Sexandroide (1987)

... aka: La dagy de les sexandroides
... aka: Les sexandroïdes
... aka: Sex Android

Directed by:
Michel Ricaud

Sexandroide is a shot-on-video exercise in plotless gore, nudity and overall bad taste - a videotaped Grand Guignol if you will - that runs just 57 minutes and is divided into three segments. I guess one could call it an anthology, though there's no linking segments to tie the stories together so this just really comes off like three shorts shown back-to-back-to-back. Though French in origin, there's no real dialogue to listen to in any of the segments so subtitles aren't even be needed for this one. Our first tale is titled "Le dagyde," which immediately had me hopping on the ole search engine to find out what in the hell that even was. "Dagyde" is derived from the Greek word dagos, meaning “doll.” The definition I found claims a dagyde is a doll similar to, but not exactly the same as, a voodoo doll, though it sounds exactly the same. The doll represents a person who's going to be the subject of a magical ritual or spell. Needles or pins are then inserted into various places on the doll to indicate where energy, for good or ill, is to be sent. Hey, I need to make watching this crap, and having you read about it, at least somewhat educational, don't I?

A man seen only in shadow opens an envelope containing a Polaroid of a woman. He places a fingernail, a snippet of hair, an earring and a bobby pin all presumably belonging to the woman on the photo and then starts messing around with a voodoo doll. The woman in the photo, who's at a bar, soon starts feeling woozy and excuses herself to the bathroom. She pukes in the sink and, as clothes are ripped off the voodoo doll, her clothes are also ripped off. First goes her dress and then her stockings and then her panties, bra and garter until she's standing their butt ass naked. The man then pokes the voodoo doll in the vagina until the woman is bleeding profusely from between her legs all over the floor and into a toilet. Next up comes the eyeballs and breasts, which also start bleeding all over the place. He then burns the doll's face, slits its throat and hangs it from a noose, all of which happen to the girl in the bathroom. Though she screams a few times, she mostly moans and sounds like she's getting off.

In our next story, "Les sexandroïdes," a scared woman (who actually conveys fear and other emotions unlike the chick in the first story) makes her way down a flight stairs to a cheap dungeon set. There, she's attacked a mutant hunchback wearing a robe and shoots him until he goes away. A skull starts smoking, she becomes possessed and then does a long strip routine that involves removing her panties, giving a mannequin torso a lap dance, constantly bending over to show off her ass, playing with fire and violently flogging herself with a cat o' nine tails. The monster returns, whips her some more and then (really!) sticks four pins through her nipples, another long pin through her tongue and more into both of her boobs. He hands her a razor and she cuts off one of her nipples, hands it over to him and he eats it. After cutting himself and having her lick his blood, what could he possibly do for an encore? Well, cut out her eyeball, stab her through the throat and then gut himself over her corpse.

Finally comes "Les dents de l'amour" ("The Teeth of Love"); which is little more than a chick showing off her hot body. A casket is cracked open for a widow to have a private viewing but the corpse rises as a vampire (in really crappy makeup). He rips the woman's clothes off, bites her and then hops back in his coffin and goes to sleep. She then leans over on the coffin and comes back to life as a pale-faced vampire with an oversized set of plastic fangs who does a nude dance around the coffin... all set to  horrible covers of the Tina Turner songs "I Might Have Been Queen" and "What's Love Got to Do With It!" After her eight minute long grave gyration complete with spread eagle shots and crotch rubbing concludes, she climbs into the coffin with the vampire, hangs a Do Not Disturb sign on the outside and closes the lid. The end.

Sometimes you'll sit through something and wonder what kind of audience they had in mind when they made it. This is one of those times. Considering the director's only other output was hardcore porn, I think it's safe to say all of the actresses on hand (none of whom is credited) were probably porno gals. I would say perhaps professional strippers except none of them can actually dance, though they all have the bodies for it. The ass on the final girl is probably worthy of a star all on its own. Not only does the constant flesh scream porn, but so do the static long shots, the fact it was shot on videotape and the ultra cheap sets, which resemble something a community theater may throw together in half an hour. Rest assured, if there happens to be a chair or another prop in the room, it's there to be used in some fashion.

