TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME A KILLING MACHINE (2000)

Country :

South Korea

Genre:

SF / Action

Running Time:

60'

Director:

Gee-woong Nam

Cast: Lee So-Woon, Kim Dae-Tong, Bae Soo-Baek, Kim Ho-Kyum, Yang Hyuk-Joon

GHOUL RATING:

0 (ZERO)

Story: The first 7 minutes, out of the 60, are made of opening credits. Nothing interesting whatsoever happens during them. In the following 32 minutes, a hooker (I'm not sure if she's teenage, but she's certainly nothing to write home about) is impregnated and killed by her 'teacher', revived by hack-saw 'scientists' and turned into a poor man's cyborg. She is unleashed upon her wrongdoers in the 39th minute of this mess (that's only 17 minutes before the end credits). Of course, nothing interesting whatsoever happens during the entire 49 minutes of the film proper. The end credits are mercifully shortened to mere 4 minutes, and, of course, just like in the opening 7, nothing interesting whatsoever happens during them. 

Review:  TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME A KILLING MACHINE is not a movie but a terrible cheat: don't be fooled. Avoid at all costs! TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME A KILLING MACHINE is not a movie but a terrible cheat: don't be fooled. Avoid at all costs! TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME A KILLING MACHINE is not a movie but a terrible cheat: don't be fooled. Avoid at all costs! TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME A KILLING MACHINE is not a movie but a terrible cheat: don't be fooled. Avoid at all costs! TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME A KILLING MACHINE is not a movie but a terrible cheat: don't be fooled. Avoid at all costs!

 

I'm not against opening credits: they can be an art-form in themselves. They prepare you for the film, introduce the mood, the setting, the atmosphere, they can be enjoyable in themselves, like a short movie of a kind... But, those you get in REAL cinema. The opening of TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME A KILLING MACHINE perfectly announces the insipid time-waster that follows by showing 7 worthless minutes of a girl roaming around the city streets, accompanied by a forgettable, stupid music and the endless crawl of names no one should ever bother to read or remember.

TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME A KILLING MACHINE is not a movie. It is a title that never bothered to provide a substance to be attached to. And by 'substance' I do not mean a profound meditation on human condition and the plight of raped schoolgirl hookers around the world. No, I mean the kind of substance one can reasonably expect from something that advertizes itself as a TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME A KILLING MACHINE. Rape, tits, perversity, mayhem, slaughter, gore, body parts, imaginative death scenes, weird cyberpunk imagery. Stuff like that.

 

None of that will be found here. The only 'sex' scene consists of repetitive close up shots of a guy's ass (luckily, in trousers) pumping at the 'teenage hooker' against the wall. Cyberpunk imagery? How about a group of giggling 'scientists' with a hack-saw, whose overlong 'operation' is intercut with a pointless opera singer? Their creation is surrounded by cheap plastic tubes. GHOST IN THE SHELL, eat your heart out! Gore and mayhem? Gotta be kidding me. A tit blown-off, a few splashes of red, and that's all. Here's a free advice: if you're after sleaze which, unlike this crap, actually delivers, try GUTS OF A VIRGIN and ENTRAILS OF A VIRGIN for a change. They ARE stupid, but at least they do not cheat you with endless nonsense. They deliver on their promise.

It is one thing to try something, and fail. But it is a completely different, and most despicable affair when a product (I refuse to consider this a movie) does not even try. TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME A KILLING MACHINE is a spiritless affair whose makers were assured there would be enough morons in the world to buy or rent a DVD solely because of its title, cover and basic plot. Since the director Gee-woong Nam was too lazy and talentless to even bother trying to develop the concept into something resembling a movie, he decided to stretch scenes way beyond the running time they require, so as to forcefully fill the 60 minutes. Other than the 11 minutes 'worth' of credits, you're also treated with a 2 minute long wailing of a granny who hates the noise in the streets. Two minutes of an ugly crone thrashing on the floor: "Why are they making all this noise? Why don't they leave an old woman like me alone? Why, oh, why? etc." Other memorable scenes include the 5 (five!!!) minutes of the hooker's single uniterrupted close up in which she slowly mumbles insufferable platitudes about her love to her teacher, willingness to leave the job for him etc. Whatever could be stretched – was stretched. Emptiness had to be filled somehow. With no budget, no imagination, no spirit, no inventiveness, no care, no regard for the audience – all they could think of was: prolong everything. This may be 'only' 60 minutes long – but if you're foolish enough to watch it, it'll seem like eternity. 

