Pimag (1980)

... aka: 피막

... aka: 避幕

... aka: Bi mu

... aka: Death Cottage, The

... aka: House of Death

... aka: Hut, The

... aka: Pee-Mak

... aka: Pimak

... aka: Woman's Grudge and Exorcism, A

Directed by:

Doo-yong Lee

Wealthy village leader's son Seong-min (Beom-gi Kim) is dying. Believing he may be possessed by evil spirits, Master Jin-sa Kang (Seong-ho Choi), his wife (Shook Jeon) and his mother Noma-nim aka Great Madam (Jeong-sun Hwang) enlist the aid of shamans from all over the countryside in hopes that one of them can finally cure him. Many elaborate exorcism rituals are performed, including a man dancing on sharp blades, but none seem to release Seong-min from his spell. Priestess Ok-hwa (Ji-in Yu) manages to impress them the most by casually removing a venomous snake from the son's deathbed and then using her powers to make it slither away. She threatens to leave unless her demands are met, which include money and them banishing all other shamans from the village and allowing her to take charge. The desperate family agree to her terms.

Unlike most of the con artists working the spiritualist circuit, Ok-hwa appears to be the real deal. Spending days and nights meditating and praying, she's eventually able to uncover some clues as to what's actually causing the illness. She beats Seong-min with a tree branch, which seems to release an animal-voiced demon, then lets the branch lead her to a secluded spot in the woods. Dropping down to her knees, she digs through the dirt and reveals a buried, smoking bottle. Somehow the top of the bottle has been broken off, which may have unleashed a spirit in the process.

The bottle housed the remains of someone named Sam-dol and the Kang family are hush-hush about both who he is and how he met his untimely demise twenty years earlier. However, Ok-hwa will need this information if she's to be able to exorcise the ghost from the home. And none too soon. Hunchbacked butler Kim (Tae-il Han) starts spitting up blood and keels over simply for holding the bottle, so even though the spirit has perhaps left the son's body for the time being it's certainly not through tormenting the family. But why is it doing this?

Lengthy flashbacks show us the sad fate of Sam-dol (Namkoong Won - A DEVILISH MURDER), a lonely, unshaven half-wit who was stuck with perhaps the worst and least rewarding job ever: running a remote 'death hut' on the outskirts of the village where the terminally ill are brought to die. Think hospice, only dirty, without a trained medical staff, appropriate equipment and adequate pain management. The excuse for this place even existing is superstitious nonsense about spirits not being able to find their way back to the village but the real reason is more likely that the wealthy didn't want to deal with the emotionally-draining, stressful task of seeing their loved ones through their final few days. Much easier to shuffle all responsibility off onto outcast Sam-dol, who's apparently deemed fit to deal with the dying but otherwise treated as a leper driven to living alone on the fringes of their society.

The Kang family are obsessed with prestige, tradition and reputation. Since men in the family have had a bad habit of passing away at a very young age, the widows left behind were forced into a life of chastity until death as not to tarnish the family's good name. In the meantime, some of the surviving widows have resorted to whipping, burning, cutting, vaginal mutilation and other self-harm techniques as a means to keep their desires at bay.

After repeatedly stabbing herself in between the legs with a dagger, one such widow, Ms. Lee (Yun-kyeong Kim), was taken to the death hut. Great Madam convinced Sam-dol to make love to her as a last minute means to appease her and keep her from returning as a tormented spirit. Then a funny thing happened: After tending to the widow's wounds with herbs, Sam-dol was able to save her life. At first outraged at being taken advantage of while in a vulnerable state, Ms. Lee discovers the truth and finds herself drawn to the outcast. She starts visiting him, doing his laundry and bringing him food and new clothes. Before long, the two begin a consensual sexual relationship. All in secret, of course. It has to be in secret. Remember that all-important Kang family reputation?

