La Llorona (1933)

La Llorona (The Crying Woman), directed by Ramón Peón, has several claims to fame the chief of which is that it was the first Mexican horror movie. 

The great tradition of Mexican gothic horror begins here.

Made in 1933 it’s also a very early Mexican sound film.

Obviously the producers were encouraged to make this movie by the success of the early Universal horror films, especially Dracula which was shot simultaneously in English and Spanish language versions.

What makes La Llorona really interesting is that this is a genuinely Mexican horror movie, based on a very famous Mexican folk tale, the tale of the crying woman. It is a story of a family curse, a curse that involves the death of a succession of firstborn sons.

It’s also exceptionally interesting structurally. There is a framing story in a contemporary setting and two lengthy flashbacks which explain the origin of the curse. But the two origin stories are totally different and unconnected. This is a feature, not a bug. This movie is among other things an examination of the nature of folk tales and the belief in them.

It doesn’t matter which of the flashbacks is true (and in fact they might both be false). What matters in folklore is that people in the present day believe the stories to be true. In this case the origin of the curse is not that important. What matters is that people believe that there is a curse and that the curse is real. And also that the curse is inescapable.

The framing story concerns a little boy, Juanito, who is celebrating his fourth birthday. He is a firstborn son and the curse always strikes on a boy’s fourth birthday.

The family is well-to-do and they consider themselves to be modern people who do not believe in old legends although of course the servants do.

And when disturbing things start to happen even hardened sceptics will start to wonder if perhaps curses might be real. Maybe Juanito really is in danger?

This is one of those “is there anything actually supernatural going on” movies and you’ll have to watch the movie to find out. The uncertainty on this point is used quite skilfully.

One of those flashbacks takes us back to a romantic triangle in the 17th century and there are complications surrounding an illegitimate child.

The other flashback goes back even further, to the days of Cortez. Again it involves a woman and a child and the woman is an Aztec princess.

The actual legend is very old, possibly even with pre-Columbian origins. It is a tale of the ghost of a mother who murdered her child. There are variations on the legend throughout Latin America.

Most versions have a connection with water but this element is curiously absent from the 1933 movie.

The legend has been filmed many times and makes its appearance in various pop culture media.

The special effects employed in this film are very simple but they work.

The framing of shots is sometimes odd but I suspect that this is deliberate. It is slightly stagey and even operatic but that’s an approach that suits the material.

It is not trying to achieve a totally realistic look. And it has lots of secret passageways!

The slightly strange staging and the unusual narrative technique will put some people off. This movie is nothing like the Universal horror films of that era. It’s that edge of oddness and the movie’s historical importance that makes it worth seeing. I’d describe it as a gothic melodrama with touches of horror. Recommended, but it’s a strange one.

Only a battered 16mm print survives so bearing that in mind Indicator’s Blu-Ray transfer is quite watchable. The most notable extra is a typically excellent audio commentary by Kim Newman and Stephen Jones.

Another very early Mexican horror movie worth watching is very atmospheric The Phantom of the Monastery (1934) which in my view is a much better more successful movie than La Llorana.

A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse (1975)

A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse is a 1975 erotic horror movie from Japan’s Toei Studio.

This is a movie that straddles a whole bunch of different genres and sub-genres. 

It has some superficial affinities to the pinky violence genre (a Japanese exploitation genre that as its name suggests combined sex and violence) but the tone is very very different compared to movies of that type. It really doesn’t feel at all like a pinky violence movie. It’s a gothic horror movie but it belongs to a particular and extremely interesting Japanese sub-genre, the ghost cat story. 

It’s also very definitely an erotic horror movie.

It is set in 1958. Brothels have just been made illegal but before the legislation has even come into effect a way has been to evade the new laws. Brothels are closing down and re-opening as Turkish bathhouses. Technically the girls are not prostitutes. In practice of course that’s exactly what they still are. This story takes place in the bathhouse owned by Genzō Kakinuma (Taiji Tonoyama) and his wife Utae (Tomoko Mayama).

One of the girls, Yukino (Naomi Tani), has decided that this is the right moment to quit the business. She will live a respectable life with her husband. Her sister Mayumi (Misa Ohara) will live with them. What she doesn’t know is that he is a gangster, a gambler and a psycho.

Yukino is betrayed by her husband in several different ways.

