Gipeun bam gabjagi (1981)

... aka: Suddenly at Midnight
... aka: Suddenly in Dark Night

Directed by:
Young Nam Ko

Wealthy entomologist / professor Yu-jin (Yun Il-bong) returns home from a long butterfly collecting trip and, as he's watching a slide show of his discoveries with colleagues, notices a slide of a creepy, white-faced wooden doll brandishing a cleaver has somehow made its ways in with all his butterfly pictures. Yu-jin's wife, Seon-hee (Kim Young-ae), sees this and instantly becomes both frightened by and obsessed with the image and keeps have reoccurring visions of it. Yu-jin goes away on another long trip and this time returns with a guest: 19-year-old Mi-ok (Lee Ki-seon). The professor found her wandering the streets and, since they've been unable to find a replacement housekeeper for one who just quit, has decided to bring her home, give her a job, put her up in a room and treat her as part of the family. The couple know next to nothing about the mysterious girl except that she's the daughter of a famous shaman, her mother died in a mysterious fire, she's very protective over a bundle of something she's brought along with her that she keeps wrapped up in a sheet and she doesn't appear to be all that bright. However, once she gets a shower, lets down her hair and gets her hands on some decent clothes, she's rather attractive.

At first, Seon-hee is delighted to have both a helping hand and regular company in the home. After all, it's a big place, she has a young daughter to take care of and her husband is frequently away and of little help. But something appears to be not quite right with Mi-ok. Though she does as she's told and is usually pretty pleasant, Seon-hee discovers the girl's wrapped bundle contains the same strange wooden doll that had miraculously turned up in her hubby's slide show. The doll, which is sometimes referred to as an “ancestral tablet,” is possibly inhabited by evil spirits and was the last thing Mi-ok's mother gave her before dying. Seon-hee tries her best to be compassionate about the situation, but she's haunted by bad dreams / hallucinations about both it and Mi-ok, which eventually lead her to believe she's trying to kill her. She also feels insecure about the fact the girl is younger, has a better body and nicer skin. Once she's comfortable there, she even starts parading around in unbuttoned blouses and miniskirts in front of the husband. However, there's another side to this story... Mi-ok may not be malicious at all. It may all just be in Seon-hee's head.

Seon-hee's bitchy, cold, astoundingly uncaring best friend Eun-yeong (who's about the worst kind of “friend” imaginable) has already been filling her head with all sorts of terrible ideas. She tells her she's undesirable because she's nearly 30-years-old and that perhaps her husband is always out of town because he may be cheating on her. Seon-hee starts feeling extremely insecure and paranoid, begins lashing out, stops sleeping and takes on a gaunt appearance. Her husband stops making love to her. All of the suspicious and scary things she's been seeing, including hubby sneaking in and out of Mi-ok's room at night, may all be in her mind. In other words, she may be going insane. After awhile, everyone's patience has been worn thin dealing with her and they can only strongly recommend she get a psychiatric evaluation. Seon-hee, however, is so convinced the new maid is out to get her and take over her life that she refuses to seek help.

While the general set-up (“Is she insane or isn't she?” / “Is this really happening or isn't it?”) is hardly original, the material is presented in such a bizarre, super-stylized way that it ends up hardly even mattering. The cinematography, art direction, music score and editing are all excellent and there's great use made of color, overlapping images and exterior frame blurs (what I like to call the “Vaseline-smeared-lens effect”). But where this really differentiates itself is in its liberal use of kaleidoscopic effects. The kaleidoscope effect – swirling circles of the same face, triangles splitting individual portions of the screen image into different directions - is applied to specific sequences that are questionable in the narrative. They're moments that either happened or didn't; strange supernatural events actually taking place or delusions Seon-hee is conjuring up in her own fractured mind. There's also a frequently-used shot that appears to go right through a glass bottle. During one of these bottle shots the camera makes an up-and-down wave motion as it pans across a room and the effect is pretty striking. This is a great example of visual chutzpah elevating the material.