But Ms. Lee eventually found herself pregnant, the Kang clan men discovered what had been going on and the only way to conceal it was to murder them both. Ms. Lee's body got tossed over a cliff into the ocean in a staged suicide while Sam-dol's spirit was drawn out by a shaman, captured and housed in a bottle, which was then buried outside of the village. Returning to modern day, a revenge motive is revealed and some (though sadly not all) of the deserving characters get their comeuppance in a variety of different ways (snakes, hanging, wheat cutter...) during the climactic exorcism finale.

One certainly can't argue about the technical merits on display here. This is a professionally directed, acted, written and shot film, which gets most of its mileage from its subtext as opposed to the actual plot itself, which is a bit too predictable. 

Still, it's fascinating (in a bleak, depressing kind of way, at least!) watching something made over 40 years ago that calls out certain obvious, harmful societal issues only to realize those same exact issues are still very much with us today, and perhaps always will be. It's doubly disheartening that this film was made over 40 years ago but is set way before that (some time in the 15th - 19th century Chosun Dynasty), and, if anything, the issues addressed have only gotten worse. Though this may have been directly mirroring certain contemporary problems in South Korea (I'm not so sure since I don't know what was going on there at the time), what this has to say is universal and still timely. Essentially we're presented a village that's a microcosm of a larger society. Even on such a small scale, the corrosive effects of living in a plutocracy where wealth, power, reputation and family name mean everything, and ultimately determine one's fate, are clear as day.

Some of the men in the wealthy Kang family don't even believe in spirits yet pretend like they do in polite company; secretly using superstition as a tool to manipulate and exploit the peasantry in essentially the same way modern day politicians use religion to manipulate and exploit the poor and middle class. This patriarchal society grants men, even married ones, the ability to have sex with whomever they please (even if by force), while women of equal social standing are made to live like nuns when widowed or even get killed for falling in love with someone beneath their social standing.

As far as Ok-hwa is concerned, she's in the unfortunate position of being a woman, poor and in a line of work that's considered lowly and disreputable within this society, which means the wealthy men around her think nothing of utilizing her services one day and raping her the next, knowing they'll always be protected and no one's ever really going to care what becomes of her. Limited in options, Ok-hwa's only way to really fight back is to use sex as a tool to manipulate these men whenever possible, but this also dooms her to a lonely existence. Her grim potential future is cleverly reflected right back at her by the elderly, territorial local female shaman (Jeong-ok Ra) who eventually takes her under her wing. She's been used when needed for many, many years, but has still been forced to live in isolation on the outskirts of the village and is frequently mocked as an "old hag."

This won two awards - Sam-yuk Yoon for Best Screenplay and Kyeong-ja Lee for Best Editing - at the Korean Association of Film Critics Awards, a Best Actor award (for Won) from the Grand Bell Awards (Korea's Oscar equivalent) and a Best Director Award at the Baeksang Arts Awards. Most notably, it was the first film in twenty years to win a major international film award after it took home a special prize at the Venice Film Festival. Because of that, this is considered a key title when it comes to getting the ball rolling on global recognition of Korean cinema. Just look where we are today! Not only are Korean horror films regularly acclaimed and popular around the world, but who would have ever guessed a worthy South Korean film (Joon-ho Bong's Parasite) would make history over 40 years later by winning Best Picture, Director and Screenplay Academy Awards? And, just one year later, veteran Korean actress Yuh-jung Youn (WOMAN OF FIRE) would make history yet again for winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Minari (2000).

There was only one VHS release that I'm aware of, in Korea (under the English title Pee-Mak) on the Goldstar Video label. However, this was given a boost when it was chosen by the Korean Film Archive as one of the 100 most important Korean films of all time. KFA then oversaw a remaster and Blu-ray release of the film, which comes with English subtitles and includes a commentary track from the director. This is also free to view (with English subs) on KFA's Youtube channel, though the quality isn't nearly as good as the physical release judging by the photos I've seen.

