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.

★★★

Dèmoni 2... l'incubo ritorna (1986)

... aka: Dämonen

... aka: Dance of the Demons 2

... aka: Demonen 2 huiveringwekkend leuk (Demons 2: Chilling Fun)

... aka: Demons 2

... aka: Demons 2: The Nightmare Is Back

... aka: Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns

... aka: Meng gui fan sheng (The Devil's Reincarnation)

Directed by:

Lamberto Bava

The original DEMONS (1985) was such a hit with Italian audiences that this sequel was immediately rushed into production, began filming a mere seven months later and was already in theaters nearly a year to the day of the first film's debut. Clearly not aspiring to do anything other than give fans a second helping of what they loved the first time out, director / co-writer Bava, producer / co-writer Dario Argento, additional writers Franco Ferrini and Dardano Sacchetti and special effects man Sergio Stivaletti repeat pretty much the exact same formula here. We're talking a very simple plot of trapped people fighting for their lives as a demonic contagion quickly spreads (with a nearly nonexistent explanation behind these events), a loud rock music soundtrack, a very high body count, identical looking ugly, green, veiny-faced demon designs, a lengthy film-within-the-film that somehow unleashes the evil and plenty of bloodshed, gruesome make-ups and elaborate special effects.

This at least makes one very good decision to alter the location. Instead of being set inside an old, dark, dingy, comparatively small flea pit movie theater, this one takes place inside an expansive, modern luxury high rise apartment building, giving it kind of a sleeker, more industrial feel that's accentuated with a consistent steely blue color palette. It also means we get a much larger playground for the demons to do their thing in. Not only are there various apartments with personalized art direction to reflect the occupants, but this building also has a gym, sauna, tanning salon, large parking garage, elevators, stairwells and more for all of the horror scenes to play out in. Sure this idea was likely cribbed from Cronenberg's Shivers (1975), which also features an outbreak inside a hi-tech apartment building, but the location change actually does make a big difference here.

As far as the characters are concerned, it's the usual assortment of thinly-defined fodder just as it was before. The closest thing to heroes we got in the first time out were hunky George and pretty music student Cheryl. Here we get another hunky student named George (David Edwin Knight) and his pretty wife, Hannah (Nancy Brilli). This does add a few slight details in that George is an extremely busy student who's also working a full-time job while his wife is 9 months pregnant and about to pop at any moment, but otherwise it's about the same routine. The more colorful and entertaining folks in the original film were those in smaller supporting parts, which is, again, mimicked here.

There's Mary (Virginia Bryant), a claustrophobic high priced call girl who's there visiting a john. There's the Haller family, including young daughter Ingrid (10-year-old Asia Argento in her feature film debut), who loves horror movies much to her father's (Antonio Cantafora) chagrin. Nearby is an even younger boy named Tommy (Marco Vivio), who's scared because he's been left all along by his mother (who's out on a date), and there's a spinster (Anita Bartolucci) and her beloved pet pooch in another unit. A number of actors return from the first film, though they're all playing different roles here. Fan favorite Bobby Rhodes (Tony the pimp from the original) is cast as drill instructor-like personal trainer Hank, while Lino Salemme (Ripper the punk from the original) is front desk security guard Frank and Eliana Miglio, featured in the film-within-a-film segment in the first, also turns up in the film-within-a-film segment here.

Early on, quite a bit of focus is placed on an incredibly shrill and irritating teen girl named Sally (Coralina Cataldi Tassoni), who is made even more annoying via the extremely whiny voice given to her in the English version. Sally is hosting her own birthday party but refuses to leave her bedroom for, hmm, reasons. When a friend complements her, she loudly shrieks "Not true! My hair stinks! This dress stinks!" She then has a meltdown over her "disgusting" shoulder pads and sleeves. Why? Well, because they "go back and forth" (?) And then when she finds out a boy she doesn't like has accidentally been invited, she has another screaming meltdown ("GET OUT!!!") and runs back into her bedroom to pout. I'm not sure if they were intentionally trying to make her unbearable so that audiences would be cheering on her demise or it just turned out that way, but spending ten minutes listening to this chick scream and complain is eleven minutes too long.

