Friday the 13th Part III

 

Also known as ‘Part 3-D’, this third entry brought Jason into the third dimension in tacky style. A lot of things come improbably flying towards the screen, because apparently that’s what 3-D means. Otherwise this is a mostly by-the-numbers slasher, though it does make a few attempts to mix things up somewhat with some violent kills, weird characters and its cheesy 3-D effects. It has a noticeably different feel than the first two, and a few faults the others didn’t have but it’s ultimately fun for what it is. This is a tiny move away from the generally more serious horror tone of the first two, and faults aside it’s ok.

In a continuing trend that thankfully mostly stopped here, the first six minutes or so are just the ending six minutes of the previous film. They don’t even tie it in as a flashback here; it’s literally just the ending of the second film shoved right in as the beginning of this one. It’s more than a little jarring and unnecessary since knowing the end of that film isn’t really that necessary to understanding this one.

There are no camp counsellors this time, and we’re no longer even at Camp Crystal Lake. Instead we’re at Higgin’s Haven, a family summer cabin with a barn on a different end of the apparently enormous Crystal Lake (the size of which is highly inconsistent between films). Set the day after Jason’s rampage at Camp Crystal Lake in Part II, the story is focused on college girl Chris Higgins. Chris takes a group of her friends to her family’s lakeside summer home, Higgin’s Haven, which she hasn’t returned to since a traumatic event some two years earlier. A wounded Jason Voorhees also makes his way to Higgin’s Haven, taking refuge in the barn to recuperate from his injuries. It isn’t long before Jason ventures out of the barn and starts to slaughter the group.

Besides the opening recap, the film acknowledges the previous film – a TV shows a news report on the massacre – but the characters don’t seem to know or care that a whole bunch of people were massacred nearby only a day earlier, which is a bit weird. Instead everybody is too busy doing stupid teen things. Once again it takes an absurdly long time before people begin there’s a killer around or even realise a whole bunch of them have been killed already.

 

Our heroine is Chris Higgins, who is another nice, wholesome girl. There’s not much to her, barring a character-defining traumatic event in her past where she was attacked by somebody in the woods. At the end of the film she realises it was Jason who had attacked her. It’s a dumb, meaningless coincidence that doesn’t actually change anything, but this sort of idea will reoccur later on in the series. Chris’ traumatic story is stupid. Upset with her parents for some reason, she wandered into the woods and then fell asleep (I guess she got tired?) before being attacked by a monstrous knife-wielding Jason. Then she blacked out and woke up later in her bed, which just raises a whole bunch of questions – was it a just a dream, and if not how the hell did she escape from Jason if she blacked out? Chris spends a lot of time shrieking like crazy, is really panicky and, by the end, has completely lost her mind, all of which kinda goes against her character story of ‘trying to get over past trauma’.

Once again Jason is still only human in this film and easy to hurt, and Chris gets a lot of good hits in. Jason backs away in fear when Chris starts swinging a knife at him and limbs when she stabs him. Chris actually really delivers a beat-down on Jason; she clobbers him in the head with a log and a shovel, attempts to hang him and eventually finished him off by hitting him in the face with an axe. It does kind of work in the confines of Chris’ weird ‘trauma victim strikes back’ personal story, but as said before her character becoming a shrieking mess sort of counteract this.

Part III is where we get our first truly annoying F13 character: Shelley, the ugly, whiny dweeb. He wants to impress girls, but can’t because he’s gross, ugly and whiny. So instead of talking to them like a normal person he plays stupid pranks using props and make-up to scare them and then whines when they hate him even more. He’s annoying. Thankfully he eventually gets his throat slashed by Jason and in a ‘boy who cried wolf’ bit of karma nobody helps him because they think it’s another prank.

Actually the characters here are noticeably a bit broader and stranger than usual, acting far more ridiculous than the standard, forgettable teen fodder seen before. While we do still get a collection of interchangeable teen victims, we also get some weirder ones with strange quirks which makes them a bit more colourful and fun, while also potentially a bit more annoying. There’s a white trash couple at the beginning, a weird crazy hobo brandishing an eyeball, a duo of stoned hippies, and a guy who can walk around doing a handstand (Jason isn’t impressed by this trick). The most ridiculous by far are the mean bikers who seem way too silly to be taken serious. Their outfits are comprised entirely of leather, denim, bandanas and studs. They get involved when Shelley ends up trashing their bikes, and end up sneaking into Higgin’s Haven, siphoning gas out of their car (giving a good excuse as to why they can’t just drive away from Jason), and coming up with a plan to set fire to the barn as revenge. Of course Jason is in the barn, so their plan doesn’t get far.

