Review: Calamity of Snakes

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2023
Images from the Internet

Calamity of Snakes (aka Ren she da zhan; 人蛇大戰)
Directed by Chi Chan;
Chi He Film Company; Kee Woo Film (HK) Co; Unearthed Classics; MVD Visual
86 minutes, 1982 / 2022
www.unearthedvideo.com
www.MVDVisual.com

Definitely not one to watch if you have Ophidiophobia like Indiana Jones: a fear of snakes. The snakes used are real, so there is no – er – squirming out of this.

This Category 3 film from Hong Kong (though shot in Taiwan), has been never released on digital discs in the form of DVD or Blu-ray until now. Available here are the original Mandarin, as well as the English dub of its initial release. There is also a “Cruelty-free Version,” which I will discuss later in this review.

There is a level of infamy for this, for many reason, but mostly being bat-shit (snake-shit?) crazy. It is vicious, nasty, and deadly. And then there are the snakes. In a theme similar to the Italian giallos filmed in South America such as 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust, numerous real reptiles were viciously and vividly killed during the making of it, but that is where the “Cruelty-free Version” comes in if you do not want to see that aspect. Also, it is worth noting that a percentage of all profits, whatever the format, will be donated to Save the Snakes in continuation of their mission to protect snake populations around the world.

Needless to say, I watched the original in Chinese and uncut, not because I hate snakes (I am only afraid of ones I know are dangerous, or ones that I meet in the wild and am not sure), but to place it in the context of when the film was released, during the heyday of Hong Kong horror. There is a new, 2023 documentary on that topic included on the disc, From Shaw to Snakes: The Venom and Violence of Early Chinese Language Horror Cinema (116 minutes), directed by Naomi Holwill.

Like films such as Frogs (1972) or The Happening (2008), this is a supernatural revenge of nature to atone for violence against its creatures. Do I need to say what kind? Did not think so. The basic set up is that a conglomerate wants to build a new high rise apartment complex (I have been to China, and they are still doing it in droves to temporarily bolster the economy; again I digress…). However, they discover a multitude of snakes on the spot where the building is to be constructed, so Fu-Ren “time is money” Jiang, the CEO who is overseeing the project with his lacky and comedy relief Peter Ma (Ping-Ou Wei, d. 1989), gives the orders to kill all the snakes to make it habitable for the new tenants-to-be.

Jiang’s wife, Shumei, who witnesses the slaughter (which I found profoundly sad, especially the level of glee as they actually torture the poor creatures), prays to Avalokitasvara, who helps Bodhisattva (people on their way to enlightenment; thank you Wikipedia) for forgiveness in fear of retribution for her husband’s evil deed.

On the side of the snakes, is the architect from Harvard, Dr. Zhengfeng Xu (Yun-Peng Hsiang, aka Wan-Pang Heung, who passed away recently). He is slowly building a relationship with Jiang’s spoiled but cute daughter, Xiumei. Surely a comeuppance is coming after by the third act (I am at the beginning of the second as I write this).

The real fun starts when the building is opened, and the condos start selling to various types, including a “Karen” and the flirtatious young girlfriend of an elderly rich man. You just know who will be future fodder because the story focuses on them, and they act like they deserve a “spanking” from Avalokitasvara.

The snakes include poisonous cobras (I wonder if they “drained” them first), but the lead snakes are huge pythons that are not to the ridiculous size of 1997’s Anaconda, but still impressive. To try to get rid of the snakes, they call in a professional snake handler/entertainer, Master Lin (Yuen Kao, rather than Samuel L. Jackson). Their centerpiece man-vs.-snake kung fu scene is definitely a highlight, though there is more than one martial snake involved (as puppets, with that boing “springing” sound used popularly in kung fu films of the period as things go flying).

The scenes where snakes are killed be it by humans or by a bunch of mongooses (to upbeat and cheerful music!), lasts way longer than necessary, lingering on the snakeicide in almost fetishistic fashion. This is technically a comedy, but it seems like being cruel is a point. There are literally thousands of the creatures that are killed on screen, and only two of the reptiles on the screen are fake (those puppets I mentioned earlier)

I was amused that at one point, in the background soundtrack, you could hear Tchaikovsky’s “Overture 1812.” Also, when was the last time you saw an elevator with a 13th floor, other than the Texas psychedelic band? Then there is the “Benny Hill” sped-up with bouncy carousel music moment that also fat shames.

The other extras on the Blu-ray are “Reptilian Recollections: Lin Kuang-Yung in Conversation with Chui-Yi Chung” where one of the actors talks with the director and co-writer, and a full-length commentary with writer and editor Nathan Hamilton and film director Brad Slaton. Last are an “Alternate Credits” and an image gallery.

Generally, as films go, this was a hoot. The story was silly as shit, as one might expect (and hope for the period and topic), reminding me of the likes of Squirm (1976) and Slugs (1988), but honestly, I will never watch this again, due to its level of cruelty to living creatures who were killed for no reason (even if in the film they have snake soup, eat organs, and drink snake blood). If this was made today, and it was CGI or even practical SFX, I would see the same scenes and smile. But this is inexcusable.

