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.

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!

POSSESSION

Possession

Directed by: Andrej Zulawski

France/West Germany, 1981

Drama/Horror, 127min

Distributed by: Second Sight Films

There’s really only two ways to watch Andrej Zulawski’s breathtaking and mind expanding, monster metaphor movie, Possession – either you love it or you hate it. This is possibly THE film that polarizes its audience and so it should, with it’s sluggish pacing, manic acting and gob smacking horror twist. Andrey Zulawski’s Possession is a masterpiece of art-house drama molten together with gooey tentacle monster in horrific body horror!

Alienation is a key to Possession and Zulawski puts this all up front as the film opens with a harsh scene of rejection. Mark [Sam Neill] returns home from a journey abroad only to be met on the street by his wife Anna [Isabelle Adjani] who proceeds to tell him that she thinks their relationship is over. This is followed by scenes of the couple discussing the fact that they don’t really have any sexual feelings for each other any more, which leads to the reveal that Anna has been having an affair with another man… or at least that’s what we think so far.

Mark becomes obsessive in his determination to keep the family assembled (consisting of him, Anna and their young son Bob [Michael Hogben]) and going through the motions, he shouts at her, fights her, throws himself at her feet, submits to her, all without result. Mark descents into a deep dark personal space as he fights for what he believes is true happiness, fighting for a memory of something that no longer is.

Looking at Possession from a storytelling point of view, it’s a rather interesting film when it comes to the lead characters – keep in mind that this is early eighties, and the nihilism of today’s genre films was decades away – so it’s something of a fascination that Zulawski keeps his lead characters somewhat inaccessible to us. Neither Anna, Mark or Heinrich [Heinz Bennet] are sympathetic characters, so I don’t really root for any of them, they are all quite unlikeable, egotistical people completely coming apart at the seams, all by their own hands.

The only person that really is a likeable and empathetic character is schoolteacher Helen [Adjani in a double role] who plays an important part in Mark’s catharsis! In her own way a metaphor for innocence and the corruption of same innocence... Oh, and watching Possession again after quite some time, I also feel that there’s a pretty cool and subtle message in there concerning the two private investigators [Shaun Lawton and Carl Duering] and their relationship!  

Secrets. Yes secrets, dirty secrets. Zulawski lures the audience down a deceptive route as Mark learns of Anna’s dirty little affair on the side with Heinrich. But he certainly doesn’t stop there, but Anna has yet another affair outside of her affair with Heinrich… the rush of insight when one realizes what has been going on is powerful, and both men become completely obsessive. Only one of them can have Anna, and nobody want’s to let go of her, in a way it’s Anna who has who has possessed the men and they will stop at nothing to have her. Even the before mentioned detectives have their “secret”. Anna’s creature, the shape shifting homunculus that she hides in that damp murky Berlin apartment is her dark secret, and in some ways it also becomes Mark’s when he learns of it.

An important part of Possession is the constant disorientation. Multi award winning cinematographer Bruno Nuytten’s work here is fantastic, but the way the scenes are edited together, one rarely comes to insight in how rooms or locations are connected, this despite several splendid steady cam shots and flowing long in and out of location moves. This adds to the mental confusion of the piece. It’s also really important to watch how the shots are composed, as the way Adjani and Neill move and place themselves in the rather long and demanding shots are like watching strictly choreographed dances. The way the camera lingers and keeps us at distance is also part of the earlier mentioned alienation. Even the audience is held at arms length from everything.

Emotionally the film grinds down it’s audience and becomes a surrealistic nightmare perfected. There are no release valves and tension simply builds, on both the character levels and on the monster levels before reaching it’s devastating climax. Neill gives a great performance as the devastated Mark but Adjani showcases some outstanding talent as she with perfection slips between the many emotions and states of mind that Anna displays.

The monster. We can’t really talk about Possession without talking about the monster, metaphorical or not. Pocketed between two academy awards for his on Alien 1979 and E.T. 1982, Carlo Rambaldi's creature of Possession is a repulsive and magnificent one, kept off screen as long as possible and when it’s revealed we never really get a clear idea of how it comes together… it’s all slime, ooze and tentacles as the creature feasts off the blood and flesh of the poor victims Anna brings to their shared secret lair, and despite being a mix of Lovecraftian elder and total nightmare beast it doesn’t stop Anna from being intimate with the slimy monster. It’s a fantastic monster and is used in the perfect amount of screen time, any more and we would have been able to start looking for the wires, rods and any other revealing pieces of trickery. Once that monster is seen the fact that Anna is pregnant with it’s child evokes some haunting mental images, but nothing as surreal and disturbing as what Zulawski, Rambaldi and Adjani conjure up in the subway miscarriage scene in the second half of Possession. This is the concentrate of nightmares indeed!

