacked the concerns about the norms of narrative filmmaking would be an understatement. But his films were so unabashedly narrative.

Cinema wasn’t just a language, it was a language vast enough to contain a foreign one. It was simply put a rush.



But while Aguirre was an attack on the conventions of cinema I held. Almost as much of a threat as a promise. A Personal Journey Through American Movies With Martin Scorsese, on the other hand, presented a perfect example, and articulation of what I considered and consider cinema to be. A quasi mystical passing down of experience through the ages. A retelling of the experiences of common humanity and ideals, occasionally ugly common humanity and ideals, through the ages.

Unlike all other art forms, I would argue that the cinema is primarily not a reach inward, or a reach outward, but a reach forward.

A Personal Journey Through American Movies, proved a warm illustration of this. With Scorsese acting as the ideal tour guide, opening up the history of film as a nourishing buffet. Cementing Scorsese as the ultimate master, the ultimate teacher from whom I would always try to learn.

The filmmakers who this film introduced me to are almost innumerable, but just off the top of my head there’s, Sam Fuller, Raoul Walsh, Vincent Minnelli, Nicholas Ray, Griffith, Von Stroheim, Wild Bill Welleman, William Wyler, Fritz Lang, Anthony Mann, and Robert Aldrich.

That is, if I may be vulgar, that’s a shit ton of movies.

Simply put no single act of cinema going expanded my vocabulary and palate more. No single act of cinema going so made me a better film fan. It was a gentle quantum leap. A mellow but firm reminder that I was only a student. That there was always more to learn,

I can only hope that this will always be so.

Summer Of Samurai: Lone Wolf And Cub Baby Cart At Hades

Lone Wolf And Cub Baby Cart To Hades is a showcase for the details that make The Lone Wolf And Cub saga different from the average samurai film, or for that matter just about any action saga ever made. It all comes down to one key scene. Itto decides to save a girl who has been sold into service at a brothel, surrounded by the brothel’s hired thugs, we fully expect him, and indeed just about anyone else in his situation to get to short work making brothel guard mincemeat. After all, we’ve seen him make ground beef out of much larger crowds before.

Instead Itto elects to take the girl’s “Penalty” which involves him being tied up side down and having the holy fuck beat out of him with sticks. Why did he do that when he could have easily destroyed the other guards? To prove a point. What point is that? I don’t know because I’m not as crazy and tough as Ogami Itto.

Meet Ogami Itto, the world’s first existential action hero.

In Baby Cart To Hades Itto takes on an assignment to assassinate a corrupt magistrate, in exchange for the life of a prostitute he liberated. Along the way we meet the first person that Itto elected to not kill, despite given ample opportunity and cause. This “true samurais” story runs parallel to Itto as he deals with slightly more pressing matters, like the army that is trying to kill him.

He keeps doing things like that throughout the film, things that are not to buy into the stereotype here, but inscrutable. Whether its meeting with a rival warlord, just so the poor bastard can realize that Itto has been hired to murder him, to allowing his infant son to be “saved” by an assassin so Itto can butcher him in one of his most brutal killings, Itto keeps doing things for seemingly no other reason then his own personal satisfaction.

Lone Wolf And Cub Baby Cart To Hades has some of the series best action beats as well as its best character moments. Including the infamous scene in which Itto takes on an entire Lord Of The Rings sized army wielding every type of martial arts weaponry you’ve seen used in a movie (Insert nostalgic wax about the marvels of pre CGI filmmaking here). As the trailer for Lightning Sword’s Of Death so righteously put it, “They threw an army at him and he threw it back. One piece at a time.”

The only thing that keeps me from calling Baby Cart To Hades the series best are two ugly protracted rape scenes, both of which pass beyond their mere narrative function and sail uncomfortably far into the land of exploitive. I can’t in good conscience give the movie an unqualified recommendation with those two scenes in place.

Which is a shame because otherwise the movie is a whole mess of fun. If you keep your hand on the fast forward button, its more then worth seeing.

Summer Of Samurai: Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo

Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo promises an epic Kaiju battle between two of Japan’s greatest action heroes. Like many films that make such great promises it’s only partially kept. Zatoichi finds a town corrupted by gang warfare and as in most town’s corrupted by gang warfare Yojimbo is waiting in the wings. Though the two are originally pitted against each other they eventually find that their mutual love of kicking yards of ass can overcome whatever personal differences they might have.

While Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo is certainly a fun watch, it gets bogged down in the repetitive and overly convoluted nature of the plots that plague the Zatoichi films. A much bigger problem is that Mifune is not playing anywhere near the top of his game. I mentioned in my review of Red Sun that he seemed to be coasting. Well his turn in Zatoichi makes his turn in Red Sun look like his performance in High And Low. Now granted, what he is coasting on is one of the most charismatic, compelling persona’s in the history of cinema. Like Robert Mitchum there is no such thing as an unenjoyable Toshiro Mifune role, which is not to say it there is no such thing as a bad one.

Still its just disappointing that his return to the character is so meager, particularly given that his agreeing to reprise the character reportedly let to the final cracking of his strained relationship with Kurosawa.

His Yojimbo isn’t the uber proficient amoral sociopath from the original. Not even the gruff, crafty, paternalist from Sanjuro. Instead he plays him so he’s nearly buffoonish, a charismatic drunk whose good with a sword and has veins of badassery woven through. True in the end he does tap into the disdain that powers Yojimbo to greater effect and he’s as ruthless with a sword as ever. But then comes a plot twist at the end that can only be described as a heap of bullshit. On the whole, It’s hard to tell why the film is named Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo, when it could have just as easily been called Zatoichi Meets Toshiro Mifune.

Like all Zatoichi films the climax is a hell of a show stopper (particularly grim after such a light in tone film), the productions values are excellent, as is the fight choreography and Shintaro Katsu remains that rare commodity, a man likable enough to conceivably build a 30 film series around. Unfortunately this time all that standard issue carries with it a whiff of missed opportunity. Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo is no better or worse then any of the other Zatoichi films, but given the materials and potential that can’t help but feel like something of a failure this time out.

Summer Of Samurai: Red Sun

There’s a category of film that I like to refer to as “Wallace Beery Wrestling Pictures”. These films do not belong to any one genre or era, but are simply films whose appeal is so self evident that writing about them is simply beside the point. Event the films themselves are somewhat beside the point. No matter how far they fall from meeting their potential, no matter how truly dreadful they are The Wallace Beery Wrestling Picture will never be able to escape that one bit of perfection inherent in their concept or casting.

Red Sun might be the king of The Wallace Beery Wrestling Pictures. Born of the brief “West meets East” craze that swept the seventies, a movement that resulted in films like the Lo Lieh/Van Cleef pairing The Stranger And The Gunfighter, and Eli Wallach’s Samurai (No Really. Look it up. Sergio Corbucci made it. I know right?) Red Son is a Buddy film starring Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune, two of the most charismatic action stars to ever appear in a film., that’s a tantalizing cast before one factors in Ursalla Andress (Nigh incomprehensible) and Alain Delon as the bad guy. It combines The Western and The Samurai film, two disreputable genres that blend surprisingly well together. No its not some beautiful dream.

Mifune plays the body guard of a Japanese diplomat traveling through the American West. The diplomat’s train is robbed by Bronson and crew, only to have Delon double cross Bronsan and leave him for dead. Mifune and Bronsan team up together to take their revenge on Delon and things start to get pretty great.

That the film plays broad almost goes without saying. Bronson was at that point in his career where he’s pretty obviously coasting comfortably. Mifune’s character on the other hand trips over the line of mystic orientalism a time too often, sleeping while he walks, and disappearing and reappearing at will in the frame like he’s Cain from Kung Fu. In all fairness though, the film does seem at least partially aware of this, usually playing it for laughs with Mifune having the upper hand. Like the bit where Mifune continually demonstrates his Judo to an increasingly haggard Bronson. And the chummy and seemingly genuine interplay between Bronson and Mifune, keeps the film from staggering over the line of offensive.

The action scenes are directed with economy and creativity, particularly a shoot out in a whore house that demonstrates such great efficiency that its over almost before it begins. I’m willing to attribute most of this to Terrence Young. The director behind some of the best Connery Bonds, Wait Until Dark, and the bizarre The Klansmen. Oh and also Inchon, but lets not hold that against him. On the whole a more competent director then you expect to find on this type of film.

The film’s not perfect. Its low budget to the point of being minimalistic, and there’s really no damn reason it should last just a hairsbreadth under two hours. Particularly when there’s so much filler so readily evident.

Still its hard to be too hard on Red Sun especially as its one of those movies that is exactly what it appears to be. There’s little in the film but people being impossibly charismatic, but sometimes that’s enough. It’s a solid little B movie that takes its concept and runs with it. I suppose it is possible that there is someone out there with a soul so dead that they are not intriugued by the idea of a Charles Bronson, Toshiro Mifune buddy picture, in which they take on Alan Delon. But it is not I.

