Too Beautiful To Die (1988)

Too Beautiful To Die (Sotto il vestito niente II) is a 1988 giallo which is a kind of sequel to Carlo Vanzina’s 1985 Nothing Underneath (AKA The Last Shot).

Nothing Underneath had been a huge hit. It was hardly surprising that that movie’s producer, Achille Manzotti, was keen to do a follow-up. Too Beautiful To Die is not actually a sequel, but it is a movie in much the same style with a similar setting, the same modelling world background and lots of thematic similarities.

Manzotti hired Dario Piana to direct, a bold but appropriate choice. Piana has made only a tiny handful of feature films but he has been an immensely successful director of TV commercials. He was the right man to achieve the kind of look that the movie needed. Manzotti, Piana and Claudio Mancini wrote the screenplay.

This belongs to a particular sub-genre, the giallo set in the world of fashion modelling. In fact the world of of fashion modelling, TV commercials and music videos. A world of sleaze, but the kind of sleaze that the rich and famous enjoy.

The setting is Milan, and Milan in the 80s had a reputation for being a very rich very decadent city that was a major hub in the worlds of art, entertainment, music and fashion.

Alex Conti (Giovanni Tamberi) runs a very high-priced modelling agency. He’s a bit creepy (in a very 80s way) and he sometimes procures girls for very rich men, who require more than modelling from the girls. So he’s a kind of very high-class pimp on the side.

This time it’s all gone horribly wrong. A private party ends in a rape. A model disappears. There’s a car crash. There’s a corpse. And there’s a cop asking questions.

Police Lieutenant Brandam (François Marthouret) isn’t entirely happy about that car crash. The timing seems all wrong. His cop instinct tells him that it smells wrong.

Lieutenant Brandam is a very quiet, easy-going kind of guy, just a regular guy really. The kind of guy you feel you can talk to. Which of course makes him an effective policeman.

David (François-Eric Gendron) is very unhappy. That missing model was supposed to be the centrepiece in his latest music video.

Pretty soon he’s not the only one who’s unhappy. There’s a murder that takes place right in the middle of the shooting of the music video but in such a way that nobody sees it.

This won’t be the last murder.

All the models who were at that unlucky party are feeling nervous.

The plot is reasonably well-constructed with some decent misdirection. We know, and Lieutenant Brandam knows, that the events at that party were the catalyst for all the murders but that doesn’t help at all in indicating the murderer’s identity.

One thing I like about this movie is that Piana doesn’t rely on gore. The murders are not that bloody. They are however cleverly set up and very nicely shot. The murder during the music video shoot is particularly ingenious. Piana pulls off some very impressive visual set-pieces.

The setting in the world of fashion photography and music videos obviously suggests that voyeurism will be a bit of a theme here. There are several photographic clues, including a photograph of one of the murders. One of the key characters has an apartment loaded with cameras keeping his guests under surveillance. The often unsuccessful attempts by the police to keep suspects under surveillance are crucial. Lots of things get observed in this movie but the observation does not always lead to results.

Too Beautiful To Die has a very 80s aesthetic. It’s an aesthetic that has often been sneered at (even in the 80s) although in recent years cult movie fans seem to have learnt to appreciate its distinctive coke-fuelled excessive decadent glamour.

This movie is obviously drawing on the traditions of the giallo (a genre that had by this time been around for twenty years), and perhaps particularly on the late 60s giallos which were often set amongst what was known at the time as the Jet Set. I think it’s reasonable also to see a bit of a Miami Vice influence.

There are also some fetishistic touches. There are the bizarre and elaborate knives used as props in the music video, knives that also get used as murder weapons. These are knives that can be used for play, or for killing. The costumes in the music video definitely have fetishistic overtones. They are slightly reminiscent of some of the costumes used in Just Jaeckin’s wonderful 1984 movie Gwendoline (and it’s interesting to note that Jaeckin had been a fashion photographer). And Jaeckin’s Gwendoline had been inspired by The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline, the fetish comic strip created by John Willie in the 1930s.

It hardly needs to be added that the mention of fetishism is very relevant in discussing a movie that deals with the worlds of fashion modelling and music videos which are very much about fetishism.

This film has been criticised for a lack of psychological depth. I think this misses the point. These people are supposed to be shallow. And the movie is more interested in the ethical vacuum and emotional emptiness of their lives than in individual personality quirks.

It’s also appropriate that a movie about models should be stylish, and Too Beautiful To Die is very stylish indeed. I love the over-the-top 80s aesthetic. And it’s very decadent. It’s also well paced and it has plenty of suspense. It was underrated at the time and it remains underrated. Highly recommended.

The Nucleus Films Blu-Ray looks gorgeous and has plenty of extras.

I reviewed the excellent Nothing Underneath not too long ago.

