Turning Japanese--

The Teratology of Battle Royale

There can be only one.

The economy is collapsing. The education system is crumbling. The traditional family structure is in shambles. This is not America in 2008; it’s Japan of 1999 during the middle of an economic depression. A best-selling novel is Battle Royale, which tells the story of 42 middle schoolers who are forced to kill each other. The Battle Royale Program takes place in a near future totalitarian Japan that randomly selects a teenage class and places them in an undisclosed location to participate in a “survival” game. The rules are simple: kill or be killed. Popular action film director Kinji Fukasaku transferred Battle Royale to the silver screen in 2000.

Fukasaku was known as a pulp director, which is a narrative style where the author uses hyperrealism to enhance a story: scenes are bloodier than they should be, situations more absurd, dialogue more stylized. A perfect example in Battle Royale occurs when a character has a hatchet embedded in his skull and continues to speak for several moments afterward, like Wile E. Coyote running for several minutes in midair before remembering gravity.

Walk it off, dude.

Fukasaku’s Battle Royale is pulp on a grand scale. Its violence is sudden and brutal—students are shot, stabbed, decapitated and poisoned. After each death, the victim’s name flashes on screen along with their class number and the number of students remaining, like a gruesome scorecard. With 42 players to keep track of, Fukasaku defines characters by action and weapon of choice: The vicious Mitsuko Souma (Kou Shibasaki) uses a farmer’s sickle to rack up her kills, but the practical Shogo Kawada (Taro Yamamoto) uses a pump-action shotgun. It also includes several haunting visuals: The images of Mitsuko smiling while underlit by a handheld flashlight or the erratic program director, Kitano (Beat Takeshi), leading a calisthenics class in an empty athletic field will stay with you long after the credits roll.

For reference, this is what evil looks like.

Like Terminator 2 (1991) or The Matrix (1999), Battle Royale is pulp that takes itself seriously. Its practical effects are top notch as is its attention to dialogue and characterization; Kitano’s quirkiness and subtlety make him one of cinema’s great villains. Its effects are far reaching; much of Kill Bill’s (2003-2004) elements are drawn from this film. While its effect on The Hunger Games (2012) is debated, it can be seen echoed in a film like Brick (2005), which also places teenagers in adult situations in a pulp setting.

The respect Fukasaku has for the original story comes in part from a massacre during his childhood. During World War II, after a nighttime bombardment, he was conscripted to clean up the body parts from civilian casualties. The experience had a lasting effect on him—he commented in an interview made during the final stages of production on Battle Royale: “Contemporary children don’t encounter situations where their arms and legs can be blown off, right? But I have. I used to watch as bodily fluids oozed from the corpses I carried on my shoulders.” He was 15, the same age as the characters in Battle Royale.

Fukasaku as an adult. Is it me, or have we seen that smile before?

Fukasaku’s firsthand experience makes Battle Royale different from a movie like The Matrix or Kill Bill and unique in the history of pulp film making. Battle Royale’s violence is not glorified, but absurd enough that it echoes the bizarreness of real carnage.

I'm Glad You Changed Your Last Name: Wizards

When you’re young, cartoons are for kids. Some deal with death (like Littlefoot’s mother in 1988’s The Land Before Time), but it wasn’t until I saw Wizards (1977) that I realized animated films could be for grown ups. While some cartoons dealt with grief and loss, Wizards dealt with genocide, propaganda, despair.

There are other adult themes in this movie.

After the opening exposition about how "the world blew up in a thousand atomic fireballs," we are told that magic, monsters and mutations have replaced humans. Groups of strange creatures appear out of the gloom carrying machine guns, and the narration picks up again: "He is called Necron 99. He is one of Blackwolf's assassins." The film cuts to an elderly gnome reading to children; Necron 99 appears in the doorway and shoots the old man dead.

Wizards does not shy away from horrible things: Dread permeates the whole movie. The antagonist in the film is a wizard named Blackwolf who discovers a superweapon from the old world: a film projector loaded with Nazi propaganda. When viewed by Blackwolf’s minions, it induces bloodlust, but the armies of good only stare at the images in shock--the reaction of my younger self as well. As the elvish defenders of a battle are slaughtered, one of them stares wild-eyed at the carnage. The camera cuts to the bottom of the hill on which he is hiding; his sword tumbles down and breaks.