Higgin’s Haven has an entirely different feel to Camp Crystal Lake. It seems a little bit more claustrophobic, perhaps because the place is relatively small, really only made up of just a house, a barn and a small jetty. Crystal Lake itself seems substantially smaller, looking more like a pond really. Otherwise the film uses a lot of the same sort of tricks and techniques as before, including more liberal use of the ‘spooky intrigue theme’. This time though there are a lot of dumb fake jump scares. These are things the first two movies didn’t have at all, but here, especially early on, we get a lot of parts of somebody getting scared by an animal or a person. This is coupled with more use of the ‘spooky intrigue theme’. It’s a bit disappointing to see the series go down that route. It also misses the tension of a character being unknowingly stalked.

This is the film where Jason gets his iconic hockey mask. Actually the film is pretty much responsible for establishing a lot of the basic elements to Jason’s iconic look for much of the series – the hulking frame, the green clothes and the hockey mask, even a bit of his ugly mug. Speaking of which, Jason looks really damn goofy when unmasked this time around. When you see him right at the end he’s grinning like an idiot, resembling some kind of simple minded, malformed goon. Basically without the mask he’s far from intimidating, even though it seems they tried hard to make him look inhuman and grotesque.

The end does the ‘nightmare twist’ thing again, this time as a dumb call-back to the first film – Chris, thinking Jason is dead, is in a canoe floating on the lake when she  sees a mask-less Jason alive, staring at her from the barn window. He bursts out of the barn and comes running towards her as she paddles away and then, suddenly, Jason’s dead, zombified mother bursts out of the lake to attack her. Then she wakes up with the police escorting her away as she shrieks hysterically. It’s a really stupid end twist.

 

 

The 3-D stuff is silly and often more than a little forced. Amongst the things that come towards the screen are fists, a snake, a yoyo, a baseball bat, a harpoon, popcorn and some eyeballs. Honestly for the most part it’s unnoticeable and barely used, and when it is it’s obvious. On a better point, some of the deaths are fairly gory and inventive this time through, though the effects are pretty fake and silly looking. A guy’s head is crushed forcing his eye to pop out (in goofy 3-D!), one guy is cut in half, a girl gets shot in the face with a spear-gun and there are a few stabbings/impaling with knives, needles, pitchforks and fireplace pokers. It’s more violent and memorable than most of the stuff in Part 2. One unfortunate issue, linked to the 3-D effects, is that some of the gore effects are painfully obvious. With every object that comes flying towards the screen, be it a knife or spear, you can visibly see wires holding them.

There really isn’t much else to say about this one. It has got plenty of faults, some annoying characters and overall it’s pretty silly, but it’s a little bit of a step up from Part II, if only because it’s a bit different. It has a different feel with the change in location, the goofy 3-D effects and the focus on somewhat stranger characters. It’s ok. Not one of the good ones, but still entertaining. Jason looks pretty dead at the end here – after the nightmare twist the camera shows his body, with an axe still embedded in his face, and he seems pretty definitively dead. But we’re nowhere near that done yet. We’ve got a whole lot more F13 movies to get through.

Friday the 13th Part II

 

The original Friday the 13^th ended up being a surprise hit, making a whole bunch of money. And when a film makes a whole bunch of money, a sequel can’t be far behind. Thus we get the imaginatively named ‘Friday the 13^th Part II’. It’s essentially a re-tread of the first film, not really bothering to break new ground, just doing the same thing over again. It is notable and somewhat iconic as being the very first appearance of Jason Voorhees as a serial killer. While he doesn’t have his iconic look yet, it’s still the first time Jason runs around killing people.

The story is even simpler than last time, and is mostly a repeat of the first. Only two months after the last film, where a deranged Pamela Voorhees hacked her way through a group of camp counsellors before meeting her end, a new group of camp counsellor trainees head to Camp Crystal Lake for a training camp, run by supervisor Paul and his assistant (and our heroine) Ginny. Paul tells the group the legend of Jason Voorhees, the young boy thought to have drowned twenty years ago who is rumoured to live in the wilderness. He tells it as a joke, but in reality Jason really is lurking in the woods, and it isn’t long until he starts to stalk and kill the trainees.

There are more teens this time around, but they’re also a lot less memorable. Half don’t even have names I don’t think, so they’re all pretty forgettable. There’s one in a wheelchair and an Asian one and that’s about it. Half of them don’t even die; they leave to go get drunk in town while Jason goes on his rampage. I have to say that the F13 franchise as a whole really lacks good characters and with only a single real exception there aren’t any notable protagonists. For the most part the characters in an individual film will be completely forgotten by the sequel, meaning most characters are completely disposable.

 

Our heroine this time is Ginny, who is studying child psychology and has some theories about Jason. Her theories are way too specific though, especially since she starts sprouting them before she even knows Jason is real, basically basing her analysis on Paul’s story of ‘there’s a crazy guy in the woods whose mom got killed’. Jason is described as ‘some sort of demented creature surviving in the wilderness’, and she suggests that witnessing his mother’s death would have turned him into a feral killer. This makes little sense since that only happened two months ago, while if he survived drowning he’d be in the woods for over twenty years. I will say that it’s refreshing that the characters already know about the murders two months earlier, but it’s also somewhat strange that nobody is concerned or cares at all.