He becomes the manager of the bathhouse. He has been having an affair with the wife of the owner. So he has betrayed both his wife and his boss. And he has also betrayed the trust of Yukino’s sister Mayumi. They will later betray Genzō Kakinuma’s daughter Natsuyo (Terumi Azuma).

Perhaps he should have been more careful to make sure that her cat Kuro wasn’t watching. Cats notice things. And they don’t forgive.

One thing does worry the treacherous couple. They are aware that a black cat has been watching them.

Much mayhem will ensue.

A ghost cat can be a supernatural creature or the ghost of someone who has been murdered.

You have to bear in mind that whereas cats in western folklore are often associated with witchcraft cats are not seen as sinister by the Japanese. In a ghost cat story the ghost cat will often act as an agent of just retribution or righteous revenge.

This is not one of those All Men Are Evil stories. In this movie women can be every bit as vicious, treacherous and evil as men. 

There’s some extreme violence and quite a bit of gore in this movie. There’s also a lot of nudity and sex.

The tone and the style are wildly different compared to European, British and American gothic horror films. The special effects are completely bonkers. The lighting and the use of colour give the film a very surreal otherworldly look. This is like a dark gothic horror fairy tale and the intention was clearly to make it look as artificial and stylised as possible.

One thing to keep in mind is that while this is an exploitation movie it’s also a major-studio picture with a reasonably generous budget made by experienced industry professionals.

Despite its links to the pinky violence genre A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse is essentially an erotic gothic horror movie, and a very good one. Highly recommended.

Mondo Macabro’s Blu-Ray presentation looks great. The imaginative use of lighting makes this a movie that really does need to be seen on Blu-Ray. There are some extras including an audio commentary.

I’ve also reviewed an earlier extremely good ghost cat movie, The Haunted Castle (1969). There are many other ghost cat movies and I’m keen to track down as many of them as I can.

Henry & June (1990)

Henry & June, directed by Philip Kaufman and released in 1990, is based loosely on Anaïs Nin’s autobiographical account of her affair with Henry Miller. So this is a biopic of sorts and I have never been able to see the point of biopics. If I have an interest in some historical personage I’ll read a book about him. I won’t watch a biopic.

Henry & June has the distinction of being the first movie to be hit with an NC-17 rating.

It is Paris in 1931 and aspiring writer Anaïs Nin (Maria de Medeiros) is married to successful banker Hugo (Richard E. Grant). She meets aspiring American writer Henry Miller (Fred Ward). Henry and Hugo are close friends. His wife June (Uma Thurman) has been left behind in Brooklyn.

Henry aims to shock the literary world with his first novel, Tropic of Cancer. He tells anyone who will listen that it’s about liberation. We soon find out that for Henry liberation means betraying his own wife and screwing his best friend’s wife (Anaïs) and then lying shamelessly about it.

Anaïs is on a voyage of self-discovery. She is discovering herself as a woman. That means betraying her own husband and screwing another woman’s husband. And then lying shamelessly about it. This is such an inspiring movie.

June arrives in Paris and things get messier and messier but whatever their literary talents might be there is no question that Henry and Anaïs have true genius when it comes to lying.

Anaïs takes a deep dive into the most perverse depths of Parisian life. You have to do that when you’re on a voyage of self-discovery.

June starts to fall apart.

Hugo, the eternal cuckold, stays in the background like a loyal good-natured puppy dog.

Maria de Medeiros was cast because she resembles Anaïs Nin. She certainly looks striking but I don’t think she really manages to bring any depth to her characterisation. We don’t really come to understand Anaïs.

Fred Ward gives the best performance of the movie. We know right from the start that Henry is a louse and by the end we realise just how big a louse he is.

Uma Thurman seems to be all at sea. Perhaps she was miscast and perhaps the script just let her down.

Richard E. Grant seems like he’s wandered in from another movie entirely and he’s finding it to be a jolly old lark.

I don’t mind if the characters in a movie are unlikeable and unsympathetic but in this case they’re unlikeable and unsympathetic is such miserable squalid ways.

Visually the movie manages to create a very scuzzy ambience. Perhaps the intention was to make Paris in the early 30s seem like a world of decadence and sleazy glamour but to me it seemed like a descent into Hell.

The sex scenes are not as explicit as you might expect given the film’s NC-17 rating. I didn’t find them offensive (I just don’t find sex scenes offensive) but they are lacking in eroticism. These are people who seem to approach sex as an unpleasant duty. It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.

