Mindwarp (1991) [copyright 1990]

... aka: Brain Slasher

... aka: Dream System

... aka: Mindwarp - Futuro virtuale (Mindwarp - Virtual Future)

... aka: Odisea en el tiempo (Odyssey in Time)

... aka: Pesadelo Futuro (Future Nightmare)

Directed by:

Steve Barnett

Fangoria magazine became such a big deal in the 80s that they decided to branch out into filmmaking by the end of the decade. The initial plan, and not necessarily a bad one in theory, was to produce one genre film per year. Seeing how covering gory horror and sci-fi flicks was still profitable at the time, the magazine was still selling, they were hosting a popular namesake genre convention and already had a fan base and name brand established, why not cut into a slice of the lucrative home video market while you're at it? Well, a few problems here. For starters, they should have tried this about five years earlier. Video stores were already stocked to capacity and tons of different labels were already competing for shelf space in the early 90s. A store may or may not buy a copy of an unknown movie from Fangoria Films (who had a partnership with Columbia Pictures at the time) but they're definitely going to buy 100 copies of a movie with big name stars from any number of major studio competitors. Additionally, while the types of splatter films Fangoria made their name on were not completely dead in 1990, their popularity was waning and these types of film wouldn't really be all that popular just a few years later.

Still, I'd say the primary problem here was expectations. If your company is comprised of genre aficionados who are supposed experts in the genre, people are going to expect these releases to be, ya know, actually good, or at the very least better than the usual low budget genre fodder. After all, if these people don't know their shit, then who does? Well, they pretty much fumbled the ball here and I think that was primarily because they were banking more on what K.N.B. Effects Group would bring to the table than who they were hiring to make these movies.

Tony Randel, whose previous foray into the genre was the incredibly dreary Hellbound: Hellraiser II, was tapped to direct their vampire film Children of the Night. Not surprisingly, the end result was an incredibly dreary movie that wasn't much fun to watch despite Karen Black giving it her best shot and attempts at humor that were childish at best. For Army (later re-titled Severed Ties), Fangoria was able to get a few known actors (like Oliver Reed) on board and then handed the reigns over to Damon Santostefano. Santostefano's only previous genre work as director was a couple of Scream Greats documentaries and shooting (very bad) "comic" linking footage for the horror shorts compilation FRIGHT SHOW (1985). Mindwarp (easily the best of these for what it's worth) was handed over to Steve Barnett, whose sole previous feature directorial credit was the comedy Hollywood Boulevard II (1989). Aside from that, he did a lot of post production work for Roger Corman.

I'm not saying the people above don't have any talent and I'm not saying the people above shouldn't have been given, or didn't somehow earn, an opportunity to prove what they could do. I'm just saying it probably wasn't a good idea for Fangoria to start a film production wing on the backs of unproven entities, especially since they were connected to pretty much every major horror talent who was working at the time. Not surprisingly, none of these films did all that well critically, commercially or with fans, and in house productions from Fangoria were no more after just three attempts. Instead, they decided to re-brand themselves as a distributor of other people's films.

It's 2037 (just 13 years from now folks... buckle up!) and the human race have mostly retreated from the real world and opted for a virtual one instead. Imagine never having to leave your home - or your BED even (except for nourishment and potty breaks) - and still be able to go anywhere you want, do whatever you want with whoever you want and be whatever you want. A company called Infinisynth has invented a technology that does just that and it's resulted in humans being able to completely retreat from reality and live in whatever fantasy world they choose. With a quick and easy outlet implant in your neck, you can now plug into a machine and live the exact life you want to live. No more jobs, no more interactions with pesky real people, no more responsibilities, no more having to feel bad feelings or negative thoughts, or be disappointed, or worry about friends or family or anything else. Your life is now entirely whatever you want it to be and the best part is that you don't even have to put any real effort into it.