Released on video in both France and Japan back in the 80s, this finally made its American debut last year courtesy of Massacre Video, who offer both a DVD and a collector's edition VHS. The Massacre release includes hardcore inserts featuring different performers that were added to at least one of the two Japanese releases. As per the usual Japanese standard, these explicit shots have been censored so why they're even there in the first place is a mystery.

★★

Dumb Waiter, The (1979)

Directed by:
Robert Bierman

Sally (Geraldine James) receives a creepy phone call one evening from a man who asks “Haven't you seen me following you?” and then tells her to “Look out for me while you're driving... I'll be right behind you.” Later, after she picks up her dry cleaning and is heading home, she notices a car following closely behind. She doesn't give it too much thought until the car starts threateningly flashing its lights and then she pretty much knows who it is. The car pulls ahead, cuts her off and stops. A man jumps out, rushes toward her, opens her door and tries to pull her out but she's able to drive off and get back to her apartment. Ah, safe at last. Still a bit shook up over the incident, she calls her boyfriend and asks him to come over as soon as he can. While she's taking a bath and getting herself ready for his visit, the black-gloved psycho stalker (John White) is busy trying to find a way inside her apartment. Luckily for him, Sally has the titular contraption inside that she uses to get rid of her trash. That's all she wrote plot-wise in this 17-minute British short but, in this particular case, that's all it really has to be. This also obviously has nothing to do with the famous Harold Pinter play of the same name.

A pretty good sign for something like this is if you'd like for it to go on longer than it actually does or if you can imagine what it would be like placed inside a full length movie and it gets the wheels turning about what the rest of the film would be like. This achieves that much and it really could have been a signature set piece within a feature or perhaps even the big finale to one. It's stylish, well-shot, has a great eerie synthesizer score from Colin Towns and provides some actual suspense and several good shocks, which is pretty impressive for the short running time. The ambiguous freeze frame ending may not be for all tastes, though.

The only glaring issue I had was that Sally never calls the cops. Even putting this in context to when it was made that's a hard swallow. In those pre-Internet / pre-cell phone days, it was cake to find the numbers / names / addresses of whoever you wanted just skimming through a phone book. Given the general anonymity of phones back then, it wasn't uncommon at all to receive the occasional call from a stranger saying they were going to do something horrible to you. You didn't call the police for something like that, you told the person to fuck off and then hung up on them. However, someone threatening you, telling you they know where you live and then actually physically coming for you after trying to run you off the road certainly was, is and always will be enough reason to get in touch with the cops! The fact Sally doesn't drive straight to the police station after the attempted attack, doesn't even call them when she gets home and doesn't even mention it to her boyfriend so he'll hurry his ass along is pretty silly.

Director Bierman went on to make the BAFTA nominated D.H. Lawrence adaptation The Rocking Horse Winner (1983), the CableACE Award-winning TV movie Apology (1986) and the very polarizing Nicholas Cage vehicle Vampire's Kiss (1988), which wasn't particularly well-received at the time but has since gone on to garner a cult following. After such an interesting start, it's kind of a shame to see he was relegated mostly to TV work after 1990. All that is currently available for this one is a poor copy that was recorded from a TV broadcast. Apparently it played in UK theaters as a warm up to Pink Floyd's The Wall (1982), which is... odd.

★★★

Xin tiao yi bai (1987)

... aka: Heartbeat 100
... aka: Heartbeat One Hundred
... aka: Sam tiu yat baak

Directed by:
Kent Cheng
Kin Lo

After leaving a nightclub in On Lok (Happy) Village, a couple who duck into an old building are stabbed to death while having sex and their bodies are then dumped into the Tai Shek Bay. The dead male was involved in a robbery where 15 million dollars worth of cash, antiques and other valuables were stolen. Five days after police discover the bodies and put up 50,000 dollars in reward money for information leading to the whereabouts of the other robbers / missing money, a small group of friends decide to head out to the same bay for a two month stay. That's not very good timing, but Maggie (Maggie Cheung), a young writer who's working on a TV detective drama, could use a little inspiration. Her somewhat snobby sister Chu Chu (Bonnie Law) is kind of there like it or not. And that's a big not on the presence of Weeny Eyes (Fong Liu), a persistent guy who's been after Chu Chu since they were both eight years old and seemingly won't take no for an answer. As the gang head down a narrow mountain road (the girls in a car and Weeny on a three wheeler), a motorcycle comes barreling down on them. After a minor crash, driver To Nam (Mark Cheng), has a flat tire and the girls agree to give him a lift.

