Kawaii Akuma (1982) (TV)

... aka: 可愛い悪魔

... aka: Cute Devil

... aka: Lovely Devils

Directed by:

Nobuhiko Ôbayashi

Made for Japan's Nippon TV / JOAX-DTV / Channel 4, this is widely described as a Japanese take on The Bad Seed, though writing it off as just that isn't quite capturing the full essence of the film and  those expecting another frenzied HAUSU from director Ôbayashi also need to keep their expectations in check. Things begin at a lavish, fairy tale-style wedding ceremony between young groom Koji (Hiroyuki Watanabe, who sadly committed suicide just last year) and his bride Kuyuko (Nao Asuka). After they're whisked off to the reception by a horse-drawn white carriage, Koji's cute little 5-year-old niece Alice becomes infatuated with Kuyuko's veil and repeatedly asks if she can have it. Fuyuko finally puts her foot down and explains that she plans on keeping it until the day she dies as a memento of the wedding. "Until you die?" returns Alice. Fuyuko shrugs and runs into the house to fix her makeup as the photographer is gathering everyone outside. Suddenly, the new bride comes flying out of an upstairs window and dies a twisted, bloody mass on the ground below. Approaching the body, Alice then turns to her mother and asks if she can have the veil now.

We then jump to Vienna, Austria at the "same day, same time," where Fuyuko's sister, Ryoko (Kumiko Akiyoshi), a music student and accomplished pianist, is in the middle of a heated lover's quarrel. As her boyfriends walks out of the door, she angrily whispers "Die!" Suddenly, there's the sound of a car crash. She looks out of the window to see that her ex, having been struck by the car, has indeed died. Blaming herself for the accident, Ryoko has a mental breakdown, starts beating her head against the wall, attempts suicide and has to be taken to a mental institution. It seems they've finally gotten through to her after three long years, at least to the extent where she can return to society.

Koji decides to take Ryoko back to his beautiful oceanfront mansion to work as a governess and tutor. Though he doesn't have a child of his own, Koji lives with his widowed sister, Keiko (Miyoko Akaza), and her daughter, Alice (Tina Jackson). You remember her? The little girl who got her veil? She's now slightly older (8) but, it turns out, hasn't changed much otherwise. In fact, her initial fear of Ryoko staying in the home stems from paranoia that she's there to take the veil back! Once she finds out she can keep it, Alice reverts back to cute little girl persona.

Ryoko's first night there, she's woken in the middle of the night when the veil is tossed over her. Keiko comes in, tells her not worry and that Alice likes to play jokes. The following morning, Alice denies playing the joke and Keiko denies either knowing about it or even coming into her room and having a conversation with her at all. Ryoko then starts seeing visions of her deceased sister, clad in her veil and wedding gown, lurking around the mansion grounds late at night. This casts a shadow of doubt about her actual recovery from her mental break. Or perhaps it could all be by design...

Keiko, an alcoholic who isn't the picture of sanity herself, may intentionally be stirring up trouble and has a variety of different possibly motives for doing so. She could be trying to make Ryoko lose her mind again. She could be trying to make her out to be an unreliable witness so the validity of everything she claims to hear or see in the future will always be in doubt. Or she could be trying to drive her out of the home for her own safety, to protect her against her sociopath daughter. Either way, she's been picking up on the fact that there's some mutual attraction between Ryoko and her brother and wastes no time running to tell Koji all about Ryoko's various incidents, suggesting he consult her former doctor immediately and send her somewhere else to convalesce.

Little Alice soon starts showing her true colors again in scenes that ARE quite obviously swiped from the 1953 classic this is often compared to. When she loses out on a doll prize during a singing competition, her teacher who awarded it to someone else mysteriously falls to her death from a bridge... after being bludgeoned in the head with a metal instrument... after Ryoko had already caught Alice up late at night hammering metal onto the bottom of her shoes. Alice later suggests the death was "divine retribution" for her not giving her the doll she so rightfully deserved.

This also has a Henry Daigle (groundskeeper from the original Seed) substitute in the form of a scumbag drug addict / sex predator / yo-yo aficionado who lives in a shack by the river and happens to witness Alice cleaning blood off her shoes after the teacher's death. Instead of going to the police, he attempts to use it as blackmail to get "favors" from both Ryoko (whom he first suspects is Alice's mother) and even little Alice herself ("I'll hand them over if you give me a kiss"). Ryoko attempts to leverage her position with the creep; sex in exchange for him getting Alice on tape admitting to her crimes, but he meets a fiery end instead thanks to some spilled gasoline and a firecracker. As all of this is going on, Ryoko tries in vain to convince Koji of Alice's true nature, but will he or anyone else believe a "precious" 8-year-old could be responsible for such ghastly crimes?

Seeing how I don't agreed with the general consensus that Hausu is a masterpiece, I'm not one bit surprised I also found many of the same exact strengths and weaknesses from a film made by the same guy just five years later. While this is nothing like the spastic, colorful pop art fx bonanza Hausu, it does share a similarity in that its greatest strengths lie in its visuals. The shots here are well-framed and frequently imaginative, the art direction is nice, there's decent use made of matte paintings for seaside landscapes, neatly-done flashback scenes with centralized color and sepia edges and some slightly surreal dream / hallucination sequences thrown in. That all helps to somewhat spruce up the middling script.

