Caperucita y Pulgacito contra los monstrous

Tom Thumb and Little Red Riding Hood

Original title: Caperucita y Pulgacito contra los monstrous

Directed by: Roberto Rodriguez,

Mexico, 1962

Fantasy/Family/Horror, 82min

Let’s cut to the chase, Roberto Rodriguez – no not the Mariachi/Dusk till Dawn/Sin City /Spy Kids and Machete franchise genius, but another Mexican genius with the same name - wrote and directed three El Cheapo Mexican takes on Little Red Riding Hood primarily aimed at children, but perhaps best suited for fans of psychotronic entertainment, as they are weird pieces of low-budget madness. Anyways, to save time, skip the first two, go straight for the cherry of the pie, and did into Tom Thumb and Little Red Riding Hood, also known as Little Red Riding Hood and the Monsters!

When people talk about Disney on Acid, they have no fucking clue what they are talking about…. You really haven’t seen anything until you have enjoyed the surreal cacophony of Tom Thumb and Little Red Riding Hood.  Something of an Avengers of the time, Rodriguez teamed up the already established characters Caperucita Roja (Little Red Riding Hood), Pulgarcito (Tom Thumb) and brought their foes along for a wham bam face off quite unlike anything else.

In the wonderful world of fairy tales, we find a bunch of monsters put on trial. The Vampires tells that the case of the day is against The Wolf  [Manuel ‘Loco’ Valdés] and The Ogre [José Elías Moreno – who later starred in Rene Cardona’s La horripilante bestia humana (Night of the Bloody Apes) 1969], since they never succeeded in eating Little Red Riding Hood [María Gracia] and Tom Thumb [Cesáreo Quezadas] in previous movies, which they all starred in. The jury consists of a pinhead, Frankenstein, a child kidnapper, a Siamese twinbeast, a Witch, and the Father of Hurricanes… a motley crew indeed. The Judge arrives –Snow Whites evil Stepmother, played magnificently sinister by Ofelia Guilmáin who starred in amongst other things Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel 1962 and the infamous El baron del terror 1962 - and she doesn’t waste her time at all! She instantly condemns the two beasts to death by the circular saw! The vampire pleads for their lives, and instead they are sentenced to lure Red Riding Hood and Tom Thumb into a sardonic plan where The Queen's magic will turn them all into monkeys. Excited yet? Well you should be as this is only the beginning of this sensational oddity that will blow your mind.

Basically it’s a tale of good versus evil, but with the ultimate mix of influences picked up along the way. Disney, Grimm, Wizard of Oz, Mexploitation, Sci-fi and Horror - anything you can imagine. With the main plot established within the first fifteen minutes – transform all the villagers of Red Riding’s hood to infantile apes, or mice in some cases – the action starts being hammered in, children and adults all become primates and it certainly looks as if the evil forces are going to bring chaos to fairyland. It’s all up to Red Riding Hood, Tom Thumb, and Stinky the Skunk to confront the evil queen and save the day.

You will not believe how this movie builds and builds, upping the action with each twist and turn: fairy god mothers, giant robots, wrestling monster galore, fire breathing dragon, and a wishy washy tear jerking happy ending.

Technically, I love this movie. It has everything that I love in a matinee – they didn’t call K. Gordon Murray the King of the Kiddie Matinée for nothing, he certainly knew what he was picking up when he grabbed, re-dubbed and re-issued this one back in the day. Tom Thumb and Little Red Riding Hood pulls all the punches it can, and goes all in. There’s matte paintings, trick photography, colourful pantomime outfits, Papier-mâché monsters, forced perspective images, and even some really silly musical numbers. You will love this movie like none other! It’s a magnificent magic masterpiece of matinee madness.

Marebito

Marebito
Directed by: Takeshi Shimizu, Japan, 2005
Fantasy / Horror / Drama, 92min
Distributed by: Tartan Asia

Story:
Freelance cameraman Matsuoka [Shinya Tsukamoto] has determined to find the true face of fear after documenting a man committing suicide. His search takes him deep beneath the streets of Tokyo and into huge system of complex tunnels. At the end of the tunnel he finds the remains of an abandoned ancient city and there he finds her… the pale naked woman that he takes back to his flat and tries to “acclimatise” to modern society. Each day the woman who he calls F. [Tomomi Miyashita].grows weaker and weaker until Matsuoka accidentally finds out what she needs to regain her strength and health.