★★★

Mangryeong-ui Wedingdeureseu (1981)

... aka: 망령의 웨딩드레스

... aka: 亡霊의 웨딩드레스

... aka: Ghost's Wedding Dress, The

... aka: Haunted Wedding Dress, The

... aka: Mangryongui Wechingturesu

... aka: Wedding Dress of the Ghost

Directed by:

Yun-kyo Park

Filmmakers who frequently dabbled in the genre have been around since the advent of film itself but it wouldn't be until the late 70s to early 80s that directors would turn into bankable commodities themselves specifically because they specialized in making good horror films. Sure, one could say that James Whale is famous for his Universal horror classics, but he wasn't bouncing from one horror film to the next his entire career either. After Bride of Frankenstein he was off to the musical Show Boat and never again returned to the genre. Audiences at that time weren't clamoring for the next James Whale horror movie. They may have been anticipating the next Whale film, but it wasn't genre specific. What they were really looking forward to was the next Boris Karloff horror movie regardless of who made it. That's not a slight on Whale, it's just a testament to the marquee star power of the day. Back then, it was primarily the actors who were selling the tickets, as all of the posters and advertising materials for these older films can attest.

The impetus for all of that to start changing perhaps began in the late 1950s with Forry Ackerman and James Warren's invaluable Famous Monsters of Filmland, a magazine dedicated solely to science fiction, horror and fantasy films. The publication was popular from the onset, led to many similar rivals magazines, helped solidify fandom as an enriching and genuinely fun thing and influenced an entire generation of later Hollywood filmmakers. What's especially interesting is that the magazine also acted as an outlet for those who perhaps felt a little alienated from society. Nerds, misfits or whoever may have been a little different than their peers could find a sense of community in the pages of Famous Monsters, whether reading letters from fellow fans, learning about the people making their favorite films or checking out photos of kindred spirits in the form of misunderstood fictional monsters. This also explains why the magazine was especially popular with kids and teenagers.

Flash forward a few decades to the explosion of the home video market, which lead to an even greater explosion of horror films (always one of the top rental categories), which lead to an explosion of horror magazines and books needed to cover all of those films. Fans genuinely wanted to know more about the films they loved, who was making them and what to expect next. People behind the scenes who'd made their mark in the previous decades, as well as emerging new filmmakers, were suddenly being put on a pedestal and becoming just as big of stars as the actors themselves. And filmmakers were suddenly receiving very prominent billing in ads, with "From the makers of..." and "From the director of..." becoming perhaps the biggest selling point of all.

However, this luxury wasn't afforded every director out there and was almost exclusively enjoyed by those working in markets that courted international distribution as part of their business model (namely in North America and Europe, especially Italy). While names like Craven and Carpenter and Fulci became internationally known horror royalty, there were just as many others with just as many credits who no one outside of their home countries even knew existed.

The above is especially true for Asian filmmakers, whose efforts usually didn't make it outside of Asia and, in the off chance they did, they almost always got butchered beyond recognition in the process. The closest I think anyone ever got to receiving accolades here in America during this time was "Father of Godzilla" Ishirô Honda. Otherwise, it really didn't matter how well versed in horror you thought you were, you still almost certainly didn't know anything about Hong Kong's Chih-Hung Kuei, Taiwan's Feng-Pan Yao, Indonesia's Sisworo Gautama Putra, India's Ramsay Brothers or South Korea's Yun-kyo Park, the director of the film we're about to watch.

Even though Park was considered "The Master of Horror Films" in his homeland, he was, and remains, completely unknown outside of South Korea. That's in spite of the fact he averaged about a horror film a year over an 18 year period lasting from 1967 to 1985. You wouldn't even know that if you used IMDb as a reference, which lists just 10 of his 40+ directorial credits spread over two different pages (one spelled "Yoon Kyo Park"). And there likely would have been a lot more than just that had he not passed away in 1987 while just in his early 50s. While it's difficult to obtain biographical information on this guy, we can deduct one thing: He had to have loved horror / ghost films himself. There were pretty long stretches of time in his home country where genre films weren't popular at all and didn't have much of an audience, yet he made them anyway. Had he solely been in the business for money or fame, he'd have zero reason for sticking by the genre like he did.