On rewatching, Wizards is ham-handed. The evil forces identify with Hitler, pilot World War II Nazi tanks and planes, use Lugers and wear Swastikas. A villainous toadie eats a side of beef upon which is stenciled the Star of David.

Subtlety.

Other flaws are apparent: Chunks of it are narrated storyboards (though used here to much better effect than in 2008’s REPO!), and the animation is rough; there's frequent rotoscoping (something of a Bakshi trademark). Wizards feels crudely stitched together; scenes that focus on the main characters are split by comic interludes--it’s a strange film that can be both dark and campy at the same time.

Despite its flaws, I have a soft spot for Wizards. I saw it at a much younger age than I should have; amazingly, Wizards is rated PG.

Some material may not be suitable for children.

I grew attached to the characters, especially Peace (a reprogrammed and renamed Necron 99). The simplistic art lends itself to odd but unique character designs. The good wizard, Avatar, looks like a clown wearing Mickey Mouse gloves; his evil brother, Blackwolf, has exposed elbow bones which I'm sure inspired the look of World of Warcraft's undead. It also has the greatest final confrontation between two wizards I've seen on film.

More than anything, Wizards was an early attempt to introduce darker themes into kids' animated films. Don Bluth, creator of the aforementioned Land Before Time, was the spiritual successor to Bakshi’s efforts, but Bluth’s works were more coherent and successful--it’s why movies like The Secret of NIMH (1982) and An American Tale (1986) are considered classics and Wizards is considered cult.

Welcome to Camp Whedon—

The Teratology of Cabin in the Woods

Don't worry. The film isn't nearly as complex as this poster makes it seem.

Josh Whedon has the amazing ability to make me dislike concepts I love (werewolves, demons, cults, ancient evils). It’s not his plots—they’re full of arc and intrigue—but the workaday elements of how he makes his characters speak. Buffy, Angel and Serenity are decent, but every character sounds the same: witty, cutesy, smart-alecky. Whedon writes the way a grownup thinks teenagers speak: His dialogue makes my eye twitch.

If I close my eyes while I'm watching this show, I can't tell who is speaking.

So it came as a surprise that Cabin in the Woods is the best film about horror in years. Note the phrasing “best film about horror” and not “horror film,” since Cabin in the Woods is closer to a high concept parody. It begins with five fresh-faced college kids enjoying trademark Whedon banter; if they were any more stereotypical, they’d have their archetypes tattooed on their foreheads. The jock of our group has a cousin who owns a “cabin in the woods” that is the perfect spot for collegiate indiscretion/murderous rampage. We quickly discover that the cabin lives up to its foreboding atmosphere and that we aren’t the only audience watching these poor souls.

If Cabin gives you a sense of déjà vu, it’s because you’ve seen this all before. That’s the point—Drew Goddard and Josh Whedon, the writers, draw directly from every large horror franchise from the last thirty years. For film buffs, it’s like sightseeing in a hot air balloon: We’re in Romero country. On your left is Clive Barker Island. Now passing John Carpenter Bay (and it used to be such a nice getaway spot).

Like this, but in movie form.

If handled poorly, this meta-awareness can sink a film, but here it’s thankfully understated. Cabin allows for a number of monsters to coexist in the same narrative space, similar to House of Frankenstein (1944) or Monster Squad (1987), without becoming bogged down in how the monsters were assembled. Cabin allows for characters inside the film to comment on horror film “rules” (no sex, drugs or splitting up) without winking too much at the audience. Cabin treats itself as entertainment first and commentary second: It points out the absurdity and tiredness of horror clichés while at the same time exploiting them. It’s a sharp critique that doesn’t take itself seriously.

It’s not the first film to decry the state of horror: Scream (1996) and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006) are both films that peel back the curtain on the narrative structure of slashers. Waxwork (1988) is eerily similar to Cabin in its combination of horror genres, and it is a forgotten gem of practical effects.

Cabin's older brother.

