Chow Yun-Fat can looks badass even when he is hand drawn and smoking a pipe like Sherlock Holmes.

One of the main aspects of Asian cinema I admire most is their ability to throw so many different themes and devices of film making into one pot and come out with something that is not only coherent, but insanely enjoyable.  One of the finer, and more shamelessly indulgent examples of this particular, and rare, breed of film is The Seventh Curse, directed by Ngai Kai Lam, who some of you may know best for directing Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky.  While much can be said about Riki-Oh, I find The Seventh Curse (Curse for short) to be his best work, simply because it is a rollicking good time that hardly ever slows down and is constantly upping the ante for what can be considered too over the top and downright ridiculous.  Merging together kung-fu, gun-fu, Indiana Jones style adventure (including a scene in which 2 of our heroes run away from a tumbling head of a giant stature down a corridor in true Indy form), horror, gore, and comedy, Curse benefits from it’s blatant disregard for nuance and subtlety in favor of unabashed wackiness and fun.

“A young heroic cop in the jungle of Thailand attempts to rescue a beautiful girl from being sacrificed to the “Worm Tribe” she belongs to. As a result, the cop is damned with seven “Blood Curses” which burst through his leg periodically. When the seventh bursts, he will die, but Betsy, the beauty he saved stops the curse with an antidote that lasts only one year, so on the advice of Wisely (Chow yun Fat), he heads back to Thailand to find a permanent cure. Action ensues as the cop and cohorts battle the evil sorcerer of the Worm Tribe, a hideous bloodthirsty baby like creature and “Old Ancestor,” a skeleton with glowing blue eyes that transforms into a monster that is a cross between Rodan and Alien.” -IMDB

Kinda captions itself, doesn't it?

I find myself at almost a complete loss on how to describe the acting, chiefly because it is intentionally hammy.  Our heroes our akin to “Everymen”, who can wield guns like champions, deliver single kick or punch knock out blows to anyone with a pulse, and take damage completely in stride while retaining full ass kicking ability.  The guy who stands out, as he does in every single movie I have seen him in, is Chow Yun Fat.  Shame however, since he only pops up in a handful of scenes, but when he is on screen he just emanates an aura and presence that is unmistakably his own.  Maybe it’s the time I intimately spent analyzing and re-watching his work with John Woo, but the man just seems to command the cameras unwavering attention, which is a testament to his abilities since he has worked with many directors over the years in various types of movies.  Besides Yun-Fat being as diesel as he always is, Maggie Cheung and Siu-Hou Chin work well as the unlikely tandem of SuperCop-extraordinaire (Chin) and nosy, rich, brat journalist who is it it for the money and fame (Cheung).  The rest of the cast come in and out at almost random intervals, but they all play their parts as cliche and stereotypically as possible, which is by no means a slight.  This is a film, as mentioned before, than is trying to entertain and squeeze as much laughter and bravado out of the it’s irreverence as possible.  And oh how it succeeds in doing that on every level fathomable.

Our heroes. At least you know old four eyes will see the enemy coming from about 3 miles away.

Ngai Kai Lams directing is pretty spot on, and you can tell he must have been a fan of older adventure pictures like Clash of the Titans and some of the sword and sandal epics like Sinbad during his youth.  If he could of, I bet you he would have used claymation or stop-motion animation to create some of his monsters.  As it turns out, rubber and latex worked just as well, and Lam shows his love for these effects by giving us quality, long, and loving looks at the monstrosities.  Other tactics he uses can be easily connected to some of his peers at the time, most notably John Woo and Sammo Hung, who were, along with some other big names, blowing the lid right off the Hong Kong action scene with their progressive ideas and formulas.  We get some wonderfully shot bare knuckle fighting, usually punctuated by explosions that look fantastic and take place dangerously close to the actors.  When our heroes aren’t duking it out with jungle tribesmen and hostage takers, they can be found lighting up the landscape with all sorts of projectile weaponry, culminating in Yun-Fat’s stellar two-time use of a classic rocket launcher during the rousing finale.  All of this is shot very well, giving just enough time to savor the wire work that was pulling back stuntmen getting blown away at point blank with shotguns as well as some great, firework style squibs and blood splatter.  Lam also keeps the pace brisk, but not blistering.  While the plot is hardly the paramount concern for this production, he still manages to eek out some mythical, fantasy style reasoning for the wild goings on within the flick.  It’s nice to have a second to catch your breath too, especially when you factor in the fact this movie clocks in at a lean 1 hour and 18 minutes.