The first six or so minutes of the film have a lot of flashbacks of the end of the original – Alice fighting and killing Pamela Voorhees, going out on the canoe in the lake, having the nightmare of zombie Jason dragging her into the lake and then being questioned by police in the hospital. It’s a bit odd, since instead of just having characters fill in the backstory (which they pretty much do anyway) the movie just shows it. It also feels a bit cheap (I usually find the use of stock footage cheap), especially since it shows so much of the end.

After the flashbacks it begins with the heroine of the first film, Alice, being killed in her home by Jason, who presumably found out where she lived and tracked her down to her house. I just want to point out that, in retrospect, this is actually really strange. From this point on, barring the last few entries in the series, Jason never ventures outside of his haunt at Crystal Lake. Also a bit ridiculous is the fact that, before Jason appears and kills her, Alice finds Pamela Voorhees’ severed head in the fridge because Jason has kept it the entire time.

Speaking of Jason, this is when we finally see the series’ iconic killer (not counting him as zombie nightmare dream boy at the end of the first film). Unfortunately you get the impression they were short on ideas of what he’d look like since he doesn’t come across as particularly menacing. This film was before the iconic hockey mask, so Jason just wears a burlap sack with a hole on it on his head. It’s not particularly menacing, especially since he’s wearing plain old overalls throughout the movie.  Towards the end the sack comes off and you get to see his messed up face. He’s slightly deformed and looking a bit ghoulish. If anything he just looks like an inbred redneck mountain man, the sort seen in other horror movies like The Hills Have Eyes (original and remake) or the Wrong Turn movies. Weirdly this is the only time you ever see him with hair. He doesn’t have much, but he has some, with several tufts of long, black hair coming out of his head. Weird detail, but it’s there.

Part II retcons a few thing about Jason. Most importantly, Jason didn’t drown after all; he survived and lived in the woods around the camp for two decades. He was there at the end of the first film and saw his mother get decapitated, which is what made him snap and is why he stalks and kills anybody who comes to Crystal Lake. This is a bit silly, since it means that for twenty years he was in the woods and nobody ever found him, least of all his mother, who you’d assume he’d seek out. It’s also means that he never killed anybody until he saw his mom get decapitated, which turned him into a full-on serial killer.

The ending twenty or so minutes (essentially a quarter of the film) is basically a massive chase/fight/struggle between Ginny, camp supervisor Paul and Jason that takes them through seemingly the entire camp, eventually into Jason’s den, where he keeps his mother’s severed head on a shrine. Ginny momentarily tricks Jason by putting on his dead mother’s sweater and pretending to be her, despite not looking or sounding like her at all. It’s stupid (and doesn’t work), but this sort of tactic will show up again in one of the later movies. I will say that Jason gets the crap kicked out of him a lot here. He’s not an unstoppable killing machine yet, so he gets kicked and beaten down a few times, and Ginny even buries a machete into his shoulder, seemingly killing him.

Ginny survives, and it’s unclear as to whether Paul does too, since this ends in a similar way to the first film. They think they’re safe after ‘killing’ Jason, but he suddenly bursts through a window and grabs Ginny (in slow motion no less) and then suddenly it cuts to Ginny in the hospital with the police, making it unclear if it’s another nightmare ending or not. It worked in the first film, but here it’s forced. The whole ‘sudden nightmare, then hospital and the police’ twist ending will be repeated a few more times before they finally cut it out.

The film feels beholden to the original in a lot of ways. Barring the opening ten minutes, it strictly sticks to the established structure of the first film. It doesn’t really try anything different, except maybe towards the end, so it’s pretty stuck in its ways. The same crazy guy who warns people not to go to the camp from the first film shows up again, but he gets murdered pretty quickly. Another thing beholden to the original is the use of theme music, notably what I call the ‘spooky intrigue theme’. It’s those few discordant spooky notes that make things seem a bit uneasy. The problem is they play it every few seconds here, even when nothing is happening. It gets old.

The gore is far less impressive this time around (no Tom Savini). It lacks blood, but worst of all it cuts away from the violence very quickly (possibly edited for violence, which has happened to a fair few F13 movies), so while there are a few more deaths they’re less interesting and nowhere near as memorable. Wheelchair guy getting a machete to the face and then rolling backwards down the stairs is pretty cool, but otherwise a lot of the kills don’t have too much of an impact. There is a bit more nudity here though.

Part 2 is pretty unremarkable overall. It’s mostly just more of the same, and doesn’t really improve on anything or do anything different. It has a few memorable parts, and seeing the first real Jason movie has its charm, but it isn’t mind blowing. It was the first film to bring us Jason, but even then he’s fairly unremarkable and not the unstoppable killing machine he’ll later become.