Because this thing is not a movie, it does not deserve to be treated as one. That's why this is not a movie review, but a warning: TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME A KILLING MACHINE is not a movie but a terrible cheat: don't be fooled. Avoid at all costs! TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME A KILLING MACHINE is not a movie but a terrible cheat: don't be fooled. Avoid at all costs! TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME A KILLING MACHINE is not a movie but a terrible cheat: don't be fooled. Avoid at all costs! TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME A KILLING MACHINE is not a movie but a terrible cheat: don't be fooled. Avoid at all costs!

ELECTRIC DRAGON 80,000 V (2001)

***

3+

ELECTRIC DRAGON 80,000 V is a great cyberpunk-SF-rock-electro-madness & weirdness from the unsung great Sogo Ishii – more typically Japanese prime qualities packed in its medium running time than most features can boast! Forget duelling banjos: how about duelling electric guitars? Yep, it's 21st century, after all, and who could be better to announce it but Sogo Ishii?

This is the DVD review of his cult film.

You’d never think that a 55-minute film could be graced with so many extras, but the good people from Discotek are there to prove you wrong – and to put to shame most DVD presentations of feature films. First of all, the film itself is in glorious black and white (anamorphic widescreen), with Japanese audio in 2.0. Stereo, 5.1. and DTS 5.1. and with very good white (but legible) subtitles. Then we come to extras: the usual ones, like chapter selection and trailers (among them is one for Ishii's amazing BURST CITY, already available and already reviewed here), and the REAL extras.

The latter include 'Making of', divided into four chapters: 'Title design' and 'Filming snapshots' contain numerous sketches and photos in an excellent frame stylized like the film itself; 'About the Tattoo Illustrations' merges drawings and text written by Hiroki Mafuyu about his concepts; and finally, there is something called 'Synthesized Images' where storyboards, photos and actual scenes (before and after special effects) are commented (for more than 20 minutes) by Ishii and the visual effects guy. Then you have the 'Interviews' section: it is unnecessarily divided, but contains mostly shots from the film's premiere, press conference and an event two months later, when the film has already become a cult phenomenon (just wait to see the kind of applause Tadanobu Asano gets!). These interviews are also in black and white, in line with DRAGON'S style.

There is also a section 'Final Showdown' – which is nothing more or less than the actual ending of the movie, extracted as the 'real meat'. To top all of this, there's a second disc too: a CD with the 'eardrum-shattering industrial/punk noise soundtrack' by Mach 1.67. The discs are in the usual plastic slipcase protected by the carton one (with different covers! yippie!). All in all: this is the definitive version of ELECTRIC DRAGON to own and cherish!

BURST CITY (1982)

Country: Japan

Genre: Action / Musical / Cyberpunk

Running Time: 116 min

Director: Sogo Ishii

Cast: Takanori Jinnai, Michirou Endo, Machizo Machida, Shigeru Izumiya…

GHOUL RATING:

***(*)

4-

Story: Set in a barren, futuristic Tokyo of highways and wastelands, a rowdy group of punk bands and their fans gather to protest the construction of a nuclear power plant. Riot police and the factory owner's yakuza friends soon move in to break it up. However, the arrival of mysterious, metal-clad bikers and a revolt among the disgruntled construction crew makes for a situation that spirals dangerously out of control… This description, taken from the DVD sleeve provides far more linearity, logic and plot than can be found in the actual film. BURST CITY is preoccupied more with conveying the energy than with telling a story, so… be warned: this city is bursting with power, but is certainly not plot-driven!

Review: Sogo Ishii is not a film director: he never went the beaten path in Japanese film industry (which is, usually, to start as an assistant and rise from there). Too passionate about his vocation, he was also too impatient to wait, and while still a student he grabbed a camera and went out there to shoot life as he saw it. He found himself in the middle of Japanese punk revolution in which he participated both as a musician (he was a singer and a guitarist) and director of promo and concert videos. His motto was: ''To experience the video not with just the eye and the ear, but to feel it through the whole body.''

Because of that, BURST CITY is not a film: it is a raw, vivid, breathing and bleeding document of an era. At the same time, it is a root of new Japanese cinema. It spearheaded the career of a major director, a pioneer of the 'new wave' of Japanese film, the man who brought the youthful punk attitude and fresh sensibility to the way movies were made. Before Tsukamoto and Miike, there was Ishii. Before TETSUO there was BURST CITY.