The "Old Ancestor" who causes a bunch of people a lot of trouble in the flick. Yes, that is a skeleton puppet assuming a "Karate" pose preparing to engage a human in hand to hand combat. I nearly wet myself when this happened.

If you like your effects cheesy and heavy-handed, but at the same time incredibly well designed and mobile, then you might as well stop reading now and just go get yourself a copy of this film.  The effects here are all practical and usually prosthetic, borrowing liberally from all that have come before it.  From Basket Case, to Alien, to Jason and the Argonauts, there is a little love letter stowed away inside The Seventh Curse to all these films and what they brought to the table as far as special effects mastery and perfection.  Couple that with some surprisingly explosive gore, bullet wounds akimbo and fires and explosions that almost outnumbers the lines of dialogue spoken, and you have yourself a real treat for anyone who longs for the days before computers went and pissed in our collective cereal and made everything look like a goddamn video game.  When the effects aren’t tickling your nostalgia bone, they will certainly be giving you some unintentional giggles.  At one point, when the “Old Ancestor” (Has anyone every met a YOUNG Ancestor?) comes back for the first time in the picture and faces off with one of our heroes, you can clearly see that someone off camera throw the skeleton puppet directly at the actor (Chin), who then grabs it, struggles with a bit, and then is swatted away by its undoubtedly robot controlled arm, and flies a good 10-20 feet away.  It has to be seen to be believed, but you better not be drinking anything when this happens, because I still a wet keyboard from dropping my bottle of water while laughing and rewinding to ensure I had truly seen what I thought I saw.  Classic make up and effects in every sense of the word.

Shit gets out of control at these outdoor Rave parties. I remember when it was just Ecstasy and techno, now they are possessing people with crystal shards and witchcraft. Tough crowd.

The Seventh Curse is not a film for everyone.  Consider it that friend you had back in school, who was really fun and genuine to be around, but you always wondered if he was dropped on his head as a baby and his parents just never told him.  It’s got no shame or apologies at the ready for it’s ludicrous nature, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.  It taps into so many trite, yet charming and lovable traits that makes older films hold up so well, and then throws in the yet-to-be-beaten-to-death mechanics and pacing that was quickly coming to fruition in Hong Kong in the mid to late 80′s.  It is certainly something I would consider a “hidden gem”, or maybe it’s just overshadowed by so many other phenomenal works to come out of Hong Kong, especially in 1986.  Regardless the reasoning as to why this flick seems to slip by so many people, I would encourage you to not let it fall by the wayside.  This movie is like a college frat boy who ties fireworks to his genitals and then lights them and doesn’t get seriously injured.  For whatever reason, it just works.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Have a taste of some rocket propelled justice you assjockey! (Believe it or not, this ISN'T the final kill!)

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Now playing: Django Reinhardt – You Took Advantage of Me
via FoxyTunes

Gotta love that tagline.