Even so, while his dedication may nudge us into his corner, it takes more than just that to develop a devoted international following. You have to have quality work, or at least a couple of really good key films, to back yourself up. Even though I'm now just two movies into his filmography and am hoping I'm proven wrong here, I've yet to see evidence that Park had what it took to break out of his obscurity even if his movies had been made more readily available. What we get here is the tired old "wronged murdered woman returns as ghost for revenge against a scumbag" plot, a long-time staple of Asian ghost cinema, trotted out again and not done in an especially memorable, stylish or interesting way. This is extremely high on overwrought emotional melodrama and extremely low on most of the things horror fans are really going to want to see.

While heading home on a dark and stormy night, wealthy industrialist Yeong-ha Kim (Se-hyeok Jeong) runs over a screaming woman who darts out into the street. When he steps out of his car to investigate, the "woman" has suddenly turned into a mannequin. Upon returning home, he hears water running, flings open the bathroom door, gets a quick flash of a blue-faced ghost girl and then discovers he's barged in on his maid taking a shower. Oops. Then he finds out his young son, Cheol-su (Yong-won Choe), had an accident while he was away and ended up breaking his leg. Rushing to the hospital, he learns from his wife (Flora Seo Jeong-Ah) that a woman dressed in black had broken into their home earlier and coerced the son onto the stairs, where he fell.

The black-clad mystery woman in question turns out to be a beautiful 19-year-old aspiring singer named Jeong-im (Eun-sook Sunwoo). Well, she was an aspiring singer before her untimely demise, which we learn all about in a lengthy flashback...

The singer first met Yeong-ha when she was hitchhiking to Seoul. Arriving in the city with stars in her eyes and cheery optimism, Jeong-im later turned up in Yeong-ha's office broke, destitute and begging him to help her find a job and a place to stay. Yeong-ha put the girl up in a company villa located out in the country, whose only other occupant was elderly caretaker Old Man Kwak (Hyang Lee), who started to develop a fatherly bond with the orphaned teen. Dropping in for a visit one day, Yeong-ha became lust-crazed after spying on the girl in the shower, forced himself on her and then the two began a consensual romantic relationship. An unexpected pregnancy soon followed, which led Yeong-ha to not only insist they stop seeing each other, but also that she get an abortion. After all, his reputation, family life and social standing would all take a massive hit if any of this were to get out. Adding salt in the wound, Jeong-im was then accidentally knocked down the stairs during an argument and broke her leg.

Pregnant, alone, heartbroken, desperate, now crippled and facing a impossible battle, Jeong-im deteriorated into a pathetic, groveling and emotionally unstable mess. After receiving a late night phone call demanding his presence, Yeong-ha arrived at the villa to find his lover crazy-eyed, decked out in a black wedding gown, holding a black rose and hobbling around on her crutch talking about their upcoming wedding and showing him the wedding cake she made them. She then offered up her own list of demands: He's to divorce his wife, kick her out of the home, move her in to take her place and then let her raise their son. Also, no abortion. She's going to have the child whether he likes it or not. If he doesn't acquiesce to what she wants, she'll expose him. Another heated argument ensued, ending with an enraged Yeong-ha punching her in the face, kicking her in the head and killing her. He then wrapped her body up and sunk it in a well, though later had to relocate it to an unmarked shallow grave in the mountains due to water contamination.

Back in the present day, the vengeful ghost amusingly orders a coffin to be delivered to home of her killer with a special note that it's for the wife. She makes Yeong-ha have visions of a couple hanging by nooses at work and may also be responsible for one of his employees falling to their death. She puts the son in a sleepwalking trance, lures him outside and tries to kidnap him. She shows up at the home, makes lights flicker, breaks a doll and then finally presents herself to the wife. She bemoans her untimely death yet is vague about the details and is basically like, "Hey, why don't you ask your husband about it." Rumors are spreading around that Jeong-im died while pregnant, which also sparks suspicion. However, Yeong-ha simply lies about all of it and says she probably killed herself because some other guy knocked her up.

