conedust

I've seen director Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead several times over the years. Perhaps strangely, this pecking persistence doesn't reflect any deep affection on my part. Though Gino De Rossi's infamously grisly gore effects carved lasting scars into my teenage cortex, I've always found it a rather dull film, overall. Absent the esteem in which so many veteran genre fans hold City of the Living Dead, I'd probably have written it off long ago.

I know, of course, that one shouldn't expect brisk pacing or narrative cohesion of Italian horror films. Even allowing for that, Fulci here pushes turgid incoherence well past the breaking point. Things happen on screen because, well... Just because they do. Because the Maestro apparently thought the shot would look kind of cool that way. Which is fine. There's nothing necessarily wrong with cinematic dream logic (or even nonsense for its own sake), and while Fulci's work is hardly above criticism, only a fool would question his mastery of the atmospheric and grotesque.

Basically, I'd come to view City of the Living Dead the lazy, off-day hackwork of an erratic and occasionally brilliant horror auteur. The progress of images, for instance, frequently seems all but literally random, as though the final cut had been assembled in a last-minute panic by a drunken editor with no clue as to the intended storyline. While The Beyond (1981) can be accused of similar faults - it's arbitrary in construction and the action is often risibly absurd - that film somehow sustains a captivating tone of morbid dread throughout, and Sergio Salvati's gorgeous cinematography helps smooth the narrative's more baffling contortions. Even its silliest and most clichéd moments feel of a satisfying piece, and the animating breath of Fulci's artistic inspiration never flags. City, in comparison, is a lurching, disconnected mess. The tone swings erratically from goofy camp (see Christopher George's ineradicable smirk) to knockout shock with stray chunks of meandering dead space wedged awkwardly in between. Worse yet, the images that carry us through are generic as often as they are arresting.*

Or so I thought. An enthusiastic Horror Board regular recently convinced me that, despite my reservations, I owed the film one last look. To that end, I picked up Blue Underground's widely-praised 2010 restoration on Blu-Ray, settled in on a long dark night, and tried my level best to keep an open mind. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed it! Though I'll probably never call City of the Living Dead a personal favorite even where Fulci's work is concerned, it's far more engaging, creative and artistically interesting than most of the "so bad it's good" cult oddities treasured by die-hard horror fans. The splattery set-pieces are dazzling and nauseating in equal measure, Fabio Frizzi's score is a seductively psychedelic gem, and a convincingly apocalyptic final act manages to wrap things up on a relatively energetic note. If I'm not careful, I just might wind up watching it again...

* While regular Fulci collaborator Sergio Salvati shot both films, The Beyond and the criminally under-appreciated Seven Notes in Black (AKA The Psychic, 1977) provide a far better showcase for his considerable gifts.

If nothing else, Sion Sono possesses an admirable work ethic. Depending on how one counts such things (and despite the often sprawling length of his films), he's averaged at least one major theatrical release per year since catching the attention of international cinephiles and horror nerds with 2001's Suicide Club. That's on top of an ambitious schedule of television shows, short films and little-seen mystery projects. Even so, 2015 was a banner year. Over a twelve-month period, the director cranked out five full-length features in a bewildering variety of genres and styles, finally rivaling the mad profligacy of Takashi Miike, Sono's countryman and peer in overcranked eccentricity.

Tag, the first of these films semi-available to Western viewers, is an ambitious if modestly budgeted exercise in surrealist dream-horror. Sono's film takes inspiration and its Japanese title, "Riaru Onigokko" ("Real Tag"), from a popular science fiction thriller by teen-lit superstar Yusuke Yamada. Given that the novel in question recently spawned not only a successful screen adaptation but an entire, ongoing film franchise, it might seem strange that a celebrated art-house iconoclast would so soon choose to pay it another visit. In scripting his own version, however, Sono deviates significantly from Yamada's text, twisting the straightforward tale of a young man hunted by mysterious forces into a fragmentary, gore-soaked and frequently comical deconstruction of female identity in contemporary media and society.

The story concerns a teenager named Mitsuko (Reina Triendl) and her attempts to navigate the inconstant landscape of what I hesitate to call her reality. We're given little opportunity to know Mitsuko, as Tag provides us no access to her past or inner life. Instead she's a blank and rather sleepy slate, and we drop into her ordinary schoolgirl's day in stereotypical media res. When the relative calm of a brief opening idyll explodes in grisly mayhem, we understand no more than Mitsuko herself, and from there we tumble with her, bouncing repeatedly from confusion to carnage and back again. Nothing we encounter coheres for more than a moment or two, not even Mitsuko's paper-thin sense of self.