BURST CITY is the world's first cyberpunk movie, made in the same year as VIDEODROME and BLADE RUNNER, and predating William Gibson's 1984 novel 'Neuromancer'). Set in an indefinite near future, it presents a world of speed and noise, a world of asphalt and metal, of engines roaring along cold grey highways, of colorful gangs clad in leather and rags MAD MAX-style. It created a typically Japanese brand of cyberpunk in which alienation, discontent and anger are painted against the background of a desert slightly different than that in MAD MAX: it is 'the desert of the real', the spiritual void of contemporary affluent Japanese society. There are no literal, visible ruins: quite the contrary, the apocalypse of the soul has left the industry, office buildings and high-rises untouched. They still domineer the grey landscape, summoning their destruction, inviting dreams of a real apocalypse which pervade so much of Japanese cyberpunk, and genre film in general, from BURST CITY through AKIRA and TETSUO all the way to DEAD OR ALIVE, PULSE and beyond.

Ishii's own two previous films, PANIC HIGH SCHOOL and CRAZY THUNDER ROAD, are the only precedents to BURST CITY: brimming with youthful angst, they are the visual equivalent of punk music. Perhaps too raw for their own good, they are superseded by BURST CITY, because that was his first film with some real budget which provided a room for serious stylization and directorial flair. Ishii's themes, style and direction are showcased at their peak in BURST CITY, and his ideal of ''feeling the movie through the whole body'' is achieved 110%. This is obvious from the stunning opening minutes in which his camera takes a furious joyride down the (mostly deserted) highways, bridges and streets, with their lights turned into beautiful abstract paintings, a SF ambience which needs no robots, space ships or even huge fancy buildings like those in BLADE RUNNER. Rapid-fire editing, non-linear structure and disregard for plot are just some elements of Ishii's style.

Characters are reduced to their colorful image, sketched but never explored: after all, most of them are not even actors but members of the leading punk bands of the time. Instead of any specific person, in BURST CITY Ishii's camera becomes a real protagonist and runs, shakes, drives, and cuts insanely among the people, gangs, cars, motorbikes and cityscapes thus presenting one of the most fascinating examples of the doctrine 'show, don't tell!' His characters communicate their feelings and visions through numerous songs, through action, movement, fight, and Ishii masterfully penetrates their lifestyle and worldview completely abandoning words (dialogue, narration, etc.).

Revolutionary on so many levels, this is a unique and highly important piece of cinema: even if the music is somewhat dated, Ishii's filmmaking is not in the least! BURST CITY is a joy to watch and learn about the real power of cinema to transcend the burdens of literature (words) and theatre (stage) and find unique style of its own, expressing things that no other medium could. Not only the cornerstone of modern Japanese film, BURST CITY is more than a historical document: it is a must-have for any serious lover of film.

DVD [ NTSC, Region 1 ] : Luckily, Discotek's special edition does full justice to the importance of BURST CITY, and presents it in a manner that could hardly be surpassed. Occasional grain and murkiness come from the film's 16mm origins and are part of its appeal: or perhaps you would like your punk movie to be a slick, over-produced big-budget extravaganza? It is presented in anamorphic 1.85:1 ratio. Pity that the sound, so important for a film like this, is only in Dolby Digital 2.0, and that some songs cannot be heard loudly and fully. Again, this has to do with the original source material, and it is what it is. This edition really shines when it comes to extras: Tom Mes provides three pages of excellent liner notes, while the disc itself showcases textual background of the film, its protagonists and the whole punk scene. There is also a theatrical trailer, rare b/w stills gallery and soundtrack lyrics (unfortunately, copyright issues prevented the option of having a bonus CD with the soundtrack the way it was done recently with Ishii's ELECTRIC DRAGON: 80,000 VOLTS). Excellent carton case envelops a regular, plastic one (with a different cover) and rounds up this wonderful edition.

RUBBER'S LOVER (1997)

Shozin Fukui has a new film!!!

Well, sadly, it's only a 30' short, but damn, it's 30' of Shozin Fukui madness!

You can read the film's review here, and on this blog this is a perfect opportunity to be reminded of his two major feature length films!

Country: Japan

Genre: SF Horror

Running Time: 90'

Director: Shozin Fukui

Cast: Kawase Youta, Nao, Ameya Norimizu, Saitou Sousuke

GHOUL RATING: ***(*) 4-

Story: A group of (literally) underground researchers use human guinea pigs, and subject them to extreme noise, pain and lack of oxygen in order to awaken their primal energies - to make them psychic, or some such. When their funding is in danger, they become desperate and start doing even crazier things than before in order to produce results – which only creates more mayhem.

Review: Key phrases: cyberpunk; mad scientists; clandestine operations; secret powers of human body and mind; drugs; nudity; rape; gore; evisceration; mutation; lots of screaming… How could you possibly go wrong with these? This is what the Japanese do best, and Shozin Fukui has already proved himself in the similar vein with his previous PINNOCHIO 964 (also available from Unearthed).