Right away, this is a fascinating, still-timely premise that has parallels to our modern day online existence. Most of us now kind of do retreat from the real world on a daily basis, at least for part of the day. There are those that take it to extremes by essentially burying themselves in gaming worlds and small online communities, where we enjoy our anonymity and can claim to be whatever or whoever we want. It's certainly not to the extreme it is here but this isn't too far out of the realm of future possibilities at all, especially with all of the recent metaverse talk. I'd say a large chunk of the population probably would volunteer to live exactly like this if given the option.

Our protagonist, Judith Apple (Marta Alicia), is sick of the virtual world and wants to get outside and explore the real one. She finds her current life to be a prison and has been going without her virtual fix for awhile now. Her mother, Pamela (Mary Becker), is too far gone at this point. Using such technology for a constant deluded high would certainly have an effect on one's mental state over time. Judy is revolting against it. In an effort to wake her mother up, she manages to plug in and invade her virtual opera singer fantasy but accidentally kills her in the process. When she unplugs, she awakens to find her mother actually dead. An alarm sounds, two helmeted guards bust in and she's injected with a substance that knocks her out.

When Judy awakens she's buried in a very shallow grave in a desolate, icy, nightmarish post apocalyptic wasteland. Clawing her way out, she's first greeted by the sight of a corpses strewn on poles, and then stumbles into a sinkhole. A pair of nomads wearing gas masks and driving a refurbished tractor swing by long enough to throw her a rope and pull her out. Unfortunately, the nomads are also cannibalistic mutants, so they proceed to immediately tie her up and gag her; presumably to make her their next meal. Another wasteland dweller, this one decked out in patchwork animal rags and goggles, and armed with a crossbow, shoots the cannibals. Luckily for her, this time she gets Bruce Campbell in hero mode.

Campbell's character, Stover, is one of the only non-mutated humans still presiding in an area known as the Deadlands, which may be the only habitable above-ground area on Earth as far as we know. He's careful to wash off the toxic chemicals he comes into contact with, eats possum instead of human flesh and knows how to survive. Before destroying the Ozone layer and rendering Earth almost completely uninhabitable, the rich naturally retreated underground to safety where they've lived as "dreamers" hooked up to their Infinisynth machines, while the poor were left to scavenge, wither, mutate and / or die. Those adversely effected have turned into those cannibal mutants (called "crawlers"), who've built a civilization under some landfills, while Stover has bucked all the odds and managed to keep himself alive, and relatively normal, all of this time. His wife and family weren't so lucky. As Stover is teaching Judy how to survive in her harsh new home, the two fall in love.

Ambushed by the crawlers late one night, Stover and Judy are dragged into the bowels of their catacomb home. There they discover a makeshift society and a hierarchy of sorts with some of the mutants treated as captive slaves (used to dig out the tunnels and find "treasures" in the mountains of trash) and the others the sadistic guards, meant to whip the workers into action and / or punish those who disobey. Stover and Judy are separated, with him promptly shackled and put to work digging and she ending up in the clutches of the sadistic Cornelia (Elizabeth Kent), who hopes to put her to work as a breeder to help repopulate their society. Cornelia has a mute young female slave named Claude (Wendy Sandow) and is the mistress of the real ruler of this society: The Seer (Phantasm series star Angus Scrimm).

Things open promisingly and this is a fairly well-made film from a technical standpoint on a million dollar budget, but it loses its way once our heroes find themselves in the clutches of the crawlers. The film then treads water as our heroes plot their escape and doesn't pick up again until Scrimm enters the picture hatching incest plots, ripping out eyeballs with a Freddy-like clawed glove, presiding over human mulching rituals and drinking fresh blood out of a skull goblet. The underground trash heap production design is appropriate for the story but the relentless hideousness of the backdrop, dreary lighting and ugly, muddy color schemes make this look, and feel, miserable. And while that may be the desired effect, it's tedious all the same. The plot twists trotted out toward the end are mostly predictable and the more interesting plot points don't feel like they're being utilized to their full potential. That said, there is at least some interesting content and genuine ambition that went into this, which helps to make up for some of the flaws.