Blood Shadow (2001-02)

Blood Shadow is an anime OVA from AT-2 Project comprising three episodes released in 2001 and 2002, directed by Nao Okezawa. I believe it has also been released as Crimson Lotus and Red Lotus. It was based on the PC game Guren.

The setting is Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868). A brigade of elite warriors has been established to fight demons. They are the Crimson Lotus and they are answerable only to the shogun. They have been trained since childhood. They have all kinds of ninja skills as well as demon-hunting skills. Since this is anime you won’t be surprised to learn that most of the members of the Crimson Lotus are very cute young women. Their leaders are a young man named Rekka and a slightly older woman, Tsukikage. Tsukikage was Rekka’s mentor and he sees her as a kind of big sister.

The other members of the Crimson Lotus are girls, Misako, Akane and Ayano.

I’ve been able to find out very little about the production history of this anime. It seems to be regarded as rather disreputable and is often dismissed as mere hentai. Technically this is hentai. It includes hardcore sex scenes. I think it’s a little unfair to dismiss Blood Shadow as nothing more than hentai. There’s plenty of action and plenty of horror content. I’d call it erotic horror with both the erotic and horror elements being reasonably extreme.

Episode 1, The Demons, introduces us to the hero Rekka and Tsukikage as they are battling a particularly troublesome demon. Tsukikage sacrifices herself to save Rekka.

During another fight with demons Rekka encounters Haruka. She’s a sweet girl but she’s not entirely human. She has some demon blood, and she hates herself for this. She is shocked when Rekka wants to have sex with her - how could a man want to make love with a girl tainted by demon blood? She expects him to be repulsed by her but it turns out that they both enjoy themselves a great deal. Haruko is recruited into the Crimson Lotus.

They also hear a rumour of a mysterious group known as the Black Steel.

In Episode 2, Darkness, their mission is to persuade the legendary demon huntress Kureha to join the Crimson Lotus. At first she’s not interested but eventually she relents. There’s another mission as well - to destroy a powerful demon named Burai who preys on women.

They discover that the Black Steel (or Kagemai) is another demon-hunting group, but they seem more ruthless and perhaps more morally ambiguous than the Crimson Lotus. Rekka has by now made a discovery - not every demon is evil. That’s not just because of Haruko.

Rekka and Kureha also make a discovery - a hard day’s demon-hunting puts them both in the mood for a bit of bedroom fun.

Things get much more crazy in Episode 3, Laughter, as Rekka starts to figure out what is really going on. There’s evil afoot but the evil is much more complicated and twisted than he’d thought. Key characters will find out things about themselves. There have been betrayals by powerful people. Certain forces have been unleashed.

Blood Shadow is a pretty decent horror tale with lots of demonic mayhem and rivers of blood.

The idea of sex-obsessed demons isn’t really all that outlandish. Sex demons (such as succubi and incubi) are an important feature of many folklores and let’s face it every vampire story is to some extent about sex.

Whether you enjoy Blood Shadow or not depends entirely on how you feel about depictions of graphic sex and how you feel about hentai. If you can handle some of Jess Franco’s more extreme blendings of sex and horror (such as Female Vampire and Doriana Gray) you should be able to handle this. While it’s certainly scuzzy I think hardcore scenes are easier to take in anime form than in live-action form. The erotic content is part and parcel of the story here. But if you really don’t care for hardcore scenes you might not enjoy this anime.

I thought Blood Shadow was not outstanding but still pretty good. I recommend it, with the caveats alluded to above.

Blood Shadow has been released on Blu-Ray by Critical Mass. It offers the Japanese language version with English subtitles, and for those masochistic enough to want to watch anime in an English dubbed version that option is offered as well. The transfer is excellent.

Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972) rewatch

Lucio Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling was released in 1972. It’s usually regarded as a giallo but it’s not quite a conventional entry in that genre.

The setting is a very traditional poor rural small in southern Italy, whereas most gialli have wealthy modern urban settings and if they’re set in Italy are more likely to be set in northern Italy. Don’t Torture a Duckling takes place in a world still dominated by superstition.

A young boy is kidnapped, or at least he has disappeared and there is reason to think he has been kidnapped. We see him and his two friends and they appear to be no wilder than most young boys.

In the very early stages of the movie we are also introduced to a number of rather odd characters. There’s Guiseppe Barra. We see him spying on a couple of prostitutes servicing their clients in an old warehouse. Barra is a bit simple-minded but is generally regarded as perfectly innocuous. There’s a woman wandering in the woods who looks like she’s stepped straight out of the Middle Ages. We later find out she is Maciara (Florinda Bolkan) and she seems to practise witchcraft. Of course it’s unlikely that she has any supernatural powers. She is probably a bit crazy but totally harmless.

There’s Francesco. He practises magic but he’s widely respected even by the local police and clergy.

Then there’s Patrizia (Barbara Bouchet), a beautiful young blonde with a rich daddy. She had a reputation as a bit of a wild girl. We see her flaunting her naked body in front of a young boy. She might be twisted and perverse, or she may be indulging in good-natured teasing.

