TUSK

Tusk

Directed by: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Drama, 119min

France, 1980

Alejandro Jodorowsky, man of mystery, man of myth, man of magic. The eighty-five year old Chilean born director has but a half dozen movies to his name, but is still considered to be one of the most daring and original visionaries to ever grace the screen with his images and philosophical narratives.

Lost films. Every director seems to have one. Every fan seems to find it. Tusk was (may still be) Alejandro Jodorowsky’s lost movie. The first time I saw it was off a VHS dupe, not too unlike the one I watched this time around, but this one was obviously a few generations closer to the source and actually had English subtitles. The first viewing all those years ago on a dodgy tape from VSoM – hey there was no Internet back then right! – was perhaps not a fair judgment of Jodorowsky's vision. That time around Tusk failed to leave an impression. I probably only watched that tape once. El Topo and/or The Holy Mountain where more to my liking – and obviously Santa Sangre, but Tusk never really went down well with me. Perhaps because back then I wanted it to be wild and surreal like those other films… Re-visiting it today, it’s fair to say that something’s do change and where I may have missed certain traits that I back then would have said where typical Jodorowsky, they are undoubtedly present in Tusk.

On the same day as plantation owner Morrison’s first child is born, the largest elephant of the herd also gives birth to an elephant cub. It’s the start of two destinies, which will intertwine and depend upon each other for the rest of time, shown clearly as Jodorowsky crosscuts the two deliveries. Plantation owner Morrison [Anton Diffring] is severely disappointed it’s not a boy and turns the child over to one of the female villagers to take care of. His butler acts fast, and returns the infant to it’s still in father… who breaks down, cradles the baby and names her Elise. A few years later Elise (now at age five is played by Oriole Henry) is given an elephant of her own, the elephant Tusk with whom Elise shares her birthday.

Two antagonists (or rather sub-antagonists, as the piece deals with several of them and in various combinations) are introduced into the piece, Shakley [Michel Peyrelon] and Greyson [Serge Merlin, who later starred in several films of Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet]…in many ways classical Jodorowsky antagonists, farcical, goofy and filled with slapstick and mime articulations, but also dark and disturbing. They are more the surreal kind of characters that otherwise fill Jodorowsky movies, disturbing facetted fiends swinging between sadistic and moronic. They fart, crack jokes about the stench, smoke Camel hairs, drink till they pass out, but at the same time they are ruthless bounty hunters who will stop a nothing, no matter how fiendish it be to achieve their goal.

Back at the ranch, it’s time to break Tusk and put him to work with all the rest of Morrison’s elephants. The scene is strong, violent and provoking leaving Elise terribly distressed. Morrison tries to reason with his daughter, and delivers the non-comforting explanation that, one day she will understand Tusk cannot be a wild animal, but a worker. Elise hides herself in her room and refuses to eat. When the young Elephant cub starts refusing too the bond is apparent.“So he’s going to die!”  The Village Mystic arrives and Elise is given a false promise of Tusk being “freed”, after which she talks to him and he eats. For the time being all is well, Elise and Tusk lead happy lives but we know otherwise...

Time passes; adult Elise [now played by Cyrille Clair] is about to leave home, travel overseas to England and attend school, briefly illustrated through transitional illustrations. With Elise out of the way for a while, enter Mr Richard Cairn [Christopher Mitchum] a complex character who’s both a fiendish elephant hunter, bit also holds the strong love interest position for Elise’s heart.

Elise returns home from her time abroad, but the celebrations soon come to an end when Ram Baba [T. Venketappa] attacks Samadi [B.N.K. Nagaraj] Tusk’s warden. Tusk [now portrayed by Menoara the elephant], ever the faithful one, looses his and goes off on a min rampage. Luckily Elise steps in right on time and calms down the giant elephant merely seconds before Mr Cairn was going to put a bullet through the beast’s brain. This incident ignites a subplot concerning Ram Baba – now degraded to serving in the cow shed and never to work with Mr Morrison’s elephants ever again – as he demands vengeance on Mr Morrison, Samada and Tusk for this loss of face.