As expected, there's a heaping helping of gore on display; so much so that this originally had to be released in both R and unrated versions. We get dismemberment, hooks stuck in faces and backs, disembowelment / gut splatter, slashed throats, impalements, eye gougings, pulverized bodies, mutant leech-fish burrowing under skin, a mouth spraying a blood geyser and loads more. The effects are generally fun / good, though the low lighting makes it difficult to appreciate a lot of the mutant make-up jobs.

Campbell isn't as campy, cartoon-like and over-the-top as Evil Dead fans are accustomed to, but instead a bit more warm and human whenever they allow him to be. Leading lady Alicia (who has a much larger role than either Campbell or Scrimm despite being billed third) gives a surprisingly capable performance, especially considering this was one of her first film roles. Scrimm, Kent and Becker all do fine in support. No real Oscar turns here, but the quality of the acting was still better than expected.

There's still some conflicting information about this online, with some sources claiming it began filming in 1989 and others claiming it was 1990, and the release year given as both 1991 and 1992 depending on where you look. The credits copyright date is 1990 (the same year the male stars were promoting it at the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors convention) and, while it may have played at film festivals in late '91, it didn't see the general release light of day here until the following year. The U.S. VHS debut came in August 1992, at least two years after it was shot. The Blu-ray releases are from Mill Creek and Twilight Time.

★★1/2

Tsuitô no zawameki (1988)

... aka: 追悼のざわめき

... aka: Noisy Requiem, The

Directed by:

Yoshihiko Matsui

The seriously disturbed Makoto Ishikawa (Kazuhiro Sano) is first seen aimlessly wandering around the slums of the impoverished Kamagasaki district of Osaka. He stops to feed pigeons, then suddenly bludgeons one with a hammer and rips its head off, adding it to a collection of dead birds he keeps hidden in the sewer. He treats his human prey about the same way. A serial killer, Makoto beats his victims, robs them, defiles their corpses and then dumps them in junkyards, trash heaps and abandoned buildings around the city when he's done with them. He sometimes strips naked, takes the entrails from his victims and stuffs them into a hole bored out of the crotch of his mannequin "girlfriend," whom he shares a "home" (actually a rooftop) with, buys an engagement ring and expensive dresses for, dances naked with, cuddles with, has sex with and licks bird droppings off the face of (!) Also, great news for the couple: She's recently become "pregnant."

A schoolgirl discusses a dream she had that involved gray pigeons preventing a single white one from eating some beans, the white pigeon turning into a crow, the beans turning into starving people ("Like in that song 'We Are the World'!"), the starving people turning into dead bodies and the crow feasting upon those bodies, finally noting that we all have the capacity to be that crow picking at the carcasses of the weak and dying, granted we're hungry enough. This prompts her to give more than her friend thinks she should to a pair of disabled Pacific War vets panhandling by a fountain. Immediately after, Makoto extinguishes that good deed by accusing the men of being Koreans faking being Japanese. He knocks them both down, bites them, stomps on them and stabs one of them in the leg with a crowbar, which he then twists around to intensify the pain. He then steals their money.

No doubt like many others living there, Makoto has a long criminal record, though he's still free to roam the streets among the other undesirables. Aside from the assorted criminals are the mentally ill, the homeless, the poor, the deformed, the disabled, the different; all of those folks "polite society" has no place, and often no compassion, for. At the end of the day everyone wants love in any way they can find it, even those whose idea of love would be viewed as sick, immoral or perverse by the standards of the world at large. And we get to meet many such folks here.

A drooling, filthy bum (Isamu Osuga) who's been reduced to having sex with a tree stump (!) stumbles upon Makoto's mannequin, attempts to have sex with it and ends up cutting his dick on a broken bottle top shoved inside her crotch hole (an extra precaution from her man to prevent "cheating" I suppose). Makoto is hired by a dwarf (Toshihiko Hino) and his dwarf sister, Natsuko (Mamiko Nakai), to clean out sewers. She has bad burn scars all over her neck, arm and chest from getting splashed with hot oil as a kid, is constantly laughed at and ridiculed and manages to drive people away simply by existing. Lacking in the romance department, she's reduced to sex toys and the occasional hookup with pedophiles who try to pretend like she's a child. Oh yeah, and once a year her brother gives it to her out of pity, per their dead mother's final request!