Friday the 13th

It’s October, which means Halloween is coming up in America – a time where people dress up like monsters, children roam the streets searching for candy, adults have parties where women dress like slutty cats and everybody gets drunk and in the interim everybody watches horror movies. We don’t celebrate Halloween in Australia – it’s not something that ever caught on. Maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s the general attitude of the people, but besides some stores selling decorations that’ll never be bought or used there’s no Halloween spirit here. It’s a shame, because that means we tend to miss out on the best part of the holiday, the viewing of horror movies.

Well I’m not one to miss out on spooky nonsense, so for October (and possibly past it) I’ll be looking at horror movies. I feel like that’s something everybody with a poorly edited blog with zero views does at some point, and now it’s my turn. And what best way to do it than go directly for the series everybody already knows about? So I’ll be starting by reviewing the Friday the 13^th series, aiming to do one film every day. So here we go, starting with the first, the film that sparked a series that’s over ten films long. Here’s ‘Friday the 13^th’. 

This is the movie that started the massive franchise, and also had a big influence on the slasher film genre. Of course the movie itself took massive influence from an even earlier slasher, John Carpenter’s Halloween, but this still had a big influence on many of the tropes and conventions of typical slasher films. People tend to forget that this one is still a pretty effective slasher. It might be slower paced than some of the later films in the series, but it works well.

The story is simple, and is essentially the plot skeleton of almost every other F13 movie. A group of teenaged camp counsellors head to Camp Crystal Lake to prepare it for some fifty children campers arriving in the summer. When they arrive they learn Crystal Lake has a nasty reputation – known by the locals as ‘Camp Blood’, twenty years earlier a young boy had drowned there and a pair of counsellors were murdered the following year. While the teens fool around at the camp they begin being stalked by a killer who picks them off one by one.

The killer is revealed to be Pamela Voorhees, the former camp cook whose son, Jason, was the boy who had drowned twenty years back. She snapped, blaming the negligent camp counsellors who were having sex when they should have been supervising Jason, and killed them in revenge. Now, twenty years later and on Jason’s birthday, she’s returned to kill again. Surprisingly, these days some people seem to not know that Pamela was the killer - after all, Friday the 13th is pretty much synonymous with Jason Voorhees, but here, in the original, his mother was the killer.

 

Our heroine here is Alice, a nice, wholesome, completely forgettable girl (because they’re almost always nice, wholesome, completely forgettable girls). Actually one thing the film does well is portray the camp counsellors as actually potentially being camp counsellors. They still act like horny teens, and do the things we’ve come to expect – mess around, have sex, get high/drunk, wander around alone in the dark for no good reason, etc. – but I could see them as actual camp volunteers. They do all fit the traditional horror movie stereotype roles (like the goofball, the cool guy, etc.), something this movie, while not the first slasher, certainly helped solidify. Alice is the sole survivor in the film and manages to behead Pamela Voorhees in the finale after a pretty lengthy chase/fight.

The ending is iconic. After decapitating Pamela Voorhees, an exhausted Alice is in a canoe peacefully drifting in the middle of the lake when suddenly Jason, looking like a zombie, bursts out of the water and pulls her out of the boat. She wakes up in hospital with the police who saved her, who remark that they didn’t see anybody in the lake with her. It’s all just a dream though, but it’s still a freaky, memorable ending.

The film pretty much set the formula and structure the future F13 movies all basically follow from that point on – a bunch of teens go to Camp Crystal Lake, somebody will try and warn them off, somebody will mention the story of Jason Voorhees, they’ll mess around and have sex and then they’ll start getting killed off one by one until the survivor/s confront Jason Voorhees and seemingly kill/stop him.

The film is a bit odd in terms of how it handles its killer’s reveal though. You don’t know who the killer is until the end, but from the cast to that point there really isn’t anybody it could be – barring the few random townsfolk and the resident crazy guy who warns people not to go to Crystal Lake (a recurring character type in F13 movies, and far too silly to be the killer) there isn’t anybody else around. The only signifier of the killer is that they drive a jeep and a POV scene that shows they wear a large ring, so you absolutely never get the feeling that it’s one of the counsellors. It lacks that sort of ‘who could the killer be?’ mystery a lot of other slashers tend to have.

It’s what makes the Pamela Voorhees revelation both surprising and absurdly obvious – she shows up out of nowhere near the end after almost everybody is dead, talks at length about her son Jason who’d drowned at the camp and then suddenly she’s trying to kill Alice. She and Jason hadn’t been seen or mentioned in the film before then (there was only a passing mention of ‘the boy who drowned’), so her appearance at the very end is pretty strange, obvious and a bit blatant. It is a surprise to see what seems like an ordinary, seemingly nice little lady being the slasher though. Not many other slashers had done it, especially since then.