Including Cabin, that’s a self-referential horror film for every decade for the last four decades. The genre is cyclical, and movies come in waves—zombies were hot, then werewolves, then zombies again, then ghosts. Why should the critiques be immune? While some critics are calling Cabin a game changer, I’m calling it a great film from a veteran in the monster business that is tired of shitty movies. Unfortunately, his comments won’t make a peep in the ear of major studios; come summer, there will be another crop of films about a group of fresh-faced youngsters who boldly go where so many have gone before. As long as these films make money, they’ll be back each year, no matter how rotten.

Drive Offensively: Death Race 2000

If the entertainment industries reveal anything, it's that we're obsessed with watching cars race, crash and shoot. Regular automotive events don't slake our thirst for vehicular destruction: Though NASCAR officially started in the '40s, it was only a decade later that demolition derbies became popular. In print, in film, on home console, we can't get enough. There's Harlan Ellison's 1969 short story "Along the Scenic Route," board games like Car Wars (1981) or video games of the Twisted Metal (1995) and Carmageddon (1997) franchises; this small sample doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. The obvious evolution of our interests is the Annual Transcontinental Road Race--better known as Death Race 2000 (1975).

I wouldn't call Death Race 2000 an inspirational movie, but it was influential.

Having seen the 2008 Death Race remake first, I was surprised that Death Race 2000 was so tame by comparison. Instead of the remake's fleet of faceless drivers who exist just to be exploded in high-def, Death Race 2000 features five themed teams with designs surely cribbed from the '68-'69 Wacky Races. The cars have no weapons besides spiked rams. Fatalities are accompanied by cartoon sound effects and overly red fake blood. Instead of racers battling each other, the eponymous death in Death Race 2000 refers to poor schmucks caught on the highway: This competition is based on points awarded for slain pedestrians, so the violence is directed towards American citizens.

The real death panels.

Death Race 2000 challenges America's spirit, propensity for violence and obsession with pop culture. Its dystopian USA has suffered a nonspecific economic disaster. To placate the masses, the Annual Transcontinental Road Race is elevated as the epitome of American ideals: the "greatest sporting event" of the "greatest of nations" whose winner will be the "new American champion for all the world to behold." I don't see how the film could've been set anywhere but America: Our roads are long, our people proud--even more so in times of hardship--our nation hungry for celebrities. Most folks know the Death Race is coming and stay off the roads, but there are a mad few, desperate for attention, who bait the racers into confrontation: A bullfighter taunts Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov) and her horned car, a group of men on foot play chicken with vehicles designed to squash men on foot.

Still safer than most intersections.

This movie is timeless. There's not a theme or concept in it that has not grown more true over time. Our stars are even more worshipped, our sports harder-hitting, the coverage more invasive, the economy worse. Forty years later, and the French are still an American punch line. In terms of style, Death Race 2000 is a precursor to contemporary films like The Hunger Games (2012): The elite wear garish fashions, the reporters are always smiling--but beneath the glamour is a no-nonsense regime censoring the news.

The real nightmare of this future is that '70s fashions never died.

What keeps Death Race 2000 from being serious social commentary is its constant smirking at the audience. David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone, near the beginning of their careers, ham it up as the film's main rivals, Frankenstein and Machine Gun Joe. There's humor in every scene, and the film contains the best pun on "hand grenade" I've ever heard. Death Race 2000 is great, campy fun that demonstrates how violence in our media has escalated over time; what was considered shocking in this film is now commonplace. If the contest was for gratuitous gore on screen, Death Race 2000 is left in the dust of newer models.

Hail to the King: The Teratology of  

Army of Darkness

In Heaven, all movie posters will be as cool as this one.

Unintentional cult movies are the result of colossal mistakes that balance out. A movie like Troll II can’t be manufactured—it just happens. Making an intentional cult film takes skill, guts and vision; a single misstep and your movie is just a giant wink to the audience. You have to be a tightrope walker. Sam Raimi is a director who knows how to walk that rope.

He made his bones in the industry with the Evil Dead trilogy. The third installment, Army of Darkness (1992), continues the saga of Ash, the wisecracking, Oldsmobile-driving S-mart employee whose trip to a secluded cabin with his girlfriend was derailed by the discovery of recordings from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, the Sumerian book of the dead. Demons from another dimension (called Deadites) systematically kill and possess Ash’s loved ones. Ash isn’t immune; ultimately, he must exorcise his own Deadite by cutting off his hand (which he replaces with a chainsaw). Army begins with Ash and the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (and his Oldsmobile Delta 88) being banished to 1300 AD. Ash battles knights, the undead and himself to find his way back home.