Possession works in two ways, one as a metaphor for the disintegration of the Mark/Anna relationship, which is presented in a gut-wrenching fashion as the couple slowly, slowly, disintegrate and come apart at the seams. Emotional recognition is vital to understanding movies that want to tell situations we will never end up in (such as being traded for a gory monster that slowly takes your shape) so recognizing the suffering and torment that the characters are experiencing are important for the audience as this is what makes us know what they are feeling, experiencing and going through. The most of us have at least one really bad break up in our luggage and this is what Zulawski uses… at least to lure us into the strange freaky place he takes us.

But the movie also, as Andrej Zulawski points out on the commentary track, works as a metaphor for the “monsters” people became during the cold war and the terror of the Stasi. It’s possible to see this metaphor in the shape of Helen who “accidentally” is drawn into the world/relationship of Mark and Anna, and is the real and only true innocent victim of the piece. As mentioned earlier, neither Mark nor Anna are all that likeable as characters, Helen is the only one who we can empathize with, hence her in all her kindness and innocence becomes the victim. Just like friends and family turning on each other in Cold War Eastern Germany.

Loaded with a full batch of possessive extras such as TWO audio commentary tracks (one with Zulawski the other with co-writer Frederic Tuten); Interview with Zulawski, A DIVIDED CITY which sees Zulawski’s frequent composer Andrzej Korzynski talk about the soundtrack to Possessed, and if you like his work, you should pick up some of their collaborations released by Finders Keepers Records on LP and CD. REPOSSESSED; an expose on how the film was received in the UK during the Video Nasties era and how the US censors recut the film, OUR FRIEND IN THE WEST sees producer Christian Ferry is interviewed, and even the artist responsible for the amazing poster for the film is discussed in the featurette BASHA. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL is a feature length making of Possession documentary that gives even more insight into this fantastic film…

The Second Sight release of Andrej Zulawski’s nightmarish drama, Possession, is without a doubt one of the top five must have Blurays of 2013. Available from 29th July 2013.

Dario Argento's Dracula

Dracula

Original title: Dracula di Dario Argento

Directed by: Dario Argento

Italy/France/Spain, 2012

Horror/EuroGoth, min

Why is it that we always want so much for Dario Argento to find his way back the grand shape that he once had? Actually that’s a rhetoric question, we want him back to the greatness that we grew up loving him for, that’s a no-brainer. But if that is the case, why do we love to hate his later movies? There’s very little love for the films he’s made in the last decade… heck some even say it started going down hill after Phenomena almost twenty years ago. So what can one expect of "Dracula 3D" a movie that we’ve heard quite a fair del of and perhaps mostly groaning about.

Story wise, there’s nothing here that really hasn’t been told before, and despite being a free adaptation of the Bram Stoker classic, this is still the tale of the Count [Thomas Kretschmann] and his minions set against Jonathan Harker [Unax Ugalde] , his fiancé Mina [Marta Gastini], her friend Lucy [Asia Argento] and Vampire slayer Van Helsing [Rutger Hauer]. It’s safe territory; almost everyone knows the story, the characters and what goes down. There’s really nothing new added at all… oh, apart from a bloody big praying mantis!

Ok, so let’s start this off. The camera takes us on a CGI journey down towards and through a village into a house. This is exactly what one would expect to find in an Argento movie – flamboyant camera movement, so why not, even if it is CG and looks sort of like Lego. The music – something terribly important in Argento fare - warbles like something pulled off a horror cartoon. Just five minutes in there’s a woman spontaneously getting out of her kit and right into a session of posey, pose-shagging with her boyfriend… the third, rather unusual move for an Argento film…  wait I should be starting this piece somewhere else…  We should be starting with producer Giovanni Paolucci! Giovanni Paolucci may have produced some brilliant pieces of contemporary low budget trash cinema – especially the suite of films that became Bruno Mattei’s last flicks – but when Dario Argento has to turn to Giovanni Paolucci to finance his films, it makes me wonder over the sad state of Italian cinema.

I’m only blurting out gut instict with this theory, but during this film there’s several moments that make me cringe, wonder who the hell OK’d that moment, and come to the conclusion that this time original source material or themes, or genre isn’t being exploited, but it’s actually Dario Argento being exploited by the cunning Paolucci!

