Census Bloodbath: Blood Pink

Year: 1980

Director: Naosuke Kurosawa

Cast: Erina Miyai, Keijirô Shiga, Yôko Azusa

Run Time: 1 hour 8 minutes

Through the course of this project, we have encountered the ever-elastic slasher film tradition melding with all different kinds of subgenres, from Italian cannibal film to Lifetime movie women's picture to National Lampoon laugh-em-up to Bollywood musical. And while the average slasher film is always in danger of fully crossing the line into softcore, 1980's applies the formula Zoom In: Sex Apartments somewhere that was probably inevitable: the Japanese pinku eiga or "pink films."

I am far from an expert in pink films, and the definition is wider or narrower depending on who you ask, but in essence this subgenre was a set of largely independent softcore and exploitation films that were popular in Japan from the mid-1960's through the 80's. In fact, Zoom In is technically part of a larger franchise (though every movie in the series was completely unrelated, and all the other ones were called Zoom Up), even if it's the only one to take this particular giallo-inspired tack.

It's not surprising that the giallo eventually got roped in, considering the constant unmotivated sex scenes in that genre. All you have to do to make a pinku into a giallo is add some black gloves.

Of course, being a pinku, the plot of Zoom In: Sex Apartments is wildly fucked up. While her biker husband is away at a race, housewife Saeko (Erina Miyai) is raped by a mysterious assailant while on a bike ride. Also, a serial rapist and murderer is stalking the grounds outside her apartment complex, assaulting women and setting them on fire.

This all rattles her, understandably, but doesn't prevent her from striking up an affair with Takaya Nakabayashi (Keijirô Shiga) the ex-boyfriend she abandoned five years ago, who has just returned from America. And also having some chillout sex with her best friend, shopkeeper Sachi (Yôko Azusa) and Sachi's husband Keigo (Ren Seidô). "Sex" meaning lots of boobs flapping around and extensive licking of every body part that isn't an internal organ, including almost no full frontal nudity.

What do you think this is, a PORNO?

I've really had to assess my relationship with rape in cinema since starting this project (something poor naïve freshman-in-college Brennan had no idea he'd brought upon himself when he started this project). I could - and might - write a whole thesis about it at some point, but I'll boil it down to what is necessary for this review. My subjective response to rape in film, even the healthy and normal rape fantasies presented in some porn and exploitation films, is negative. I can accept its existence, but I'm not going to like it. That said, Zoom In: Sex Apartments is relatively responsible with what it depicts and what it doesn't in rape scenes, shading more toward the relative visual subtlety of something like Eyes of a Stranger or Revenge. 

The same can not be said for the sexual violence involved in the kills themselves, which is effectively harrowing, but extremely questionable (although less questionable than the centerpiece kill in Patrick Still Lives, which unfortunately isn't saying much). The bottom line is, even though this isn't a film I would recommend to begin with, any viewer must approach with extreme discretion and a very firm grip on their own philosophies around and reactions to such material.

Thankfully, the film backloads its most consensual material, where it settles into a groove of what I like to call "erotic camp," in which the film seems to take place in an off-kilter, through-the-looking-glass world where sex is always around the next corner and literally any stimulus can make somebody horny (including, in one especially memorable moment, the spontaneous combustion of a pregnant lady).

Never show this woman 28 Days Later.

Also, weirdly, of the softcore slashers I've covered recently, Zoom In actually has the most focus on its slasher subplot than any of them. It's not particularly good (the killer drops his case of evidence and it explodes all over the floor no fewer than six times), but at least it's committed to what it's doing! And this film came early enough that it owes more to the films of Dario Argento than those of Sean S. Cunningham, leading to some truly beautiful camera compositions in the narrative moments.

The design of the no man's land of arid dirt and garbage around the apartment complex creates a spectacularly alienating setting, and there are at least five shots that I'd call "beautiful" without hesitation. My favorite is a shot of Saeko's eye reflected in her open compact, which has fallen in the dirt, but here's another memorable one:

This aesthetic instinct comes to the fore most prominently in the final ten minutes, when Saeko descends into a pyschosexual phantasmagoria of madness where her erotic desires leave trails of flame behind her, culminating in a hallucinogenic sex scene with a pair of Takayas in a burning-down room. It doesn't make a lick of sense, but hey, neither does Suspiria.

The aesthetic is unfortunately the only interesting thing in the movie, however. I was toying with giving this a score that was one point higher, but then I remembered that a sex murder movie where the sex is either alarming or boring and the murder is either alarming or offscreen probably isn't worth rewarding.