RUBBER'S LOVER could be mistaken for an earlier work, since it's in black and white, and is more extreme and experimental than its predecessor, but that's Fukui for you: while other similar directors, like Shinya TETSUO Tsukamoto, moved from grungy underground towards mainstream, Fukui's second effort is even weirder than PINOCCHIO. While PINOCCHIO had a reasonable semblance of a more or less linear plot and a sympathetic protagonist to guide you through it, RUBBER'S LOVER is lacking in that regard. Whether you take it for a more 'avant-garde', praiseworthy approach, or a fault which makes viewing experience more difficult, depends on your ability to enjoy a non-linear structure in which motivations and reactions of characters are not really explained, and a plot in which a lot of the stuff comes out of the left field. Personally, I like to be surprised, but surprise is based on expectations; RUBBER'S LOVER, however, at the very beginning sets its main strategy as 'Expect the unexpected'. For some viewers, this would translate as 'Anything goes' kind of plot.

Still, the things that go on in this film are mostly intriguing and weird enough to captivate an open-minded viewer and challenge the most jaded sensibilities, which is always a good thing. The crisp black and white photography provides a lot of eye candy to equal the best parts of TETSUO: the cyber-gear and techno-paraphernalia intermingle with the screaming human flesh which sizzles and smokes in pain (and pleasure as well) and are treated as equally fetishistic as the more conventional sights of torn clothes and writhing naked bodies.

More erotic and more perverse than PINOCCHIO 964, RUBBER'S LOVER still lacks the emotional punch that goes with such a stock device as 'a sympathetic protagonist', and the ending is even more frustratingly cryptic and hermetic than in Fukui's first film. Also, the sound design is pretty rudimentary and the sparsely used music score leaves a lot to be desired; it is passable, but with a subject matter like this, and the director's background in the musical underground, one would hope for at least the melodic stuff of Chu Ichikawa if not the downright sonic assault of a project like THE DISSECTING TABLE.

At least as a director Fukui hasn't lost his punk sensibilities in his second feature, and he's back with lots of quick cuts, weird angles and extreme close-ups as well as his trade-mark: a hysteria of almost incessant screaming of all grimacing characters. One would expect at least the scientists to be more restrained and reasonable, but the ones you find in this film are the closest cinema progeny of Dr Benway, the amoral doctor from the novels of William Burroughs. And, while we're at Burroughs, one should also mention welcome outbursts of dead-pan humor, in lines such as 'Rectal injection for immediate effect!' or 'Torture sways records – Stay to low-tech stuff!' There are many visual jokes as well, the best of them being a cyclopean syringe which would scare off an elephant, used to inject ether into (mostly) unwilling subjects.

RUBBER'S LOVER is a thoroughly satisfying example of Japanese underground cinema and provides an inevitable dose of their idiosyncratic weirdness for all those already addicted to such material. If you're new to this kind of filmmaking, maybe you should start with slightly more accessible stuff like the already mentioned TETSUO, or Fukui's own PINOCCHIO 964, and see if you can take it. Then come for more.

DVD [ NTSC, Region 1 ] : Although RUBBER'S LOVER was originally filmed on 16 mm, the video transfer (in original format of 1:33 : 1) makes it look as perfect as can be. The same goes for the Dolby Digital 2.0 sound which provides the maximum the original recording could produce. The supplements include the second part of the interview with the director (in which he explains that this film was made in black and white solely because the rubber suit did not film well in color!), trailers for other Unearthed Films goodies, and another short film. This time it's GERORISUTO (which translates as 'Vomit Terrorist', or something like that). It's much shorter than CATERPILLAR on the PINOCCHIO 964 DVD, but it may not be short enough for those not able to enjoy a prolonged vomit sequence, even more repellent here than the one in PINOCCHIO's subway (since it's filmed in broad daylight here).

