jamesrupert2014

Squid game winner, now billionaire, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) teams up with former game infiltrator Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) to locate and shut down the competition and to revenge themselves upon the organisers of the deadly tournament. Meanwhile, recruiters are on the streets of Korea looking for people desperate enough to bet everything on the sanguineous outcomes of children's games. Although no longer as novel as in season one, the jarring juxtaposition of innocent children's games, often played in colourful, ingenuous venues, with the gouts and pools of blood as people are slaughtered with automatic weapons, remains the signature scenes of the series while the fragile veneer of human decency over murderous greed is maintained as a signature theme. Most of the excellent cast play 'characters' rather than 'people' but given the surreal implausibility of the entire scenario, the series doesn't suffer from this superficiality. As in series one, the Escher-like sets are fascinating, the costumes and props clever, and the story oddly compelling despite its inherent preposterousness.

In 14th century Japan, a woman and her widowed daughter-in-law (Nobuko Otowa and Jitsuko Yoshimura) live in a crude hut deep in a vast, reedy marshland, surviving by ambushing passing soldiers and selling the weapons and armour stripped off the dead men. When a local man returns from the war, the younger woman is torn between lust and loyalty while the older woman goes to extreme lengths to drive a wedge between the lovers. Slow-moving but cruel, creepy and beautifully filmed, the bleak, erotic melodrama takes a horror turn when the old woman finds a demonic Hanna mask. The 'jazzy' score seemed out of place (especially in the opening credits) but, along with the consent drumming, eventually adds to the film's stark, harsh mood. A memorable quasi-horror from Kaneto Shindo.

Strange things are happening in and around Japan that heroic pilot Jun Manjome (Kenji Sahara), sidekick Ippei Togawa (Yasuhiko Saijo), cute news-photographer Yuriko Edogawa (Hiroko Sakurai), and clever scientist Dr. Ichinotani (Ureo Egawa) are frequently called on to investigate. The 28-episode series was produced by Tsuburaya Productions, the company founded by Eiji Tsuburaya, the special effects pioneer who created the original 'Godzilla' for Toho Studios as well as many of the iconic daikaiju that followed in the King of the Monsters' footsteps (as well as numerous smaller monsters, aliens, spacecraft, miniature cities (standing and flattened) etc.). Similar to the popular American anthology series 'The Twilight Zone' (1959), each episode opens with an ominous prologue and closes with a wrap-up epilogue (usually cautionary) delivered by a voiceover (there is no host). Ultra Q is also similar to the contemporaneous American program 'The Outer Limits' (1963), in that both shows were pushed to include a 'monster' in every episode (in the Japanese show, this was primarily to appeal to youngsters who were captivated by the current child-friendly crop of 'Godzilla' and 'Gamera' films). Episodes varied from reasonably 'adult' science fiction (such as 'Balloonga', ep. 11) to juvenile fantasy ('A Boy and His Turtle', ep. 6) with the occasional 'horror story' (e.g. 'Baron Spider' ep.9) thrown in. The kaiju episodes are similar to the light-weight late Showa-era Godzilla films, and as Tsuburaya was well connected with Toho Studios, some of the similarities were due to him borrowing props and monster suit-mation costumes (often modified by adding new heads, extra frills, horns, tusks, etc). I just finished the series in order on TUBI, and having watched with the aid of not particularly sophisticated English subtitles, I can't really comment on the acting but it appears to be on par with the that of human characters in kaiju movies from the same era (although Hiroko Sakurai's projection of 'grief' or 'fear' was a bit risible at times). All in all, a fun throwback for people (like me) who are fans of all things daikaiju and tokusatsu but probably best known as the precursor to the incredibly popular and long-lived 'Ultraman' franchise.