Night Feeder (1988)

Directed by:

Jim Whiteaker

Newly-single, thirty-something reporter Jean Michaelson (Kate Alexander) is working on an article called "Crime and Fear in American Cities," so what better way to do research than to move into a crime-infested neighborhood of San Francisco that's also recently been plagued by a series of mysterious murders? Jean even goes that extra mile by leaping head first into the seamier side of the cities night life, right down to hosting wild parties in her loft apartment where coke, booze, cigarettes, impromptu stripping, terrible hairstyles and punk rock all factor heavily. She claims to be doing so in order to gain the trust of those partaking in the area's grimy punk scene, but there's also another more personal, more rebellious reason. After one such party, her friend Marcia (Lissa Zappardino) is found dead and mutilated in her bathtub. Strangely, one of her eyeballs has been gouged out and her brain has somehow been removed.

Even though Jean and her useless, peroxided punk "plaything" pseudo-boyfriend, Bryan Soulfield (Caleb Dreneaux), who's a member of a controversial local band called DZS (pronounced "disease"), are now under the watchful eye of the police, Jean's writer instincts kick in and she decides to do a little investigating of her own.

Snooping around town, she discovers that many of the locals refuse to even discuss what's going on. She then learns that, years earlier, her boyfriend's band had been somehow involved in the deaths of three young groupies, who apparently OD'd on some kind of experimental drug that was originally made to treat schizophrenics. The drug's street name? DZS. Just like the band. Coincidence?

Jean's lawyer ex-husband shows up long enough to be murdered right outside her apartment and her compassionate new lover reacts to that by bringing home a bimbo groupie to their shared apartment. A construction worker is then killed after he throws a beer bottle at a hunchbacked, facially-disfigured bum nicknamed "The Creeper" (Robert Duncanson), who lurks around in the sewers eating shish kebab'd rats and seems to be present during most of the murders. While trying to crack the case, Jean becomes involved, romantically and otherwise, with the investigator on the case, Alonzo Bernardo (Jonathan Zeichner), and also becomes friendly with a spaced-out, impressively monotone punkette single mother named Victoria (Cintra Wilson).

During a long and surprisingly gory autopsy scene, a coroner cuts through a scalp, peels a face off and saws a skull open to reveal an empty brain cavity. He theorizes that the victims have been overpowered by someone or something and had their brain matter liquefied via some kind of acid so it could then be sucked out through the eye socket. Mmm! Not only that, but trances of the drug DZS have been found on all the victims. Though the screenplay tries to set things up as a mystery, complete with numerous detours, dead ends, obvious red herrings and the obligatory police stuff, nearly all advertising materials for this title and the reviews readily spoil the killer's identity, so there's no real reason for me to conceal it either! But here's your warning, anyway, so feel free to stop right here if you're interested in this title and not wanting anything spoiled.

Still here? Alright. The killer turns out to be a killer baby who's been mutated by the DZS drug and now has a snake tongue it uses to slurp up its daily intake of brains.

While admittedly a low bar, this is more ambitious, and put together with more skill, than your average 80s SOV film. At least some care has been taken with the photography and lighting, there are acceptable performances from the two leads (some of the supporting actors are downright awful, though!), attempts at actual characterization and surprisingly sharp dialogue at times, and the make-up fx courtesy of Jonathan Horton are solid. Of course the 80s milieu and aesthetic provides some additional fun and certain viewers may also enjoy a few of the musical interludes with Bryan's band, who are played by real-life San Fran new wave / punk group The Nuns. Unfortunately, the longer musical moment is ruined by deciding to hop back and forth between it and another scene.

The audio and editing are sporadically clunky but what really drags this down at times is the inclusion of too much filler that doesn't have much, if anything, to do with the main plot. While I enjoyed some of the blossoming romance scenes between the writer and the cop, a lot of the other stuff involving the punks and their love lives coulda shoulda been scrapped, as should have other scenes like a perplexing bit at a funeral that's actually quite reminiscent of a tasteless scene from the following year's Pet Sematary, a town hall meeting and more.

Some of the people involved in this - Horton, writers Linnea Due and Shelley Singer - later worked on the weird and somewhat better KAMILLIONS (1990), which also featured Alexander. I was unable to find any older release aside from a VHS release in Poland by Delta Video. (For the record, IMDb has a listing for a Mexican VHS under another title but I was unable to actually find any evidence of that.) In 2015, Bleeding Skull finally resurrected this, releasing it in a limited edition VHS and DVD. It was then reissued on Blu-ray by SRS Cinema.

★★

Kaibyô ômagatsuji (1954)

... aka: 怪猫逢魔ケ辻

... aka: Ghost-Cat of Ouma Crossing

... aka: Mysterious Cat Exorcist

Directed by:

Bin Katô

There are a lot of 50s / 60s era Japanese period-set ghost films with near-identical characters (who almost always fall into one of two categories: amazingly evil or uncommonly virtuous) and plots, but this one hopes to differentiate itself with its setting. Kaibyô ômagatsuji is focused around the world of acting troupes and busy kabuki theaters which are being dominated by the Masudaya troupe and their popular headliner, the demure and sweet Miss Ichikawa "Tayu" Senjo (Takako Irie). However, with great popularity comes great jealousy and there are forces conspiring against the star attraction. Mr. Okuba has high hopes for young actress Somewaka (Noboru Kiritachi), whom he'd love to see eclipse Tayu as the #1 kabuki actress. However, due to Tayu's talent and fame, there's almost zero opportunity to show Somewaka off and she seems destined to be stuck in small supporting roles so long as Tayu is still working. As for the few remaining ways to still get one's foot in door, well, some kind of freak accident could always occur and thus create an opening for another leading lady...