We’re also introduced to the popular young parish priest, the experienced levelheaded older cop and the much keener young detective lieutenant. And lastly persistent newspaper reporter Andrea Martelli (Tomas Milian).

There are several murders. The victims are all young boys. None were sexually assaulted.

The police arrest suspects which only leads to disasters. Andrea plays amateur detective and uncovers some clues.

The major problem is that once you’re ten minutes into this film you know exactly how it’s going to end and the grindingly obvious ending you fear and anticipate does indeed come to pass. A potentially great movie ends in a trainwreck.

The acting is pretty good. Seeing Tomas Milian in a sympathetic role took some getting used to. Barbara Bouchet is extremely good. It is however Florinda Bolkan who effortlessly steals the movie with her powerhouse performance. An extraordinary actress at the top of her game.

The violence in the first half of the movie is very restrained and the potentially disturbing murder scenes happen entirely off-camera. Later on we get an incredibly brutal scene which really is disturbing and powerful. And at the end we get a totally pointless exercise in crude gore which makes the disastrous ending even worse.

This is a giallo but it lacks all the superficial giallo trademarks.

The setting is interesting and the location shooting looks good. There’s not much here in the way of impressive visual set-pieces. This is much less stylish than other Fulci movies I’ve seen.

The Blue Underground DVD which I bought years ago still looks fine although it’s lacking in extras. There have been other DVD releases and the film has since been released on Blu-Ray.

I’m a major Lucio Fulcio fan and I still regard The Devil’s Honey (1986), One on Top of the Other (AKA Perversion Story, 1969) and A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971) as authentic masterpieces. I even liked Aenigma (1987). Which makes Don’t Torture a Duckling all the more disappointing. I saw this movie fourteen years ago. I hated it at the time and seeing it again just confirms my very low opinion of it. A poor movie from a very very good director.

The Black Cat (1981)

The Black Cat is a 1981 Lucio Fulci movie and I’m becoming very fond of Fulci’s 80s work.

There have been countless Edgar Allan Poe adaptations but very few have been faithful adaptations, for the obvious reason that apart from one short novel he wrote nothing but short stories. Any film version is going to have to expand those stories considerably. The most effective approach has always been to use a Poe story as the initial inspiration and then build a new story around it. That’s the approach taken here.

We don’t get an initial explanation. We see a series of odd sinister events. People are killed in apparent accidents, but the accidents are puzzling. There is always a particular black cat in the vicinity. He seems to be a bad-tempered cat but of course that does not make him evil. Some cats are just bad-tempered.

We get lots of shots from the cat’s point of view.

The setting is a small village in England. Scotland Yard, in the person of Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck), become involved after the disappearance of two young lovers. They have eloped. The audience knows better. They have met a very unpleasant end.

That’s not the only strange thing going on. The elderly and rather eccentric Professor Robert Miles (Patrick Magee) spends a lot of time in graveyards talking to the dead. He does this in the interests of science. He has various scientific instruments with him. He seems to believe he can contact the dead.

In fact he believes himself to be a medium but he wants to put the process of communicating with the dead on a more scientific footing.

This attracts the interest of an American woman, Jill Trevers (Mimsy Farmer). She’s visiting the village to photograph the ruins.

There are other deaths that seem to be brought about by the cat.

Jill becomes acquainted with the professor and discovers his odd relationship with that feline. He believes the cat intends to kill him. He also believes that while he and the cat hate each other they also need each other. There’s a weird bond between them, and possibly some kind of psychic link.

Jill is convinced that the cat is involved in some way with all those fatal accidents but Inspector Gorley is a straightforward commonsense copper and he doesn’t buy into such nonsense.

The plot may appear to have some holes and some incoherencies but I’m not convinced that is really the case. The business about the professor’s attempts to contact the dead may not be tied in directly to the central plot but it serves a purpose. It establishes that the professor is well-versed in the occult and in fringe areas of science. This makes it plausible that he might have the knowledge, skill and power to forge a psychic link with an animal.

It also adds the suggestion that these strange events may have a supernatural cause or alternatively the explanation may lie in some kind of esoteric science. It adds to the ambiguity.

I do think Fulci was aiming for a degree of ambiguity and that he did not want the link between the professor to be explained by witchcraft or magic. He wanted us to consider more interesting possibilities.

Mimsy Farmer and David Warbeck are perfectly competent in their roles but of course it’s Patrick Magee who dominates the movie. He’s both sinister and strangely frightened. At times he feels in complete control, at other times he feels that events have spiralled completely out of his control. The viewer is not sure if the cat is controlling the professor or if it’s the other way around and maybe the professor is no longer sure either. It’s always great to see Patrick Magee in any movie and it’s even better here seeing him in a starring role.

This is a nicely shot movie that makes good use of the English locations. A picturesque peaceful quaint little English village makes a fine setting for terror and mystery.