Killer: Takaya Nakabayashi (Keijirô Shiga)

Final Girl: Saeko (Erina Miyai)

Best Kill: None of these kills are pleasant to watch, but during the murder of the Piano Sensei, there is a cool aesthetic moment of hands punching through the paper panels of a shoji sliding door.

Sign of the Times: One of the girls swans about in a pair of skintight pink leggings and a shiny silver jacket.

Scariest Moment: Saeko's attacker runs a piano hammer down her face, threatening to pierce her with it.

Weirdest Moment: A young woman who witnesses one of the murders at the local dump starts to eat food out of the garbage like it's popcorn while she's watching.

Champion Dialogue: "Take a good look! I'm a killer rapist now!"

Body Count: 6; and I'm including Takaya, even though the ending - which is most likely a fantasy - isn't exactly clear about him.

1. Schoolgirl is burned alive via the crotch.
2. Jungle Gym Girl is murdered offscreen.
3. Piano Sensei is shoved into a trash incinerator.
4. Garbage Girl and
5. Takaya fall to their deaths from the roof.
6. Pregnant Lady spontaneously combusts in what may be a dream but isn't really presented as such.

TL;DR: Zoom In: Sex Apartments is a particularly tasteless sex murder movie, but it has an unusual commitment to interesting imagery in its narrative moments.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1124

Census Flashback: Everything But Rich

On our Fright Flashback/Census Bloodbath crossover, every week this summer we'll be exploring an 80's slasher film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to the weekend's upcoming blockbuster.

In anticipation of Crazy Rich Asians, I'll be reviewing a movie that is both crazy and Asian: the Japanese slasher Evil Dead Trap!

Year: 1988
Director: Toshiharu Ikeda
Cast: Miyuki Ono, Aya Katsuragi, Hitomi Kobayashi
Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes

When one thinks of Japanese horror cinema, the slasher genre is not what rises to mind, and for good reason. J-horror has been dominated by ghostly visitations and ethereal folk tales long before The Ring brought them to American shores in the early 2000's. Oh, but no corner of the world was unaffected by the 1980's slasher craze. It was the box office boom heard round the world, and when Japanese director Toshiharu Ikeda (of 1980's Sex Hunter) got in on the fun in 1988, he found a way to blend an extremely traditional slasher structure with some of the weirdest J-horror sh*t you ever did see.

Pictured: the slasher genre trying to escape after reading Takashi Ishii's script.

In Evil Dead Trap AKA Shiryō no wana, fluff news reporter Nami Tsuchiya (Miyuki Ono) gets sent a mysterious video of a woman being tortured and, smelling an opportunity to actually report on a real story, takes her team to the location where the video was shot. You know, as you do. But you gotta get your tray of meat to the spooky isolated location, which in this case is an abandoned military base infested with vermin that seems to be actively falling apart while they explore it.

Also in typical slasher fashion, the Meat here is a heap entirely indistinguishable women who don't have two personality traits to rub together: sound engineer Masako Abe (Aya Katsuragi), make-up girl Rei Sugiura (Hitomi Kobayashi, at the time a massively famous Japanese porn star), scripter Rie Kawamura (Eriko Nakagawa), and the token man - assistant director Kondô Akio (Masahiko Abe). Also wandering around the base is Daisuke Muraki (Yûji Honma), a man who is looking for his brother Hideki. Over the course of the afternoon, one after another of the crew members meets their untimely end at the hands of several different killers (the most prominent wearing a mask that makes their face look like a crumpled heap of laundry - it's scarier than I'm making it sound) and traps that have been set up around the area.

See? Spoooooky!

That basic plot synopsis is the only place where Evil Dead Trap can be remotely compared to a generic, run-of-the-mill slasher. It does draw influence from quite a few slasher films (the structure of the kills - with a lot happening all at once then giving way to an extended Final Girl sequence - is certainly reminiscent of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), and the style of the kills quite vividly emulates the best of the Italian giallo, especially Dario Argento's Suspiria. But Evil Dead Trap has a lot more on its mind than that.

For one thing, it steals the careening, unmotivated POV shots and two-thirds of the title from The Evil Dead, and a major death is a direct riff on Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's Un Chien Andalou. And I don't want to spoil the movie necessarily, but let's just say the plot turns out more Frank Hennenlotter than Tobe Hooper.

