Hakujitsumu (1964)

... aka: Daydream
... aka: Day-dream
... aka: Träume im Zwielicht (Twilight Dream)

Directed by:
Tetsuji Takechi

In 1962, director Satoru Kobayashi made Nikutai no Ichiba ("Flesh Market"); the first official Japanese film featuring both sex and nudity and made decidedly for adult audiences, and thus the "eroduction" genre (or as it would later be called, the "pink film" or "pinku eiga") was born. Kobayashi's film became a huge hit playing in more underground venues. Made for another independent production company, Koji Seki's erotic adventure Jôyoku no dôkutsu (called "Desire in Cavern" on the original poster and also known as Cave of Lust) soon followed. Then came Tetsuji Takechi's Onna onna onna monogatari (1963), a nudie pseudo-documentary featuring strippers, geisha and the all-important female wrestlers, which became the third pink film and was also the first of such films to get a release in America (under the title Women... Oh, Women!). Under whatever title, the film was another moneymaker. Takechi was then allowed to make a follow-up. Though it came two years after the inaugural pink, Hakujitsumu ("Day-Dream") was the first of its kind made on a big budget and the first of its kind to receive an extensive marketing campaign. The production company went all out; wide-releasing it in its homeland, getting it a screening at the Venice Film Festival and issuing it theatrically in numerous other countries, including here in America. In fact, it ended up doing so well on the sexploitation market in the U.S. that it was re-issued a second time with new color dream sequences added by distributor Joseph Green (of THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE fame).

Things open with statements from both the writer of the source story and the director, who notes the political nature of the film and justifies the unclothed scenes by explaining "... nudity stands as much for man's extreme situation as it does for human alienation." The credits feature white paint oozing down and being squirted onto a wall, accompanied by a female's moans. We're then in a dentist's office for more unsubtle sexual imagery like the sounds of drilling, gurgling, spitting and people being probed in the mouth with fingers and phallic dental instruments as the camera tilts this way and that way and shoots everything from odd angles and large circular lights and fans are positioned around like giant eyeballs gazing upon all the action. In the waiting room, Mr. Kurahashi (Akira Ishihama) is waiting with an infected tooth when Cheiko Hamuro (Kanako Michi) comes in. He's intrigued by the quiet young beauty and can barely keep his eyes off of her. Both he and Cheiko are then called back to the dentist (Chojuro Hanakawa) and his nurse (Yasuko Matsui) at the same exact time. In preparation for getting his tooth yanked out, Mr. Kurahashi is given a shot of anesthesia and drifts off into la-la land for a bizarre fantasy.

Kurahashi envisions the dentist biting Cheiko and drinking her blood. Next she is a meek nightclub cabaret singer at the whim of her dominating and abusive manager / lover (played by the same guy who plays the dentist). He takes her home, ties her up, slaps her around, removes her shirt and bra with a scalpel and scissors and then plays a game of "electricity" with her by wrapping wires around her arms and shocking her. Kurahashi has to sit and watch the whole thing play out from outside the window. In a brief color interlude, the mean lover rubs blood on her chest. Next, Kurahashi is on the playground and Cheiko is a monkey on a leash that he confess his love to before she vanishes. The mean lover rips her clothes off numerous times, she turns into a mannequin after sex, throws a pillow at a black cat drinking milk off the floor and runs through a department store naked. I'm sure it all has something deep and profound to say about sex or love or gender roles or male insecurity or obsession or something. Or maybe it's just an excuse just to show tits and ass. It's rather difficult to tell.

Like many other experimental / surreal films, I found this pretty tedious to sit through. The soundtrack (frequently incorporating distorted sounds, echoing sinister laughter, string plucking, weird sci-fi beats and a shrill dentist's drill) is annoying in the extreme. There are lots of long unbroken shots of the same repetitive actions; some lasting minutes at a time for no apparent reason. It's all nicely photographed and there's some good imagery in here from time to time, but it's wasn't enough to hold my interest. But hey, if you're the type who likes to watch numerous 30-second shots of someone having water squirted on their face with a water pick, 1-minute shots of blank screens, a minute of an anguished face barely visible in the darkness and over three minutes of someone trying to run down an escalator going up, then this may be the movie for you. The new color scenes added by Green for the U.S. release - which were spliced in throughout the film - featured full frontal nudity and more explicit soft-core sex starring extras wearing masks, probably to disguise the fact they're not Japanese. For the record, I viewed the original version as intended minus that footage.