Dellamorte Dellamore (translated to Of Death Of Love, which can then be easily jumbled around to Love of the Dead) is a title better known to most American audiences as Cemetery Man.  Regardless of which title you prefer to adopt for it however, it is a film that is widely considered by horror aficionados as the last great Italian horror film, and in particular the last standout zombie picture in the long lineage of the countries contributions to the sub genre.  While Fulci and his peers were busy pushing the limits of on screen violence and nurturing the inherit apocalyptic nature of the dead coming back to life, writer/journalist/novelist Tiziano Sclavi was hard at work on what we might call a comic book series called Dylan Dog about an investigator who looked into nightmares.  As with anything that is held in even remotely high regard in print, it was loosely adapted for the silver screen.  While that history is certainly interesting, and may even give insight into the wildly surreal and dream like qualities of Cemetery Man, it isn’t vital to enjoying and thinking critically about the movie itself.  What is of utmost importance is the ability to just go with the quite jarring and constantly morphing flow of the picture, allowing yourself and your imagination to free associate the many clues and symbols embedded within the flick, and let your mind fill in the gaps that arise from its sordid and often misconstrued storytelling methods.

Our story is, at its base, one of a cemetery keeper who has not only the nasty chore of burying the recently deceased, but keeping them under the pounds of dirt he shovels on top of them.  See, Francesco Dellamorte (an ironic name that even the character pokes fun at in the very beginning of the film) battles zombies almost nightly, and with his trusty revolver and spade, and the assistance of his near mute helper Gnagi, he keeps the tenants of Buffalora cemetery within the gates by either shooting them in the head, or driving objects through their rotting skulls.  For a horror movie, this is more than enough to justify a standard 90 minute run time, but what makes Cemetery Man  so interesting and open to interpretation is that it is a film with films inside it.  There are love stories for both of our flawed and damaged reluctant heroes (Gnagi and Frances), there is a ingeniously deceptive detective story complete with twist, and then there is the ultimate question that plagues any intellectual viewer of this movie.  Where on Earth, or outside of Earth, is this all taking place?  Before I throw down my loose theories about the messages and mysteries contained within, let me first analyze it as a piece of  horror entertainment.

This is exactly how I open my door.

Cemetery Man leans heavily on the acting of its male lead Rupert Everett, which is a good thing considering he does a magnificent job conveying the many facets of Frances without the movie or the character ever coughing up any major information as to his personal history.  Besides mentioning that he doesn’t read much and never finished high school, we are instead treated to my personal favorite of all methods for establishing a characters motives, values, and even their beliefs.  The method is simply his actions.  His movements, the way he expresses his emotions and treats those close to him, and almost every other behavior all compiles together into giving us a better understanding of Frances, and if you take the plunge and see this movie (or watch it again, which I also highly recommend) you will learn that understanding Frances may be the key to understanding the film as a whole.  Outside of our enigmatic lead, Anna Falchi also graces the screen with her unique beauty, and brings some acting and modeling credentials to the multiple characters she plays, all of whom are cryptically named as “She” only.  She may not be the best actress, and at times it seems like either she is being subtly dubbed or having a hard time speaking perfect English (she is Italian after all), but for what her characters demand, it seemed fitting that someone who is beautiful, but not in a conventional sense, would play those parts.  In particular, I noticed that her eyes and eye make up changed for each of her 3 “shes” she plays, which may denote a change in the film itself, perhaps opening another chapter every time she reappears.  Gnagi, played by François Hadji-Lazaro, also lends a great deal of depth to the set of personalities on screen, and without hardly muttering any words, and not a full sentence until the very end of the picture, manages to serve as the loyal, but sometimes useless, compatriot to Frances.  He is there with him through thick and thin, and seems to serve as a reminder to Frances that even as along as he feels, he never truly is completely alone.  The rest of the supporting cast are all good, but they get nearly as much time and dialogue as these 3 do, which means that I don’t feel the need to elaborate on their fine performances.  But trust me, they are all well beyond adequate, and in the odd case there is someone you don’t particularly like, don’t worry, they will be dead soon enough.

Frances and "She" spending some quality time in the ossuary.