A lot of this material is really fun and totally bananas. The kills are an overwhelming melange of rapid editing, black-and-white surrealism, hyper-gory effects, and Kabuki makeup that jolt you like a cattle prod. It's like an experimental film gained sentience and set out to destroy your corneas. From the Evil Dead II-esque moments where blood spurts all over people's mouths to the very Japanese approach to the setting, which is constantly exploding, catching fire, and flooding for no reason whatsoever, Evil Dead Trap has a live wire energy that grabs you by the shoulders and shakes you around mercilessly.

And as much as it's drawing from the traditions and tropes of a lot of Western horror films, it's thoroughly Japanese, using an approach that couldn't possibly be emulated in any other filmmaking culture. Just take a look at certain choice images from the film and tell me you've seen anything like it anywhere on this side of the Pacific.

Right?

Right??

Right???

Right????

The only unfortunate thing about Evil Dead Trap is that it's not all horror sequences, and everything that isn't directly engaged with murder and terror is fabulously boring. The characters are identical paper dolls that just exist to be slashed open, and the structure of the narrative leaves a lot of lead time between the last body count kill and the bonkers finale. These sequences mostly involve Nami and Daisuke slowly limping down endless tunnels and having conversations that think they're being cagier about the nature of the plot twist than they actually are (in fact - and this may just be an issue with subtitling - a certain line during a deplorable exposition-via-rape sequence gives away the ending, or at least the general gist of it).

Plus, the score is both a useless riff on The Exorcist and an unbearably repetitive insult to the ears. They clearly wrote one and a half music cues and are hopelessly devoted to making sure we get to hear them again and again and again.

But when Evil Dead Trap is great it's spectacular. The closing fifteen minutes are some of the most bonkers effects-driven cinema of the 80's, the horror sequences craft infinite disturbing and uncanny images (my favorite being a stack of televisions all showing the same image of Masako's face while she's being imprisoned and screaming for help). The expansive setting also allows for some truly bizarre interiors, including a factory-esque floor that looks like the vast expanse of Hell in The Beyond and a Crimson Peak-esque hall of falling objects.

The fascinating thing about Evil Dead Trap is that as much as I'm constantly thinking of other movies it reminds me of, it still has its own indelible personality, and a truly strange one at that. I wish the non-scare sequences were a lot better, because if that were the case it would absolutely be a masterpiece of modern horror cinema. As it stands, it is a hidden gem, but less like a diamond and more like an opal or something else cool to find but not life-changingly valuable.

Killer: Hideki
Final Girl: Nami Tsuchiya (Miyuki Ono)
Sign of the Times: It seems that the "teased hair so big you could use it as an umbrella" craze reached Japan at the very same time the slasher did.

Best Kill: Rya's death, because it is completely impossible to describe, and the one that most replicates the surrealist style of Argento.
Scariest Moment: Rei accidentally steps on a snake and must stand stock still while it decides whether to kill her or not.
Weirdest Moment: After watching her friend's head get pulverized with a machete, Name is chased out of the room when the killer shoots fireworks at her.
Champion Dialogue: "Stop talking about your penis, we're supposed to be working now."
Body Count: 7

1. Video Lady gets her eye gouged with a knife.
2. Rei is impaled with spears from all directions after triggering a trap.
3. Rapist is impaled with a spike,
4. Rya is dragged over a van with a lobster snare.
5. Kondô is decapitated offscreen.
6. Masako has her head split down the side with a machete.
7. Daisuke falls from a great height and basically disintegrates. 

TL;DR: Evil Dead Trap is a bizarre and beautiful film that blends Japanese horror with the Italian giallo and the American slasher, but is too much a slog in the middle third to truly love.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1308

Cardboard Science: I Am Become Death, Destoroyah Of Worlds

Year: 1954

Director: Ishirô Honda

Cast: Takashi Shimura, Akihiko Hirata, Akira Takarada

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

For the second entry of our October crossover series with Hunter Allen at Kinemalogue, the man was far too nice to me by presenting another 50’s sci-fi classic: Godzilla. Our first Cardboard Science feature not produced in the U.S., it’s not as different from the others as you might think. [EN: For the record, for this project I watched the original Japanese cut of Godzilla, which was unavailable in the U.S. until about a decade ago. I did NOT watch the American cut Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, which is fundamentally different and features reshot footage that shoehorns in Raymond Burr, because white people HATE it when everyone in their movies is a different color.] 

The first and most important of the giant monster movies known as daikaiju eiga, Godzilla (AKA Gojira AKAゴジラ) ticks all the boxes I’ve come to know and love throughout this project: Giant, irradiated monster? Check. A weird preponderance of military board meetings? Check. A subtextual political agenda? Check. The frightened perspective of a country rocked by the nuclear bombings of civilian cities?