Where this didn't sit so well for me was how simple plot revelations are delivered to us with zero nuance. This is filled with so many comically unsubtle, soap opera-esque zoom shots and blaring music cues any time something peculiar is happening it almost reads as some kind of parody of old Gothic melodramas. At times I suspected that may have been an intentional angle the director was working, but that doesn't entirely appear to be the case. Instead of going for the over-the-top, theatrical histrionics that are a staple of classic Gothic films (and also the work turned in by Nancy Kelly and Eileen Heckart in the original Seed), he has the cast pitch their performances in a more mannered fashion.

The Ryoko and Keiko characters are saddled with various mental issues, neuroses and secrets, which work early on as a way to cast suspicion on multiple characters, but it's ultimately just a distraction that eventually gets cast aside for a basic final reel psychoanalysis of Alice, delivered to us in heavy-handed fashion. She suffers from something called "abnormal attachment" syndrome after losing her father to suicide and is now compulsively fixated on getting whatever she wants whenever she wants it. Killing is just a means to an end for her. Alice has similarly leeched onto her uncle as her new father figure and will lash out at anyone who threatens to come between them. Quite a complex psychological makeup for the little peanut, huh?

The level of exaggeration eventually becomes a bit of a turn off here too, especially considering the film spends 90% of its time trying to be plausible only to then do a 180 into bonkers territory right at the end. The finale features such silly moments as the young psycho tipping a large glass vase over some upstairs railing and having it fall directing and snugly on top of someone's head without shattering, suffocating them to death. Alice also rigs a bunch of booby traps around the house, like fastening a fountain pin to a mouse trap, which somehow rockets it across the room with such force it sticks into a wall 20 feet away. The tiny 8-year-old menace also flings a large scythe all the way across a lawn at our protagonist as if she's suddenly been granted superhuman strength. An ambiguous final scene is then trotted out that may (or may not) explain all of this.

Playing small roles here are Shin Kishida (best known for playing the vampire in both LAKE OF DRACULA and EVIL OF DRACULA) and Tôru Minegishi (also in the director's Visitor in the Eye and The Aimed School). To my knowledge, this has never been released here in America. The Japanese DVD from Dimention (not to be confused with Dimension) isn't English friendly, though fan-made English subs are available. It's worth a look for the stylish directorial touches and isolated moments of interest. Just don't expect to be blown away.

★★1/2

Ijin-tachi to no natsu (1988)

... aka: 異人たちとの夏

... aka: Discarnates, The

... aka: Summer Among the Zombies

... aka: Summer of the Strange People

... aka: Summer with the Strangers

Directed by:

Nobuhiko Ôbayashi

Ôbayashi is the same man behind the astonishingly creative HOUSE (1977), which is a marvel of color, style, visual design, noise and weird, inventive low budget special effects, which are now seen as less-than-impressive yet still enjoyably gaudy and kitsch. The movie didn't make much of a splash outside of Japan when first released and it also failed to gain much of a cult following for thirty or so years. But then something happened. It received a limited U.S. theatrical release, started showing up on late night cable (I recall it being on IFC all the time at one point) and then finally received its "We need to start taking the film seriously right now" honor badge after Criterion Collection started distributing it. As a result, the film has not only become the most popular Japanese horror film made before 1990 but it has become one of the most popular and viewed Japanese horror films of all time. Many (though not all) critics also started to embrace it. It's very highly rated on most movie websites and suddenly has started to show up on "Top 100" genre lists. It's great that Ôbayashi was around long enough to enjoy a lot of this before his passing earlier this year.

However, going by the amount of attention House - and House alone - gets, one would assume he never even made anything else. Or at least never made anything else nearly as good. This film proves otherwise, though it's absolutely nothing like his much more famous, much more frenetic work. House lovers looking for more of the same, or those who have an issue with slower-moving genre films, are best to either keep their expectations in check or steer clear completely. Discarnates (which means "not having a psychical body") is measured, mature and very serious. Though the horror content is definitely here, it takes awhile to actually get to it and it's used more as a catalyst for personal change.

Arrogant middle aged TV writer Hidemi Harada (Morio Kazama) has just recently divorced his wife. She got to keep their land, their house and their money, plus got primary custody of their young son, while he's had to move into an apartment in a large, quiet building that's mostly comprised of offices that are only open during the daytime. That leaves him alone every night with only the noise from a nearby highway to keep him company. He's noticed a light on in one of the offices on the third floor late at night recently, though, which he finds peculiar. Ichiro (Toshiyuki Nagashima), one of Hidemi's friends and frequent collaborators, comes to him and says he can no longer work with him because of moral and ethical reasons. As the unpleasant conversation continues, he confesses to being in love with Hidemi's ex-wife and that he's planning on asking her to marry him.