Hakujitsumu is notable also as the very first sex film to fall victim to Japanese censorship. As most exploitation connoisseurs know, the Japanese have no issue allowing all manner of twisted perversions and oddball fetishes to pass into their popular entertainment, but for the longest time had a law forbidding showing genitalia or even pubic hair  That began right here when a brief glimpse of down-there-hair was censored with a white dot. For decades afterward, filmmakers had two options in regard to full frontal nudity: either film it as they wanted and have the censors either pixilate or fog out the offending areas, or try to shoot around it. Numerous films opted for the latter but then tried to make up for that by showing basically everything but the private parts and / or upping the perversion to insane levels.

Takechi followed this success up with Kōkeimu (or, "Dreams of the Red Chamber") the same year, which was attacked by the censors, stripped of over 20 percent of footage and made incoherent in the process (the removed footage has since been lost). The following year, he made the highly-political Kuroi yuki ("Black Snow," 1965), which stirred up a ton of controversy in its homeland after Takechi was arrested and tried on obscenity charges, which were later dropped after other artists came to his defense. Takechi would continue to make sporadic pink films through the late 60s, disappeared for much of the 70s and reemerged in 1981 with a more explicit remake of Hakujitsumu, which became the first theatrical release in Japan with hardcore sex. His final film; also blending graphic sex with horror, was yet another partial remake: Hakujitsumu 2 (called either "Captured for Sex" or "Daydream 2" in the U.S.); which was his final film. He passed away in 1988, but certainly left an indelible mark on Japanese cinema while he was around.

All of Takechi's Hakujitsumu films were based on a short story (written in 1926) by Jun'ichirô Tanizaki, who supposedly did not like Takechi's adaptation of his work and didn't live to see the others (he died the following year). In 1965, the same story was filmed in South Korea under the title Chunmong ("Empty Dream"). Brief nude scenes (which were removed prior to release) led to the arrest of that film's director, Yu Hyun-Monk, as well.

★★

Netflix Instant Marathon: 3 Days, 8 Movies

Usually when I'm browsing Netflix I feel the same way I do when I'm in a restaurant with a huge menu: I can never decide what I want because there are so many damn options. Sometimes I'll skim through the catalogue for half an hour unable to pick and finally just get annoyed and end up not watching anything at all. Where do all of these movies even come from? Why do they make so many of them? Do any of these things actually make money? I suppose they do or else they wouldn't be making so many, but considering these days thousands upon thousands of independent horror films are released, it couldn't be all that much. Wading through all of these mysterious titles to find the few gems out there can also be downright frustrating. There's a lot of sheer mediocrity out there, which is mostly what I experienced in my random marathon of films, but I stuck them all out until the bitter end... 

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Abandoned Mine (2013; Jeff Chamberlain)

On Halloween night, a high school jock named Brad (Reiley McClendon) decides to take his girlfriend Sharon (Alexa Vega) and three of their other friends into an abandoned, supposedly haunted mine where many died years earlier. Predictability ensues with banal dialogue, unconvincing emoting, inappropriate use of condiments during lame practical jokes and too-slow-to-get-started-and-then-not-much supernatural shenanigans. Upon this film's release, numerous supporters, who may very well be production company sock puppets from the sounds of their glowing posts, kept flooding message boards praising this as a great horror flick for teenagers. In actuality, it's more like a great horror flick for parents who don't want their kids watching real horror films. Though there's little objectionable material here, teenagers, if anyone, will likely be bored senseless as this has no gore, no profanity, no sex and nothing else they want to see. It also happens to have no real scares, no creepy moments, no suspense, a corny ending and is filled with cheap attempts to disorient the viewer by toying around with the timeline and repeating things over and over again to make up for the lack of plot. The portrayal of an Indian supporting character is slightly offensive and it's a muddled bore regardless of how old you are. [USA]  ★1/2