So the film then… I’d have to say that a lot of the FX is pretty good, even with the use of CG, there’s still a few grand moments. One effective scene sees Kretschmann’s Dracula speeding through a room slicing off heads as fountains of blood spray all over the place… so as for the gore and effects section, that’s got an OK from me. Well apart from one really shitty wolf to man transition that my kids could have done better with crayons and a notepad, and also the very flat CG train station. Actually the second time the 2D, 3D train station was used I laughed hard a the moment when the horses head moved as I was convinced that it was a mounted prop.

At times the film manages to tap into some kind of Hammers/EuroGoth groove and even if only slightly obtains a good atmosphere. There’s a few neat details have been worked in, or perhaps only one as that’s the one I recall, such as how Lucy hides her bite-marks away from friends who suspect that she’s been seduced by the fangster up in the castle. A moment in the bathtub reveals where and how she’s been drained and put under his spell.

Trying to sum the film up, Dario Argento’s Dracula has some pretty good effects; a couple of successful CG and practical FX combos, do give a decent amount of freaky and gory set pieces (hey we really don’t need very much more do we). The story is safely within the realm of what the title declares – The Dracula story, although it is a lazy adaptation as it all stays in the same location. I’d have loved to see Argento take on the seas, the plague of rats and Whitby. The sets look much better than I feared they would. Hell, even the obvious CG sets get the job done. A fairly familiar crowd surrounds Argento as several of the cast and crew have been with him on earlier productions.

The biggest flaw is that Argento never establishes, invest or develops his characters. He simply lets them run off their own reputations and legacies. There’s no attempt what so ever at bring complexity, dimension or even a vague attempt at actually creating these characters. Nothing is done to blow life into them, give them empathizing traits, or even make us give a damn. This leads to some pretty dull and flat characters and some piss poor acting that never really manages to engage the audience. The result is devastating and the movie really suffers from it.

Also, there’s never really any real value at stake, the threat of death never really feels present. Fights are over in a jiffy, Van Helsing is too cool for school, and Mina never really shows any fear when meeting the Count, her dead friend Lucy or anything else… and spontaneous nudity has never really been a part of Dario Argento’s movies… I know whom I’ll accredit that to.

Dario Argento’s Dracula has several unmistakable Argento traits, and at times his wonderful style shines through with such a powerful ray of light that it would burn any vampire to a cinder…. But the painfully dull characters totally ruin it all. There’s an problem with the film trying a bit too hard, but not managing to reach all the way through. Sure there’s gore, splatter, female nudity, some great moments, and I’m sure that if this one had been delivered somewhere between Tenebrae and Opera it would have been considered a cult classic from the last years of Italian Genre cinema. More importantly, perhaps Dario would have invested more in directing the actors than messing about with technology and trying to do fancy stuff with his camera. Because it’s true, the deeper you get into his filmography, the more his work becomes being about great camerawork and cool shots than great characters and cool story.

Dario Argento’s Dracula, not as terrible as I through it would be, but not as good as I wanted it to be… and believe me, I’ll watch and support Dario Argento no matter what kind of movies he makes. There are great moments, some cool effects, but way shallow on content, story, pacing and passion. In all honestly I don’t think he’s made this as a horror film at all, but as a Gothic pastiche. Style, tone, sets and the little atmosphere that there is, all strafes after some kind of Hammer/EuroGoth style, but in pastiche form.

I don’t think anyone can make Dracula as a period piece horror film these days, and especially not as a Dario Argento film. I’m basing that on the fact that there’s none of the classic Dario Argento sadism in the deaths here – as mentioned, action flashes past before you know the conflict is there, there’ no complexity to the deaths. The story just chugs on, it simply rolls forth without that classic Argentoesque last moment twist or trial. Nobody really seems to give a damn about what’s happening, and Claudio Simonetti’s constant, and somewhat annoying use of Theremin through out the movie, makes it feel like a Scooby-Doo episode. I kind of get the feeling that they played it safe, took a story that everyone knows and used it to see what they could do with modern technology. But taking your genre audience for granted is a deadly mistake.

Perhaps, and I’m only guessing, but perhaps this was a lightsome way for Dario and Luciano Tovoli to mess around with 3D cameras? Perhaps, and again I’m only guessing, but perhaps this was a way for Dario Argento and Luciano Tovoli to try out new technology, find out what can be done with 3D, what can be done with CGI, what can they get away with if they push it to the limit? Perhaps there still is one last great masterpiece in there?

I hope so, because Dario can do so much better that this. I feel that each time he brings new writing partners on-board, the story goes right out the window. I’d love to see my dream team constellation of say Luigi Cozzi, Daria Nicolodi, Franco Ferrini to bring story back home, and I also hope that he reconciles his relationship with producer/brother Claudio, because one thing is sure, we don’t need more cheap Dario Argento movies that merely exploit his name and the pure fact that he still wants to make movies.