 

It’s a nice looking movie, and one of the best strengths is that Camp Crystal Lake actually looks and feels legit. The camp looks like a camp, complete with logging shed, cabins and an archery range, and the lake actually looks like a lake – it’s impressive in size and has dual jetties and a canoe shed and everything. These are things a lot of the sequels miss completely, and this is one of the rare times the camp has actually looked like a camp (it helps that it actually was filmed at a real-life summer camp). In terms of filmmaking, the most memorable stylistic choice was the scenes shot in the killer’s POV as they stalk/kill their victims. It’s wasn’t a new idea though. Halloween began in Michael’s POV as he killed his sister, but more importantly the Italian ‘giallo’ horror movies of the sixties and seventies employed that tactic all the time.

The gore and kills are simple but still hold up well, which makes sense since it was done by make-up maestro Tom Savini. A few throats are slashed, but more memorably a girl gets an axe in the face and Kevin Bacon gets an arrow through the throat. Those are some of the most iconic kills in the entire franchise.

 

There are some odd things in the script that don't quite work. The ‘Camp Blood’ stigma thing with the townsfolk doesn’t really work because the time period is way too long and the tragedy is way too minor. Twenty years is a long time for something as relatively minor as one drowning and two murders to cause a place to become ‘cursed’. While after this point the stigma will make sense (a whole lot of teens are going to be killed there from this point on), this time it’s pretty minor, especially since there were twenty years where nothing bad happened at all, so telling the kids they’re doomed because of something that happened two decades ago is ridiculous.

And that’s the first film, a slasher seemingly only made to attempt to follow on the success and popularity of John Carpenter’s Halloween that managed to be a surprising success of its own, spawning a massive franchise that has extended from films to books, a TV series (yes, it exists), comics and even videogames. While it owes a lot to films that came before it, (notably Halloween, but also others - scenes shot from the killer’s POV were a staple of Italian ‘giallo’ horror movies from the 60s and 70s), F13 offered its own mark on the slasher genre, helping to solidify the various tropes and elements the genre still uses to this day. It also helps that it’s still a fun movie. Next up we get the sequel, which capitalised on the success of the original by basically being the same.

The Thieves

You know, they really don’t make enough heist movies. It’s a genre with generally tried and true structures and elements, and often lend themselves to fun little adventures with satisfying finales, but we don’t really see too many of them, especially these days – in a good year you might see one at most. So it was a surprise to discover ‘The Thieves’, a South Korean heist movie. It was an even bigger surprise to find that it was a really entertaining film, boasting slick visuals, an entertainingly broad cast of characters, some exciting, unexpected twists and an energetic finale. It’s a really entertaining flick and a genuine surprise in how good it is. I’ve seen my share of heist movies, and The Thieves is one of the good ones, with its slick style, country-hopping action, heist planning and surprisingly exciting action. It’s got a good sense of humour about itself as well, with light comedy and fun characters, while also handling drama well.

Operating out of Seoul is a small gang of thieves that pull off heists together. Popie is the brains, Zampano is his protégé, Yenicall nimbly scales walls, Chewingum runs interference and Pepsee cracks safes. In Hong Kong, career thief Chen leads his own team which specialises in more hands-on operations, such as armed robbery. Notorious master thief Macao Park brings the two teams together for a big time heist that requires all their skills and specialities; the Korean team’s specialities in silent, carefully planned heists, and Chinese team’s expertise in quick-thinking armed robbery.

Their target is the Tear of the Sun, an exceptionally valuable jewel held by the mistress of a powerful gangster notorious for murdering anybody who crosses him. Locked within a safe in a massive, heavily guarded Macau casino, the heist will involve careful planning, preparation, teamwork and a little luck to pull off. Tensions quickly rise amidst the two teams, where distrust and dislike between the groups lead to various plans, deals, arrangements and agendas being formed as everybody looks to their own secret motivations. The biggest tensions are between Macao Park, his former protégé Popie and his former partner/lover Pepsee, with their relationship being a messy love triangle of past betrayal.

It’s almost an antithesis to ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ and its sort of slick, swanky heist films. In that movie and those like it the team were all liked each other, worked together well and the heist went off perfectly – even when it looked like it was going wrong it was just another part of the plan. ‘The Thieves’ couldn’t be more different. It’s slick and stylish for sure, and most of the thieves are likeable, but the way things play out is anything but smooth. The team is a shaky shambles from the start, with distrust, dislike and disharmony amongst the ranks and its numerous members all having their own personal agendas. When things go wrong they really go wrong, and the team fractures even more as various schemes and motivations come to light. It becomes much more action packed than one would expect in its finale, where motivations are revealed and things get dangerous for everybody involved. I actually really enjoyed the shift, as it lead to some impressive moments and let some of the characters show off their skills.

The two ragtag teams of thieves are entertaining, made up of a collection of likeable thieves and thugs, with even the scummiest of the lot (Popie is a bit of a douchebag) still being entertaining. Everybody has their part to play, and when things look as though they might go wrong you care about what happens to them. Their interactions are fun. The aged Chewingum and Chen start a little romance, while sexy Yenicall uses her charms to mess with some of the men. The strongest is the Macao Park/Pepsee interactions, with both having their own baggage going into the heist. There are a lot of characters though, and some of them don’t get as much attention as the others. It’s mostly fine, though one or two ancillary characters suddenly get forgotten as the movie continues.

