Emma Westwood writes about writing, cinema and other wild trips
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 18,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 4 Film Festivals
Beware! Never trust a woman with a frangipani behind her right ear…
Dir. H. Tjut Djalil, Indonesia, 1981
I wear a stone around my neck everyday. The Balinese call it ‘Kresnadana’, which, I believe, means it belongs to the god Krishna in a world less materialistic to the one in which I live. For the time being, though, I claim it as my own and, as such, draw the intrigue of many Balinese who continually ask me how I came into possession of this much-desired rock (that’s another story for another time).
For the unfamiliar, Mystics in Bali might seem like a jolly good laugh. As a horror film, it falls squarely into the category of good bad films – performances so wooden they should join an environmental movement, scripting so poor it deserves social welfare and special effects so cheesy you’d expect them to come with crackers. Let’s put it another way – this film is unlikely to send you under the sheets shuddering in fear or squinting through your fingers for fear the gore will have your stomach lurching. But there is a very real Balinese/Indonesian belief of black magic (the cult of the Leyak) from which this film derives its mythology and it’s bloody scary stuff for anyone who’s come across it. As evidence of this fact, Mystics was originally banned on its release in Indonesia in the early ’80s. Take it from me, there are some of us who get the heebie-jeebies from the likes of such cinema ridiculousness – and I’m one of them.
However, I am the rarer kind of viewer in this instance. As the DVD cover attests, Mystics in Bali is “The Holy Grail of Asian Cult Cinema” and, similar to its Japanese sibling Nobuhiko Ohbayashi’s nutty Hausu (1977), this is a treasure that promises much derision and enjoyment once finally acquired because you won’t find it readily at your local DVD retailer. One reviewer says, it has “some of the most bizarre supernatural horror elements I have ever seen in a motion picture”. Based on the book, Leák Ngakak by Putra Mada, Mystics was actually conceived in the Western mould of horror and pitched for an international audience, just like further work from its filmmaker such as the delightfully blatant Terminator rip-off, Lady Terminator (1989). Seek it out.
In Mystics in Bali, an unsuspecting American girl – played by a holidaying German tourist, Ilona Agathe Bastian, who was convinced by the producers of the film to extend her stay on the tropical island for a couple of months but, not surprisingly, amounted to little more in terms of a movie career – develops a morbid fascination in the dark arts of Indonesia. She encourages her local paramour – he of the tight jeans and impressively thick bouffant hair – to introduce her to a Balinese leyak (in a stand-out performance by Sophie W.D.) who promises to divulge black magical secrets just as long as the foreign lady agrees to be her disciple. Despite the leyak having a face that would make her own mother recoil in horror and an unrelenting laugh that could cut glass (make it stop!), the American agrees… and with hardly a flicker of emotion. But that seems to be the defining element of Ilona’s unique breed of acting. Let’s just say, Lee Strasberg trained she ‘aint.
I’m not even going to start picking through the holes in this screenplay because it resembles a sieve. Special mention must be made concerning the SFX, though, because they’re really something to write home about. Djalil and his filmmaking cronies have employed a crude form of animation (no computers in sight) and physical prosthetics, rubbers, etc, to bring the black magic to ‘life’. In a couple of particularly satisfying sequences, our disciple transforms into a pig and – the pièce de résistance – loses her own head (with spinal cord dangling) that gets into all sorts of unbecoming mischief, such as flying through the air (duck!) and eating the foetus from another woman’s womb. Choice stuff.
These are just a few of the sublime moments that make Mystics in Bali a cult supernatural horror in its own right. And in paying homage to such originality, I’d also like to note the beauty of its cinematography. Some scenes/shots are quite breathtaking in their atmosphere and lighting while others are perplexingly inept. I can only guess someone’s nephew was handed a camera to take care of incidental pick-ups. The title sequence is a true marvel as well – quite frenzied and exciting, as though witnessing the emergence of an Indonesian Dario Argento. One could only hope for such brilliance, but even if it does not deliver on the promise of the opening few moments, Mystics in Bali offers so much more.
Watch it with others who understand the brilliance of bad cinema. Or a Balinese local, if you’d like a different perspective.
Mystics in Bali is available on DVD through Mondo Macabro.
Dir. Paul Bunnell, USA
Did someone say ‘juvenile delinquents’?
Immediately my antennae are tweaked. I share the same camp fascination as John ‘Cry-Baby’ Waters when it comes to this other phenomenon in 1950s propaganda known as the ‘juvenile delinquent’. You know it too, so beautifully propagated through the likes of the 1958 horror classic, The Blob, starring Steve McQueen as the ringleader of juvenile delinquency, and Marlon Brando’s mumbling, surly bad-boy in The Wild One.