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Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader (2012; Kevin O'Neill)

Cassie Stratford (Jena Sims) is an unpopular, nerdy college girl with acne, greasy hair and big glasses. Her comically awful mother (Sean Young) is pushing her to become both a cheerleader and sorority girl or else she won't pay for her tuition. Cassie doesn't quite cut it at either, so she takes a pink experimental drug that ends up making her beautiful... but it has a few side effects Allison Hayes, Daryl Hannah and J.J. North already know all about. Cassie soon finds herself stealing a bikini off a giant blow-up display, bathing in swimming pools and crouching down inside a gymnasium hoping her lab partner (Ryan Merriman) can come up with an antidote. This is one of those purposely stupid, silly films that doesn't take itself seriously at all and it's just OK entertainment for B movie fans. The CGI effects (including a giant spider) and much of the acting is awful, but there are a few dumb laughs and Sims, Olivia Alexander (as a bitchy sorority queen bee who also gets injected with the drug) and Anne McDaniels show ample skin for your viewing pleasure. Treat Williams has a co-starring role as a doctor who gets to yodelayheehoo into the heroine's cavernous vagina. There are also brief cameos from the likes of Ted Raimi (another doctor), Mary Woronov (sorority house mother), John Landis (professor) and producer Roger Corman (college dean) for the faithful. Highlight: the nude 50 foot cat fight on a football field, no doubt. [USA]  ★★

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Cheerleader Massacre 2 (2011; Brad Rushing)

Two rival teams - the cleverly-titled red team and blue team - are slated for a competition at a secluded cheerleading camp where a 10 thousand dollar college scholarship is at stake. Meanwhile, some mechanical flying devices with differing abilities have somehow been unleashed into the woods and do the cast in one by one. And what a cast it is! Excluding a dozen skimpily-attired bimbos, we also get a creepy groundskeeper, a pervy camp owner, three cheerleading coaches, a pair of cops, a trio of dumb boys trying to sneak into the camp for some action, a female news reporter and her crew and numerous others. In fact, there are so many damn people in this movie the director can't even kill them all off in 75 minutes even though six die in in the pre-credits sequence alone. There's a ton of nudity, including three shower scenes, two sex scenes and topless sunbathing. Some scenes of nudity (like a large-breasted redhead who speaks in an extremely bizarre Euro monotone like some Hungarian valley girl) seem to have been grafted on at a later point and have nothing to do with the plot. The CGI is laughably awful, as is the acting, dialogue and the killer's motive, but the idea of robots flying around laying waste to a bunch of half-naked airheads puts a smile on my face and I wasn't at all bored while watching this. So while this isn't good at all, it's bad in a good way. Bring on Cheerleader Camp 3, I say! [USA]  ★1/2  SBIG

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Devil's Pass (2013; Renny Harlin)

In 1959, nine members of a skiing expedition were found dead in Russia's Ural Mountain weeks after the fact. A later investigation revealed that they had ripped their way out of their tent and fled into the snow barefoot for some undetermined reason which has caused a lot of speculation from conspiracy theorists over the years whose theories run the gamut from an avalanche to wild animals to aliens to Yeti and to the Russian government murdering them because they stumbled upon something they shouldn't have. This film uses that real life mystery as a basis for a found footage horror shot from the first person camera perspective of the characters. What an original concept! A female psychology student, a student director, a boom operator and two experienced hikers travel to Russia and hike to the spot of the Dyatlov Pass Incident where they encounter avalanches, a couple of armed government agents, a secret underground military lab, skinny mutant monsters with shaky faces and the ability to teleport and, finally, a time travel wormhole. The characters are unlikable and the acting and dialogue are surprisingly bad considering this film actually had enough of a budget for on-location filming, which makes the first talky hour or so extremely tough to get through. This does become slightly more interesting toward the end but by then they'd already pretty much lost me. I also found it rather distasteful to use still photos of the actual corpses of those killed in 1959 to open this film. [Russia, UK, USA]  ★★