Despite his own elephant escaping and rampaging the countryside, Ram Baba teams up with Shakley and Greyson and hatches a plan to steal Tusk! As she sit’s meditating at a water filled temple, Elise senses Tusk’s kidnapping and runs to him only to be confronted by Ram Baba’s mad elephant…Guess who comes to her rescue –TUSK – cue, elephant fight complete with bloody tearing, gory tusks and dead antagonist elephant! A magnificently wonderful Jodorowsky moment!

In the emotional state after her close call with death, Elise understands that Tusk want’s to be free and pronounces him such. He runs off! But his freedom is short lived as the Eccentric Maharaja’s [Sukumar Anhana] wife wants an ivory necklace made from the tusks of the great warrior elephant, and also requests to drink his blood and steal his power…

The hunt is announced, … Elise is disgusted, but she still takes part in it – and damn does the amazing cinematography by Jean-Jacques Flori, demand a proper release now, as there’s some great stuff here, some stunning shots, as an impressive amount of elephants participate in the climactic hunt. Ram Baba and cohorts have come up with a new plan and that is to snatch Tusk from the massive hunt, as they now realize his value and can use it to make a deal with the maharaja.

Ram Baba with his partners in crime, Shackley and Greyson, plan to snatch Tusk during the hunt, as they know of his value! But the two somewhat comedic characters show their dark side as they lure Samedi up a mountain cliff only to toss him over the edge to his death and then double cross Ram Baba as they sniper shoot him from the mountainside!

Mr Cairn’s get’s to show off his hunting skills as Tusk is snared, held in a giant cage, and the Maharajah’s fiendish wife gets her cup of Tusk blood and Elise is devastated! But no cage is strong enough to hold the mighty Tusk, and after a short struggle, he breaks free and goes on a rampage!

Walls are smashed, busses are tossed over, and Tusk even pushes a train backwards as he makes his stand. The kind of thing that makes us all root for the beast and cheer him on… and cheer him on is what we do for the last twenty minutes of the movie, where Tusk settles scores, rights wrongs and makes the world a better place! Phew… Tusk is very much a Jodorowsky experience, without any doubt in mind!

Based on Poo Lorn L’Elephant by Reginald Campbell and adapted by Nicholas Niciphor, who also served as one of the many co-directors on Deathsport together with Allan Arkush and Roger Corman. The original source material could be interpreted as some kind of critique towards the colonization of India, with elephants and the characters as metaphors for empire and occupied country, although that’s not really the way  I see Jodorowsky using the material. Here it’s put into work as a classical Jodorowsky narrative.

Sandwiched in between The Holy Mountain 1979 and Santa Sangre 1989, Tusk is, as the opening titles declare, “a panic fable” and even though it may not be quite as wild and surreal as some of his work, it is without any doubt a very typical Jodorowsky movie. His common themes of revenge, justice, dark comedy and absurd violence, are all here. Many times a serious scene will end in a laugh, or a comedic scene will end in something serious. Violence will lead to tenderness and tenderness will lead to violence. The classic Jodorowsky magik and surrealism is found too, such as the Indian mystic who can transform himself into a chicken!

Tusk sports a fantastic soundtrack, groovy sitar, fuzz tone guitars, and way weird synthesizer pop, yet another reason why Tusk needs to see a proper release.  Why not a soundtrack re-mastering and re-issue while your'e at it?

There’s a reason why they certain movies become “lost”. At times its due to director negligence. As for Tusk, the movie has slipped into the void after fact that Jodorowsky himself disowned the film due to the politics of meddling producers. When will they ever learn?  In any which way, Tusk certainly is a Jodorowsky movie, and I’d love to see an official release of it. Seriously, not even the bootleg versions one can find have even a decent image, hence the lack of screenshots in this piece. This is one “lost movie” that needs to be rediscovered and presented in a proper release, because at the end of the day there can never be enough Jodorowsky movies out there.