At a time when ‘Apple Pie’ America was set to collapse under ’60s counter-culture rebellion, a juvenile delinquent represented the bucking of predisposed family values; those greasy-haired, motor-cycle riding, gum-chewing, insouciant adolescents that inhabited diners and turned a mocking shoulder to the face of authority. They’re the rock ‘n’ roll-generated threat to mid 20th-century conservatism. Compare them to the nasties of today and they’re as squeaky clean as Palmolive (think of those dancing gangs in West Side Story, for instance) but, for a certain generation, they represented the disintegration of the Great White American Dream.
Ah, bring back the juvenile delinquents, I say.
So, imagine my delight at stumbling across a new millennium spin, but with a retro aesthetic, on the juvenile delinquent phenomenon in the form of The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, not to mention – gasp! – these JDs are from outer space! “Gee whiz”, I think. “This film’s gonna be a blast.” And it certainly lives up to the gorgeously graphic-designed poster pitch, belying its modest inception as an independently-made feature film (and I must emphasise ‘film’, as this little darling was shot on the last of Kodak’s 35mm black & white Plus-X film stock, which is highly unexpected in this digital age).
In a sublime mash-up of genre forms that works surprisingly well because it is actually good – not ‘good-bad’ in an Ed Wood Jr sense of the term – Johnny X kicks off with an intergalactic criminal court where Kevin ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers‘ McCarthy (in his final role before death) sentences Johnny (Will Keenan) and his gang known as ‘The Ghastly Ones’ to exile on Earth. What follows hereforth is a sci-fi/dark comedy/musical/romance with a touch of horror that essentially follows The Ghastly Ones on their search for Johnny’s sassy former girlfriend, Bliss (De Anna Joy Brooks), who’s taken off with the all-powerful ‘resurrection suit’. Amid all this, Johnny grapples with some parental rejection issues – as the song goes, ‘What’s up with Johnny?’– that leads them to encounter all sorts of colourful Earthlings, one being musician-turned-(small)-movie-star, Paul Williams, as talkshow host, Cousin Quilty.
The Ghastly Love of Johnny X really comes together in the details. In order to make such a concept pop, this one needed as much research as guts and gumption to see it over the line, and filmmaker Paul Bunnell has obviously invested a significant amount of time and money into making sure his film rises to its many, many sources of inspiration. I can see John Waters in here; I can see alien invasion films; I can see the big monster movies of the atomic age; I can see West Wide Story; I can see James Dean’s oeuvre; I can even see a bit of Frankenstein and Re-Animator. The fact that Bunnell has managed to rope all these influences together into the one cohesive package is a feat that deserves ‘high five’ recognition. The songs by Ego Plum and lyricist Scott Martin (apparently added late in the production process) aren’t quite that of Bacharach or Leiber & Stoller, but they’re tight, finger-snappin’ ditties that recall the show tunes of a bygone era and ornament the film perfectly without overwhelming it.
I can’t help but imagine hoards of ginchy guys and girls with coiffed hair and leathers turning up at weekly midnight screenings of Johnny X in years to come, screaming out the one-liners at the top of their voices, mimicking the choreography and booing the bad guys. It has that kind of Blue Brothers/Rocky Horror vibe that begs to be experienced on a big screen with a mutually appreciative audience. I’d go so far as flagging it as a cult hit waiting to be discovered, just as long as it can find the crest of a wave to ride to shore.
“The Ghastly Love of Johnny X is a very personal project which encompasses many of the things I love about the movies. I started working on the project in 2002 and would not rest until I saw it through to completion in 2011. If I had listened to what the naysayers thought I should do, the movie would not have gotten started, let alone finished. Thankfully, persistence paid off and I completed my dream project with no major compromises. It is my wish that its images will become a lasting part of your film vocabulary – the stuff that dreams are made of.” ~Paul Bunnell, 2012
The Ghastly Love of Johnny X is currently playing at film festivals worldwide.
In wrapping my head around Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia – which I will be reviewing shortly (as soon as a DVD copy lands on my desk) – I’ve decided to post a rather lengthy review originally published in Screem Magazine of his equally divisive film Antichrist.
Lars Von Trier has done little to redeem his image since I provided, what I believe to be, a defence of his eccentricities. Has my opinion on Von Trier changed? You’ll just have to wait until the Melancholia review. Coming soon.
The shower scene from 'Psycho' (almost)
Warning: This review contains some highly explicit descriptions that may offend some readers.
When it comes to absolutes about the films of Lars Von Trier, the word ‘pretentious’ immediately materialises. Even hardcore fans of Von Trier could not possibly call him anything but pretentious, although I make this statement with reserved affection and not with inherent negativity as the word ‘pretentious’ tends to be loaded.