I'd never heard of the leading actress before watching this, but she's extremely impressive in her role and does a fantastic job of modulating her performance. The character does nearly a complete 180 over the course of the film and Kim Young-ae is completely invested in this character from beginning to end. In less-showy roles, all of the other actors are fine, as well. This also deserves credit for a decent twist in the third act, which manages to alter what we think (to an extent) whilst maintaining the ambiguity. The ending is very much like the ending of The Innocents (1961), where it's up to us to determine whether something supernatural was ever at play or not. This works either way.

Currently with just 36 votes (and no reviews) on IMDb, and with no official VHS or DVD release ever here in the U.S., this can now join the ranks of dozens upon dozens of other very worthwhile Asian genre offerings that are still awaiting a wider audience.

★★★

Húsið: Trúnaðarmál (1983)

... aka: House, The
... aka: House: Confidential
... aka: Húsið

Directed by:
Egill Eðvarðsson

When I think of Iceland, I automatically think of three things: the country's natural beauty, year-round cold temperatures and, of course, their most successful entertainment export: musician Björk. As of 2013, the entire island nation had a population of just over 323,000 (several hundred thousand less than the least-populated U.S. state; Wyoming) so I never once thought about them having much of a film industry. Looking into it further, I discovered they do indeed have their own thing going though many of their films haven't seen the light of day outside of the country. In 1991, Friðrik Þór Friðriksson's Children of Nature became perhaps the first major cross-over film from that country, even garnering an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. As far as horror cinema is concerned, the pickings are much more slim. In fact, Húsið: Trúnaðarmál (which roughly translates to “House: Confidential”), which had been Iceland's Oscar submission in 1984 but didn't make the cut, may have been their very first feature film containing pronounced horror elements. Going by an IMDb title search, it was proceeded only by two TV movies in the genre, one in 1977 and another in 1980, but that's all. Of course, that's not set it stone. There could be others not even listed on there and this film – a psychological drama that may or may not involve ghosts and a haunted house – is currently categorized as being just a mystery. (For the record, I'd personally classify it as a psychological drama / horror).

Struggling music composer Petur (Jóhann Sigurðsson) and his wife Björg (Lilja Thorisdottir), a teacher of deaf children, are having a hard time finding an affordable flat and are forced to live with her grumpy, sickly, annoying elderly aunt (Þóra Borg), who like barges into their room without knocking and plays the TV so loud Petur cannot concentrate on his compositions. The two finally think they have a solution to their problems once Petur locates a large and suspiciously affordable old house. Its owners will be gone for two whole years and their only stipulations while they're away are to keep the place in good shape and stay out of one room which has covered furniture in it. But things aren't going all that well for for the young couple aside from what supernatural events may later transpire. Björg begins to suspect her husband is cheating on her with one of his students, violin player Asa (Helga Ragnheiður Óskarsdóttir). Asa always seems to be around getting “lessons” and he's always sneaking back in very late at night after working with her.

In the new house, Björg soon begins hearing strange noises coming from upstairs, which first turn out to be some pigeons who've gotten inside through a broken window. But the noises continue and a small blue ball - first given to her by a strange woman who's been lurking around the neighborhood - seems to move all around the house on its own. Then the bad dreams and hallucinations, which begin to bleed into her real life, start. These feature a creepy, grinning old man, his sickly wife, their young daughter and a bunch of other adults she doesn't seem to know. The central figure of her visions turns up in a photo she finds in her aunt's album and she eventually comes to the realization that people she knows, including a local grocer and her own parents, know who this guy is but are withholding information from her.  Her consuming obsession with learning the truth causes her to stop eating and stop sleeping. She grows ill, starts feeling cold and has to be prescribed iron pills for anemia. She also learns she's pregnant and her husband has to go out of town for five long weeks so she'll be all by herself. Things spiral out of control from there.