Also weaved into the film is a touching story of a teenage boy (Simon Kumai) and his sweet young sister (Yukiko Murata). They chill at the beach, play hopscotch and give each other knowing, loving looks. And then he decides to rape her to death, tries to spit her blood back into her mouth, paints her face, buries her in a lot, digs her back up and then cannibalizes her corpse. After stripping all of the flesh off, he then carries around her bones in a bag. He's not the only person to go mad either. Poor Makoto loses it too, starts killing people with a claw hammer, burns down a building and, in a very striking and surprisingly moving scene captured in long shots, runs toward a hundred or so schoolgirls for help, only for them to flee from her in horror.

There's an out of body experience, a headless Buddha statue with eggs on its neck stump, a dead parakeet, a ghost, a hand getting impaled, self-mutilation, spitting up half-chewed food, a disembowelment, a fetus getting ripped apart, a close-up shot of a dirty asshole, puking on someone's face, accidental death by discus hit to the back of the head and many, many incidents of casual, seemingly senseless cruelty and violence.

Societal alienation has always been a key theme in all of the director's films. His debut, Rusty Empty Can (1979), dealt with a homosexual love affair at a time when gays were heavily discriminated against in Japan. That was followed by Pig-Chicken Suicide (1981), which dealt with racism against Koreans living in Japan and also reputedly has many scenes of real animal slaughter, which is why I've avoided it thus far. Many of the same themes, namely the search for love and affection in a world filled with prejudices and obstacles, have carried on over to this one.

This proved to be something of a challenging view for me and it took three separate tries to finally make it all the way to the end. The controversial content didn't bother me at all, nor did the grotesque and gory imagery. What was more of a struggle was the formless plot, which takes seemingly forever to start taking shape, and the repulsive, thinly-drawn characters, This really could have used some tightening up in the editing room as well. While I don't necessarily have a problem with a 2 1/2 hour movie, I do have a problem with a 2 1/2 hour movie packed with unnecessary long shots of mundane things that seem to go on forever. There's making a point and then there's making a point and then beating the audience over the head with that point for an additional hour.

Aside from the prolific Sano, who's a director himself and a regular presence in Hisayasu Satô movies like RE-WIND and SURVEY MAP OF A PARADISE LOST, the cast is comprised almost entirely of amateurs, though everyone plays their part effectively.

What really saves the day here is the style. This is one of the most visually remarkable pieces I've seen in quite awhile. It's shot in grainy 16mm and black-and-white (one of my personal favorite aesthetic choices), with lots of unsteady handheld camerawork roaming about, great framing and very striking shots and camera placements. There's one great high contrast shot after another and the whole thing looks fantastically gritty. That by itself is enough of an incentive to give this a look, though the narrative and the content may not be to everyone's tastes. I'm a bit torn. Even though I really appreciate the artistry and imagination behind this, and there are a number of powerful moments worth seeing, it's definitely not something I'll ever sit through again.

This project began all the way back in 1983, took three years to complete and another two years to release. It caused controversy in its home country but became a big underground cult hit, playing in one theater until 2004! However, the film didn't make much of an impact in other parts of the world. Supposedly a number of film festivals, even those outside of Japan, refused to show it. It also didn't do much for the career of the director, who wouldn't make anything else until twenty years later. His next and, as of this writing, last film, Where Are We Going? (2008), once again dealt with love among the marginalized, this time between a young male factory worker with a traumatic past and a transsexual.

While the film took forever to release on home video (which wouldn't occur until the late 2000s), there are several Japanese DVDs on the market now and English subs are available. Though uncredited, Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man), Gakuryû 'Sogo' Ishii (Burst City) and Takahisa Zeze (In the Wake), all supposedly worked on this in some capacity.

★★★