Maniac

Title: Maniac
Director: William Lustig
Cast: Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Tom Savini
Year: 1980
MPAA: Not Rated
Date of Review: February 27, 2007

Maniac opens with a grisly murder on a beach, where Frank Zito - a schizophrenic serial killer, and the film’s protagonist - kills a young couple having a romantic evening by the seaside. It’s nothing shocking by today’s standards, but it manages to start the movie with a punch, and also begins its 90 minutes of violence, gore and depravity. Every kill throughout the film gets more gruesome - sometimes not visually, but in the tension and the sheer idea of what Frank is doing to these people. The film really doesn’t cover any new ground in the serial killer genre, but it succeeds in being a thoroughly unsettling venture with a main character who is effectively creepy.

Frank is played by Joe Spinell, and at the risk of sounding quite mean, he is a very unattractive man. Not only in the fact that he is overweight, poorly groomed and generally strange looking, but his voice, his mannerisms - even his walk - all add up to a frightening persona. This is both to the film’s advantage, and part of its downfall. In one scene, a beautiful photographer named Anna (played by Caroline Munro - you may remember her as Stromberg’s busty assistant in The Spy Who Loved Me) takes a photograph of Frank talking to a child in the park. Frank sees this, finds out where she lives, and shows up one day, introducing himself as “the guy you one took a picture of in the park”...so of course she invites him into her home, then goes on a date with him. It’s easy to see what the filmmakers are trying to do with this - another serial killer movie which tries to shock the audience with “look how normal these people could be - you could be living next door to a mass murderer!”, but unfortunately Spinell never really turns off the creepiness in Frank, and subsequently it doesn’t seem too plausible that a beautiful woman would ever give him the time of day, let alone invite him into her home without knowing his name.

And while coming to know Frank is a very disturbing experience, you can’t help but feel a little bit bad for the man. He is very sick, of course, but the film also delves into his very lonely (albeit twisted) home life. He has no friends or family, he lives in a single room apartment by himself, and he is never shown by himself without being in a state of emotional distress - Frank is a very sad and lonely man. But that also brings us to his backstory, which is a little muddy. Apparently his mother treated him poorly when he was a child and he sees these brutal murders of women as a way of repaying her for the way he was treated. Unfortunately, this is never made very clear, since the audience only ever hears of it in Frank’s nonsensical ramblings while working in his apartment - and oftentimes he is crying during these short monologues, making it even harder to understand what he is saying. The backstory would have worked much better in one of two ways: if it had been fleshed out and easier to piece together, or altogether dropped so that it seems he is seemingly doing this for no reason. As it is, it tries to add depth to the story but only succeeds in confusing the viewer.

What will undoubtedly catch the attention of most viewers is the gore. Created by special effects and make-up wizard Tom Savini (who also has a small role in the film), Maniac feature the same juicy, chunky, explosive, arterial goreshots you would expect from something with Savini’s name in the credits. Cuts result in gushes of blood, stabs are surrounded by oozing and slurping sounds, and at one point a victim who is shot in the head and explodes from the neck up. But unlike the work Savini did on George Romero’s zombie films, the gore in Maniac can actually be quite unpleasant to look at because of the story’s basis in reality. Of course there are things in the film that would never happen, but there isn’t the constant reminder of the fact that it’s “just a movie” like you would get in horror films dealing with goblins and ghouls.

Maniac is a good but flawed film. Gore afficionados will no doubt love the work presented by Tom Savini - and will also get a chuckle out of his short scene on camera - but others may find that there is really nothing new here to add to the serial killer genre. The story is a blend of several others, sampling especially from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. But while it doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary, what it does do, it does well, and would surely be appreciated by fans of the wave of slasher movies in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

7 / 10

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky

Title: Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky
Director: Ngai Kai Lam
Cast: Siu-Wong Fan, Mei Sheng Fan, Ka-Kui Ho
Year: 1991
MPAA: Rated R for strong violence and gore, and for some drug content.
Date of Review: February 24, 2007

It can be said that there are two different categories of “guilty pleasures”: the first category is the type of movie that is critically panned and generally considered a mediocre movie, but you just have fun with it. The second category is a movie that is poorly written, acted and directed, the effects are hoaky and poorly executed, and the entire movie is so laughably bad that it transcends its own negativity to become something that’s unintentionally brilliant. Riki-Oh fits snugly into the second category, providing more laughs and unintentional hilarity than most comedies intend to provide, and has some of the most outrageous gore ever committed to celluloid. Translation: it’s a great movie.