Hidden in the Woods

Hidden in the Woods

Original Title: en las afueras de la ciudad

Directed by: Patricio Valladeres

Horror/Drama, 97min

Mexico, 2012

Want to know where the new wave of horror is coming from? Well I’d say it’s Latin America! Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay… just a few of the spawning grounds for original genre fare right now – and has been for the past four—five years, amusingly just after the success of the Spanish wave. Still not sure that this is right? Well just look at your recent genre fare! Directors like Adrián Garcia Bogliano, Jorge Michel Grau, Fede Alvarez and others, are popping up in anthology flicks, getting big exposure for their domestic flicks, and in some cases even getting shots at and remaking their own films all over again but now with Yankee dollars in the USA! (where did Gustavo Hernandez go, and when does the third generation of Cardona’s break through? And No I haven’t forgotten the master of them all; Guillermo Del Toro, he just plays in a completely different league!)

Patricio Valladeres En las afueras de la ciudad (Hidden in the Woods) is no exception. This piece of savage but contemporary Mexpoitation trash did the festival circuit and then got picked up for a US remake featuring Micheal Biehn, Willam Forsyth and Robert Rodriguez regular Electra Avellan in lead roles.

Kicking off with a classic “Based on a true story” card, drug dealing drunk, Felipe [Daniel Antivil] is will stop at nothing to learn the name of his wife’s secret lover, and murders her in front of their two infant daughters. He buries her body in the woods and tells them that mommy has gone to heaven. The years pass and Felipe raises his two daughters, Ana [Siboney Lo] and Anny [Carolina Escobar] in his own disdainful way, complete with nightly visits and day after stories laying the blame on “the bogey man” for abusing the girls. Further down the road, Anny gives birth to his own grandson, an inbred mutated beast with sharp teeth and an appetite for raw meat.

Felipe makes his living by hiding drugs for regional Kingpin Costello [François Soto] who makes random visits to the cabin in the woods and looks the two young women over with an unhealthy stare and disturbing remarks about Felipe sending them over to him when they are old enough… Ironically despite all his terrible flaws as an abusive pedophilic, incestuous parent, Filipe will let no one else harm his little girls. 

The so far delightfully trashy and on spot exploitative plot takes a sharp turn when Felipe is sent to jail after attacking two police officers with a chainsaw! The girls grab their mutant child/nephew/teenager Manuel [José Hernandez] and make a dash for it. Out of the frying pan… into Hell!

Being all-alone with no money or a place to stay, makes it only a matter of time before Ana takes to giving random dudes blowjobs for cash, and for some reason blowjobs lead to cannibalism. Well at least it get’s the girls, and inbred kid off the prostitution racket! Felipe find himself in his own hell too, as he’s thrown in jail with a bunch of bad-asses who all work for Costello, who just for the sake of it want’s Felipe dead before he tells of his drug dealing affairs with Costello. Ironically Felipe is the only one who knows where Costello’s drugs are hidden and uses this fact as leverage against Costello in an attempt to force the drug lord into getting him out of jail…

In a counter move, Costello sends his goons out to find the girls, Felipe breaks out of jail to save his daughters, and after being beaten and raped the girls decide to confront Uncle Costello once and for all in what promises to be a bloody mess of family resolutions and rushes of harsh insight!

Hidden in the Woods is a fun, shit-kicking movie that is more or less a concentrate of everything that the Latin American horror films stands for! It brings it all to the park, dark violence, inbred freaks, incest, abuse, rape, cannibalism, death, revenge, oh and I almost forgot the birthing scene! One could sum it up as: find a taboo and push past it. Find a body and abuse it physically, sexually, demonically or any way you can. Find a character and make it suffer and bleed. Find the rules and break them! Hidden in the Woods is a feisty little mongrel and I loved every demented minute of it! If you want a provocative piece of trash that nurses a genre “taboo fetish” majestically and has a blood lust like none other, then Hidden in the Woods is the ticket for you!

