Come to the Dark Side...we have J-rock

Went to chiro today, then to the bank & to the shopping centre to pick up the paper. After a light lunch at home, cut the grass - both front & back. What a workout! My grandpa was feeling pretty good today, so he got out the edger & trimmed up some of the bits I couldn’t reach.

Relaxed the rest of the day. Watched some baseball, talked to my mom. Made tofu & vegetable rice fajitas for dinner.

I’m still pooped, though, from all that lawnmower action. Time for some ice cream.


( As promised, a review. )



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This one’s one of yours, xelucha. (Oh, by the way, do you want/need me to send these back or can I just hold onto them ‘til I see you again? I’d feel really bad if I mailed them & the post office lost them or f***ed them up.)


I don’t know all that much about China, but I have a theory that the more structured & repressive a culture or society is, the weirder the art is going to be.

If that holds true, then the people who made “Beauty of the Haunted House” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0344906/) are either seriously repressed or just really sexually frustrated.

There is a plot in here, buried beneath generous heapings of bad dialogue, hard-to-read (& grammatically incorrect) subtitles, & lots & lots of sex: Mr. Ai, a Chinese businessman, seeks a loan from a Japanese businessman. The two are discussing the transaction on somebody’s yacht, while Ai’s secretary/mistress, Vivi, & two other gals engage in some hardcore licking. The Japanese guy mentions that he knows Ai has a large house near Hong Kong, which he wants to buy so he can stay there when he visits HK on business. Ai says it’s his family’s house, & it’s rather old & run-down. Besides, his brother lives there, so he cannot sell it.

Being of sound business tactics (uh...not), the Japanese guy resorts to blackmail in order to force Ai’s hand. He photographs Ai cavorting with the girls & sends the pictures to Ai’s house, which, of course, has Ai frantic because he doesn’t want his wife to see them (she’s already trying to get him to fire Vivi). Ai sends his son, Eddie, & two of his other workers, Anna & Ho (who are either married or living together), to the old house to convince his (Ai's) brother, known only as Uncle, to vacate the house, & negotiate its sale to the Japanese, who are sending Mr. Kyohon, a company representative, to view the estate & discuss the deal. Uncle flatly refuses to leave unless he is taken out in a coffin, especially since they want to sell to the Japanese, who massacred many Chinese during WWII.

Eddie starts having visions of himself in a white suit, moving throughout the house. When he manifests a strong sense of déjà vu, Anna & Ho think he’s either crazy or involved with a ghost. And when a photo of a sultry, mysterious young woman surfaces, triggering strange visions, sightings, & encounters, we learn the latter is the case.

The woman is Chanel, former lover of Eddie’s grandfather (to whom Eddie bears a striking resemblance). She was captured & tortured by Japanese soldiers during the war, & was subsequently murdered. Seeking to rekindle her lost love, Chanel haunts the house & Eddie, until the boy no longer sees himself as himself but the ghost of his grandfather. Anna & Ho & even Mr. Ai - in between their own sexual escapades & business dealings - attempt to help Eddie, employing both a loopy medium & a kung-fu Taoist priest (who, I had to wonder, would win in a fight between said priest & Reverend I-Kick-Ass-For-The-Lord from Peter Jackson’s “Dead Alive”?), to no avail. I won’t tell you how it ends, suffice to say it gets somewhat more interesting & dare I say kinda fun, too.

Part porno film, part whimsical farce, part so-bad-it’s-funny movie, part kung-fu flick, part tale of love, all masquerading as a thought-provoking ghost story (just look at the DVD’s cover & you’ll think this is a serious film), there is actually some stuff in here to muse upon. The easy acceptance of spirits & ghosts - no doubt a cultural thing - is intriguing (at least from a Western point of view), as is the deep-seated hatred Uncle has for the Japanese for what the Japanese did to the Chinese during the war- there are probably still Chinese who share the sentiment. But overall, the film doesn’t really seem to know what it wants to be, & you have to endure a goodly amount of cheezy, repetitive dialogue, roving tongues, & milk-white breasts before you arrive at these darker themes. Likely, the film would have worked a whole lot better as a full-on, serious tale of spirits, war atrocities, & love transcending time. As it is, it’s all a bit silly & you have to wonder just how horny the Chinese really are.

At its best, “Beauty of the Haunted House” has some amusing little moments & interesting underlying subject matter; at its worst, skip it & go for something in the vein of real horror. When all is said & done, this film might be worthy of a badmovies.org posting, & - on a nostalgic note - I do remember thinking it was something I might’ve sent to my old friend, Ed.

“Wiseblood” (http://aol.imdb.com/title/tt0080140/ & http://www.talkingpix.co.uk/ReviewsWideblood.html) is one of those films that’s really hard to put your finger on, plot or point-wise, at least for a while. It doesn’t seem to be about a whole lot. But in its subtle way, it ends up making some rather profound points.

Set somewhere in the deep South in or around the 1940s (with its musical score consisting mainly of variations on “The Tennessee Waltz", I'm thinking it could be Tennessee), the story follows Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif, probably best known these days as the voice of Chucky in the “Child’s Play” series), as he journeys from his hometown, after returning from combat (he has a purple heart but won’t wear it because he doesn’t want anyone to find out where he got shot), to the big city, where he plans to “do some things” he‘s “never done before".