If nothing else, this is a thoughtful film and it's brimming with subtext (not all of which I'm sure I understood) that seems inspired by the films of Ingmar Bergman and, most especially, Roman Polanski. What I made of it and what someone else may make of it very well could differ but, to me, this seemed very much about the fears of young wives and mothers-to-be... whether all those fears are rational or not. Though she's sometimes reluctant to voice her thoughts, Björg strongly suspects her husband is cheating on her / deceiving her and that he doesn't care about her mental state, her emotions or even her physical well-being once she becomes ill. Once she reveals she's pregnant and learns he'll be away for awhile, she then fears he's just going to abandon her. Judging by what we are shown, most of her insecurities about her marriage prove to be just. While Petur's not a monster and has his good and bad days like any of us, he proves to be untrustworthy, self-serving and immature; unable to carry his weight in the relationship either financially or emotionally.

Everything builds upon an increasing paranoia before the depressing climax, very much in the vein of two of Polanski's landmark horror films: Repulsion (1965) and ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968). From the former, you have a mentally fragile young woman being consumed by horrifying hallucinations and falling apart after being left on her own and, from the latter, you have a protagonist who grows to fear that her husband and all those around her are conspiring against her, deceiving her and / or intentionally keeping her in the dark. The director also clearly borrows ideas from Peter Medak's The Changeling (1980), including having a central character being a composer living in a large house that appears to be haunted plus a séance scene in the home and the recurring ball imagery. So yes, this treads on some very familiar ground and I'm not sure it really has anything to say that hasn't already been said elsewhere.

My personal feelings on this one are mixed. On one hand, I appreciate it for being a deadly serious, professionally-shot film dealing with adult problems and relationships in a mature way. It's well-made, well-acted, fairly well-written, intriguing and even genuinely creepy in spots. However, it's also tedious, talky and very slow going at times and certainly isn't going to appeal to all viewers out there. Whatever mystery elements this contains remain vague, unsolved and unsatisfying. The downer of an ending, while something of a surprise, just makes one wonder if they'd actually learned anything of value watching a troubled character with next to no real social support circling a drain.

The budget was around 270,000 U.S. dollars and has never been released on DVD or VHS here in America. In fact, I couldn't find a DVD box for it at all.

★★1/2

Where Evil Lives (1994) [filmed in 1991]

... aka: Trilogy of Fear

Directed by:
Richard L. Fox Jr.
Stephen A. Maier
Kevin G. Nunan

Oh, Troma, you masters of hyperbole and deception, you! Where Evil Lives is a low budget, shot-on-16mm anthology film from Florida that apparently went unseen for a very long time. And by a very long time, I mean for over two decades. That's 21 years, folks. There was no VHS issuing and it wouldn't be until 2012 that Troma decided to finally unleash this beast on DVD with the tag line “One of the GREATEST HORROR FILMS of the 80's!” That statement is ridiculous enough as is until you realize that this couldn't possibly be one of the greatest horror films of the 80s because it's not even from the 80s. It was actually filmed in 1991 (despite Troma's false claim of 1989 on their website). Glancing at the end credits, the copyright date is 1994 and there's even a dedication to the late Claude Akins, the only real “name” in the cast (who passed away in January of 1994), so it's safe to assume someone was hoping to release this in '94 and it just never happened for whatever reason. Speaking of Akins, the IMDb trivia section for the film (as well as Troma's website) claims this was his final film appearance. Amusingly, the trivia sections for three other films on IMDb - Seasons of the Heart (1993), The Search (1994) and Twisted Fear (1994) - also claim to contain his final film appearance. That either means his final film appearance somehow happened simultaneously on four different films or that yet another clueless bozo has submitted false info. I'll let you work that one out on your own.

This is basically three short films from three different directors with a framing story that attempts to link everything together. In the framing segment (directed by Kevin G. Nunan), Realtor Brandy Wine (producer Faye McKenzie) leaves potential buyer Blake Rutherford (James Coffey) to look around a mansion while she makes an important phone call. Blake wanders around the estate and eventually stumbles upon friendly caretaker Jack Devilin (Akins) digging a hole in the backyard. Jack warns him that the house has “quite a history” and may actually be haunted and then proceeds to tell him three different stories of horrifying things that have happened there over the years.