 

Check out the trailer!

Only God Forgives

Only God Forgives

Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn

Thriller/Drama, 90min

France/Sweden/Thailand/USA

Continuing his study of vengeance, human deterioration, moral grounds and violent death, Nicolas Winding Refn takes to the heat and fluorescent base colors to tell the story of a family constellation set against a bad ass cop and his henchmen.

Julian [Ryan Gosling] and his brother Billy [Tom Burke] run a drugs racket out of Bangkok, Thailand. Billy goes over the edge raping and beating a 16-year-old girl to death. When the police arrive on the scene, Inspector Chang [Vithaya Pansringarm] choses to brings in the father of the girl in instead, and tells him to take his revenge upon Billy. Upon his death, their mother Crystal [Kristin Scott Thomas] arrives and questions why Julian hasn’t taken the vengeance she claims Billy would have done if the issue where the opposite. Always in the shadow of his older brother – even in death – Julian tries to settle the scores in his own way, and possibly uses the situation to solve some unsettled family issues.

Not as violent as Drive, not as trippy as Valhalla Rising, not as out of the box as Bronson, but definitely a combination of all three. In a way one could chose to read Only God Forgives as a dysfunctional family tale and how the pressure to fit in and be accepted drives one to the darkest places of mankind. What Refn does though is to question morale and character positioning. We know that Julian and his family are villains – even though there is a chance that Julian is trying his hardest to stand outside of the smuggling racket and focuses his time on the Thai Boxing club he spends time at – and this creates a protagonist with dimension. At the same time Inspector Chang uses a profound over use of violence and alternative policing tactics in his fight against the drug smugglers – it doesn’t need to be spoken out loud, one can understand the frustration that has driven him to this point. We also understand that there can be no real winner (or can there?) to this tale of dystopia, hot nights and loneliness, but at the same time we end up rooting for characters that are questionable when it comes to their moral positioning.

Just as he does in Drive, Valhalla Rising, Bronson – and earlier films like Bleeder and the Pusher Trilogy – Refn presents us with complex characters who are on the wrong side of the law, classic anti heroes, and fascinating personalities that linger on in your head long after the film has finished. I find that Refn makes two kinds of films, the dark dramas that more or less play along the rules of classic narrative such as the Pusher films, Bleeder, Fear X and Drive and then the alternative experimental ones like Valhalla Rising and Only God Forgives. It’s almost one classic, one experimental.

Only God Forgives is a seductive, mesmerizing and provocative dark drama that mocks convention and dares question classic characters and narrative.

Nicolas Winding Refn is a genius and I will not stop crossing my fingers until he get’s his adaptation of the Jodorowsky/Moebius (Jean Giraud) epic The Incal written, shot, edited and on a screen near me. Long Live Nicolas Winding Refn!

Kiss of the Damned

Kiss of the Damned

Directed by: Xan Cassavetes

Horror/Drama, 97min

USA, 2012

Distributed by: NjutaFilms

It’s odd what catches your attention and emotionally attaches you to a movie at times. For me there was something in an early scene after the initial introduction of Djuna [Joséphine de La Baume], as her maid Irene [Ching Valdes-Aran] answers the telephone. Irene writes a note to Djuna reminding her that the videos she has rented are to be returned to the store. A seemingly unimportant scene, but it was one that really hit a chord with me. It hit a chord with me because it made the ordinary world so real. I’ve worked in video stores and calling customers to remind them to return tapes was a daily task. So there was something in that small scene that appealed to me and made me venture into Kiss of the Damned with a smile on my face and a sense of recognition in my head. From that opening hook to Acanthus Angoisse Temporelle from Jean Rollin’s Le Frisson Des Vampires playing over the closing credits, Kiss of the Damned was undoubtedly some of the most entertaining time spent this year.