The movie has a pretty tenuous connection with Poe’s story but it has a distinctive flavour of its own. It’s by no means conventional gothic horror. The Black Cat is intriguing in its own right and it’s highly recommended.

Arrow have released this movie on DVD and Blu-Ray in a lovely anamorphic transfer with a wealth of extras. The highlight of these is, as you might expect, Stephen Thrower’s informative and perceptive video essay. The Arrow release offers both the Italian and English dubbed versions. In Italian movies of this era it’s pointless worrying about which is the original version - the Italian language versions were post-dubbed as well. In this case most of the key cast members are English speakers are dubbed their own voices so in this case the English version is obviously preferable. And you don’t want to miss out on hearing Patrick Magee delivering his own lines.

Flesh + Blood (1985)

Flesh + Blood, released in 1985, was Paul Verhoeven’s first American movie. Or at least it was his first movie made with American money for an American studio (although there was a small amount of Dutch and Spanish financing as well). It was in fact shot in Europe, mostly in Spain.

The setting is western Europe in 1501. Movies that took a grim unglamorous view of the Middle Ages were very fashionable at the time (John Boorman’s Excalibur came out a few years earlier) but Flesh + Blood must be just about the grimmest depiction of the period ever put on film.

The Duke of Arnolfini has hired a band of mercenaries to recapture his city for him. Having promised them unlimited loot he then betrays them, driving them off with nothing to show for their efforts on his behalf. He persuades the leader of the mercenaries, Hawkwood (Jack Thompson), to do the dirty work of betrayal for him.

In the course of sacking the city Hawkwood butchers a nun. It is entirely accidental. This becomes the pivotal event of his life. He now intends to buy a farm in the country and devote himself to nursing the nun back to health. He wants no more of killing. His motivation is not entirely clear. It may be that he thinks that by slashing a nun with a sword he has committed a grievous sin. Maybe he was getting disillusioned with war anyway. Maybe there was something about the nun that fascinated him (she’s a young pretty nun).

One of Hawkwood’s lieutenants, Martin (Rutger Hauer), becomes a kind of unofficial leader of the penniless mercenaries. He would like revenge. He is perhaps even more motivated by a desire for money and power. He was cynical enough to begin with but now he realises more strongly than ever that without money and power a man is nothing.

The accidental finding of a statue of St Martin changes everything. The mercenaries’ spiritual leader is the Cardinal (Ronald Lacey). In fact he’s just a crazy priest. He sees the statue as a sign from God. St Martin is of course Martin’s patron saint. This must mean that Martin is destined for greatness, and the statue will lead him to that greatness. Martin is now undisputed leader of the band.

Arnolfini has arranged a marriage for his son Steven (Tom Burlinson). Steven fancies himself as a scholar, a man of science. He’d like to be the next Leonardo da Vinci, inventing cool machines and gadgets.

His intended bride is Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Steven is not keen on the idea of marriage. Agnes has a certain natural adeptness at the art of seduction and she manages to get him interested in her. She also convinces him that their destinies are linked.

Disaster strikes. Agnes is captured by the mercenaries and raped by Martin. It’s a controversial scene but it’s the pivotal moment of the movie. Martin now feels that his destiny is tied up with Agnes. She is now his woman, but she is more than that. She is an obsession.

There are plenty of adventures and disasters in store for all these characters whose fates become hopelessly intertwined.

Verhoeven is intensely interested in religion (although he is hardly a fan of the Catholic Church) and there’s plenty of focus on religious motivations, usually entangled with desire for money, power and sex.

This is not at all a Hollywood movie. Most of the characters do not have straightforward character arcs. They are contradictory multi-faceted characters capable of both good and evil, selfishness and sacrifice. The contradictions in their characters do not necessarily get neatly resolved. The movie suspends moral judgments on the main characters. Viewers will have to decide for themselves how they feel about these people.

This applies in a limited sense to Steven. It applies much more fully to Hawkwood.

Martin and Agnes are the most contradictory and multi-faceted of all. They are not people who have definite goals in mind. They react to situations in which they find themselves in whatever ways seem most advantageous to them at the time. Whether they have any genuine feelings for one another is uncertain. They seem to be motivated not by love but simply by a belief that their destinies are linked in inescapable ways. They are also very definitely motivated by survival. In the circumstances in which they find themselves that’s not entirely unreasonable. Their behaviour seems inconsistent because they adapt to circumstances.

Rutger Hauer is very good. Jack Thompson (an Australian actor I’ve never liked) is surprisingly good, as is yet another Australian actor, Tom Burlinson. The acting honours however go to Jennifer Jason Leigh who gives a wonderfully enigmatic performance.

At times Flesh + Blood is uncomfortable viewing. It’s a movie that takes a very bleak view of human nature, with not a trace of romanticism or idealism. It’s a powerful movie and it is highly recommended.