‘The Thieves’ was a big surprise for me, if only because I wasn’t sure what to expect when going in. It revealed itself to be a good film, especially as it continued. Every time it changed gears I enjoyed the new direction it took. It’s one of the good ones.

Tiktik: The Aswang Chronicles

 

What the hell is a tiktik and what the hell is an aswang? Those are two questions that’ll probably come to mind when looking at this movie. Aswang, from what I gathered, are some kind of Filipino vampire/were-dog. They’re gypsies who can transform into monstrous forms and eat human flesh. They eat hearts and livers, but prefer to eat unborn children. They appear almost like vampires – they have horrific sharp teeth, they hiss, their bite and saliva is infectious and they have super strength and speed. They can also transform into skinny dog monsters. They’re vulnerable to salt, garlic and stingray tails, and when the sun rises they lose all their powers. As for tiktik? That’s where things get a little more confusing. The word only appears once in the film, said by one of the murderous aswang. From what I can tell, a tiktik is a particular kind of aswang. All tiktiks are aswangs, but not all aswangs are tiktiks. Got it? No? That’s ok, it really doesn’t matter.

So then what exactly is Tiktik: the Aswang Chronicles? It’s a Filipino action/horror film with a tiny bit of comedy thrown in, shot mostly on green screen. And it’s alright. It’s not a scary movie and it might be a bit all over the place, with a weak story and thing characters, but it’s entertaining for what it is and the cultural spice gives things a different flavour.

Makoy, an arrogant jerkass, travels to his heavily pregnant ex-girlfriend Sonia’s tiny countryside hometown hoping to reconcile with her. Sonia doesn’t want to see him and tells him to leave, egged on by her headstrong mother Fely. Her timid father, Nestor, is more welcoming as he feels that underneath Makoy’s douche persona he truly cares for Sonia. Nestor convinces Makoy to stay for Sonia’s birthday the next day and they head into town to buy supplies. Wanting a suckling pig to roast in celebration, they head out of town to buy one from the large family of gypsies that live in the mountains. The rude and impatient Makoy needlessly antagonises and insults them and they head home with a pig in tow. But the insults aren’t forgotten and they certainly aren’t forgiven; the gypsies are actually aswang, flesh hungry were-dog monsters who feast on unborn babies. The aswang want to kill Makoy and eat Sonia’s unborn baby, and so Makoy and Sonia’s family must barricade themselves inside their house and survive the night.

 Aswang are weird, initially appearing as basically vampires (big teeth, superhuman strength/speed, hissing) Things get downright bizarre when their patriarch appears; when things get really dire (and the film switches from horror into more action-based territory for its finale), the aswang’s leader opens his mouth and a crow sticks its head out. The crow vomits a disgusting liquid into his hands, which his children and grandchildren lap up. They then transform into skinless dog monsters, much like werewolves. The leader, for his part (and completely confusing me entirely) transforms into a demonic looking giant crow-man monster. Why is he a crow when his children are dogs? No freaking idea. I feel the answer would be ‘because aswang’.

I always find it interesting watching horror films from different countries dealing with culturally-specific monsters or nasties from folklore, mythology or legends generally because it’s usually something new and different, but also because they never seem to spend too much time explaining what’s going on or what the horror is. Nobody acts like it is strange or even out of the ordinary when the aswang show up. In fact, everybody seems to know and accept that they’re around, which is why everybody is so well supplied with garlic, salt and aswang-killing weapons. ‘Oh look out, there are aswang’ seems to be the muted response from some characters, and while they do explain what they are and how to kill them it’s done quickly and the characters already know what they’re doing. I find it refreshing when a film’s characters are well-educated, equipped and prepared for the horrific beasties, usually because the film’s audience is assumed to know what’s going on. It’s the opposite of American horror films that spend a lot of time explaining things. 

 

Makoy is a massive toolbag for almost the entire movie. It’s one of those movies where he magically redeems himself to the other characters by killing monsters, but even then he remains a jerk throughout. He doesn’t grow as a person, he doesn’t learn anything but by the end Makoy is slashing down monstrous dog-like aswang with mystical stingray whips because he’s the main character. It’s a clichéd character arc, but thankfully the film doesn’t spend too much time looking at it. Thankfully the film also makes fun of him, pointing out his poser crap, his terrible decision making skills and how dumb he tends to be. In fact a great strength is the use of humour – while I wouldn’t call it hilarious, the levity makes it a fun ride and a better film than if it had tried the serious route. The rest of the cast are similarly simple – Sonia doesn’t have much going on apart from being pregnant, her mother is righteously bitchy about Makoy being a tool, Nestor is wimpy because his wife browbeats him constantly while Sonia’s cousin brings the comic relief, usually being the target for Makoy’s douchebag behaviour.