The scene where Ash saves President Obama from Tea Partiers was left out of the theatrical release.

I like this movie—not as much as the first two (1987’s Evil Dead II is responsible for my descent into horror), but I do recommend it. Army is campy, it’s funny and action leads it around by the nose; it manages to be zany without being cutesy. Raimi is one of the few directors who does cult intentionally and does it well: The movie oozes cult. The trilogy is a master class on how to make a genre film. Army teaches two things to directors trying to craft their own underground classics.

First, know your cult: Who is the audience for your film? Raimi is writing for teenage boys—he was only 22 when he started the series. Ash is the man every zombie-loving geek wants to be: a cutup with a heart of gold who isn’t afraid to play rough (“Good. Bad. I’m the guy with the gun.”). The film focuses on gadgets more than a film set in the middle ages should: Ash manufactures a robotic hand a la Luke Skywalker—he also converts his Oldsmobile into an engine of death. It features women with heaving bosoms that spend half the movie wanting to sleep with Ash and the other half wanting to kill him. It even has an issue of Fangoria, a magazine that’s been catering to the gorehound teen since 1979.

If Santa is listening, one lifetime subscription, please.

Second, send your cult a strong message: If laws of physics are diluting your message, change those laws. A cult film is one that bends reality to tell a story with style—there’s a reason why noir films are filled with low light and shadow. In Raimi’s case, he set out to make a live action cartoon. Characters don’t just spurt blood when eaten by a demon: They shoot it out like a fire hose. In one scene, a Deadite does a somersault after being shot by a double-barreled Remington. In another, Ash is attacked by skeletons using a Three Stooges eye poke. The first ten minutes of this movie are a goldmine of comedic style.

Army of Darkness is Raimi at his best. It is a film that has embedded itself into the geek lexicon (when someone says “boomstick,” they have this movie to thank). His style is so distinctive that it has become an adjective: When a film uses extreme gore as a sight gag or gives the viewpoint of a fast-moving object, it’s being “Raimi-esque.” When Raimi sticks to his style, he walks that tightrope discussed earlier with ease (see 2009’s Drag Me to Hell). 

If you haven't seen this movie, stop reading and watch it.  NOW. 

When he doesn’t, he falls (do NOT see 2007’s Spiderman III).

 Sitting dejectedly in the rain was also how most audience members responded to this film.

Once More, with Feeling: REPO! The Genetic Opera

REPO! The Genetic Opera (2008) is set in a future inhabited by surgery-addicted masses. Feeling ill? Not as beautiful as you could be? There's an operation for that. You can have the designer organs you've always wanted, but they come at a price. Miss an installment on the payment plan, and the Repo Man reclaims his company's property, be it eyes, heart, spine--the procedure is almost always fatal.

Saying it'll cost you an arm and a leg is probably an understatement.

Early hype about REPO! suggested that The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) had finally found a successor. REPO! had a surprisingly well-known ensemble cast: Anthony Head as the Repo Man himself, Alexa Vega from the Spy Kids franchise as his daughter, Paul Sorvino as owner of the GeneCo corporation, veteran horror actor Bill Moseley, famed soprano Sarah Brightman, Paris Hilton, even Joan Jett shows up for a cameo. Prior to REPO!'s release, all we had to judge it were a good soundtrack and a slick trailer with suitably warped visuals. After a viewing, it's clear that REPO! has much in common with the medically-altered crowds in its cast: beautiful at first glance but rotten on the inside.

The movie never lives up to its promise. What could be a great, gory, campy excursion is hamstrung by baffling writing and pacing choices. The story's weak, but that's forgivable in musicals; the problem is that instead of showing, REPO! tells, and it tells in the worst way possible--with slow, drawn-out, unvoiced, immersion-breaking storyboard sequences. What really twists the knife is that the information in the storyboards is either inconsequential, explained later in song or is obvious to the audience.

Unfortunately, the disease was boring comic strip interludes, and there was no treatment.