Oh…

In Godzilla, underwater H-bomb tests awaken an ancient monster from the depths of the ocean: the almighty Godzilla (Katsumi Tezuka & Haruo Nakajima & Jiro Suzuku & Ryosaku Takasugi)!! He emerges onto the shore to crush various Japanese towns. The human beings involved really aren’t important, but we don’t have the budget to show Godzilla toppling buildings in every scene, so they’re a necessary evil.

These humans are Hideo Ogata (Akira Takarada), a Coast Guardsman, and his girlfriend Emiko Yamane (Momoko Kôchi). They work together with her biologist father (Takashi Shimura) and fellow scientist Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) to find a way to stop the rampage.

Speaking from Disneyland experience, if you punch a guy in a costume in the groin, that’ll usually slow ‘em down at least for a while.

Remember all those film scholars who say that horror films are a catharsis for societal fears and anxieties? Well screw them, the Japanese figured that out from Day One. Godzilla is such a gargantuan, demanding metaphor for the shadow of the atomic bomb looming over Japan in the wake of World War 2 that even its own characters figure it out before too long. You know I love me some political subtext in my horror films, but this might be one of the most affecting metaphors in genre history, considering it’s about one of the grisliest atrocities ever committed by humanity, from the perspective of the culture it was inflicted upon.

This is no goofy monster movie, like what the Godzilla franchise would become. This is a harrowing disaster film about a country being torn apart. Sure, Godzilla’s googly eyes might seem a little silly nowadays, but this is no laughing matter. These days people probably don’t associate kaiju films with deep national sorrow, but this is a film in which little girls watch their mothers die in front of them, brave reporters perish in the line of duty, and a panicked populace scrambles across the countryside, looking for anywhere safe. Godzilla is a monster, and he’s one that we brought upon ourselves.

And Godzilla’s swath of destruction is especially gut punchy because it looks superb. Sure, there are a handful of 50’s-isms like obvious toy cars crashing, or boats full of people looking completely abandoned in wide shots. And there really is no defending Godzilla’s unblinking plastic bug eyes. But the composite photography that allows Godzilla to share the frame with hordes of fleeing people is exquisite, and his relentless destruction of city miniatures is pretty damn convincing

This is why we use practical effects, ladies and gentlemen.

Let’s get this out in the open right now. Every single point I’m awarding to the film is earned by the big lizard monster. The human element here is doing zilch for me. Ogata is kinda cute, but he’s a very reactionary protagonist who doesn’t do anything to drive the plot forward, and his endless scenes with Emiko almost always consist of them discussing some mundane drama with unnecessary vagueness so we can discover the details later, as if the revelations were actually important.

The character Serizawa is the lynchpin for the film’s thesis on weapons of mass destruction and the struggles between scientific good and political-militaristic evil but every other character could be excised and it wouldn’t have any impact on the film. If Godzilla had stomped the Yamane household in the first reel, I literally don’t think I would have even noticed. Godzilla operates better when it’s an Eisensteinian tale about the masses battling off evil, rather than the story of these particular individuals.

But in spite of its unfairly dull second act, there’s a reason the Godzilla franchise has survived for more than half a century. It’s both an impeccable effects spectacle (in fact, it was the most expensive movie ever made in Japan at the time) and a powerful horror film that taps into the collective subconscious of its people, but is broad enough to be understood by the world at large. Hunter has been very very kind with his selections thus far, so I am very very worried about the third and final film in his bag of tricks the other shoe has to drop sometime.

That which is indistinguishable form magic:

• The oxygen destroyer invented by Serizawa to stop Godzilla splits oxygen atoms into fluid. I’m no scientist, but I’m fairly certain that when you split an atom, a lot more than a dribble of water comes outta there.

The morality of the past, in the future!:

• I’m very confused by Emiko and Ogata’s situation. To my understanding, she was engaged to Serizawa but wants to break it off to be with Ogata. So why is he living with her and her father? I thought the 50’s were more buttoned-up than that.

Sensawunda:

• It’s no mistake that Godzilla’s first appearance is on August 13th, four days after the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing. Let’s take a moment to think about what we’ve done.
• We get our first stock footage procession of military vehicles of the month, which is making me all kinds of nostalgic.
• Why were so many Japanese signs in English, even then? Were we friends yet?

TL;DR: Godzilla is a fascinating, harrowing look at a post-nuclear Japan.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1073
Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture
2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend Without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)