Me:
Well I’ve had quite a few mixed feelings towards Shimizu’s movies, I thought that the first Ju-On movies and the sequels where great the first time I saw them, but upon repeated viewing they rapidly get quite annoying as you never really get to know the characters, and his efforts after them, what with the US remakes and all. After I watched Rinne [Aka Reincarnation, 2005] I was truly disappointed and it made me loose interest in his career. But by chance I stumbled over Marebito and decided to give it a chance, even though I previously have rejected it due to reviews. Anyhow, the first ten minutes managed to draw me in and it could have been the way Shimizu starts to unfold this tale of just the fact that it was Tsukamoto in the lead role as Matsuoka. After the quite graphic suicide of Arei Fukori [Kazuhiro Nakagawa] Matusoka starts his quest for the true face of fear, which drives him to return to the scene of the suicide, where he starts searching for clues to what gave Arei that terrified gaze in his stare the seconds before he took his own life. And here Shimizu starts to take on bold steps. Matsuoka finds himself discovering an underground system of tunnels in which he finds the ghost of Arei, and somewhere about here you start to realise that this isn’t going to be a typical J-horror shocker. The ghost is just there and he doesn’t come of as a threat to Matsuoka, who doesn’t even get scared by the ghost. The ghost leads him down the dark corridors until Matsuoka arrives at an ancient city which I to the best can be described as a Lovecraft-ian sort of world which sets a completely different tone to the events to come. Ok so the city is quite bad CGI and I had a few problems buying it, but Shimizu does wise in not focusing on the city and moves rapidly on to the “creature” or naked shockingly skinny naked woman that Matsuoka finds chained to the wall of a cave. He takes her home and starts to study her so that he can adapt her to modern society. He does this with a complicated system of surveillance cameras and even through his cell phone that is connected to a webcam at his flat. Somewhere around here I started to realise that there are two ways to watch this movie, either you can be disappointed because it isn’t turning out to be a J-horror movie within the formula or you can watch it as a melancholic fantasy drama, which plays out like homage to the world of Lovecraft. It’s all there, the lonesome protagonist searching for something, alone with his doubts of his own sanity. The relationship between Matsuoka and F. as he calls her sort of reminds me of George and Weena in George Pal’s The Time Machine 1960. A strange relationship which blends curiosity with fascination and fear for the unknown with protective parental instincts. The lengths that Matsuoka goes to when he realises that F. craves blood to survive are just one example, and the baby bottling of his victims blood is another. Then the question about his sanity! Is he in fact just insane or is this happening? The strange man in black that keeps showing up and talking about the “task” that Matsuoka has taken upon himself, and then there’s the worried woman who stalks him and then claims to be his ex-wife and F. his daughter! Is he insane or is it happening? Also the ending, could you actually ask for a better ending? Matstuoka gets what he is searching for on all levels, the company of F, and he finds the fear that he so desperately was looking for!


In general I enjoyed the movie, there was enough elements thrown in at the right time to keep the J-Horror slow crawling pace alive and vibrant, for instance the suicide, the ghost of Arei, the Lovecraft-ian thread, the finding of F., the mysterious woman Aya Fukumoto [Miho Ninagawa, who you probably recognise from Miike’s MOH episode Imprint], the Man in Black [Shun Sugata, who you may have seen in loads of other Japanese genre movies like Kairo, Koroshiya 1, and even Tarantino’s Kill Bill.] the discovery of F. needs for survival and so forth all the way though out the movie, and it works. I definitely have to revalue Shimizu again, and would highly recommend Marebito to anyone looking for gems within the world of Asian cinema, but keep in mind it isn’t a J-Horror formula movie it’s something completely different even if a lot of the trademarks are there.

Image: Anamorphic Widescreen: 1.78:1, Optional English Subtitles.

Audio:
Japanese Dolby Digital Surround 5.1, Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 and DTS Digital 5.1.

Extras:
There are a few short interviews with Director Takashi Shimizu, actor/director Shinya Tsukamoto and Writer Hiroshi Takahashi. Film notes and the original theatrical Trailer.