 

The pacing is initially slower than you might expect. It takes its time in the beginning, introducing the thin characters and setting up the scenario. I thought it worked partly to its benefit, since it lets the rest of the film have a sense of escalation. After building some tension and atmosphere, it becomes a little bit of a chase movie, then a house-under-siege horror film before becoming more of an out-in-the-open action film for the finale. As a result it sort of removes some of the atmosphere and tension that gets built up. While I’d never say it’s scary, the initial scenes at dusk in the village and gypsy camp give a cool pulpy horror story feel, and an initial car chase through the woods feels a little tense.

The film is noted as being the first ever Filipino movie shot in green screen. It’s not entirely green screen (despite the claims, those interior locations are real), but the effect is used in exterior locations and for landscape backgrounds. It doesn’t look bad. In fact I think it looks fine, and actually adds to the atmosphere. The surrounding countryside of woods and hills have a somewhat sinister look to them, while the few locales, like a bustling little market and the aswang’s gypsy camp feel legit. The other CGI doesn’t fare quite as well. The transformed aswang aren’t anywhere near being convincing, looking like obviously fake computer generated dog monsters. It takes some of the bite out of the finale. 

 

I enjoyed the film, probably more than I expected. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was expecting actually, but I think the added humour and cultural flavour spiced things up. While the blend between horror and action might not be the smoothest, especially after the slow build-up, I still had a fun time with the movie. Let me put it this way, apparently there’s a sequel and from watching the original I’d be interested in seeing it.

Eastern Condors

 

Combine the Dirty Dozen with Rambo, mix in martial arts and what do you get? Eastern Condors, perhaps the most awesome, ridiculous, action-packed movie about the Vietnam War you’ll ever see. Directed by and starring Sammo Hung, Eastern Condors seems like something of a passion project – the man even lost weight for the role. It’s a big departure from the films he usually made, with a more serious tone and more brutal action. It’s also a big showcase for the Hong Kong action talent of the time, with a cast made up of big Hong Kong action stars. I cannot stress enough how bizarrely entertaining this movie is. It just all works so immensely well.

Twelve convicts taken from various prisons, including the tough no-nonsense Hung (Sammo Hung) are conscripted into a secret mission by Asian-American Lieutenant Colonel Lam (Lam Ching-ying) at the height of the Vietnam War. Their objective: go behind enemy lines in Vietnam and destroy a hidden US munitions dump before Vietcong forces get their hands on it. Their mission is tough from the get go, being called off just as they’ve parachuted into enemy territory. With no support or backup, barring black market trader Rat Chieh (Yuen Biao), his mentally unstable uncle and a trio of Cambodian lady guerrillas with their own agenda, the team hurry to find the munitions while being hunted down by an eccentric Vietnamese general (Yuen Wah) and his forces.

Action-wise, it’s great, with a massive amount of variety and combat with a real punch to it. There are gun fights, fist fights, double crosses, explosions; all that good stuff. Knives are thrown into throats and flying kicks seem to solve every problem. There are also many of the staples of Vietnam War movies thrown in; gunboats travel across rivers, the main cast get taken prisoner in an enemy camp complete with a bamboo water prison and there’s even a Russian roulette sequence. It’s also surprisingly violent at times. Apart from the shooting and stabbings, some of the fist-fighting ends pretty brutally.

The cast is absolutely amazing, being a great collection of Hong Kong action stars of the time. There are so many of them in there it’s astounding, and the movie gives room for them to show off their skills. Sammo Hung, looking slimmer and more athletic, does a great job in a role that’s the complete opposite of the roles he usually did. Hung traditionally played mischievous scamps, but here he’s serious, mostly silent and no-nonsense, showing off a toughness he didn’t have in his usual roly-poly comedic roles. Lam Ching-ying is great and authoritative as the Lieutenant Colonel, wanting to both succeed in the mission and also protect his team and Yuen Wah is fun as the villainous general. Yuen Biao does a very familiar and Yuen Biao-like role as the happy-go-lucky trader, bringing humour to counteract Hung’s more serious role. He still shows off all sorts of flip kicks and the like though. The characters are given just enough characterisation that you start to feel bad when some of them die. The focus is more on the action than the simple story, but they make sure to give most characters some quirks or character to differentiate them, and even the few brief exchanges between them make most of them likeable.

There is some occasional nonsense to be had – a scene in the jungle involves Sammo Hung killing Vietcong by shooting palm leaves at them like arrows. I have no idea how that would even work but it’s still entertaining and awesome. That’s very much how the entire film is, entertaining and awesome. It all works together so well, with an excellent pace that keeps it entertaining throughout. It’s a really good time and a lot of fun, and easily one of the best films Sammo Hung has done. 