The film suffers from superfluous characters. Primary among these is GraveRobber, an out of place Greek chorus. It's only until REPO!'s production history is traced does his real purpose become clear. Like Rocky Horror, REPO! started life as a stage show. Its first iteration was The Necromerchant's Debt, which starred a GraveRobber played by Terrance Zdunich: He's REPO!'s writer, composer, producer and illustrator (Zdunich drew the storyboard sequences). As REPO!'s story evolved, GraveRobber remained, even after he became vestigial. It's a case of self-indulgence: The writer gives himself a role of overblown importance, and he just happens to get the most memorable songs (including one where he dry humps Paris Hilton).
 

This man truly suffers for his art.

It may sound as if I hate REPO!, but I don't. I want to like it, and it's got some standout moments: Bill Moseley angrily chews scenery as he belts out lyrics, Paul Sorvino adds gravitas to the musical performances, Anthony Head is excellent. There's a scene where he sings a duet with a corpse that he's turned into a puppet. His Repo Man is a Batman gone wrong, complete with scary Batman voice.
 

He already knows how you got all those scars.

These moments are overshadowed by the film's flaws--the show itself needs a little work done. My advice? Buy the soundtrack, arrange the songs in your preferred order, and write your own story to stitch them together. It's your chance to play surgeon!

Werewolves Ate My Platoon: Dog Soldiers

The United Kingdom is lousy with werewolves. Whether a tourist-turned-monster is rampaging through London or Lawrence Talbot is running rampant in remote Wales, you can't enjoy a night on those islands without bumping into a lycanthrope.

Werewolves hate hikers.

Even the military isn't safe! Take Dog Soldiers (2002): It's 105 minutes of desperate British soldiers holed up in a cottage, battling the beasts. What makes this movie a treat are the quality and care put into the production: The dark humor and dialog, the charisma of the characters, the slow reveal of practical-effect monsters. You never get a good look at them until the end--before that, and it's just a claw here, a snout there.

Dog Soldiers shares the gritty British horror cinematography from 28 Days Later (2002). The forest is a brilliant green in the day; nights and interiors are grainy and claustrophobic. None of the pyrotechnic effects look like they were performed safely. Action is desperate, frantic, funny: Werewolves don't just get shot or stabbed--they get impaled by broadswords, taunted into a fistfight, burned by the hair spray and lighter trick, jabbed in the head with a faucet and blinded by a camera's flash.

Also, hit with a frying pan by a man screaming hilarious obscenities.

If these elements seem familiar--a cabin in the woods, a squad fighting encroaching creatures, violence that borders sometimes on slapstick--it's on purpose. Dog Soldiers does not work because it's original; there's not an original bone in its body. It wears homages on its sleeve with referential quips: We've got the Kobayashi Maru, a summary of Zulu (1964), the "There is no Spoon" line from The Matrix (1999), children's stories like "The Three Little Pigs" and "Little Red Riding Hood." The final confrontation is Evil Dead (1981), it's Aliens (1986). There's even a Burke-like shill, but we know right away he's a bad guy--at least Paul Reiser had his goofy charm and smile.

All these references and callbacks give Dog Soldiers an almost retro vibe. Neil Marshall, the writer/director (who would go on to The Descent in 2005), stripped the werewolf to its barest bones--a forest-dwelling thing with a canine's teeth and hunger but man's intelligence--and installed it into an '80s throwback. The early 2000s had a number of monstrous revivals in the same vein.

Werewolves were brought back to their violent roots in Dog Soldiers, zombies got fast in 28 Days Later. 30 Days of Night updated vampires; it began life first as a graphic novel in 2002 and arrived on the big screen in 2007. Meant to return the bloodsuckers to their Nosferatu-esque stature, 30 Days of Night ends up feeling like a so-so zombie film set in Alaska. For a movie whose plot is incomprehensibly silly by the end, 30 Days of Night's tone is overly melodramatic; the filmmakers forgot that horror movies don't always have to take themselves seriously. Dog Soldiers doesn't.

Where else can you see a dog in a tug of war over a man's intestines during a werewolf attack?

Dog Soldiers and 30 Days of Night are perfect examples of how this genre can be (mis)handled. One is a scary and fun werewolf romp--the other should be renamed 2 Hours of Boredom.