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Exit to Hell (2013; Robert Conway)

Man, I am so sick of these current throwback "grindhouse" flicks. The fake film grain and scratches added in post production, the purposely choppy editing, the constant jumps and split second flash-forward snippets so our ADD-racked minds don't stray... Guess what filmmakers? This has already been done hundreds of times. It's not clever. It's not stylish. It's not novel. It's just tired and copycat, makes you look like a bargain Tarantino wannabe and really does nothing to actually improve your film. Enough already. It's a shame in this case because this film otherwise has a few things going for it. After shooting up a Russian gangster's strip club and fleeing with a bag of cash, four criminals headed toward Mexico take a wrong turn and end up in a small Arizona town where everyone seems a little bit off their rocker Two-Thousand Maniacs-style. The town is resided over by Sheriff Sickle (Kane Hodder), who slaughters bad folks and then cannibalizes them with his son and obese wife. There's not a moment in here or a stylistic choice that hasn't been cribbed directly from another film, the direction, editing and camerawork are often massively distracting and every single character is unlikable. On the plus side, there's gore and nudity, Hodder isn't bad in his role, Dustin Leighton and Tiffany Shepis do the best they can as two of the criminals and there's a standout role for Dan Higgins as a gas station attendant. The film falls short of its potential simply because the the director is so infatuated with "style" he neglects the story. The who, why and how are all extremely vague. Filmed in the Spring of 2009 under the title Sickle, this took until the end of 2013 to get a DVD release. [USA]  ★★

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Midnight Movie (2008; Jack Messitt)

Clearly influenced by Demons (1985), Anguish (1987) and Popcorn (1991), this supernatural slasher flick set in a movie theater is acceptable within its own limited parameters. Bridget (Rebekah Brandes) is the put upon manager of a cinema who's planning on screening a black-and-white horror flick from the 70s by a long-forgotten director named Ted Radford (Arthur Roberts) at midnight. Years earlier, Radford had gone crazy and was stuck in an insane asylum where everyone else was mysteriously slaughtered. Ted however was not among the bodies found and may still be on the loose. Well, never mind that. What unspools for us here isn't the tale of a mad director per se but of the mad director's creation. The killer on screen (a guy in a skull mask and some hand-held giant corkscrew) materializes in the theater and goes on a "real" murder spree. His murders even magically show up on the screen as part of the older movie. Granted much of the acting is amateurish and the plot hasn't been thought through all that well, this is fast-paced, performed with enthusiasm by the cast and is entertaining (and bloody) enough for slasher flick fans. [USA]  ★★1/2

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100 Bloody Acres (2012; Cameron Cairnes and Colin Cairnes)

*PICK OF THE LITTER* The Morgan Brothers, Reg (Damon Herriman) and Lindsay (Angus Sampson), have a successful organic fertilizer business with a product capable of growing gigantic vegetables. Their secret ingredient? Roadkill. The siblings don't limit that to just dead animals either and have no issue snatching humans up from accident sites if they can get to them before the cops can. Hoping to improve their fertilizer even more, their next scheme is to drain fresh potassium from live humans. Reg stumbles upon a trio of young folks having car problems, takes them back to their secluded farm, ties them up and demonstrates their patented meat grinder. Troubles arise when Reg starts having second thoughts about what they're doing and finds himself having feelings for the lone female captive (Anna McGahan), who's not quite happy with her current love life, anyway. This medium budget backwoods Aussie effort - more a comedy with gore than a horror-comedy - is well made, well acted, nicely photographed and edited, breezy with the pacing, light on the tone and entertaining for the most part. There's enough enthusiasm on display to mostly overcome the threadbare plot, though some cliché drug humor seems out of place and the aggressive attempts to be quirky and charming seem forced and calculated at times. That said, this was easily the best film from my marathon. John Jarratt (Wolf Creek) has a fun cameo as a police officer. [Australia]  ★★★