Arrow’s Blu-Ray looks great and Paul Verhoeven provides another excellent audio commentary.

Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (1989)

Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend, released in 1989, is one of the most notorious of all animes. It was based on a manga series by Toshio Maeda. There were in fact several Urotsukidoji OVAs.

The first thing I want to say is that although it is often described as hentai I think that’s very misleading. There is some reasonably explicit sexual content but the sex is probably the least excessive and outrageous element in a very excessive and outrageous anime. I would certainly not describe this as hentai. And there’s a great deal more to Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend than sex.

There are three separate worlds - the human, beastman and demon worlds. After sleeping for three thousand years the Chojin (or Overfiend as it’s somewhat unfortunately rendered in the English title) is about to awaken. According to legend the Chojin will unite the three worlds. This will be a good thing. Perhaps.

The Chojin will be reborn in human form. Nobody knows the identity of the human in which the Chojin will be reborn. Various factions within the beastman and demon worlds are very anxious to find this human host, although they are not entirely sure what they then intend to do.

It seems likely that the human host is a student at a particular Japanese university. There are at least three students there who are possibilities. One is Nagumo. Nagumo is in love wth a sweet girl named Akemi. A muscle-bound athlete named Ozaki is another possibility, as is the socially inept Niki who is sexually obsessed with Akemi.

Amano and his sister Megumi are from the beastman world. They want to find the Chojin, preferably before the demons find him.

The problem is that the human host has no idea that he is the Chojin. Even when he finds out he still doesn’t know what his purpose is, or what his destiny is. Nobody knows what the Chojin’s destiny is. Nobody knows what will happen when and if he tries to unite the three worlds.

This is not a straightforward good vs evil story. The demon world might be disturbing but that does not necessarily make it evil. The Chojin might be good or evil. You have to bear in mind that Japanese concepts of the supernatural are very different from western Christian concepts.

Amano has been given a glimpse into the future and it worries him.

The rebirth of the Chojin certainly makes an impact, although whether it’s going to be a good thing or a very bad thing remains uncertain. Suffice to say that the Chojin is not what anybody expected. And it appears that whatever forces have been unleashed may be unstoppable.

There’s a weird romance angle which will have strange consequences. There are prophecies to be fulfilled and destinies to be achieved.

Along the way there’s a breathtaking amount of mayhem and carnage.

Amano is as close as this movie comes to having a hero. He and his sister Megumi and their odd little demon pal Kuroko are the good guys. Or at least they think they’re the good guys.

This is a movie in which there are forces that represent pure evil, but perhaps they’re not pure evil. It depends on your point of view, and on the price you consider worth paying to achieve goals that may or may not be desirable.

The violence is extreme but it’s so over-the-top that it’s less disturbing than more realistic violence would have been.

This movie’s reputation would lead one to expect truly shocking sexual content but I really don’t think there’s anything overly shocking here. It’s certainly an anime for grown-ups.

It’s the stylistic excess that is most shocking here. It’s stylistic excess pile upon stylistic excess to the point of madness. There’s a certain appeal to that. This is not an anime constrained by considerations of moderation or good taste.

It’s a wild ride but I enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

The Kitty Media release includes the movie version as well as a slightly different version on DVD. The Blu-Ray offers the option of watching in Japanese with English subtitles. The English dubbed version is included as well but I have no idea why anyone would want to an anime dubbed into English.

Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983)

Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn is a 1983 post-apocalyptic science fiction action movie directed by Charles Band that includes just about all the ingredients associated with that genre. It was billed as High Noon at the End of the Universe and it does have a bit of a western vibe. It also obviously owes a huge debt to Mad Max II: The Road Warrior.

This movie (wisely in my view) doesn’t bother explaining things at the beginning. Obviously we’re in a post-apocalyptic wasteland but that’s all we know.

In what was already the well-established post-apocalyptic tradition the action takes place in a desert and there are lots of vehicles that are like armoured dune buggies.

Dogen (Jeffrey Byron) is the hero. He’s a Ranger and he’s also a Finder. We never do find out what that really means but he’s clearly one of the good guys. His mission is to track down Jared-Syn (Mike Preston) who is some kind of super-villain stirring up trouble among the Cyclopeans. The Cyclopeans appear to be one-eyed mutants.

Dogen encounters some of Jared-Syn’s henchmen including Baal who is a kind of Cyclopean cyborg and apparently Jared-Syn’s son. Much mayhem ensues. Lots of vehicles get wrecked, there are lots of explosions. Dogen has to fight a duel with one of Jared-Syn’s champions. It’s all standard action movie stuff.

There is some crazy mystical stuff which makes things more interesting. Jared-Syn doesn’t just kill his enemies. He drains their life force and stores the energy. There’s lots of stuff about crystals. There’s some dimension-jumping stuff as well.

Of course there’s a girl, Dhyana (Kelly Preston). She and her father are working an abandoned mine when they get attacked by Jared-Syn’s heavies. Dhyana then hooks up with Dogen.