Now I know that what I have just said is actually going to intrigue a certain group of people into seeing it, and I have no problem about it (at least the snakes would not have completely died in vain, nor vein), but I am at an age now where I prefer the SFX and CGI fakery to the actual destruction of animals for profit.

IMDB listing HERE

Review: Tokyo Decadence

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2022
Images from the Internet

Tokyo Decadence (aka Topâzu; Topaz)
Directed by Ryû Murakami
Cinemabrain; Melsat; Unearthed Classics; MVD Entertainment
112 minutes, 1992 / 2022
www.unearthedfilms.com
www.MVDentertainment.com

It is hard to nail this one down when it comes to categorization. Exploitation? Sexploitation? Asian Extreme Cinema? Transgressive? Well, I guess the film has its leather boot in and on all of them.

This film is infamous, and to be honest, before this, I have never seen it, so I am looking forward to catching up. Despite a penchant for vengeful ghosts, Japan genre releases are more known for violence, gangsters, and underage women and other sexual deviances (that term conditional to the individual viewer).

There are two versions of this film: the first is the U.S.-released “soft core” 92-minute version, but this is the longer, Japanese 112-minurte “harder” one, with more sado-masochism in certain scenes (neither of them is hardcore). Needless to say, the film is in Japanese with English subtitles. The director and writer, Ryû Murakami, is no stranger to over-the-top storytelling, having written the novel upon which was the foundation of Takashi Miike’s Audition (1999). This film is also based on one of his own best-selling novels.

This Japanese production was filmed in Tokyo, at a social stratum I am certain I will never achieve in my lifetime (unless there is a full Lotto in my future).

Miho Nikaido

Right off the bat, we meet a mostly nekkid and tied down Ai (Miho Nikaido) before the credits roll. She is a high-end call girl who specializes in sado-masochistic role playing for incredibly rich men, especially on the receiving end. Her exploits are shown in very loving photography and highly erotic stylings. The first half hour is dedicated to a couple of her couplings, but one really needs to be into that kind of thing for it to be effectives, but I must admit, it’s not my style, either the humiliation, the leather, nor the domination. Artistically, I can marvel at the lighting and the way the camera is used, but the action leaves me cold and – er – unresponsive. I never really understood Japanese kink.

Despite the psycho-sexual tone of the film, the story itself moves at a glacial pace, as Ai superstitiously gets advice from a medium (Yayoi Kusama), who gives her advice such as to put telephone books under her television (like to see her try that now).

Ai starts having a change of heart about her life’s work after a few clients go just a bit too far…okay, way too far, and she begins to want to get out (somewhere in my head I hear Al Pacino saying, “But they keep pulling me back in”). While she pines for an ex-lover, a well-known man (Hiroshi Mikami) who appears on television, and is now married to a famous opera singer (Chie Sema), she is also drawn to a statuesque dominatrix drug addict, Saki (Sayoko Amano).

Sayoko Amano

The camera seems to love Nikaido and shows her emotions through extremely contrasting use of light, with people wearing mostly black and white, with the background dark and the people lit sharply. But still, she looks quite beautiful even in this harshness. There is also a sharp use of the adding of the color red, used seductively, in things like shoes, nail polish, lipstick, and especially Ai’s nearly ever-present oversized handbag to hold all her sex-toy and attire accoutrements. The shots are long, following the action with relatively few edits. The scenery is also worth mentioning, as most of the first two acts is of the city at night, with incredibly tall building with industrially florescent lighting inside the structure’s windows. It feels both organic and incredibly designed at the same time. When we do see nature, usually trees, it almost seems out of place.

Ai’s journey of dealing with rich people who need her but do not really care about her, and trying to get out of the life reminds me quite a bit of the framework of the story of Bob Fosse/Neil Simon’s Sweet Charity (1968), except it’s not a musical, other than the incidental music here is by Oscar™ winner for The Last Emperor (1987), Ryuichi Sakamoto. The music is extra helpful because Ai doesn’t really have too much dialogue, relatively speaking to most of the other characters in the film, and when she does talk, often it is almost whispered. It is like she is on a boat without oars, and she just floats in the direction the waters take her.

While I found the S&M scenes cringe-worthy, for me the most uncomfortable moments were the last act, where Ai goes looking for her ex-lover, and her further humiliation on the journey itself, even before possibly meeting him, a series of bizarreness worthy of Fellini or even Philippe de Broca’s King of Hearts (1966).

The extras for this “Blu-ray Special Edition” include an English dub version for those who have an aversion to subtitles, but know that I watched the original Japanese versions with the English subtitles turned on. I did spot check in on it here and there, and the dialogue comes close to matching the subtitles, but not quite. As a non-Japanese speaker, I really cannot say which of the two is most accurate. A “Featurette” is included from when it was first released, which is an odd mix of an extended trailer that focuses on each of the actors through clips, and interviews and pieces from the film’s opening (it looks like at a festival, but it could just be a theater and the after-party. It’s in Japanese with subtitles, but that’s no surprise, I am going to surmise. Along with a “Stills Gallery,” and a nice box slip-cover, there are trailers that include a bunch of Unearthed Classic releases, and two different versions of the one for Tokyo Decadence: from Japan and Germany.