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Zombie Night (2013; John Gulager)

After starting this and seeing the production company was "The Asylum," I automatically set my expectations low. Good thing, too, as this film is infested with annoying boneheads doing moronic things simply to advance the nearly nonexistent plot. Speaking of plot; I couldn't really find one here. Zombies rise from their graves, attack a town and people scurry around trying to avoid being killed. That's it. There's no explanation behind the zombie plague and there's also no explanation for why the zombies "die" when the sun comes up. The film moves along at a brisk pace, has plenty of action, highly variable makeups and gore (some of the CGI blood splatters are terrible) and the acting from the leads (Anthony Michael Hall, Daryl Hannah, Alan Ruck) is acceptable. What drags this down are the characters, including a whiny blind mother (Shirley Jones!) who won't shut the fuck up until a bullet is put into her head, a horrible little brat whose retarded actions get several people needlessly killed and a couple of teens glued to their cell phones and moping around over one another for an hour. At one point, a small group of survivors - knowing they only have to survive a few hour until morning - have full access to a safe room but then leave the house for no reason whatsoever. Director Gulager (the son of actor Clu) also made the Feast films. [USA]  ★★

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Thanks for reading.

Lethal Woman (1988)

... aka: Desafio al ejercito USA (Challenge to the U.S. Army)

... aka: Insel der schwarzen Witwen (Island of the Black Widows)

... aka: Modliszka (Mantis)

... aka: Most Dangerous Woman Alive, The
... aka: Seduzione letale (Lethal Seduction)

Directed by:
Christian Marnham

The last movie I reviewed here was NOTHING UNDERNEATH (1985) starring Danish model-turned actress Renee Simonsen. Not long before that I watched HAUNTING FEAR (1990) starring Danish model-turned-actress Delia Sheppard. And now I've jumped right on over to something called Lethal Woman starring Danish model-turned-actress Merete Van Kamp. Coincidence, or do I have a secret fetish for Danish models? Well, only I truly know for sure and I'm not saying another word about that... though I will say that when I hear the name "Merete Van Kamp" I can't help but immediately think of canned beanie weenies. Ms. Van Kamp began her show biz career with the one-two punch of a small role in Sam Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend (1983) followed by the title role in the well-publicized,  multi-million-dollar-budgeted, 3-hour-long, made-for-TV-movie Princess Daisy (1983). The latter, which was based on a best-seller by paperback potboiler queen Judith Krantz, was a big deal at the time, garnering its rising star a coveted cover issue of TV Guide plus a lengthy spread in People Magazine. 

So how was Merete received in her first big starring role? Well, a reviewer for The Guardian noted that "... Merete Van Kamp as Daisy cannot act at all. I don't mean that she acts badly, simply that she appears incapable of putting one expression in front of another." Ouch. Undeterred by that little setback, Merete landed one season of Dallas in 1985 and then, well, not much else after that. By 1989, she found herself in South Africa starring in this obscure B flick, which briefly made the video and cable rounds in the early 90s before sinking into complete obscurity.

Things begin with an old man in a terrible wig being garroted and a bunch of topless women in animal skins moaning and dancing around a campfire with the victim's head speared on a trident. It's a sign of things to come for some male scum who have it coming. We then meet Army Major Reserve Derek Johnson (Robert Lipton), whose qualifications are adequately laid out when his black karate instructor friend calls him "the slimiest, sneakiest white boy I've ever run across." Being a middle-aged wounded war hero with a bum leg who has retired from active duty to write spy novels doesn't stop Derek from whipping the asses of a quartet of young army recruits during a training exercise. It also doesn't keep him from being forced out of retirement by his superior, General Grant (Larry Taylor). As it turns out, in the past seven years, twenty U.S. Army personnel have mysteriously disappeared without a trace and the General wants Derek to get to the bottom of things. He shows our hero a photo of an attractive blonde woman who may be responsible.