Djuna is reclusive woman staying in her friend Xenia’s [Anna Mouglalis] house. During a nocturnal trip to the video store she bums into Paolo [Milo Ventimiglia] and the two connect instantly. Djuna takes him home, but sends him away before things get to serious and remorsefully cuts off all contact. She won’t answer the phone, she won’t come to the door; she won't have anything to do with him. Although Djuna keeps Paolo at a distance, he becomes increasingly obsessed with her. Paolo takes a shot at a chance meeting as he forces his way into the house. Their joint passion overcomes the rejection and when he proclaims his love for Djuna, she explains that she’s in fact a vampire. Paola takes his chance and lets Djuna turn him. From here on the couple could live happily ever after for all eternity. But that’s not going to happen as Djuna’s rebellious and manipulative sister Mimi [Roxane Mesquida] unexpectedly turns up…

Kiss of the Damned is a seductive and magic masterpiece. It takes traditional vampire lore and lives according to those rules. It keeps the romanticism, the poetic and smartness of classic vampire mythology, something I’ve been longing to see for quite some time, without becoming a sanitized piece of commercialized bubble-gum. Smart, adult, believable and sticking to the basic rules, instead of teenage angst, adolescent heartbeat and sparkling nightwalkers jumping from tree to tree in broad daylight - all the things that made vampire flicks safe, cutie pie pop-culture instead of dark, complex creatures of the night. All that silliness is replaced with adult lust, stern rules and the dilemmas of responsibility and it makes for a truly appealing movie that brings the Gothic and Romantic elements back to the vampire film, even if it does take place in a contemporary world.

Xan Cassavetes knows storytelling. She knows it well and Kiss of the Damned goes right up on my list with Nosferatu (both Murnau and Herzog's versions), Tod Browning's Dracula, Terry Fisher's Horror of Dracula, Guillermo Del Toro's Cronos, Tom Holland's Fright Night, Katheryn Bigelow's Near Dark, Paul Morrissey's Blood for Dracula, Abel Ferrara's The Addiction and both adaptations of John Avjide Lindqvists Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In) - not a shabby list for someone who says he doesn't like vampire flicks! But nothing beats a well-told story and believable characters, even if they are vampires. Emotional recognition goes a long way, and that’s what a lot of Kiss of the Damned uses. We may never know what it’s like to be a vampire and all the complications therein, but we can relate to the characters both human and undead, as the basic traits of loyalty, love, heartbreak, pain, remorse and guilt are all the same as we experience in our daily lives.

An important part of Kiss of the Damned is the gentle and delicate approach to the subject matter. It’s a tenderness that flows through the movie generating a strange sternness with characters and mood, and at times becoming almost Lynchian in its style. Characters are almost perversely restrained and calm in all situations. As if showing emotion will expose them (as in the Vampires) to the “real world”, which would be catastrophic for them as a race. Meditative is not the right word, but contemplative is. Everyone is very careful in his or her decisions and actions. Those who are not, become automatic antagonists. And in this world of gentle hand, pensive characters and cautious narrative we find a non-formulaic story much like those told by Xan’s father, John. No other comparisons made, but a possible influence.  Whatever the case, it brings a seductive uniqueness to the story told, and to the way it unfolds.

Early on there’s something about the gentle and reclusive Djuna that appeals to an audience. She’s defying her natural urges, going against vampire convention and eats animals as not to harm humans. She fights her natural urges to bite into Paolo when she’s sexually aroused, and sends him scampering off home after their first encounter. She more or less breaks down and cries when she reveals to Paolo what she is… All of this builds empathy for the character.

Paolo is sceptic when Djuna tells him that she’s a vampire, and this helps us accept the fact of vampires as a reality too, as we have a character that also doubts the existence of vampires. As soon as Djuna has bitten Paolo she starts to tell him the rules (of being a vampire). Now this is where the sceptic character becomes a true believer and the audience is transported from the ordinary world of Paolo into the let us call it ordinary world of the Vampire. The rules together with his scepticism make it believable for us.  Vampires are real, albeit living under new rules.