Like in the first film where the initial demon is able to enter into our world through a theater screen showing a film about demons, the one here manages to pop right out of a television set showing a movie about demons. And it immediately does us all a huge favor by choosing Sally as its first victim. Her ear-piercing whines are soon replaced by the much more pleasant sounds of deep-voiced moaning, groaning and yowling as she starts shredding her party guests with her freshly-sharpened claws and fangs, transforming the entire event into a bloodbath and creating a mini-army of demons in the process. Afterward, Sally expels some acidic ooze that eats right through the floors and enters into other apartments downstairs, contaminating even more folks. The same goo melts through the wiring, cuts out the power and phones and makes it impossible to leave the building.

George and Mary both become trapped inside the elevator, the spinster is attacked by her own dog after it laps up some contaminated blood, Hannah has to face off against a demon kid and the awful Gremlins-style rubber puppet that pops out of its chest (with the silly scene made that much worse by constant strobe lighting, grating rock guitar cues and piercing shrieks and giggles from the creature) and a group of resourceful survivors (led by Rhodes) eventually congregate in the parking garage, try to find weapons, make some Molotov cocktails, barricade the doors with cars and try to stay alive. There are some goofy murder scenes, like a woman roasted alive in a tanning bed, a guy getting smooshed in gym equipment and a demon claw squashing a guy's crotch.

It's not just the plot being rehashed here, but also some of the more memorable shots from the first film (like a group of backlit, glowing-eyed demons running down a long dark corridor in slow motion) are repeated. This also seems to repeat the mistake of constantly cutting away to irrelevant activity outside of the apartment building to show Sally's parents, Tommy's mother and a quartet of obnoxious punks (AGAIN!) driving around seemingly for the sole purpose of being able to cram more rock songs onto the soundtrack. However, I'm willing to let that slide here because the director at least uses our familiarity with the events of the original to subvert expectations and uses these characters to set up an unexpected event right outside the building.

While this suffers from the same exact issues that plagued Demons 1 (bad acting, dumb dialogue, terrible dubbing, nearly nonexistent plot...) it's just as visually stylish, handsomely shot / lit, fast-paced, brainlessly entertaining and filled with fun make-up fx. One could mark it down for recycling too much material from the first, but the change of location mostly makes up for that. 

The Simon Boswell score is perhaps not as memorable as the previous one from Goblin, but it's still pretty good, while the soundtrack (featuring The Smiths, Love and Rockets, The Art of Noise, The Cult, Gene Loves Jezebel, Dead Can Dance, Peter Murphy and more) swerves away from 80s glam metal to include a more diverse sound that includes new wave, alternative, post-punk, Gothic rock and synth-pop. As for which of the Demons films is actually better, I can now officially call it a draw.

Like its predecessor, this was a big VHS hit in much of the world, which led to the development of a third film soon after. However, that ended up going through a number of abandoned story ideas before the sequel idea was scrapped altogether. Bava and Sacchetti both left the project to do other films, but it eventually took shape as Michele Soavi's La chiesa / The Church (1989), which both Argento (a producer and writer) and Ferrini (writer) were involved with.

Similar to the very loose Zombi series, there were a few other films released under the Demons banner in different countries, though none of these are really official sequels. The aforementioned The Church was called Demons 3 in Japan. La casa dell'orco / "The Ogre's House" (1988), which was made by Bava for the Italian TV series Brivido giallo, was released in certain markets (including the U.S.) as Demons III: The Ogre. Umberto Lenzi's Black Demons (1991), an Italian production filmed in Brazil, was released in many European countries as Demons 3. 

Soavi's La setta / The Sect (1991; U.S. title - The Devil's Daughter) was called Demons 4 in Japan. Bava's La máscara del demonio / The Mask of Satan (1989), a made-for-TV loose "remake" of Bava Sr.'s BLACK SUNDAY (1960), was released in Japan and the U.S. as Demons 5: The Devil's Veil. Luigi Cozzi's Il gatto nero / The Black Cat (1989), his unsanctioned conclusion to Argento's "Three Mothers" trilogy (which Argento would officially finish himself a few decades later), was called Demon 6, or Demons 6: De Profundis, in France, Japan and the U.S. Finally, Japanese distributors (who are the ones mostly responsible for turning these unrelated films into bogus sequels) got their hands on Soavi's Dellamorte dellamore / Cemetery Man (1994) and rechristened it Demons '95 for the home video release.

For its limited 1987 theatrical run here in America, Artists Entertainment Group had around 4 minutes of gore removed so it could secure an R rating. The same cut turned up on home video courtesy of Imperial Entertainment, which claims to run 88 minutes. To my knowledge, all later DVD and Blu-ray releases, from Anchor Bay, Synapse, etc., are the uncut version running just shy of 92 minutes.

★★1/2