Dogen has also acquired a cynical smart-talking side-kick, Rhodes (Tim Thomerson).

Jared-Syn’s objective is to start a holy war which will of course end with him in charge. Dogen has to stop him, and rescue Dhyana.

This movie was shot in 3-D. I’ve only seen the 2-D version which looks fine apart from the aerial sequences which were obviously shot to take advantage of the 3-D technology. On the whole the visuals are pretty good and the action scenes are done quite well.

The plot makes no real sense so it’s best not to worry too much about it.

The acting is a mixed bag. Mike Preston makes a terrific sinister charismatic villain.

Jeffrey Byron as Dogen is however sadly charisma-challenged. In fact he’s kind of dull.

Kelly Preston as Dhyana is a bigger problem. It isn’t her fault. Her part is badly underwritten. We expect her to be a feisty sexy heroine but she is given no opportunities to be either feisty or sexy. More damagingly there is zero chemistry between Dogen and Dhyana. Again it’s the script that is at fault. One of Dogen’s motivations is to save her so we have to believe that he has some feelings for her but there’s no indication that he’s more than vaguely aware of her existence. The two of them don’t get a single love scene.

It was A Boy and His Dog in 1975 that launched the post-apocalyptic sci-fi craze and established the basic aesthetics of the genre. Damnation Alley followed in 1977 but it was of course Mad Max II: The Road Warrior that kicked the genre into overdrive and inspired countless imitations.

The great thing about the post-apocalyptic aesthetic is that it always looks cool and it could be done on a very limited budget. There was no need for elaborate sets or whizz-bang special effects with spaceships - all you really needed was to find an abandoned quarry and star filming. Cool creepy makeup effects always helped and the makeup effects here are done reasonably well.

Not surprisingly it was the Italians who made the weirdest and most interesting movies in this genre and who pushed it in genuinely interesting directions in movies like Lucio Fulci’s Warriors of the Year 2072 (1984) and the totally bonkers but mesmerising She (1984).

There’s no way you could describe Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn as a great cinematic achievement. It’s very very cheesy but for a low-budget production it looks good and it’s fun. Recommended.

Perfect Blue (1997)

Perfect Blue is a 1997 Japanese anime psycho-sexual thriller directed by Satoshi Kon.

This is the story of Mima. Mina is a pop idol, a member of a J-pop girl group called CHAM. They are moderately popular but have never quite made the big time. Mima feels she’s going nowhere and decides to make a major career change, quitting CHAM to try to establish herself as a serious actress. We’re already getting a glimpse of one of the movie’s major themes, as Mima has decided to abandon one artificial role in order to take on another role that is equally artificial.

She lands a role in a TV crime drama called Double Bind. It’s an amazingly lurid series focusing on a cop and a psychiatrist investigating sex murders. We see lots of clips of Double Bind and I’m inclined to doubt whether such a sleazy series could ever in reality have been screened on television in Japan (or anywhere else) in the 90s. But that’s not a flaw in the script for Perfect Blue since this is not a movie about reality.

Mima’s acting career progresses slowly but she does start to make a bit of a name for herself. She is a minor celebrity (just as she was a minor celebrity as a singer in CHAM). She supplements her income by doing nude modelling.

Her character in Double Bind undergoes a personality crisis after being raped. Mima’s own personality seems to be unravelling at the same time. She keeps seeing herself, but is it her?

Then people associated with the Double Bind TV series start getting murdered.

Mima has already acquired an internet stalker who posts things about her on the net. His website is called Mima’s Room. She is concerned that he seems to know an awful lot about her. It crosses her mind that he may in fact be watching Mima’s real room, in her apartment.

The lines between reality and fantasy become more and more blurred, for both Mima and the viewer of Perfect Blue. There are multiple levels of reality - the real world, the artificial reality of the entertainment world, the world of the Double Bind TV series, the world of celebrity culture, the internet and the world of Mima’s fantasies or dreams or illusions. Assuming that they’re her fantasies and not somebody else’s. And Mima doesn’t seem to know if any of these worlds corresponds to objective reality. The viewer isn’t sure either.

Mima is so accustomed to playing a part (firstly as the cute squeaky-clean pop idol and later as the sexy actress with a reputation for doing sleaze) that it’s possible that she’s forgotten how to play herself. It’s even possible that she doesn’t really have a self.

But don’t jump to conclusions. Don’t assume that Mima is crazy. This movie is open to various interpretations.

To find out whether Mima finds her way back to any kind of actual reality you’ll have to watch the movie.

It’s interesting that although this movie was made in the very early pre-social media days of the internet it’s extraordinarily prescient about the effects that the internet was about to have on society.

I have seen this movie described as Hitchcockian but apart from the fact that there are hints of voyeurism I don’t see it as being the slightest bit Hitchcockian. There might perhaps be some hints of De Palma.