When it comes to vampire film there’s quite often a problem where to position the audience as they frequently tend to feel empathetic towards the anti-heroic character, that is the vampire, traditionally the antagonist, the monster. So it’s important to create a character that one can relate to, and one that can lay down the rules. Which is what all that first act is about. Creating a believable world, laying out the rules and presenting likeable characters that we will want to invest in.  Because it’s only in the light of how gentile, graceful and honest Djuna is that we can evaluate Mimi. Compared to Djuna, Mimi is the devil, living the life of “old school vampires”, breaking all the rules.

Mimi is a great character. A character much closer to the classic vampire old folklore tells us about. She’s definitely not the kind of vampire the audience will empathize with. We may dig her for her Goth chicness and rough demeanour, but we won’t empathize with her like we do Djuna. She’s manipulative and sinister. She’s deceptive and cunning. She’s a junkie in rehab! Mimi is getting all the characteristics of the bad sister. There’s a subplot concerning vampires that have quit drinking human blood and now only sip animal bloods. Most of the vampires have since long gone “sober” and only feed off non-human blood… according to the “new rules”, possibly part of the staying out of trouble idea, so obviously Mimi is in defiance of those rules too. She want’s human blood, because it’s the drug she’s addicted to!

Although Mimi may be the antagonist of the piece, this doesn’t mean that she lacks dimension. She’s much more than just the “evil vampire”. Cassavetes screenplay gives all characters dimension and backstory, much of which is referred to on occasion during the film. We have two sisters who have been around for a couple of hundred years and obviously don’t share all that many warm feelings for each other. It’s only natural that they will have a lot of bad blood between them.

Such is the case with Mimi and Djuna, and it creates a fascinating dynamic between the two, as there’s something in the backstory that plays a wicked trick on the characters and the audience.  At some time in history, Djuna has accused Mimi of doing wrong… such as turning a human in the name of love. Quite possibly this is what once created the rift between the two sisters. Even if it was in the noblest fashion and everything but against his will, Mimi forces the power of guilt upon Djuna for turning Paolo into a Vampire. The bad sister scolding the good for doing wrong, it’s one of many fantastic moments of character dynamics in Kiss of the Damned!

What makes vampires such interesting beings – not only here, but also generally in folklore - is that they come off as suave, lush, seductive beasts of the night, resistant to pain and set to have fun for all eternity. But there’s a sadness and sorrow behind the lavish façade. There’s a sadness and regret that they, in many ways, are damned to live forever in solitude. This too causes interesting friction between Mimi and Djuna. Mimi scolds Djuna for being selfish enough to turn Paolo, and in such, condemning him to their eternal suffering. At the same time here’s a tone of envy in Mimi’s actions, as somewhere along the backstory it seems that Mimi has lost the love she once had. A love that Djuna in her turn judged Mimi for, just like Mimi now judges Djuna. The tables have turned and the sibling rivalry that one can guess has been going on for decades takes a new destructive twist.

Again as mentioned earlier, characters are restrained; although this does not mean that we never understand the emotions they are experiencing. This is where the emotional recognition comes in. We can relate to them and what they are going through. As the story tells it’s infected tale, gracefully but still with some rather gory moments, the way the movie moves into its climax is done in the exact same fashion. Even though it is a violent climax, it’s told and shown in the same delicate fashion as the rest of the film. Poetic and just, but equally haunting, after al these are complex characters and through the emotional recognition and backstory we can understand their actions. At the end of the day it all becomes about regret, tradition, honouring rules and loyalty.

Totally capturing the magic of low-key independent cinema of the late seventies early eighties, Kiss of the Damned is this years must see art-house indie horror hybrid. An intoxicating combination of old school Vampire lore, classic EuroGoth and contemporary genre film! If Jean Rollin where still alive he would have loved Kiss of the Damned!