The story in Riki-Oh is pretty much non-existent. Riki is a prisoner in the future where prisons are run by corporations who exploit the prisoners as free laborers. Some back story is thrown in through random flashbacks involving Riki avenging the death of his girlfriend (or is that his sister?), using the most lethal of martial arts techniques: breath control. Apparently if you have control of your breath, you can stop heart attacks, break through walls of reinforced steel, and have strikes so powerful that you can actually punch through people. It’s quite a feat, to be sure, but the training sequences are what really convince the audience this could be real. Riki trains with his uncle in a graveyard, where they demolish all of the tombstones – you would think something like this would be frowned upon, but when you’re this badass you know no one is going to bother you about it.

One of the best parts of Riki-Oh is its complete sincerity in what it’s doing. Siu-Wong Fan – who plays the titular character – has this look of complete seriousness throughout, as if he is trying to win some awards with an incredibly heartfelt performance in a sure-fire masterpiece of filmmaking. When profusely angered, he puts turns his face towards the sky and screams at the powers-that-be, before engaging in some of the most spectacular air-fu* ever created by mortal men. Surely if a certain invisible character from a novel by H.G. Wells were anywhere in the vicinity, he would have his ass handed to him.

*air-fu (verb); kung fu against an invisible opponent – derives from “air guitar”.

It’s impossible to discuss Riki-Oh without comparing it to another hoaky, low-budget gorefest which is equally brilliant – Peter Jackson’s first feature length film, Bad Taste. Both films make extensive use of homemade prosthetics and make-up effects, and both films use quick cuts between real actors and prosthetics or costumes to try and blend the real and fake elements together. All this really does is magnify how ridiculous the effects really are, and successfully makes both movies even more fun. Both films also feature a final confrontation with a monster that is so utterly ridiculous that it makes you wonder if the filmmakers were trying to create something completely outlandish, or if they were just completely insane. In the case of Riki-Oh, it may very well have been more of the latter.

Where Riki-Oh gets its charm is in its pure sense of fun. How one could not have a great time watching this movie just doesn’t make any sense. The gore is so over the top and out there that it couldn’t even be considered disturbing or offensive, and the movie just makes so little sense and takes itself so seriously in doing so that it’s an absolute joy. It actually brings back memories of another film I recently reviewed called Duel to the Death, in which any plot or believability is completely abandoned for the sake of pure, unabashed fun. Whether this is what was actually intended by the filmmakers is beside the point, because that’s what it is.

How one can not love a movie in which people actually get kicked in half just doesn’t make any sense. Nor does every minute you go without seeing this movie – it’s delightful.

7 / 10

Pan's Labyrinth

Title: Pan's Labyrinth
Director: Guillermo Del Toro
Cast: Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú
Year: 2006
MPAA: Rated R for graphic violence and some language.
Date of Review: February 11, 2007

No two films by Guillermo Del Toro are the same, or even similar. His first film, Cronos, was a stunningly original take on vampire mythology, combining aspects of well-known vampire lore with Del Toro's own fascination with insect biology. The Devil's Backbone was a heart-wrenching ghost tale which was both unnerving and beautiful. Blade II and Hellboy were two comic book adaptations that showed how much fun one could have with the source material, satisfying both longtime fans of the books and newcomers whose first experiences with the characters were these very films. Now with Pan's Labyrinth he shows us his most human film, combining storytelling elements from each of his films with wonderful costume and set designs, to create his most accomplished film to date.

Pan's Labyrinth is the story of Ofelia, a little girl who explores a beautiful and frightening fantasy world which mirrors the turbulent time she lives in: the Spanish Civil War. As she explores this new world, she comes to realize that her place in the fantasy world is much more clearly defined than what she has in the real world. The creatures she meets throughout this world are startling to look at, with almost nothing that physically resembles a human being - but Ofelia is never afraid, because she has seen much worse monsters in the world of man.

The imagery in Pan’s Labyrinth really steals the show upon a first viewing. That is not to say that the narrative or characters are shallow - in fact, they’re entirely the opposite, providing fleshed out, real human emotions. But the worlds that Del Toro has created in this film are breathtaking. From the swooping opening shot showing a glorious castle under the cover of a blue night sky, to the nightmarish world of “The Pale Man” - a blind monster who eats anyone that samples from the delightful buffet that sits in front of him - each setting is unique, but has an organic flow that makes it feel not-too-far from reality. And as Ofelia curiously explores each area, we cannot help but feel just as full of wonder as she does.

This film is rich in symbolism, but the great thing about the way Del Toro crafted the story is that one does not need to pick up on this symbolism in order to have just as emotional and rewarding a time watching it all unfold. As with his previous works, a lot of the imagery consists of insects and very insect-like transformations and metamorphoses, symbolizing characters’ revelations in mind, body and spirit. But one can watch the scene of an enormous toad regurgitating its innards and simply see that at face value, while another sees a comparison with Ofelia’s fascist step father who lives in a barren land killing the occasional straggler (as the toad lives in a dead tree sparsely eating flies). And neither viewer’s interpretation of the scene would be wrong. It’s Del Toro’s ability to step back and let the audience see and feel for themselves - rather than guiding their hand - that gives the film so much power and universal connectivity.