This is much more of a surrealist film. It’s closer in feel to Jess Franco films like Necronomicon - Geträumte Sünden (AKA Succubus, 1968) or Paroxismus (AKA Venus in Furs, 1969) than it is to Hitchcock.

Modern viewers might find the animation style old-fashioned but I think it works, emphasising the unreality and artificiality of everything we’re seeing.

This is certainly an anime for grown-ups. There’s sex and there’s nudity, including frontal nudity. There’s violence.

Perfect Blue is a twisted but somewhat cerebral psycho-sexual thriller about madness, obsession, the nature of reality and the masks people wear and the ways in which the masks can become more real than the people behind them. Highly recommended.

The Shout! Factory steelbook release offers the movie on both Blu-Ray and DVD. The extras include a reasonably interesting interview with Satoshi Kon conducted at the time of the film’s release and a much more interesting lecture delivered by him a decade later to film students. Unfortunately Satoshi Kon’s extremely promising career was cut short by his premature death in 2010.

Whirlpool (1970)

José Ramón Larraz’s Whirlpool is an erotic horror movie with an interesting history. It’s an Anglo-Danish co-production shot entirely in England by a Spanish director and post production was done in Italy. It was released in 1970 and within a couple of years vanished completely. It became one of those legendary lost movies, to the great frustration of fans of the fascinatingly odd movies of Larraz. It was however not lost after all and a few years ago it received a Blu-Ray release from Arrow.

Tulia (played by former Penthouse Pet Vivian Neves) is an aspiring fashion model. She accepts an invitation from Sarah (Pia Andersson) to spend a weekend with her in the country. Sarah is a middle-aged woman with some vague connection to the world of fashion modelling. Sarah lives in a cottage with her nephew Theo (Karl Lanchbury). Theo is a keen photographer. He’ll be able to take some photos of Tulia. Theo and Tulia will both enjoy that.

Before this happens we’ve already had a scene in which an attractive nude young woman wakes up in bed next to Sarah. Whatever happened in that bed was clearly not to the young woman’s liking. She’s heading straight back to London pronto.

At this point one has to consider Tulia’s motivations, which are a little confused. Her problem is that having established a very tentative toehold in the world of fashion modelling she thinks she’s a sophisticated woman of the world, but while she isn’t totally naïve she isn’t as sophisticated as she thinks she is. She’s also a city girl and it has never occurred to her that spending a weekend in an isolated cottage in the country with a woman she’s met once and a young man she’s never set eyes upon might involve some risks. She’s also very young.

The fact that Sarah is a lesbian doesn’t shock her. The fact that Sarah takes an obviously sexual interest in her doesn’t shock her either. It might be an adventure.

A game of strip poker ends with Tulia and Theo getting it on on the living room floor. At which point something happens that should ring major alarm bells for Tulia, but Tulia is too inexperienced to recognise its significance.

There are some three-way games of flirtation and seduction. A drive in the countryside with Theo leads to a situation that should ring even louder alarm bells, but Tulia shrugs it off.

Of course Tulia’s lack of alarm may have something to do with those special cigarettes Sarah plies her with. The idea that they might contain ingredients other than tobacco doesn’t occur to her.

Tulia does wonder what happened to Rhonda. Rhonda was a girl who also spent some time at the cottage. Tulia has seen nude photos of her shot by Theo. Apparently Rhonda just suddenly went back to London. We, the audience, know that Rhonda was not the naked girl in bed with Sarah at the beginning of the movie so we know that a number of young women have accepted invitations from Sarah.

Tulia eventually figures out that there’s more going on than just an older lesbian looking for pretty bed companions. The fact that Sarah is middle-aged is important but in more complex ways. Sarah and Theo are both wanting to drag Tulia into their sex games but there’s another occasional player as well. All the sexual motivations in this household are perverse in very complicated ways. There’s also something significant about the differing motivations of Sarah and Theo but to say more would be to risk spoilers.

Tulia is hopelessly out of her depth and would be wise to leave, if she can.

The acting, which is a little stilted on the part of all the key players, could have been a problem in a straightforward realist movie but in a movie such as this the fact that it’s a bit off just adds an extra layer of strangeness. The real problem was probably not the dialogue but the script. It’s a fine complex twisted story but the dialogue is very stilted and doesn’t ring true. This may simply be that Larraz, who wrote the screenplay, was Spanish and just hadn’t yet developed an ear for natural English speech patterns and colloquialisms. It’s a problem that isn’t so noticeable in his later films which makes sense. As he made more movies in England he would naturally have become more comfortable with the language. Whirlpool would have benefited from some dialogue polishing from a native English speaker but the budget presumably would not have stretched to that.

There’s plenty of nudity and sex which earned the film an X rating in the United States. The sex is rather graphic for 1970. There’s also some reasonably graphic violence.