Over Your Dead Body

 

Take Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, swap out ballet for theatre, give it a distinctly Japanese spin, dial up the psycho-sexual insanity up, frame it around a ghost story and hand it over to director Takashi Miike and you’ll end up with Over Your Dead Body (referred to as OYDB from here on), a psychological horror film about stage theatre. It’s billed as a ‘wild cinematic detour’ for Takashi Miike, but it’s really not much of a detour at all really. Miike has made ghost stories before (‘One Missed Call’), and he’s done psycho-sexual horror-thrillers (‘Audition’). Over Your Dead Body is like a combination of these, but it comes up lacking. It’s a bit too slow and the payoff, while freaky, isn’t satisfying enough. Its premise is really interesting, but the film just doesn’t pull it off.

Miyuki is an actress in a theatre troupe, along with her distant boyfriend Kousuke. They’re doing a series of rehearsals for a production of a famous, popular play, ‘Yotsuya Kaidan’, a centuries-old horror tale of ghostly vengeance. In it an opportunistic ronin named Iemon (played by Kousuke after Miyuki gets him the part) secretly murders a man and marries his sickly daughter, Imu (played by Miyuki), to inherit their estate. She loves him, bears him an ill child and takes the brunt of his abuse, until he earns the affections of a much younger, far wealthier woman. He conspires with her family to kill Imu so he can remarry, and does so violently, but upon her death she curses him and her ghost takes violent revenge.

Real life begins to imitate the play, as Miyuki’s relationship with Kousuke begins to mirror that between Imu and Iemon. As the rehearsals continue, both Miyuki and Kousuke start struggling to separate reality from fiction as madness begins to take control.

OYDB is a very slow movie for its entire beginning hour. Two thirds of the movie is slow, building up atmosphere It is pretty atmospheric, with the few locales (the theatre, backstage, Miyuki’s apartment, a traffic stop at a construction site) becoming somewhat creepier as the film continues. The problem is the build-up isn’t very interesting for that first hour. Once the build-up is finally over though, it gets pretty freaky in quick order. When the play turns brutal in its final scenes, the film starts getting violent and creepy, with the brief moments of psychological uncertainty ramping up until it reaches its climax, where both the play and the character’s psyches reach violent ends.

It’s similar to the build-up in ‘Audition’, but here it’s far less interesting. Part of the reason is the dual-narrative – regularly switching between the Imu/Iemon rehearsal and the Miyuki/Kousuke backstage real-life dealings. The rehearsal scenes are long, drawn out and while they might be true to the Japanese play (I’ve no idea) they aren’t particularly engaging for the most part, or at least not in the beginning (it does get interesting towards the end). It takes a while before the rehearsal actually feels like a story, and by that stage it’s towards the end of the film. Alternatively, we really don’t spend that much time outside of the rehearsals, so our connection to the characters when they aren’t playing their roles is muted.

It’s also less effective overall because of a lack of a likeable lead. Kousuke is a total unlikeable douchebag from beginning to end, not even bothering to hide his constant philandering or blatant disinterest in Miyuki. Seeing him get his comeuppance isn’t as satisfying as it should be, partly because of how confusing the final twist is. Miyuki on the other hand turns out to be completely mental in a pretty severe way from the get-go (the big, rough, most ‘Miike-ish’ scene involves Miyuki with sterilised kitchen utensils in the shower). I really couldn’t sympathise much with her since she’s already strange at the beginning. The other characters aren’t much of a presence, neither within the play or the film, mostly there to incite or exacerbate more psychological tension between the couples.

The ending itself, despite the build-up, doesn’t make much sense and opens up a massive number of questions. The movie seemingly goes extremely supernatural and extremely psychological at the same time, which leaves some big confusing twists. Were the supernatural aspects real, imagined or just a red herring to trick the audience? Did the psychotic psychological stuff happen at all? No idea. The final twist itself is fairly familiar, but the details are so very confusing. A lot of the scares and big freaky moments in the film are of a similar nature, often unexplained.

OYDB is disappointing all up despite its few good aspects, but most of its faults can really be put to its premise, which is a shame because of how interesting it is in concept. The stage play makes up so much of the film that it really consumes it, which lessens the impact. The stage play stuff is done well though, with the set design and costumes looking and feeling exactly like what I’d assume they’d be for a real theatre production. The revolving stage and some of the sets are particularly impressive, even at the times when the play itself isn’t particularly compelling. The film overall is well shot on a technical level as well, with excellent use of darkness and shadows for the theatre scenes. The acting likewise is pretty decent, particularly towards the end where the characters aren’t so much as acting in a play but living it out.

On second thought, maybe calling it a ‘cinematic detour’ is the best way to describe the overall film. It’s basically a stage play itself, to the point where I could imagine Miike producing and directing a theatre production of the central ghost story. It certainly looks the part, and the film’s focus on it shows a passion for the theatrical arts. It’s a shame that it doesn’t come together particularly well. The elements are all there, and it is fairly effective in getting some chills in, but they don’t fit together into a satisfying whole and it just doesn’t pay off in the end.