(Unsurprisingly some awesome posters were put together for a film with this irrestiple of a concept. Thought I'd share a few I came across. )

Summer Of Samurai: Lone Wolf And Cub Baby Cart At The River Styx

Any series that runs long enough, often ends up being judged not by the new things it does, but how well it does the same old things. While improvisation and innovation are always rewarded, I’d be lying if I said I watched The Lone Wolf And Cub films for their graceful plotting and keen eye for character.

This is all a very round about way of saying that though I consider the second Lone Wolf And Cub, Baby Cart At The River Styx to be the best of the series, I’m harder pressed then usual to tell you why.

To be sure Baby Cart At The River Styx features all the usual pleasures of The Lone Wolf And Cub series. Magnetic performances from its two principles, an audacious and at times frankly beautiful shooting style, creatively choreographed yet beautiful fights and shots and imagery with such a strange hallucinogenic feel to them that they break the genre mold and often seem closer to the likes of Jodorowsky (Witness the blood pooling from beneath the sand in the foiling of a desert ambush). So is it enough to say that Baby Cart At The River Styx is a “better” film than the rest for no other reason then it hits its marks abnormally well? Perhaps its cynical but yes. Baby Cart At The River Styx may just be going through the paces, but you’d never tell. And if you only make time in your life for one Lone Wolf And Cub Movie (Poor fool) make it this one.

Baby Cart At The River Styx begins with the attention grabbing image of Ogami Itto chopping a man’s head in half length wise. The poor bastard manages to tell Itto that an army of assassins are coming to kill him and his son, of which he is merely the first.

(Ogami Itto Don't Fuck Around. When You Absolutely Have To Kill Every Mother Fucker In The Room... Accept No Substitutes.)

The Uber Stoic Itto responds with his usual amount of alarm, which is to say, he promptly goes and gets himself hired by a dye maker.

It turns out said dye maker’s monopoly is threatened. So Itto does exactly what you or I would do when faced with a threat to a monopoly on dye. Namely he kills just about everything that ever walked or crawled. All while fending off assassins and melting the cold heart of the woman sent to kill him.

The Film features some of the series most colorful assassins. Which is saying something. Including, An army of monks three master killers who will look awfully familiar to any fans of Big Trouble In Little China and a team of female ninja’s who cut the limbs and latex face off of a poor bastard ronin, in order to show their chops (wah-wah-wwaaaaahhhh) in one of the film’s most unbelievably gaudy sequences.

Of course the film features many unbelievably gaudy sequences, parts that would be the highlights of lesser films, including a disorienting bit at a carnival in which a series of brightly colored acrobats come for Itto. An action scene aboard a burning ship that’s just freaking impressive. And the aforementioned desert climax that has a real and strange beauty to it.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

“I hate Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's boil-in-the-bag perversion for sexually repressed accountants and first-year drama students with too many posters of Betty Blue, The Blues Brothers, Big Blue and Blue Velvet on their blue bloody walls.”

-Simon Pegg, Spaced-

Well... yes. But it’s still kind of fun isn’t it?

I’ve been to The Rocky Horrror Picture Show from between a dozen to fifteen times since my first encounter at seventeen...

(On the couch with the cancer stick and bad Crow makeup)

At the great Cedar Lee Theater in Cleveland (The best revival Theater to not have anyone paying attention to it). And I’d say scarcely half of them have been in actual theaters.

I’ve seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show in Rec Rooms, High School Multipurpose rooms, Outdoors, College Lecture Halls, Gymnasiums, Theaters (The Non movie kind with the film projected on a screen propped awkwardly on the stage).

Wherever there two or more gather in Franken Furter’s name there is Rocky. Save AA meetings, I don’t know of another social institution with the same sort of versatility of habitat. The same staggering indifference to its surroundings.

And the two are not so different institutions from one another. Both act primarily, if not solely as a place for those who feel afflicted to have somewhere to go and confide in others who are like them.

There are many things to wonder at the whole phenomenon. What strange Alchemy is it that has kept The Rocky Horror Picture Show going? Why did it strike a chord? Why are there not weekly screenings of Pink Flamingo’s or El Topo, or some other seventies relic? Why has it not fallen the way of Earth Shoes and Billy Beer? Whatever it is, here lies a movie that for all the bitching we cinephiles like to do about older films surviving in the cultural lexicon, has needed no aid from us. No, The Rocky Horror Picture Show continues serenely on like some unfathomable perpetual motion machine. Drawing crowds to remark “That only assholes draw on church doors.” for the 156,000th weekend in a Goddamn row.