Michele Soavi (who directed another one of my favorite horror flicks of all time, Stagefright), with competent acting in hand, wastes no time in unraveling his surreal and morbid vision.  The pacing of the film is incredible, surrendering the typical pseudo-tension found in most horror flicks for an off-beat but blistering tempo that is always striking you with violence, sex, dark twisted comedy, or a combination of those 3.  Soavi comes off as a fan and student of the Italian Spaghetti horror films that dominated the underground and foreign markets for much of the 80′s, while at the same time balancing the tragic and dreamy mind fuck that is the narrative.  As I mentioned earlier, it seems like there is at least two movies being told at once, with the major determining factor between the two being the night and day cycle, as well as the lighting and the soundtrack changes.  Night time looks amazingly detailed, never suffering from “I can’t see SHIT” disease that I hate with a every fiber of my being.  Soavi also employs some clever POV shots, usually from the perspective of the dead or soon to be dead person in the scene.  It is used just enough to cement it as a legitimate tool in Soavis directing arsenal, but is done with enough restraint to not come off as a simple gimmick.  If you are a fan of European architecture with a Gothic flair to it, the scenes within the cemetery and surrounding area are sure to please you.  The film really shines during the night scenes more so than the day, and it reeks of a perfect unison between director, cinematographer, and photographer, who all seemed to understand how to make scenes not only look beautifully lit and well composed, but dark, eerie, and other worldly all at the same time.  This is without a doubt one of the most visually arresting horror movies I’ve ever seen, and maybe the best to date.

One of the clever POV shots in the film.

While it is commonplace in modern cinema to have sound effects and a inappropriately loud and obnoxious soundtrack or score dominant the dialogue of a film, it wasn’t so common even up through the mid 90′s.  The sound in Cemetery Man will probably sound dated to most, but then again you can say that the sound in JAWS is dated, in which my response to both is fuck you.  Gunshots are clear and sound as if they are being shot from a gun that has been shot many times before.  The soundtrack deliberately switches many times in order to extract or set a mood for a particular scene.  The dialogue also comes off fairly clean, although it could have been more crisp, but we will chalk that up to it not being a production that was not made on an astronomically large budget.  Whatever mild sins may have been committed by the available technology in the audio department are surely made up for by the special effects and visuals ten fold.  The blood and gore is incredibly visceral and strong, and Soavi shows confidence in his splatter man when he doesn’t jerk his camera away from head shots and other grisly images.  Speaking of which, this may be the movie with the most head shots I have ever personally seen, and each one looks more dynamite than the last.  Lighting, set design, filter choices, costumes and make up are all top notch and don’t feel dated or cheesy in the slightest.  If this movie were made in America, you would be able to spot the outdated attire and social wear from a mile away, but since this movie is a European production, the clothes have much more of a timeless and classic feel.  Same goes for the locations.  Beautiful architecture really helps set the stage, and the cemetery itself seems full of wondrous little alleys and coves begging to be explored.  It looks like the kind of movie you want to jump right into just to walk around and explore it.

Goodbye Boy Scout. Send the girls back with some cookies.

Cemetery Man is, or at least was for me, an answer to many wishes when it comes to my beloved zombie sub genre.  It is fast paced,never boring and it combines trippy, almost hallucinogenic visuals with classic elements of European horror film making.  It is unapologetic in its cryptic nature, which some have unfairly dubbed as simply confusing, and it is a startling example of how to try an add depth to something that could have existing solely on its surface values.  If you consider yourself a zombie film fan, or even a horror fan in general, and you haven’t seen this, you should do so immediately.  It belongs within every conversation about horror, especially if the conversation is about classics of the 90′s, and can even be looked at (as I do below, beware though it is full of spoilers) in an analytical sense if you are so inclined to try and figure out what is really happening.  Either way, don’t let this one sit there in your “Yeah, I’ll get around to it” pile.  You’ll learn to Love the Dead.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Fuck, that is an awesome giant puppet.

BONUS THEORIES!