As our hapless heroine's trip down the razor-lined rabbit hole progresses, even her name and face become subject to revision. Though Triendl's Mitsuko remains central, three actresses eventually step in and out of the lead role. Mariko Shinoda plays the character as bride- to-be "Keiko", while Erina Mano appears as a determined young athlete named "Izumi", each quite strong and distinct in her portrayal. It's worth noting here that much of Tag's runtime is populated exclusively by women. This lends a distinctly political edge to the film's constant threat of apocalyptic violence, especially when combined with the polymorphous protagonist's adaptive blankness. For those who might need a bit more prompting, a hilariously bizarre third-act reversal makes Sono's intentions crystal clear.

I don't know about you, but I'm a sucker for bugged-out existential thrillers in which the fundamental nature of reality is called into question, so I found Tag's shifting, looping, self-sabotaging storyline quite intriguing. Better yet, Sono corrals his penchant for long-winded digression this time out, confining himself to a careening, 85-minute sprint. This allows the film's disruptions and mysteries to retain their charge from beginning to end, despite the fact that "making sense" isn't high on the agenda. Many will doubtless feel cheated by the elliptical resolution, but as far as I'm concerned, the thrill of the ride more than justifies the price of admission.

So, I watched Cannibal Holocaust (that title!) last night - my third viewing over 20-odd years and the first I even half enjoyed. The revelatory restoration currently available on region A Blu-Ray courtesy of Grindhouse Releasing has a lot to do with that, especially when measured against the dubiously sourced, pan-n-scan VHS that introduced me to this infamous sleaze epic way back when. Where I once saw only a turgid and poorly-framed mass of washed-out browns and yellows, I now fully understand why so many praise Cannibal Holocaust for its visual qualities. Sergio D'Offizi's lush yet gritty cinematography gives Ruggero Deodato's film a sweat- soaked, jungle-vibrant eye candy appeal that I was never before able to properly appreciate.

And the gore is spectacular. Let's get that out of the way right up front, as it's undoubtedly a huge part of this film's lasting cult appeal. Even with thirty-some years of horror fandom beneath my belt, the unforgettable (and much-reproduced) image of the impaled native woman remains one of the most astonishing practical effects shots I've ever seen. It's as brilliantly simple as it is brutally effective. That said, I'll probably never become comfortable with the film's ghoulish displays of real-life animal abuse. While even its most upsetting moments do have thematic relevance in context, I'd have been far happier to go through life without ever having seen a living monkey's tiny face chopped off. In moments such as this, Grindhouse's otherwise glorious high-definition restoration is no blessing at all.

Cannibal Holocaust is often celebrated for its social criticism. With all due respect to the film's many erudite admirers, I personally feel that it's too obvious and hypocritical to make a truly meaningful statement. While Deodato clearly condemns the ignorance and exploitative cruelty of the "civilized" interlopers who view Brazilian rainforest tribespeople and their customs as "savage", he milks a shockingly ignorant, flatly racist cartoon of the latter's culture for cheap shock value. And though he seems to implicate his audience's bloodlust in the carnage we witness on screen, he uses this potentially intriguing critical vantage primarily as an excuse to wallow in lurid atrocity (much like Paul Verhoeven in Robocop and Starship Trooppers). Despite all that, I'm not inclined to condemn the film or its makers. Racism aside, there's nothing so terribly wrong with the sort of cinematic hypocrisy on display. And though Cannibal Holocaust's ethical incoherence sabotages its claim to moral authority, it fuels the feral, leering intensity of a true exploitation classic.

Amid the carnage, it's interesting to note the seldom-mentioned inclusion of (appparently?) real human execution footage in an early, context- & character-establishing flashback sequence. This documentary-styled section of the film seems to comment, if indirectly, on Jacopetti and Prosperi's Africa Addio and the ensuing murder trial. Perhaps one could describe Cannibal Holocaust as a "what if?" exercise imagining a documentary crew even more monstrously cynical than Jacopetti & Prosperi were alleged to have been by overzealous Italian prosecutors. With that in mind, there's a certain bitter irony in the fact that Deodato and his crew were themselves brought up on (and ultimately cleared of) murder charges following the release of their film. Plus ca change...

What else? Wonderful music!!! I desperately want a copy of Riz Ortolani's perversely beguiling score on vinyl. And I'm glad to have finally understood - and to some extent appreciated - a celebrated/reviled horror "masterpiece" that long eluded me.