One cannot talk about this movie without mentioning the superb performances - most notably from Ivana Baquero as the young Ofelia. It is a universal truth that a child actor can make or break a film - especially when said film stars said child in the leading role. But Baquero, like every other child actor Del Toro has used, was wonderful. She was able to evoke the feelings of wonder, innocence and fearlessness that were required in the role without resorting to the hammy nature that so many child actors before her have ruined entire movies with. And while her lines of dialogue are few, she delivers them just as realistically as she does the physicality of the role.

Sergi López gives a genuinely frightening performance as Capitán Vidal, Ofelia’s sadistic, fascist stepfather. His scenes of merciless brutality come completely unexpected and will shock even the most diehard horror and gore fans in the audience, but like everything else in the film these scenes are not there for the sake of showing senseless violence. Del Toro does a great job of making Vidal very easy to hate, and strengthening the connection between him and the evil monsters of the fantasy world.

Pan’s Labyrinth is a movie that’s hard not to recommend to everyone. It has all of the things that make going to the movies such a great experience: drama, intelligence, heartache, an easily hated villain, and an even more easily loved protagonist. Combined with its stunning imagery and Del Toro’s one-of-a-kind imagination, it is a movie that should be seen by everyone.

10 / 10

Tattooed Life

Title: Tattooed Life
Director: Seijun Suzuki
Cast: Hideki Takahashi, Akira Yamauchi, Hiroko Ito
Year: 1965
MPAA: Not Rated
Date of Review: February 1, 2007

Seijun Suzuki is a very interesting filmmaker. His 50 year career has made him one of the leading Japanese directors, especially in terms of pure style. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he became one of the more prolific Japanese directors to capture the violence of the yakuza world on screen, and films like Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill have become classics of the genre. Tattooed Life was released in 1965, and is one of his less stylistic and more narrative-driven films, but it still retains his ability to commit some beautiful imagery to film, as well as fantastic action.

Tattooed Life is the story of two brothers: Tetsu and Kenji. Tetsu is a yakuza underling who kills the boss of a rival gang, who then send a man to kill him. His brother Kenji is a passive young man, emotionally fragile and pursuing a career in art, but manages to save Tetsu’s life by killing the man sent to kill him. This prompts the two brothers to run away and live a reclusive life as construction workers. They create many strong friendships and earn the respect of their coworkers, but are constantly watching out for police or yakuza who may show up to arrest or kill them.

It is interesting the way Suzuki presents the presence of a threat. Near the beginning of the film, the police are in pursuit of the two brothers, but don’t really have anything to go on other than the fact that they are two grown men. The one detective who begins to get close is almost always shown from the shins down, as he wears bright red shoes. Later on, a yakuza shows up at the construction site wearing an almost identical pair of red shoes. Several characters throughout the film are shown wearing this almost flamboyantly bright red shoes, warning the viewer that trouble lies ahead. It’s a very different stylistic choice on the part of Suzuki, but it works.

The entire film has the theme of not being able to escape your past – the idea that the things you do and have done are “tattooed” onto you is represented by the yakuza lifestyle quite literally being tattooed onto Tetsu. The yakuza have always been known for their elaborate tattoos all over their bodies, so when Tetsu runs away and does not want anyone to know of his past, he does not let anyone see him unclothed, even when bathing – regardless of the fact that he has become a genuinely different person. It’s a very good look at identity and whether or not people are ever really able to have a fresh start at life.

Tattooed Life culminates in an incredible sword fight, at least equal in quality to anything shown in the best of samurai cinema. It really displays Suzuki’s ability to create a tense, thrilling action scene, and is better than anything else he has done, including the ever-famous climax to Tokyo Drifter featuring the “gun throw”. Tattooed Life’s swordfight is also where Suzuki’s artistic stylings show through the most. The final showdown makes use of a glass floor which the camera sits underneath, providing a great and not-often-used view of each fighter.

No doubt many people overlook Tattooed Life, as it is one of Suzuki’s most straightforward outings. It’s unlike anything else he has done, but it’s also one of the best and most fully realized films of his entire career, even if just looking at the underlying theme. Many of his other films had almost Lynch-ian plots and characters which were quite hard to decipher. But the message of Tattooed Life is clear: the things you do define you, and are tattooed onto you for the rest of your life. While you can try to run away – and may think you’ve successfully done so – the ghosts of your past will always catch up to you, and at some point you will need to deal with them, or else they will destroy you.

8.5 / 10