PINOCCHIO 964 (1991)

Country: Japan

Genre: Sci-Fi / Horror

Running Time: 97'

Director: Shozin Fukui

Cast: Hage Suzuki, Onn Chan, Kyoko Hara, Koji Kita, Ranyaku Mikutei

GHOUL RATING: ***(*) 4-

Story: A discarded sex-droid with erased memory roams the streets of Tokyo until he meets Himiko, a strange girl with binoculars who also suffers from a memory loss. Together they go to her dark, ramshackle room, where she tries to teach him speech and help remember his past. At the same time, the crazy sex-droid constructor sends out his goons to recover ‘Pinocchio’… Then Himiko starts acting REAL weird and tries to (literally) enchain the droid. But no chains can stop him once HE starts acting REAL-REAL weird and rushing to meet his maker…

Review: PINOCCHIO 964 is a delicious piece of weirdness the likes of which you’ll hardly ever find west of Japan. It belongs to a typically Japanese kind of cyberpunk which, unlike its American counterparts (ranging from BLADE RUNNER to THE MATRIX), is light on budget, effects and gloss, but heavy on the whole ‘punk’ part of the affair. You might actually say that the Japanese put ‘punk’ back into ‘cyberpunk’. And punk means: a lot of dirt, grit, bad taste, nihilism, exaggeration, speed, noise… Which is a good and healthy thing, and it brings this subgenre back to the basics as expounded by William (Neuromancer) Gibson.

Another distinction: while the American films of this subgenre are often SFX extravaganzas using a lot of action film’s trademarks, the Japanese ones usually verge on another, appropriately bleaker genre – horror. As such, they are much more body-conscious and far more existential in their approach to the genre, which means that their western roots, if any, can be found primarily in the early works of David Cronenberg (especially SCANNERS and VIDEODROME). In PINOCCHIO 964 one can also recognize bits from David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD, while the screaming frenzy in the later part of the movie seems to build upon the insanity of A. Zulawsky’s POSSESSION. Shozin Fukui, in the interview supplemented on the DVD disc, admits that POSSESSION is one of his all time favorites, which is more than obvious even without his explicit statement.

PINOCCHIO 964 starts with a bang: a flash of quick cuts shows the titular character in the arms of two writhing naked women, a drill to his head (to erase his memory) and him being dragged into the street by a sexy ‘nurse’. Slim, pale and bald (save for a small patch of hair in the front), in white hospital clothes, he’s obviously a lost soul, a stranger in a strange land. He’s immediately recognized as such by Himiko, a girl who’s making some kind of a map so as not to be lost in the city. Their encounter takes place on a crowded sidewalk in a scene which is pure guerilla filmmaking – with real passersby around them instead of stuntmen and extras. Fukui obviously likes to use (and provoke) his fellow citizens: later in the film, there is a scene in which Pinocchio is running amuck down the crowded city streets, screaming with his bloodied mouth and dragging chains behind him, while the confused Tokyo citizens look on.

Pure punk, isn’t it? Or perhaps this attitude is best exemplified when Himiko goes crazy in the subway and starts vomiting copiously for interminable minutes, in a scene that is obviously inspired by the famous Isabelle Adjani going berserk in the subway of POSSESSION. It doesn’t get longer and more explicit than this, so - be warned! The film is relatively light on gore, and violence is equally directed towards the viewer as it is towards the characters in the film: it is done through flashy editing, tilted framing, close-ups of screaming distorted faces and a lot of noise. The final 20 minutes or so consist of a long frantic running down the streets and alleys -TETSUO-style- with a speed that may get you dizzy, especially if you enhance the viewing with any substance heavier than a fruit juice.

This is a film pretty light on plot, and even the little there is – is not hammered into your skull the Hollywood way. You may or may not ‘get’ all the characters, their histories and connections on first viewing, but – here’s the good news: this is definitely a highly enjoyable and rewatchable film, provided you’re into this kind of unconventional filmmaking in the first place. PINOCCHIO 964 is, more than anything else, a pure emotion recorded on film, and the emotion is: rage, anger, frustration, confusion, alienation, a sense of being betrayed and lost. Hage Suzuki, as Pinocchio, is perfect in conveying this through his body language and expressive face, and Shozin Fukui is always there to capture and edit it to a maximum effect. If I’m to look for some faults, I might say that music could’ve been a tad better, that a little bit more gore wouldn’t hurt it, and that the final showdown could’ve been more explosive and cathartic. But, except the last complaint, these are minor faults which do not hurt the film in any noticeable way. If you’re into stuff like ERASERHEAD, VIDEODROME, POSSESSION and, of course, TETSUO – then PINOCCHIO 964 is definitely for you.

DVD [ NTSC, Region 1 ]

After 13 years of cult status and second-hand fame, this rarely seen gem can finally be enjoyed on something other than a poor VHS copy. Thanks to Unearthed Films, PINOCCHIO 964 is presented on a quality DVD, in full-screen and with 2.0 Dolby Digital sound. The extras include a short film CATERPILLAR (a slightly overlong, but intriguing outburst of punk energy: no plot, but a lot of images to assault the viewer) and an interview with the director –a quiet, almost shy-looking fellow who does not explain more than his film does, but still gives a valuable insight into his creative strategies and provides some funny anecdotes as well.