Just when the evening couldn't get any more awkward, a woman shows up at his door with a bottle of champagne. Her name is Kei Fujino (Yûko Natori). She claims to be a dancer and the occupant of a room on the third floor. She's also a big fan of his work and has clearly dressed up nicely just to impress him. However, Hidemi's in a terrible mood. Seeing how she comes off as desperate and emotional, and more or less tries to force herself into his apartment, he ends up being rude and short before shutting the door in her face.

Hidemi leaves the big city of Tokyo for the less-populated district of Asakusa, where he grew up. People there eat slower, walk slower and go to bed sooner. Everything closes by 10. He has such a romanticized view of the area that he even finds a sleazy pimp asking him if he wants an eighteen-year-old date for the evening charming. Hidemi ducks into a variety show to see comedy and magic acts and hears a familiar voice in the audience. He creeps closer and realizes the man is a dead ringer for his father, Hidekichi (Tsurutarô Kataoka). This guy turns out to be more than just a look-a-like. Hidekichi takes him back to his home to have a few beers and there awaits Hidemi's mother, Fusako (Kumiko Akiyoshi). She too is exactly as he remembers her and both treat him just as they did when he was a child. Seeing how his parents were both hit and killed by a truck while out bicycling when Hidemi was just twelve years old, we're left with a few important questions. Are they ghosts? If so, what are their intentions? Is this even really happening? Is Hidemi going insane and just imagining all of this?

Returning to his apartment, Hidemi runs into the building's only other occupant. Since he's drunk, he apologizes for being so rude during their first meeting and invites her in. Only this time she rejects him. The next day she calls. The two meet up for drinks. She's very direct. A bit too direct. But seeing how he's surrounded by people who never mean what they say, he finds it kind of refreshing. When he asks why a nice young woman like herself is single, she lets him in on a little secret: she was badly burned on her chest. Despite plastic surgery the scars are still visible and she's very insecure about them; so insecure she refuses to let anyone see her naked. If the two are going to have a relationship, she insists he have sex with her from behind and never look at her. He agrees to the arrangement and the two eventually fall in love.

Hidemi goes to visit his parents again, but his sushi chef father is at work. He works a lot when he is working but quits whenever he feels like it, knowing full well that he's good at what he does and can easily get hired on somewhere else. Still, his sporadic employment is why they live in a small one bedroom apartment and can't even afford to have a shower. Hidemi's father claims to hate writers, whom he believes are "hard-hearted people," but is willing to make an exception for his son, while his lonely mother always seems to be churning homemade ice cream. Hers is the best. Perfect. Not too sweet. Hidemi is able to relive the childhood he missed out on now; playing catch with his father, playing card games with his mother and eating home cooked meals with the parents he hardly even got to know as a child.

After many encounters with both his parents and his new girlfriend, Hidemi starts changing physically. He grows pale. His eyes and cheeks start sinking. His teeth start rotting. What he envisions himself to look like isn't the same man staring back in the mirror. In fact, he really has to concentrate to even be able to see what he's becoming. Something is draining his life force and slowly killing him, but who's doing this? And why?

This adaptation of Taichi Yamada's 1987 novel of the same name (called Strangers in its English-language form) may not be perfect but it's extremely well made, extremely well-acted by the four leads, keeps laser focus on the novel's primary themes and is ultimately quite moving. Though the moral of the story is presented in a somewhat heavy-handed fashion at the end, it still resonates in an affecting manner. This is essentially about overcoming trauma and finding the strength to keep living regardless of what life throws in your path, but it also touches on other related issues. Perhaps most profoundly for this viewer, how our own unresolved personal trauma can lead us to harm others and in turn create trauma for them; forming a cycle of human misery that pretty much just spirals into infinity.

Though there are some stylish flourishes, like shots reverting to black-and-white and then shrinking into small boxes used for scene transitions, they're kept to a minimum as not to distract from the heart of the story. Musician Yukihiro Takahashi (of Sadistic Mika Band and Yellow Magic Orchestra fame) is seen briefly in the TV studio and GODZILLA director Ishirô Honda also has a cameo.

This was a film festival favorite and was nominated for numerous awards, including a whopping twelve Japanese Academy Film Prize Awards (their equivalent of the U.S. Academy Awards), winning for Best Screenplay (Shin'ichi Ichikawa) and Best Supporting Actor (Kataoka). Shochiku released this theatrically in the U.S. in 1989 and it's been available with English subtitles for quite some time now. Odd then that this has been almost completely forgotten over the years but such is the fate of many hard-to-pigeonhole films, I guess. Still, there are surprisingly few critical reviews for this title online. It's not even listed on Rotten Tomatoes and the ever-increasing popularity of Hausu hasn't even helped matters any. I vaguely recall a short capsule review in a movie book I used to own calling it "the first zombie movie from Japan." Whoever authored that clearly hadn't even seen the movie.

Just as this film is not entirely bound by the conventions of just one genre, Ôbayashi made films in many different genres. His other titles of interest to horror fans include the Vadim homage vampire short Emotion (1966), The Visitor in the Eye (1977), the Bad Seed-inspired TV movie Kawaii Akuma (1982 aka Cute Devil or Lovely Devils) and The Drifting Classroom (1988).

★★★1/2