When he gets there, he copies down a name & address he sees on the train station bathroom’s wall, & hails a cab. Dressed in a dark blue suit & wide-brimmed hat, he is mistaken for a preacher by the somewhat theologically astute cab driver, but says he’s not a man of God; he doesn’t believe in anything. Upon reaching his destination - the home of a zaftig prostitute - he asserts almost immediately (rather more vehemently this time) that he is not a preacher. The hooker says that’s okay, so long as he’s got $4.

Soon after, a rambling, slow-witted zoo-worker with a penchant for primates (whether he actually works at the zoo or just spends all his time there, I'm not entirely certain) named Enoch starts to follow Hazel around town. Out on the streets, they come across sales pitches (reminiscent of the old medicine shows) & a blind preacher, Asa Hawks (Harry Dean Stanton), begging money off passersby while his daughter, Sabbath Lily (Amy Wright, compared by one reviewer to Alyson Hannigan of "Buffy" fame), passing out leaflets. One of these Hazel takes & promptly tears to pieces.

Hazel seems to be in a constant state of anger for unknown reasons. He is stern, humourless, hurried. It always looks as if he’s running away. But from what? This is never fully explored, though it may have roots in his childhood, as his dreams suggest. His grandfather seems to have been a preacher, & with Hazel’s unremitting rants against faith & dogma, it’s apparently had a pretty nasty effect on him. He speaks often of starting a new church, one in which there has been no Fall, where there is no judgment, no blood of Jesus, no need for redemption.

He buys a clunky old Ford that has to be hot-wired to be started, mostly as a house for himself. It breaks down after a few miles, & seems to have more bits go wrong as the film progresses (a parallel to Hazel’s experiences, to be sure). Soon, circumstances inspire him to seek out Hawks & Sabbath, & he enlists Enoch’s help, because Enoch supposedly knows where they live. First, however, Enoch has to show Hazel something interesting in the museum: a very small, mummified being. Then he can’t figure out exactly where Hawks & Sabbath reside, & Hazel, naturally, gets pissed. Not long after, Hazel spots Hawks & Sabbath walking home, & rents a room in the boarding house where they’re staying, under the guise of being a preacher, himself.

There seems to be something brewing between Hazel & Sabbath, but he’s so tense, one can’t imagine him taking a fancy to any woman. He said she gave him “the eye” when they first met. She said it was a look of indignation because he ripped up her leaflet. She thinks he’s following her. Hawks, who keeps a newspaper clipping about how he blinded himself in the name of Christ, calls Hazel a “Jesus-hog”. Hazel questions Hawks’ ethics as a preacher, thinking Hawks isn't even really blind, but a liar & a crook. Sabbath takes a definite interest in Hazel & speaks openly about pursuing him. When they go for a drive together, we find out she’s one screwed-up gal. Hazel, however, just continues to be angry.

Hazel begins promoting his ‘church’ in public, & berates Enoch in front of a crowd. He says the Crucifixion did not mean redemption. He proposes a new Christ, one that is all man without a hint of God, who “can’t waste his blood redeeming people”. Enoch says he knows where to find one, & heads off toward the museum.

Later, while Hazel is street-preaching, a shyster named Hoover Shoates (Ned Beatty) appears & attaches himself, leech-like, to Hazel. He claims he is also a preacher, & calls Hazel a prophet, but is clearly in the “religion business”, as he unashamedly tries to finagle cash out of the possible faithful. When Hazel refuses to team up with Shoates, the con-man gets himself a new prophet (William Hickey), a poor soul just trying to make a buck however he can; in this case, by touting Shoates’ fake gospel.

The story starts to come together at about this point. These hitherto unconnected, oddball characters begin to intertwine in a way which sets Hazel on a deadly course. I won’t give away the end of the film, suffice to say Hazel’s downward spiral causes him to crash hard, & turn sharply, learning some very harsh lessons through his own humbling, self-torturous attempts at redemption (hearkening back to stories of the days when priests used methods such as self-flagellation to keep themselves virtuous).

This is where the subtly-staged yet profound points come into play. Despite its religious subject matter, this is not a straightforward story about a man who does not believe & then sees the light & embraces God. Rather, it is a film about truth. The deeply-troubled Hazel, disheartened by his past & perhaps the war from which he has returned, seems to focus on falsehoods & rail against them (his views come rather close to Existentialism, in some ways), while searching for meaning in life & in the concepts under which he must have been strictly raised (one really wishes we had more than a vague glimpse into his past to reinforce or, indeed, explain this - as the film is based on a novel by Flannery O'Connor, one can only hope the source material is clearer on the origins of Hazel's animosity). Others have already found their own form of truth: Sabbath, an illegitimate child, reconciles herself to the fact that “a bastard cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven”, & lives her life accordingly. Shoates is quite happy to exploit & connive. Enoch, with his simple, innocent thoughts & demeanour, is the purest character (though his good intentions do get him into trouble at times). It is he, in fact, who explains the title of the film, having to do with a sort of psychic-spiritual kind of awareness.

Though it is a little difficult to comprehend due to the way it’s presented, some of it seems to run thusly: people with this ability are driven by a deep-seated need, which Enoch calls “wise blood”...they don’t always know what drives them, but they go on (perhaps because some innate part of them knows, hence the phrase); it’s a gift, & not everyone has it. The question then becomes, does the main character in this story have its title gift? If he does, he has ignored it, blocked it out with anger. Perhaps he needs to earn it, & that is the true meaning of redemption.

Whatever the case, the film is definitely worth a look. The deeper concepts, you can judge for yourself.

* Subject line swiped from John McCarty’s book “The Official Splatter Film Guide, vol. 2"


( The family that slays together... )