The ghost then starts getting meaner. She lures Yeong-ha out to a cemetery, attacks him and gives him such a bad nervous breakdown he has to be hospitalized. He then starts drinking too much and becomes partially despondent and sometimes violent, driven by visions of the ghost in place of other people. During a ritual to try to appease the spirit with chanting, dancing and a severed pig's head, Yeong-ha has a red-and-blue lit hallucination where the ghost shows us in a clownwitch-looking costume and entombs him alive. And there's some other stuff that happens, none of it too horribly exciting. What this really is is a family melodrama, and it's not a very good one at that.

My initial fear was that this was going to go down the exact same morally dubious path that the director's previous effort, WAIL OF THE GHOST (1980), did. In Wail, we're rightly positioned from the beginning to sympathize with a poor, orphaned peasant girl who's murdered after delivering a son / heir to an awful rich family before the film tries to switch gears at the very end and expect us to side with the her killers and co-conspirators instead! Having already seen that, a sinking feeling then fell over me the minute the director suddenly started portraying the husband as some poor pitiable shell of his former macho, stone-faced self and he was huddling together with his weepy wife and child. Thankfully, this eventually steers itself away from the same trap Wail fell into, but the lengths it goes to get there creates a brand new problem entirely!

And, Jeezus, is there still a lot of problematic content here. So how would you react if your spouse had an affair, murdered their pregnant lover, hid the body, lied about it the entire time and ended up putting both you and your child's life at risk as a result? Would you be like Stepford Tradwife over here and be like "Oh, I still love you, honey! Must. Keep. Family. Together." No, of course not, unless you happened to be severely mentally ill, possess deeply masochistic tendencies, are really, really dumb or are just a terrible person more concerned with maintaining your upper class lifestyle than your own child's safety. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation in the future, here's a line you can borrow: "Hey ghost girl, leave me and my child alone and hurry up and kill this useless motherfucker I'm currently married to before I do it myself."

While this film is almost entirely bloodless and doesn't have any notable special effects to speak of (best we get is colored lights), it does "boast" one of the most ludicrous twist endings I've ever seen in one of these things. Part of me wanted to go back and find all of the different ways it was impossible, but that would require me spoiling it. Let's just say, it's at least good for a laugh. On a more positive note, I can at least say some actual justice was meted out at the end (unlike with Wail), and that a couple of the lead performances, most notably from the two female leads, are strong and probably better than the film deserves.

I found two different Korean VHS releases for this title (the earliest was from 1983) as well as two entirely different prints on Youtube. The ragged though brighter and sharper print, used for the first video release is missing a lot of screen image plus ten minutes of footage, including the entire opening sequence with the mannequin and lots of other stuff. The other, longer print (not sure where this came from exactly) is widescreen and has less damage but it's also much darker and murkier. I hopped between the two to keep tabs on what I was missing, but I much preferred the look of the shorter, poorly cropped VHS print. Here are some comparisons...

Despite Park being 0 for 2 with me thus far, I'm still going to continue to comb through his filmography at some point looking for something better. There HAS to be something better, right? His other genre credits include The Girl with White Hair (1967), Witch Castle (1968), Magical Sword of the Skeletal Spirit (1969), Demon's Bedroom (1970), Ok-Nyeo's Resentment (1972), Resentment of Daughter-in-Law (1972), Resented Spirit of the Baby Bride Groom (1973), The Story of Lady Arang (1974), A Young Lady's Resentment (1974), Grudge (1976), Legend of the Mountain (1979), The Wail in Spring (1981), Daughter of the Demon World (1983), Thousand Year Old Wolf (1983)  and Song Under the Moonlight (1985). Anyone out there seen any of these?

★1/2