Mr. Ume, Somewaka, Somewaka's (very mean!) sister, Sunekichi (Chieko Murata), and a few others all get to work trying to make their dreams a reality, which means Tayu has got to go. They first sabotage a catwalk, which causes Tayu to step through the floor and injure her foot mid-performance. However, it's just a minor injury and she's determined to continue performing despite her scrape. After all, she says, a true artist should be willing to die on the stage if necessary. The suspicious incident also puts the theater staff as well as Tayu's entourage on high alert as they rightly suspect foul play is involved.

After suffering her way through yet another performance on her still-tender foot, Tayu is almost smashed backstage when a sandbag "accidentally" falls from the scaffolding. However, no one happens to be up there aside from a cat named Miya (or "Mi" for short), who belongs to one of Tayu's understudies. While the incident is written off as an accident, the troupe's manager still decides to postpone performances until Tayu has adequate time to heal. That opens the door for nasty Sunekichi to humiliate and bully her in front of her peers. She takes her seat at the head of the table, dumps a bowl full of sake over one of her apprentice's heads, shatters a cup in front of her which cuts her face and tries to force her to dance despite her injury. By the way, most of the female characters in this are hilariously melodramatic about every little thing and will wail, burst into tears and collapse at even the smallest of provocations!

Tayu will soon have a real reason to flip her shit though when her enemies increase their attacks against her and someone she loves and trusts stabs her in the back. That person is her lover, Tsubaki Genziro (Kôtarô Bandô). She wants to marry him but, unbeknownst to her, he's been secretly dating Sunekichi and is leading the plot to get her out of the picture. Due to the cut on her face, Tsubaki brings Tayu a special black ointment "medicine," which turns out to actually be some kind of poison. After applying it, Tayu's face becomes hideously disfigured on one side, thus potentially spelling the end of her acting career. She covers up the rotten half of her moneymaker and puts hope in another doctor to cure her.

Things start spiraling out of control after Tayu's trusted confidant, Tomezi (Kimiko Tachibana), finds out about what's going on. After she threatens to spill the beans, Tsubaki strangles her to death and then stages her murder to look like a hanging suicide. He then takes Tayu out on a romantic moonlit boat ride, which quickly turns sour when he cruelly recounts everything they've been up to before slashing her to death with a sword and throwing her body into the lake. As the bad guys start rehearsals with Somewaka (who turns out to be quite untalented) as the new lead, Tayu's vengeful ghost returns to ensure that they don't even make it to see opening day.

While this isn't entirely useless, it's a very middling example of this type of film and suffers from very poor pacing and an unnecessarily large roster of characters. Good luck trying to keep tabs on the constant theater names, acting troupe names, troupe manager names, etc. that the cast are constantly talking about because I couldn't make heads or tails of it much of the time. Even worse, so much time is spent with the bad guys plotting and tormenting Tayu that an hour of this 82 minute movie is up before the ghost even makes her first appearance. Also disappointing is the promise of a ghost cat film and failing to make full use of it. There's no discussion about the mythology of the ghost cat or anything else that could have made this type of spirit interesting. They simply show a domestic feline hanging around the theater a few times and, almost at the very end of the film, the ghost finally turns up with slightly bushy eyebrows, crazy hair, crooked lipstick and occasionally does a pawing type motion with her hands. And that's really the extent of it. This ghost also appears to have vampire-like tendencies and goes straight for the jugular, though she mostly just moves her head in the general direction of the neck and then the victim falls over dead.

Not that this is all bad. A few elements work. Costumes and sets are fine. Some of the ghost scenes, especially the ones on the lake when the ghost keeps popping its head out of the water and one where it peeks around an umbrella, are fun. This also has some precise and surprisingly well-executed jump cuts that are effective. The most notable aspect here is the time set aside to show kabuki, which almost makes the ghost stuff feel like it's the padding. We get to see several performances, including a cool opening number that includes a webbed backdrop and a giant spider prop. One of the silly death scenes is even patterned in kabuki style with the victim flipping, floating, doing rolls across the stage, contortions, hanging upside down, etc. Aside from that, this is pretty forgettable.

Director Katô made a few other similar movies, including The Terrible Ghost-Cat of Okazaki (1954), Ghost-Cat of Gojusan-Tsugi (1957) and Ghost Story of Devil's Fire Swamp (1963), and this film may have been close to his heart as his brother (Asataro Ichikawa) was a notable kabuki actor in his day. Lead actress Irie, who was a major star for many years in Japan starting way back in the silent era, ended her long run making so many films in this category that she eventually earned the title "Queen of Ghost Cat Films," which is a pretty cool title really. The cast also includes Michiko Ai (who plays Tayu's understudy "Kocho"), a pre-Zatôichi Shintarô Katsu, Kôichi Katsuragi and Kôichi Mizuhara.

This has never been commercially released outside of its home country to my knowledge but there have been many VHS and DVD releases in Japan. While fan made subs are available and a watchable print is accessible (archive.org is one site that has it), there are probably several hundred other vintage Japanese ghost movies you'd be better off checking out first.

★★