The show I went to wasn’t the best. That doesn’t matter. It’ll be better next time. The theater does it every week and as the MC (whose Pre Show Spiel was easily the best part of the show) remarked “Its E_____! It’s Friday!! What the fuck else you gonna do!?!?!” It wasn’t that the cast weren’t game far from it. But they perform on a stage that’s on the level of the screen, meaning their lights bleach out the screen and the sound mix seemed off, meaning that they’re choreographed catcalls ended up drowning out the actual movie, to the point where the set ups for the punch lines couldn’t be heard. Most damningly they skipped “Late Night Double Feature Picture Show.” The films opener, in favor of an overly choreographed burlesque act set to unfathomable reasons Rob Zombie’s “Pussy Liquor”. And that’s just not done man. You don’t skip “Late Night Double Feature Picture Show” It’s the fucking heart and soul of it all.

But perhaps more so then any other work, the particulars are not important when it comes to Rocky Horror, the spirit is. At the show I was at, I watched as The Virgins got their pre show initiation, and as one of the cast celebrated his thousandth show (To which the MC replied, “That is Soooo Sad”) and a married couple in the cast celebrated their five hundreth performance, as well as their anniversary (“That is so sad.”).

So yes, perhaps the audience was filled with sexually repressed accountants, and first year drama students. Yes perhaps most of the cast and the audience was about fifty pounds above actually pulling off their costumes. Yes perhaps they cut off “The Late Night Double Feature Picture Show.”

It doesn’t matter. It was still a great time. Say what you will about Rocky Horror, but as long as it gives lonely people a place to go and feel good for awhile, I’m all for it. There's just something about going out to the late night (early morning) picture show. And then finding some people to go to Denny's with afterwards.

Summer Of Samurai: Zatoichi's Conspiracy

I’ve never liked the Zatoichi series as much as I’ve thought I should. There’s always been a certain homogenized feel to the Zatoichi movies, not present in other Samurai series, or heck other series period. By this I don’t mean so much that Zatoichi fails to differentiate itself from other Samurai series. Say what you will about it, but it’s definitely doing its own thing. Its just that they don’t do much to differentiate themselves from one another.

If you’ve seen one Zatoichi film, you’ve seen them all. As a point of comparison I’m able to point to say From Russia With Love as a very good James Bond movie, and Moonraker as a very bad James Bond movie and I can tell you why. But what is it that makes a good Zatoichi film? Perhaps more importantly, what makes a bad one? Zatoichi neither rises nor falls, each installment only plods along at the same basic pitch of workman like competence. Perhaps it is not so much the Japanese equivalent to James Bond, as it is the action equivalent of the “Toru-san” series.

The Zaitoichi films follow a rigorous formula to say the least. In each of the bajillion some odd films, Zaitoichi, the blind, irascible multi talented do gooder, wanders into town, sees some manner of motherfuckery going on and then does his best to stop it. Trying to make peace until the inevitable moment in which he is forced to start chopping off various motherfuckers’ arms.

Zatoichi’s Consipiracy starts, as Zatoichi films often do, with our hero, the famous blind masseur/gambler/swordsman, at a crossroads, deciding where he’s to go with the flip of a coin. Though it might not differentiate itself from the formula very much, Zatoichi’s Conspiracy at least tries to add a new wrinkle, by having the town he walks into be his old home town which he left many years ago under circumstances most mysterious.

There in Zatoichi encounters, as you might have guessed, A Conspiracy, involving an old friend and a slew of Yakuza swordsmen. He gets busy righting various wrongs and then hits the road, cheerfully awaiting the next installment. Finding time for one truly fantastic sequence involving a sword fight set in a driving rain of rice.

Still even if over their thirty films and hundred and twenty episodes the Zatoichi series has been a bit too staid for its own good, the central figure of them Shintaro Katsu, who plaid Zatoichi with confidence, wit, badessery, and just enough mischievous enjoyment at his own abilities to keep from being dull, is always fun to watch.

You may never have a great time watching a Zatoichi movie, but thanks to Katsu, you will always have a good time.

Despite my antipathy (more like detachment) from the character Zatoichi will almost certainly come again in this marathon. Sure he might not be as colorful (or crazy) as Hanzo, nor impressive as Ogami Itto. But while exploring the samurai genre it would be foolish to ignore the man who embodies it for s many. Particularly when the earlier films are so readily available.