I can certainly understand why this is considered a classic: the beautiful way it is shot, its languid style among the brutality, and the story arc, almost like an opera, but I will not be revisiting it, honestly.

IMBD Listing HERE  

Review: Nightwish

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2019

Images from the Internet

Nightwish

Directed by Bruce R. Cook

Channel Communications / Wild Street Pictures / ZIV International /
Unearthed Films Classics / MVD Visual

95 minutes, 1990 / 2019

www.unearthedfilms.com

www.mvdb2b.com

During the latter hey-day of the VHS glut of rushed cinema, when original ideas were starting to drain off, a theme developed of adding as much as possible into a single film, to appeal to the widest spectrum of the fan-base (the demographic usually being adolescent-to-mid-20s aged males). This film is a fine example of let’s throw the spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.

Jack Starratt

The basic premise is hardly new, even for the late 1980s when this was filmed. Mendele, a professor of the paranormal (Jack Starratt, who to me will forever be Gabby Johnson in Blazing Saddles) that we eventually get to add the word “mad” before his title, has assembled four graduate students for an experiment to draw out a demon entity [séance genre] at a disreputable and remote abandoned farmhouse [cabin in the woods genre].

Of course, a weird and usually bearded professorial type gathering people together for a séance that brings evil to the forefront is hardly a new idea, going back at least to The Haunting (1963) and The Legend of Hell House (1973), based on books by Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson, respectively. In fact, it is a motif that is even used to this day, though in modern cinema a Ouija board is usually used. Just go to IMDB and search the word Ouija.

Alisha Das

For this film, all that’s needed is some concentration by him and the students, because as the professor says, the evil is present in the house itself (again, a theme in The Haunting and Hell House). It isn’t long before spookies come a-callin’. He warns them that, “It has the power to instill paranoia… I want you all to watch each other very closely for irrational behavior.” One of the students shockingly replies, “Are you saying we may not be able to trust each other?” Yeah, this is directly out of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982); there may not be shift-changing per se, but the entity supposedly produces hallucinations, so it amounts to the same “who can you trust” vibe. It apparently feeds off fear (too numerous references to mention, including the recent IT two-parter).

Elizabeth Kaitan

When we first meet the four students in the lab, they are using a sensory deprivation tank (that has a glass window!) to see if they can dream their own deaths. This is a nice way to get some wet and see-through tee-shirts into the picture (again, demographics). Not that I’m complaining, mind you. The scholars are the cool kid – you can tell by the salmon-colored shirt – Jack (Clayton Rohner), the nice girl, Donna (1980’s scream queen Elizabeth Kaitan), the over-confident assistant/suck-up to the professor, Bill (Arthur Cybulski), and the lusty Kim (the lovely and toothsome Alisha Das). Joining the mix to drive them to the farm is the aggressively macho and toxic masculinity-filled Dean (Brian Thompson), who Bugs Bunny might have posited being “obviously a barbell boy.”

Seance

Before long, cheesy (though then quite state-of-the-art) ectoplasm snakes are threading through the air and aliens are using bodies to propagate bugs (American cockroaches, aka waterbugs… the smaller versions are German cockroaches, but I digress…). This truly is a mixed bag of genres.

Speaking of effects, while there are some proto-digital SFX (e.g., physically drawn on the original negatives), there is also quite a decent collection of practical gore set pieces, such as loss of body parts and the pulsating alien insect larvae on the bodies). For its timeframe and budget, there definitely is relatively a number of unexpected “wet” spots as far as slime and blood are concerned.

Brian Thompson

You can always tell when (an?) (the?) entity is around because of the green light that is employed by the filmmakers, be it on a dog, a person, a car, whatever is available to move the story along and produce a body count.

The acting is rather good here, albeit sometimes a bit over the top. And speaking of tops, there is a very nice solo sex scene induced by the demon spirit [The Entity, 1982; Trick or Treat, 1986]; once again as a reminder, demographics.

There are a few digital extras on the disc, such as the 4K digital transfer, Unearthed Films trailers (all of which have been reviewed on this blog!), and a full-length commentary by soft-spoken producer Paul White and Unearthed chairperson Stephen Biro. Biro does well keeping White answering questions, despite some gaps of silence. White is occasionally hard to hear (turn up that volume, kids!), and he even acknowledges that more than once, but most of what he says is relevant to the film, so it’s worth a listen.

...Because this is how all Graduate Students dress

The two non-digital extras are a “Limited Edition alternative slipcover” (for the Blu-ray), and a really nice multi-paged glossy booklet about the film, cast and director, with color pictures.

Despite the reasoning at the end, this film is definitely a lot of fun, even though it suffers a bit from not being able to make up its mind about a direction. Still, I enjoyed it quite a bit, as it brought back memories of that time period when VHS was king, there was a video store on what seemed like every corner, and there was so much from which to choose.

Oh, did I mention there are also flesh-eating zombies thrown into the mix …?