Upon arrival in the village, the locals aren't very friendly and their rental home is a filthy, rat-infested disaster so they set about trying to whip it into habitable condition. Their attempt at hiring a maid (Mama Hung) backfires when she refuses to enter their home, claiming it's haunted. She does however invite them to her home so she can tell them about what happened there years earlier, which involved a love triangle, a suicide and a restless ghost haunting the home. Meanwhile, To Nam, who turns out to be a police inspector visiting the village to investigate the murders, meets up with local law enforcement, who are in the middle of trying to beat a disobedient dog to death with a log (!) when he walks in. Arrogant yet seemingly inept police sergeant Kwan Kao (Lam Chung) informs him that he's been there for decades and the tiny village hadn't had any problems until recently. Kind of hard to believe once we see who else is living there!

For starters, there's the mentally retarded and snake-obsessed Pink Panther (Ching Wong), who Chu Chu catches peeping in the window while she's in the bathtub. And then there's his father Yam (Wung Foo), who hears what his son's been up to, beats him over the back with a 2x4 and then kicks him to the ground. And trust me, it's probably even more difficult to type out scenarios like “Yam beats Pink Panther with a 2x4 after he peeps on Chu Chu” with a straight face than it is reading it. Mrs. Tse (Lisa Chiao Chiao), the mother of suspected robber Hoi (Fui-On Shing), claims she hasn't seen her son in a decade and appears to be out of her mind as well. There's also a gang of young thugs dressed in black who continue to harass the new arrivals even after To Nam kung fu's their asses and forces them to apologize.

As it turns out, numerous people in the village are not who they appear to be and a series of gory axe murders soon begins. Late one night, Maggie hears commotion coming from the home next door and sees a murder Rear Window-style. Because she tagged a particular person as the victim and that person turns out to still be alive after the cops look into it, she loses the support of the local police and decides to investigate matters on her own against the urging of To Nam. This ends up getting a dog killed and her sister and their friend kidnapped and put in a death trap that threatens to impale them both on spikes. But that's only the tip of the iceberg as far as the problems they'll face.

Considering all of the elements at play here, this combination of drama, comedy, romance, mystery and horror should have been a chaotic mess... and yet it's not. A very likable cast helps a lot, but so does the sheer unpredictability of it all. You never know what you're going to get from one scene to the next. The blossoming romance between the detective and the writer (done with some genuine charm) or a body chopped in two with a shovel? A surprising bit of humanity shown the usually one dimensional "annoying" character or a shootout at a fireworks festival? They also throw in a car chase, explosions, a snake attack, a decapitation, sword fights, karate fights, gore, a dash of nudity, some Nancy Drew-style sleuthing, a bizarre ceiling fan attack, corpses hidden in plaster sculptures, a sense of humor that's more character-driven and less slapstick than most other HK films from this same time frame and much, much more. There's never a dull moment and the directors are geniuses as far as I'm concerned for making this run as smoothly as it does, tying everything together by the end and for making a film that's quirky and offbeat yet still easily digestible at the same time. I was thoroughly impressed.

This one's from Cinema City & Films Company (later called just Cinema City Company) and has drifted into obscurity over the years thanks to never being given a DVD release. That's somewhat surprising considering CCC is the same company behind the easy-to-find hit A Chinese Ghost Story (1987). There was a VHS release from Rainbow Audio & Visual out of San Francisco, which had English subtitles. The VCD release from Mega Star has no English option. DVDs several sites currently hawk are actually DVD-Rs that just use the video print.

★★★1/2