Change Your Image
jagerhans
Reviews
Pulgasari (1985)
excellent Kaiju movie made in Korea
first of all, its unfair to compare this movie with a Hollywood product: this is an eastern "man-in-rubber-suit" monster movie made in north Korea and must be evaluated as such. and in his niche this is one of the very best. for the originality and meanings it deserves to be put on the same level of Honda's Godzilla of 1954. it sports believable effects, real mass scenes (ok they were soldiers drafted to act in a movie but nevertheless it's better than what i've seen in "Gappa") and believe it or not a plot that is less nonsense than the usual Gamera - Rodan - Godzilla - Gappa stuff we got used to. at least all the story is more fantastic than Sci-Fi and this places everything on a completely different perspective. "comedy" episodes are laughable but i suppose that asking to a North-Korean movie to meet the standard humor tastes of a western audience is way too much. the interpretative key of the story revolves around the goods and evils of capitalism ,one may appreciate or not the intentions but go find another Kaiju with more sense than "the Japanese are still scared after the atom bomb, poor souls", and "the Japanese scientists save the world". Pulgasari is finally less nationalistic than the average Japanese movie, and this is outstanding for a product of a dictatorial country, isn't ?
Vase de noces (1974)
nearly a masterpiece
"Vase de Noces" is an outstanding flick . Its meaning is obvious: it's an allegory about obsession (not a particular one, provided that the particulars - teaching the pigs good manners, marrying a sow, collecting feces - are totally inane , but any mind-destroying compulsion developed in insulation ) which finally leads the obsessed one to destroy his sick love and finally himself. There is an identification man <-> obsessions and when the objects of the obsession fail, we understand that our hero is necessarily doomed. The fact that it's very graphical and disturbing is functional to the message. It is beautifully shot with great mastership of the medium, the music comment is awesome and Dominique Garny plays "heroically" his role. Now this can sound like a provocation but I think that one of the good things in this movie is that it is never excessive. The same plot in the hands of a less skilled director/actor would result in a mere shocker movie full of bad taste (imagine this movie in "Technicolor" or directed by john waters), not in that lonely descent to hell depicted by this outstanding movie. Its limit is that the story could reach a higher expressive impact if developed by a more creative director - I imagine that some Pasolini or Lynch could do even better than this.
And as pointed out before, one who willfully watches a movie called "the pig-f***ing movie" automatically loses his right to complain.
One last word to that plethora of Philistines who commented on this thread so far: "when the finger points at the moon, the ... look at the finger" . Please spare us your nonsenses. We already know that feces and pigs are gross, find some other argument or change your schedule.
Cyborg - Il guerriero d'acciaio (1989)
holy Grail of bad movies.
Here to you, bad movies' fans, no matter how long and how hard you keep trying for a sillier, more laughable and/or irritating flick, this title got _everything_ . It is kind of an Italian remake of Terminator, the plot is dull with glimpses of sheer idiocy galore. The characters are stereotypical, they act as badly as possible, it's pathetic, special effects suck bad and are superfluous too. Believe me, watching "Cyborg guerriero d'acciaio" (the original title) is more painful than watching "Turkish Star Wars" or some productions from India because while most of those hilarious films seem directed by Borat, this one lacks even such a questionable bonus. Everything seems spoiled on purpose like in "The lost skeleton of Cadavra" but isn't. It is just the ultimate apotheosis of idiocy, bad taste, lack of ideas, exploitation, crappy acting, no budget and shamelessness . The only possible way of watching this and surviving is to call a few friends, get drunk and fall asleep in front of the screen as soon as possible.
The Devonsville Terror (1983)
horrifying movie
Well I've been watching a lot of really weird stuff but this one is worser than awful. Pityful. The plot is so stupid it's hard to believe; special effects are crappy and hilarious; characters are stereotypical to the extent that the moviegoer feels offended; nothing makes the least sense in this movie which is a pile of badly rearranged commonplaces of horror. More than this the setting is squalid and depressive, and the whole movie looks close to some very ugly TV series. Expect boredom to its highest. A completely unexplained end stops the audience's sufferings. And there is Donald Pleasance in the cast, too. Yuck.
Arcana (1972)
a movie in jeopardy
This weird , out-of-the-schemes movie is one of the few Giulio Questi's works. Rough and poorly made, but with some sense of measure (thus very real-life-looking) it occasionally slips into the usual clichés of trash 'b' gore - horror works but the overall result is surprisingly suggestive.
It happens sometimes that obscure directors happen to make something really outstanding , only to fall back again in mediocrity for the rest of their careers (remember Tobe Hooper ?) .
This spooky and politically incorrect tale of filth and horror is almost dead and gone: the movie is impossible to find , there must be still one copy in some wet vault (the grave of old movies) and folklore says that the director himself was looking for a copy of it.