Given such a pompous oeuvre, Von Trier The Man presents as a fidgety and uncertain fellow who undeniably suffers from severe anxiety and depression. This is startingly apparent through the plethora of supplementary material provided with Antichrist as he explains the depths of ‘the black dog’ that saw him conceive such a bleak film. He mutters and murmurs and looks away from the camera, but then, in the same breath, Von Trier The Film Director informs a packed press conference at the Cannes Film Festival that he is the greatest living filmmaker today. Such a dichotomy makes Von Trier an intriguing auteur if anything else, and one that legions of people love to hate, as much as venerate. Read more…
For purposes of identification and public safety, a troll may (or may not) look like this
Dir. André Øvredal, Norway
Just when I thought I could not stomach another found footage horror film, Troll Hunter comes along and makes me eat my words. Produced in 2010, it has emerged from a mass of vampire and zombie ‘product’ to shine brightly as a beacon of originality.
In a tradition popularised by The Blair Witch Project (1999) but spearheaded by the infamous Cannibal Holocaust (1980), Troll Hunter purports to be the result of chronologically edited, raw footage left on the doorstep of a Norwegian film production company. The days of Blair Witch are well and truly over, so audiences are immediately in on the joke, although the film plays as a poker-faced portrayal of supposed documentary events with humour handled cleverly in an almost incidental manner.
As it goes, students from a local university – armed with video camera – set out to uncover the activities of a mysterious poacher who is believed to be muscling in on bear hunter territory. After hounding this lone ‘ranger’, trolljegeren Hans, they are graciously brought into the fold and granted permission to capture his strange vocation on film, despite the disapproval of the ‘authorities’.
Now, I know as much about Norway as Kurt Russell’s MacReady in The Thing, so there is a curiosity about all things Norwegian that certainly adds to the entertainment value – the snow-capped mountain landscape with fingers of low-hanging cloud, the lyrical yet vaguely obscene language and, of course, the Scandinavian-specific troll legend itself. But Troll Hunter is successful in so many other ways, from the modern wrangling of a fairy-tale myth to the presentation of the trolls themselves.
Similar to other well-conceived found footage horror films – such as the Spanish zombie flick [REC] (2007) – Troll Hunter uses the inadequacies of guerrilla filmmaking footage to its advantage, largely to obscure the crappiness of any computer-generated imagery and, consequently, create more believable monsters. Computer effects are cheap, which is why we’ve been forced to suffer at their uninspired mercy for 20-odd years now. What the makers of Troll Hunter do is employ a bit of creative thinking, such as green-filtered night vision and wavering camera, to smooth over any chinks in their CGI armour.
Most importantly, the trolls of Troll Hunter are not just roaring, charging, flesh-chomping monsters – they are artfully drawn characters, each with a personality of its own, including strange behavioural quirks and expressions. Through troll hunter Hans – a “Norwegian hero”, as described by one of the student documentarians – we’re given a fascinating reintroduction to troll folklore, including troll varieties such as ‘Ringlefinch’, ‘Tosserlad’, ‘Rimetosser’, ‘Mountain Kings’ and the largest troll of all, the ‘Jotnar’. But, as Hans makes a point of saying, “Fairytales often don’t match reality”.
While an adult horror film from start to finish, Troll Hunter successfully does what few modern horror films do – channel our inner child. The arrival of the first troll on screen literally had me clapping with excitement, which is a rare response these days with, more often than not, sadistic horror flooding the market. To exit a horror movie with a broad smile on your face is quite a rare thing indeed.
Troll Hunter will also have you humming along to Edvard Grieg’s ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ from Peer Gynt before you know it.
More trolls please.
Troll Hunter is available on DVD (Australia) from Madman
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
The Bruce is loose
Way back in 2002, cult actor and all-round righteous dude Bruce Campbell starred as Elvis Presley in a film, Bubba Ho-Tep (directed by Don Coscarelli). In it, Elvis and JFK are both still alive and wasting away in their own decrepitude in a nursing home until an ancient Egyptian mummy vies for the souls of their fellow aged residents. Sound strange? You betcha. Even better, JFK is an African-American, played with soul-stirring reverence by veteran actor, the late Ossie Davis.
Bubba Ho-Tep struggled in distribution limbo despite attracting a devout following, which is why this interview (below) with Bruce Campbell took place almost three years after production. Given such a lag, Bruce managed to remain upbeat and forthcoming about the project – and very generous with the one-liners (“It could be called Grumpy Old Ghostbusters“) – making him one of my favourite interviewees. Ever.
The beginning of this uncut transcription centres mainly on Bubba Ho-Tep, but bear with it, and you’ll find lots of morsels about Bruce himself and, in particular, his career circling the mid-noughties. Having just recently met Pollyanna McIntosh and filmmaker Lucky McKee during their Oz publicity junket for The Woman, I really enjoyed re-reading Bruce’s words about his experiences with Lucky McKee on the director’s sophomore feature, The Woods. Maybe you will too.
Bruce, you always do us proud.
January 3, 2013
Emma Westwood