Now onto my theories about the actual meaning and psychology behind the film.  If you haven’t yet watched it, I suggest you do at this point.  Cemetery man at first struck me as a story of a man in purgatory or hell, who is meant to learn about the differences between life and death (see his short talk with the death stature towards the end of the film for confirmation of this) or maybe even life itself while he himself rots in a cemetery where he must “re-kill” the undead.  The “She” character could easily be seen as the Devil, as every time she pops up, Frances sets himself back further from learning anything from his mistakes as he takes the bait on her “love” and pays dearly for it every time.  Outside of a religious context to the tale, there is also the possibility that Frances has a very vivid imagination, and that isolation, besides his friend Gnagi who could ALSO be seen as just an elaborate hallucination, has started to play tricks on his mind to the point where he truly believes the dead rise up from the ground and that it is his job to put down the “Returners” as he so eloquently puts it.  There is also the possibility that whenever night time comes along, what happens during the dark is a dream, and maybe he sleepwalks and acts out his dreams.  Of course, these are all just theories, each one having massive holes in them, and would welcome anyone to help me formulate an airtight meaning to this very cryptic gem I love so dearly and hold close to my horror loving heart.

END OF BULLSHIT THEORIES!

The Devil? Perhaps.

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Now playing: Nadja – Clinging To The Edge Of The Sky
via FoxyTunes

That scene in the movie where he's in that tree is even cooler looking in motion.

Madman was released in 1982, right in the thick of the tidal wave of Friday the 13th slasher clones that were being pumped out at a mind boggling rate.  From big budget national release dice ‘em ups, to low budget, backyard quality rampage flicks, the movie industry saw the unprecedented success of films like Halloween and Friday the 13th and then broke both its collective legs trying to be the next studio to pump out a blood-splattered cult jewel.  What happened next was inevitable as the public became burned out on seeing the same stories retold over and over, but among the shameless slop that was shoveled out at a breakneck pace, there exists some gems that not only stand out, but nudge the sub-genre along into uncharted waters.  Madman is one such film that takes what has been done before, and makes small, but incredibly significant alterations to the formula in order to create something not wholly original, but certainly highly entertaining and just original enough to become nessecary viewing for any self-respecting slasher fanatic.

...and thus our story begins.

Madman is an incredibly simple tale, which is actually refreshing since it doesn’t parade around trying to be the next slasher with a great twist ending or be deathly scary by replacing suspense and genuine chills with a whole shitload of too-dark-to-be-really-appreciated outdoor sequences or drawn out, pre-kill silence.  Instead, it simply lays out a fairly thin story of how some guy when crazy and chopped us his family with an axe.  When people found out what he had done, they hung him AND dug his axe into the side of his face.  When they awoke the next morning, Madman Marz, as he is known, had managed to free himself from his noose, and made off with the bodies of his family he had killed.  Neither he nor the bodies were ever seen again.  While it may be a pretty scant mythology, Madman Marz lets his actions speak for himself, and since we aren’t bogged down with dozens of minutes of revelations about our killer that are meaningless, we can be treated to more detail on his soon to be victims, which is one the the first points where I began to realize that Madman was going to be a very different type of slasher film, regardless of its glowingly apparent similarities to its more famous predecessors.

The dreaded Marz house and a fine example of Madmans' incredible nighttime photography that doesn't rob the viewer of detail in favor of spookiness.

Speaking of his prey, the cast here, full of the typical “nobody I recognize” actors, do an amazing job bringing the embarrassingly natural feeling script to life.  Make no mistake, dialogue here is not simply filler in between pot smoking, beer drinking, pre-marital sex, and of course the killing.  It actually stands on its own to make the characters deeper and not only likable, but sympathetic.  It also explores some admittedly half-baked psychology, but its done in such a playful yet relevant manner that it becomes incredibly interesting.  One such scene has a counselor type guy whip out a knife and deliver a very convincing bi-polar personality turn where he threatens to kill his fellow counselors in the room, all the while explaining how no one can really know what goes through another persons mind, and how at any moment, you can never fully tell what something is thinking or plotting.  Its pretty subtle, and to most viewers will hold very little significance, but to me, it was light years ahead of  of its contemporaries, and echoed more like the analysis that goes into the character study/torture porn films like SAW more so than the mindless camp slasher.  In short, everyone holds there own acting wise in this flick, and some even elevate their performances to downright good, striking the balance between slightly cheesy and stereotpyical, and innovative, three-dimensional, and stimulating.