The blonde in question is former army cadet Christine Newhouse (Van Kamp), who hasn't been seen or heard from since 1982 when a rape case she took in front of the military tribunal was thrown out and she was dishonorably discharged. So what has she been doing in the meantime? Well, she's changed her name to Diana and has purchased her own island. And she's drafted a mini-army of other vengeful female rape / assault victims who live on the island with her. And she's been running an ad in a popular adult magazine promising an "erotic vacation" to the island for any man who can handle it. Said "erotic vacation" has been set up specifically to ensnare male rapists; who are lured there for sex and end up being hunted down by a crossbow-carrying "Diana" and her spear-chucking gal pals instead. Once killed, the men are decapitated and their heads are hung in the cellar trophy room. In between the hunts, the women (who are naturally all attractive) like to cavort around in lingerie or topless in their luxury swimming pool. Derek eventually arranges for a trip there, ends up falling in love with one of the women and has to resort to violence when the others attempt to hunt him own during the last 15-20 minutes.

For this film to work as anything other than trash, it would require a smidgen of believability, as well as creating a compelling central character in Christine / Diana. The film accomplishes neither. Via long flashbacks, we learn that Christine was indeed raped by sexist pig Colonel Jerry Maxim (James Luisi) in his office. As it turns out, her dignity wasn't the only thing he stole on that fateful day. Christine was also a virgin ("... just the way father wanted it.") and had been saving her virtue for her fiancé, John (Deon Stewardson). Everyone (including John) then lied about the incident to cover for Maxim. The incident destroyed Christine's credibility, career, life and relationships with both her lover and her best friend Vikki (Kryska Wilkowska), whom she discovered had been carrying on an affair with John behind her back the whole time. 

As if the above wasn't bad enough already, Christine ended up getting raped a second time in her car at gunpoint, again by Maxim, who probably figured since he got away with it the first time, he might as well go in for a second helping. Needless to say, such horrible treatment should get us behind Christine 100 percent... and yet it doesn't. I don't know what part Van Kamp's acting had to do with that, but the script arming her with an array of corny pseudo-feminist one-liners ("I won't be anything less than what I am!") probably didn't help her plight any.

Fairing best of all in the cast is Shannon Tweed, who has a large co-starring role as Tory McAllister, a helicopter pilot in charge of escorting prey to the island. Tweed was well-known in the 80s as one of the most popular Playboy Playmates of the decade and ex-girlfriend of Hugh Hefner. In the 90s, she dominated the cable and video soft-core market with dozens of releases, and then became a reality TV star in the 2000s alongside eventual husband Gene Simmons on their popular Family Jewels series. One thing Tweed perhaps has seldom been given credit for is being a competent actress; something on full display here as she easily eclipses the leading lady in terms of acting talent and natural on-screen charisma. She also has some nice chemistry with Lipton during their scenes together. 

The cast also includes Adrienne Pierce (Demon Keeper) and Kenyan-born dwarf actor Deep Roy (a regular presence in Star Trek, Star Wars and Tim Burton movies). IMDb also credits Carrie Bittner (aka porn actress Alicyn Sterling) with the part of "Miss Dillon" but she is nowhere to be seen, nor is there a character by that name in the film, and they are clearly mixing this film up with a 1991 porno of the same name starring Bittner.

Aside from copious amounts of nudity, the film also offers up enough cheesy fight scenes and violence to entertain. Men beat up men. Women beat up women. Men beat up women. Women beat up men. Heads are chopped off, arrows are shot into legs, necks are snapped, knives are stuck into crotches, eyeballs are gouged out with earrings and, during a lavish feast, some of the ladies even eat the flesh of one of their victims. A woman is set on fire and another is impaled while topless. One of Diana's butch henchwomen has an acid-scarred face and is missing her tongue from a previous assault. There's also a title theme song, "Most Dangerous Woman Alive;" which was also the release title in the UK. The U.S. VHS was from VidAmerica. There's no official DVD for this one as of yet.

★★