This is a non-supernatural horror movie. Or at least that’s probably the case. There are sequences that can be interpreted in various ways, and which can be seen as hinting at the supernatural, or perhaps the paranormal. It’s another way of increasing our sense of unease.

There are certainly things in this story that make no sense. The first act of violence not only makes no sense in plot terms, it makes no sense in character terms. At times you wonder to what extent Larraz is being deliberately mystifying and to what extent these problems are simply a sign that this was his first feature film and he was still learning his craft.

One thing that strikes me about Larraz’s films shot in England is his relationship with the English landscape. Of course to a Spaniard the English landscape was as exotic as the Spanish landscape would be to an Englishman and I get the feeling that Larraz saw it as offering interesting cinematic possibilities. He certainly uses it here to create an atmosphere of isolation and menace.

The most interesting thing about Whirlpool is that what appears to be a linear plot is in fact cyclical. Whirlpool is a flawed movie but an interesting one. Recommended, and if you’re a fan of Larraz’s later work you’ll certainly want to see this one.

The Arrow Blu-Ray offers an excellent transfer and there’s audio commentary by Tim Lucas.

I’ve also reviewed Larraz’s Vampyres (1974) and Symptoms (1974). Both are very much worth seeing.

Lady Morgan’s Vengeance (1965)

Lady Morgan’s Vengeance is a 1965 Italian gothic horror movie directed by Massimo Pupillo.

The setting is Scotland. The young Susan Blackhouse (Barbara Nelli) is an heiress who is expected to marry Sir Harold Morgan (Paul Muller). That’s what Harold believes and that’s what Susan’s uncle and guardian Sir Neville Blackhouse (Carlo Kechler) believes. Susan however has fallen hopelessly in love with architect Pierre Brissac (Michel Forain). Susan explains her predicament to Harold and to her uncle. They are understanding and they are willing for her to marry Pierre. Everything has worked out for the best.

Fate however intervenes and Susan ends up marrying Harold. Susan is sent off on a trip to give her time to reconcile herself to these changed circumstance. When she arrives home she is disturbed to discover that all her trusted household servants have been dismissed. She is also disturbed by the presence of the beautiful young Lillian (Erika Blanc) in the household. The two women are immediately at daggers drawn. There’s mutual suspicion and jealousy.

Odd things seem to happen. Susan imagines she sees things and hears voices. She is increasingly unsettled and nervous. She fears she might be going mad. A doctor is called in. He is puzzled and becomes increasingly concerned. He wonders if perhaps Susan would be better off in a rest home.

The audience will have no doubts whatever about what is going on. We know some things that Susan doesn’t know. In fact what is going on is very very obvious indeed.

For much of its running time the viewer will wonder whether this is really a gothic horror movie. It has much more of the feel of an overheated gothic melodrama or a Victorian sensation novel. Whether it will in fact become a true gothic horror film remains to be seen.

I’m being very vague about the way the story unfolds although every other online review and the IMDb synopsis reveal every single detail of the plot. Which is unfortunate since the second half of the movie is clearly expected to come as a surprise.

The audience will certainly suspect that some gaslighting is going on. Interestingly it’s a woman taking the lead in doing the gaslighting. This is a movie featuring women as both victims and villainesses. And it features men as both heroes and villains. It’s an equal opportunity movie.

The title makes it clear that there’s going to be a revenge plot and that does turn out to be the case.

The movie relies heavily on the performances of Barbara Nelli as Susan and Erika Blanc as Lillian and they’re both terrific. Nelli is convincing as a confused frightened young woman and she conveys the necessary sense of vulnerability which puts the audience on her side. Erika Blanc is nicely but subtly menacing. We feel that Lillian is probably up to no good and may turn out to be very sinister indeed even though she appears to be sympathetic towards Susan.

Paul Muller is solid as Harold and Gordon Mitchell is excellent as the rather intimidating butler Roger.

Of course in order to qualify as gothic a movie has to include scenes of young women wandering about the grounds of a forbidding castle in a diaphanous nightgown and more importantly must include scenes of that young woman descending spooky staircases carrying a candle and wearing the essential filmy nightgown. Happily this movie includes fine examples of such scenes.

Dungeon scenes are equally necessary and they’re here as well. Along with other beloved gothic clichés. Lots of dark and stormy nights.

This film was nicely shot in black-and-white. The special effects are a problem. They’re very crude indeed, and very uninteresting.

Lady Morgan’s Vengeance is typically Italian in its unwillingness to box itself into a single genre and its unwillingness to conform to any genre rules at all. It also employs a slightly odd indirect narrative technique in its second half. It’s an enjoyable enough movie but this is definitely not a neglected gem. It’s worth a look.

This film is part of Arrow’s Gothic Fantastico Blu-Ray boxed set which also includes the excellent The Witch (La strega in amore, 1966). Lady Morgan’s Vengeance gets a lovely transfer and there are bountiful extras. Unfortunately the extras are not worth bothering with unless you really enjoy tedious political ranting.