If the movie could convince the viewer that Henry and Anaïs really are geniuses pushing the frontiers of literature we might feel inclined to be more sympathetic to their antics. I’ve read both writers. Henry Miller I found to be unreadable. Anaïs Nin’s erotica is quite interesting. The problem is that the movie doesn’t offer any real insights into them as writers so we’re left with the story of two appalling people.

At 136 minutes the film is at least half an hour too long. I found it to be a chore to sit through but if you’re a Henry Miller or an Anaïs Nin fan you might get some enjoyment out of it.

The movie looks OK on Blu-Ray.

I’d suggesting avoiding Henry & June.

Hard Target (1993)

Hard Target is a 1993 action movie directed by John Woo and starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. This is obviously yet another adaptation of the classic 1924 Richard Connell short story The Most Dangerous Game (also published as The Hounds of Zaroff).

Natasha Binder (Yancy Butler) is looking for her daddy. She hasn’t seen him for twenty years, since he walked out on her mother. Natasha discovers that he’s been living on the streets. We know from the opening sequence that something really bad has happened to him.

Natasha is an accident waiting to happen in the big city. It’s not that she’s dumb but she’s not a city girl and in this movie New Orleans is like a post-apocalyptic wasteland in the making. She’s way out of her depth and almost immediately she gets herself into big trouble with a gang of hoods who don’t just intend to rob her. She doesn’t know why this big tough guy rescues her but he does. We will soon find out that the big tough guy is Chance Boudreaux (Jean-Claude Van Damme).

Natasha hires him to help her find her dad because she’s smart enough to realise she needs someone who knows the city and she needs a minder. Her woman’s instincts tell her she can trust this man. And she’s right.

Her father was tricked into playing a deadly game where he was the prey being stalked by bored psychos who like the idea of hunting men. And as a former Special Forces soldier they figured he’d make challenging prey.

Chance starts to work out what happened and soon he and Natasha are being stalked. Chance has been chosen as the latest prey.

The hunters, and there are lots of them, have motorcycles and helicopters and grenades and automatic weapons and Chance is just one guy. But he is Jean-Claude Van Damme so that makes the odds pretty even! And he is not likely to just sit back and allow himself to be hunted.

That’s basically all the plot there is but it’s enough.

Much mayhem ensues.

John Woo is obviously a guy who believes that nothing succeeds like excess and the more excess you have the better you’ll succeed. He gives us lots of excess in this movie. There are explosions. Millions of rounds of small arms ammunition are expended. There are more explosions. There’s martial arts action. Action on horseback. Action with motorcycles and helicopters. And bows and arrows, and venomous snakes. And more explosions.

All handled with incredible style and energy. The finale in the warehouse full of Mardi Gras floats is wild.

Once you accept the premise the movie makes sense. Chance isn’t just a regular Joe, he’s ex-Special Forces so it’s believable that he’s an awesome fighting machine. And it makes sense that he would take on a whole army of bad guys even though he doesn’t owe the girl anything and it wasn’t his fight to start with. Her father was a military veteran, and Chance is a vet as well. And we find out right at the start that he doesn’t like seeing powerful people picking on powerless people and he really doesn’t like seeing women being picked on. If a woman needs help that’s something a man can’t just walk away from. Not a man like Chance anyway.

The psychos hunting men as big game are trying to prove their manhood but Chance understands what real manhood entails.

Van Damme has the necessary charisma. He’s in fine form. And the bad guys are led by two totally evil totally crazy larger-than-life super-villains - Fouchon (Lance Henriksen) and van Cleaf (Arnold Vosloo). Yancy Butler as Natasha is likeable enough and not at all irritating. She doesn’t have GirlPower fantasies - she’s happy to accept Chance’s help and protection.

This is like a fever dream post-apocalyptic western with dashes of Mad Max but set in a totally dysfunctional New Orleans. The action never lets up, which is as it should be. Hard Target is a very superior action movie and it’s very highly recommended.

The earliest adaptation of the Richard Connell famous story is The Most Dangerous Game (1932) which is excellent. Another notable version is Turkey Shoot (1982) and there have been some weird and crazy versions that are well worth seeing, such as Confessions of a Psycho Cat (1968) and Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987).

Bolero (1984)

OK, let’s talk about Bo Derek and Bolero (released in 1984). Critics at the time and almost all online reviewers today will tell you that it’s an awful movie and that she was a terrible actress.