First up is “Hubert's Homecoming,” directed by Stephen A. Maier. Back in 1969 when the home was being used as a college dormitory, obnoxious and unpopular Hubert Whitehead (Peter Zaff) decided to slaughter six popular students, including gunning two down in the middle of a game of Twister and stabbing another to death with a stuffed blue marlin (!) while blood sprays all over a Yogi Bear lamp (!!) He's put away but then released in 1991 and goes to stay at a puke green home he inherited from his dead parents. Eager to prove he's been cured to his new neighbors, Hubert sits on his front lawn talking to a Barbie doll and brushing its hair and spending hours furiously washing his old purple T-bird. Hubert eventually goes back to the now-closed-down college and encounters the vengeance-seeking zombies / ghosts of his victims, who force him to play a deadly game of. uh, Quarters (!) Confederate flags seem to be all over the place for some reason and this is both predictable and silly. Yet, as dumb as the whole thing is, it proves to be the easiest-to-tolerate of these tales.

Nunan's “Midnight Date” is next and the only memorable thing about it is an unintentionally hilarious voice-over that seems pilfered from a corny paperback trash romance novel. 11-year-old Jamie Davis (Beth McKenzie), who has the psychic gift of “sight,” breaks into an old abandoned house but runs off after encountering a fried-haired, lingerie-clad vampiress named Diane (Jennifer Marie) in the basement. Jamie's horny oldest brother Tim (Thomas Croom) goes back to the house later that same night and sees Diane dancing. Seeing how “Her slow, sultry movements perfectly matched his eternal pubescent rhythms,” she is clearly “The perfect woman to ignite the hot loins of his youthful passion.” And how could he resist “Her slow, undulating sexuality...” as it “...sent ripples of desire throughout him?” Well, he doesn't resist it, gets himself bit and transforms into a vampire. Jamie sees it all in a vision and is unable to convince either her parents or the cops about what happened. Instead, she and her other brother Tommy (Derick Martini) get advice from a comic book called “Succubus” about how to stop her. This is just... not good... at all. And I'll leave it at that.

Last is Richard L. Fox's “Saved by the Spell.” Goofball scientist Dr. Henry Gabriel (Dan Daly), the new occupant of Spencer House (now called “Gabriel House”), has lost his mind and wants to construct a female Frankenstein monster using fresh body parts. He sends out grease ball hired killer Nico (Larry Quadagno, another producer) to get all the organs he needs, which he does by strangling women with piano wire, slicing them open with a scalpel and removing whatever part is requested by his boss. The cops are on the case but, since this is a tough nut to crack, police chief Thompson (Larry Silver) enlists the aid of “special agent” Jessica Peters (Louise LeTourneau). Jessica is actually a witch who conducts candlelit black magic rituals wearing only a sheer robe. One would think she'd eventually use her powers to apprehend the killers but instead she has sex with Nico (?!) to get his bodily fluids and proceeds to do nothing with them and doesn't even have a hand in stopping the doctor! Things end on a rushed and inconclusive note, which makes me think they either ran out of time / money or at one point this was an attempt to make a full-length feature but the project was abandoned before completion. Either way it just feels really incomplete.

Things finally return to the framing footage, which has its own (pretty stupid) twist. Needless to say, Evil proves to be far from the best horror movie of the 80s (or 90s) and Troma yet again proves they'll say just about anything to sell something. Surprisingly, two people involved in this one managed to go on to bigger and better things. Actor Martini from the second segment has gone on to an award-winning career as a independent filmmaker and third segment director Fox went on to become an assistant director in Hollywood and has worked on such features as Donnie Darko, The Descendants and Spring Breakers. The end credits feature a few outtakes with Akins, where it's revealed this was called Trilogy of Fear (the title on the slate) at one point.

★1/2