That's exactly why mommy told you to never to run with scissors. Actually, Madman Marz cut this dudes throat open with an axe, which is incredibly badass if you ask me.

All the acting in the world can’t save a flick that doesn’t move at a carefully orchestrated pace though, and Madman proves how even without an opening kill sequence, a movie can still fly by without a hitch.  Director Joe Giannone, directing his ONLY movie, shows brilliantly how to make nighttime in a slasher seem much less frustrating to the viewer.  Instead of relying on huge lights that cast an obviously man-made, sun-like glow, or resorting to on set/location lighting like candles or light fixtures, he uses a variety of filters to give nighttime a very stylish and ahead-of-its-time blue hue.  The clarity seen in the image quality is almost surreal its so pleasant.  It really makes Friday the 13th, and its disciples, look so bland, boring, and ameteurish in comparison.  Besides a stunning visual presentation, Giannone also keeps the pace deliberate, teetering the line between too slow for its own good, and too quick to be tense and enjoyable.  Once Madman gets going, and the other counselors figure out why people are disappearing, the pace ramps up to those blissful last 45 minutes where the killer can pop up anywhere as he plays with the emotions and confusion being experienced by the now weary remaining staff.  Gionnone showed an intimate understanding of the principles and tricks that make a good old-school slasher tick, but also showed a willingness to twist those concrete practices in order to keep the audience guessing, and make for a more convincing, and realistic, serial killer flick.  The audio is standard for a early 80′s movie, and is pretty crisp overall.  You won’t find it blowing you away, but its all there and done well, so there is nothing to worry about on the audio front.

The final piece of the slice ‘em up puzzle, or riddle if you prefer, is the kills themselves.  In many films featuring disfigured or masked psychos chopping up everyone in sight, the kills are seen as the main dish, but with Madman, the style in which each kill is presented is constantly in flux.  Sometimes we will see the actual slaying, sometimes we’ll get just the aftermath, and sometimes we’ll get a cleverly placed quick cut that does more to infer what has happened, than actually showing the act itself.  This usually bothers a self-proclaimed gorehound such as myself, but since the other aspects of the film are already so damn solid, the fact that the payoffs came in many different forms was very palatable, and even welcome.  It’s another example of Giannone wearing many different hats as a director, and flip-flopping, to great affect, through all sorts of different styles and methods to present his murders.  There are some great, and innovative kills to be had though, along with some oft-forgotten traditional murdering techniques, like good old fashioned hanging and neck breaking.  All in all it’s jolly good fun, and well conveyed on screen at all times.

That soft back lighting and the blue filter really make the entire film pop. It has be seen to really appreciate how much it brings to the film.

Madman is a title I couldn’t be more happy that I stumbled upon.  Its unique blend of tried and true formulas and snazzy photography tethers beautifully to the natural, unpretentious nature of the dialogue, the noticeable and commendable skill of the actors, and the clever diversions from the beaten path in terms of how the stalking, killing and pace are handled.  Madman is a testament to the sub-genre of the slasher, and proof that even in times of shameless cash-ins and rip offs, that creativity, innovation, and progression can still be prevalent.  OH, and did I mention you can watch it on IMDB for free as long as you have a free account there?  Yeah, so now you have absolutely no reason not to catch this unusual hidden gem.

Madman on IMDB FOR FREE (Just sign in, or create and account, sign in, and ENJOY!)

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Nothing really witty I can say here, just be mindful of the low bridge.