In fact the critics were wrong as usual and sadly most online reviewers assume that this is a bad movie before seeing it. They had already decided that this was an opportunity to indulge in some cheap snark.

The fact is that Bolero is an erotic fantasy romance. This is a kind of movie that frightens mainstream audiences and by the 80s mainstream critics (who praised such movies to the skies in the 70s) had decided that they strongly disapproved of such movies. If you want to enjoy Bolero you have to accept that yes it is an erotic movie.

I shared most of these prejudices before deciding that perhaps I should take another look at the film. I also shared the disdain for Bo Derek until I saw her in Tarzan the Ape Man (1981). Watching her in that I found myself realising that she was actually pretty good. She was giving exactly the performance that was required. It was also the performance that her director, John Dekek (who was also her husband, something else that enraged critics), wanted. She was doing what actresses get paid to do.

Bo Derek is just one in the long line of actresses from the 70s to the 90s who were targeted for career destruction by critics.

Which brings us to Bolero. It is the 1920s. Ayre MacGillvary (Bo Derek) has just graduated from college and has inherited an immense fortune. Now she wants adventure. The first step is to lose her virginity. But she’s a romantic girl and she has seen all of Rudolph Valentino’s movies and she wants the experience to be special. She wants Valentino as the Sheikh to carry her off into the sands of the desert on his horse.

Reality doesn’t always match our dreams. She finds her sheikh and he is handsome and he is a real sheikh but he’s a poetry-writing Oxford graduate and carrying her off on his horse is a problem. He isn’t good with horses. He’s scared of them.

Next up she decides to go to Spain to find a handsome matador. Like Valentino in Blood and Sand.

She finds her matador, Angel Sacristan (Andrea Occhipinti), but he’s also not quite what one might expect. He’s the least popular matador in the country because he never kills the bull. So if you’re worried there’s going to be animal cruelty in this movie I can set your mind at rest. There isn’t any. No bulls are killed. No bulls are injured. For Angel bullfighting is simply a test of skill and courage.

Ayre may have found her dream but there’s Angel’s crazy gypsy girlfriend who vows to kill any woman who steals her man.

And then there’s an accident. Not a fatal one, but it’s a blow to poor Ayre’s dreams.

Among other things this is a movie about women’s sexual fantasies and being a woman Ayre’s fantasies are as much about love as they are about sex. This is a very very romantic movie.

It’s also an homage to silent cinema. Ayre doesn’t just want a man. She wants the kind of romantic hero she has seen in the movies.

It also features sex scenes that are quite explicit for a mainstream Hollywood movie, and a lot of nudity. This was reason enough for many critics to dismiss it out of hand.

It is an erotic movie but it’s an erotic romance movie and it’s a slightly offbeat movie as well.

Don’t worry about whether it gets any of the period details right. This is a total fantasy, inspired by the world of silent cinema rather than the actual world of the 1920s. For the same reason don’t fret too much about any implausibilities in the plot.

I enjoyed Bolero quite a bit and I highly recommend it as pure romantic fantasy.

I saw this movie on a very poor quality DVD years ago. Seeing it now on Blu-Ray is a revelation. It looks great.

Santo vs Evil Brain (1961)

While there had been quite a few Mexican wrestler movies made in the 1950s Santo vs Evil Brain (Santo contra cerebro del mal) was the first actual Santo movie. It was shot (back-to-back with Santo vs Infernal Men) in Cuba in 1959 but not released until 1961.

The movie begins with a silver-masked man (who is in fact Santo) being beaten up and kidnapped by some hoodlums. He is hypnotised and forced to do the bidding of the bad guys.

Later we will meet another masked man (with a black mask) and the two masked men seem to be allies. We discover that they work unofficially for the police.

There have been a number of kidnappings of scientists and the police fear that the brilliant Dr Campos (Joaquín Cordero) will be the next target. A banker is also kidnapped.

The police provide protection for Dr Campos but it may not be enough. 

The next kidnap victim is Elisa (Norma Suárez), the girlfriend of Dr Campos’s assistant Gerardo (Alberto Inzúa). Gerardo tells the police that he is puzzled by this. If the kidnappers are trying to get their hands on Dr Campos’s latest discovery then he, Gerardo, would have been a more obvious target.

The black-masked man sets out to rescue his silver-masked comrade.

While this is going on we find out that the men who kidnapped Santo were part of a spy ring.

The plot meanders around for quite a while as the police hunt the spy gang but we still have no idea what is really going on. Eventually we get a moderately exciting action climax.

If you’ve seen any of the later Santo movies you’re going to be very disappointed by Santo vs Evil Brain which sadly fails to live up to is promising title.

Part of the problem is that the Santo movie formula had not yet been perfected and in fact only exists in embryo in this movie. There is no wrestling in this movie and no real indication that the masked men even are wrestlers. In this film Santo is pretty ineffectual and has no personality whatsoever. He’s actually overshadowed by his black-masked colleague but neither of them could be described as particularly heroic or formidable.

The chief villain isn’t really sufficiently colourful or menacing and his motivations are unclear. We don’t get to know Elisa well enough to care about her fate.

The plot is chaotic. We find out why scientists are being snatched but why the banker? They use him to carry out a bank robbery but that is just a needless distraction from the central espionage plot.

The fight scenes are a bit uninspired.

Although the movie runs for just 72 minutes it still drags. It never develops any real impetus.

The location shooting in Havana is some compensation. The shoot was rather eventful, with the crew escaping from the city just hours before Castro’s army arrived.

While it has considerable historical interest for hardcore Santo fans who will be pleased that Powerhouse Indicator have released these first two Santo movies on Blu-Ray (in very nice transfers) it has to be said that Santo vs Evil Brain is really a rather bad movie. Recommended only for Santo completists.

I’ve reviewed several other Santo movies that are a whole lot better. Santo vs The Zombies (1962) is a much better place to start if you’re a Santo novice. The Santo formula was really starting to fall into place by this time. Santo in the Wax Museum (1963) and Santo & Blue Demon vs. Doctor Frankenstein (1974) are also highly recommended.

Angel’s Egg (1985)

Angel’s Egg is a 1985 anime OVA written and directed by Mamoru Oshii. 

It was devised by Mamoru Oshii and Yoshitaka Amano.

Whether it’s fantasy or horror or science fiction I can’t tell you because I don’t know. Maybe it's all three.

Or maybe it's something else entirely. 

It could certainly be described as art-house anime.

It was not a financial success and it stalled Oshii’s career for several years.

It begins with a young girl and a large egg. She feels that she must protect the egg.

She wanders through an apparently deserted city. It looks like a medieval European city but we will soon come to have doubts about the nature of this city. It may have been subjected to some calamity, possibly war or a plague.

It feels like a fantasy movie but then fairly on the machines arrive. Assuming that they’re machines.

The girl encounters a young man. He might be a wandering soldier or even a wandering knight. He seems determined to be her protector. He carries a weapon which looks slightly machine-like.

The girl is unsure about him but he has become her shadow.

He tells her about a bird he once saw. He asks her what is in the egg. She either won’t tell him or doesn’t know.

There is very little dialogue in this movie and very little plot. It’s a succession of images and moods.Striking, moody, disturbing images but disturbing in a subtle way. Everything is slightly off-kilter.

There are no clear delineations. Where does the water end and the city begin? Is this a city of the living or the dead? There are ruins, or are they skeletal remains of creatures or of machines, or even of gods? Is the man’s weapon a gun or a sword? Is he the girl’s protector or her enemy? Is he human or non-human? Are the girl and the man alive or dead? Are they real? And the fishes. What on earth are they?

Is this a dream or a vision? Is this another planet, or some distorted version of Earth or an entirely imaginary non-real world?

The egg might be the egg of a living creature or of a god or it might be something else entirely.

Asking what this movie means is probably to miss the point. It’s almost as if Mamoru Oshii has conjured up a movie from his dreamworld and is now asking the viewer what it means because he isn’t sure either.

This sounds very arty and very philosophical and possibly mystical and it is all of those things. It has been interpreted as having some Christian significance since many people believe that Oshii was at one time training to be a Christian priest. This appears to be a misunderstanding. He has stated that he had a considerable interest in Christianity but never was training to be a priest. He does know his Bible but he is also interested in religion and mythology in general. Perhaps in Angel’s Egg he is trying to create his own personal mythology.

As for the ending, you’ll have to decide for yourself about that.

The images are as stunning and extraordinary as you would expect given the involvement of Yoshitaka Amano.

Umbrella’s Blu-Ray release (the 4K disc is included as well) looks terrific.

Angel’s Egg is hypnotic and puzzling and if you like plot or character-driven stories this may not be for you. But if you hypnotic and puzzling stories then it’s highly recommended.