Retro Review: Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965)

This here is the kind of a movie that is going to help determine if you are a tried-and-true kaiju fanatic, or just someone who enjoyed watching a couple of Godzilla movies on syndicated TV when you were a kid. Simply put, Frankenstein Conquers the World is not for everyone. But if you love this sort of thing--Japanese giant monster movies--then it's a veritable treasure trove of rubber-suited goodness.

Who knew the mythos created by Mary Shelley and reinterpreted by Universal would come so far, and be taken to such a nearly unrecognizable point? Toho co-opts the classic Euro-American pop culture figure with an enthusiasm that's just tough to knock. Sure, they seem to have no grasp of what the source material is really all about--but it just seems mean to trash a movie in which the Frankenstein monster grows to gigantic size and fights a classic Japanese kaiju. This is the kind of a movie where you know what you're getting into. Either it's exactly what you're looking for, or it's nothing you'd ever go near. And you can count me firmly amongst the former.

The story begins in Germany at the end of World War II. Nazis raid what appears to be Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory (in 1945? and was it in Germany to begin with??) and seize the heart of the monster--which is inexplicably the only part left of him. The scene in which they steal the heart is quite bizarre, as it is done completely in mime, almost as if the screenwriters couldn't be bothered to write German dialogue. It's weird and goofy, and pretty much sets the tone for the entire flick.

The Gerries hand the heart over to their allies in Japan, just as everything is going to hell in Europe. It's interesting, by the way, to notice how in Takeshi Kimura's script, the Japanese distance themselves from their former wartime buddies--they seem to regard the Nazis as pathetic and desperate losers that they can't wait to see crash and burn.

Anyway, just as scientists in Hiroshima are studying the heart in order to breed a race of super soldiers (what else?), the city is hit by the big one. Well, there goes that experiment. Ah...but you forget, this is a Japanese monster movie, which means that the Frankenstein heart, irradiated from the atom bomb, mutates into a sort of bizarro clone of the original creature.

Fast forward 15 years later, and the young monster is discovered by yet more scientists--who, it's interesting to note, insist on pointing out that the creature is Caucasian, when actor Koji Furuhata clearly is not. And thanks to the dose of radiation, he's growing way beyond the bounds of his platform shoe-wearing predecessor In fact, he grows big enough to be able to take on the mighty Baragon, who for no reason at all shows up out of nowhere to wreak some havoc. Frankenstein (as he's referred to throughout the movie) escapes the lab, and fights Baragon, followed by....a giant octopus! Why? Not a clue. But I loved every minute of it.

The 1960s is often looked at as a golden age by fans of this sort of stuff, and Frankenstein Conquers the World (which he doesn't even come close to doing, by the way), is an excellent example of how much fun these movies were. Ishiro Honda, the director of the original Gojira, takes the reigns, accompanied by his ace special effects man Eiji Tsuburaya, and musical composer Akira Ifikube. Together, this trio delivers a balls-to-the-wall mega kaiju extravaganza which will either have you jumping up and down on your couch with glee, or scratching your head quizzically for 90 minutes. This movie will definitely determine what kind of genre fan you are!

The effects in Toho films take a lot of flak, and much of it is deserved, but a lot of it is also ignorant. Yes, the effects suffered a decline in the 1970s, but during the mid-'60s they were pretty slick for the time. Here in America, the completely different, stop-motion approach of the Ray Harryhausen school may have tended to bias some fans (the constant maligning in the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland didn't help, either), but there's definitely something to be said for Tsuburaya's work in this film, and others like it. There's some very cool composite work to be found, for example.

Yes, the whole thing builds to what amounts to a guy with fake teeth, a flattop wig and a furry loincloth wrestling with another guy in a rubber lizard suit, but hey, what were you expecting, Wuthering Heights?

Ifikube contributes some of his best film music, and that's saying a lot. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the score helps save the movie in parts, adding much-needed atmosphere at times. Actually, since with Frankenstein in the title, one would think this movie was vaguely connected to horror, it should be pointed out that Ifikube's music really helps to convey a sense of dread and mystery in places. I was surprised to find that there are several moments in the film, mostly involving the monster, that are actually pretty creepy.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the one and only Nick Adams, the poor man's James Dean, in the role of American doctor James Bowen. This was Adams' first kaiji film, followed soon after by Godzilla vs. Monster Zero. Unfortunately, unlike that film, the version of Frankenstein Conquers the World currently on DVD is subtitled rather than dubbed, which means you don't get to hear Adams own voice speaking English in that woefully out-of-place Bowery boys accent.

The beautiful Kumi Mizuno appears as Bowen's love interest, Sueko. She and Adams would be reunited immediately after for Monster Zero, and in fact Mizuno even appeared in the last (to date) G-flick, Godzilla: Final Wars. Adams' partner, Dr. Kawaji, is played by Toho favorite Tadao Takashima, who had already appeared in King Kong vs. Godzilla and Atragon, and would later turn up in Son of Godzilla.

All in all, Frankenstein Conquers the World delivers on everything one would expect from a movie called Frankenstein Conquers the World. It's boatloads of fun, and just plain cool to see a classic Western monster interpreted in such a foreign milieu. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but for lovers of Japanese giant monster fare and general Cold War-era cheese, it's a relative rarity that yields some wonderful, oddball things.

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21st Century Terrors, Part 3: 2002

If the early part of the current decade suffered a bit from the aftereffect of the '90s malaise, then 2002 was the year that things really began to shape up. Most would agree that this decade has been a good time to be a horror movie lover, and 2002 is where it all kicked into gear. This was when the decade started coming into its own.

This was the year so many things began clicking all at once, giving fans lots of options, and rebuilding the face of the genre in the process.

For example, 2002 gave us what very well may be the decade most well-crafted and impressively made horror film, Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. Not only was it a tense, fascinating and brilliant re-evaluation of the zombie genre, it's the kind of horror film that literally defines an era. In other words, looking back on the 2000s, we could very well call it the decade of 28 Days Later.

And speaking of zombies, it can safely be said that the 2000s was the decade those undead buggers really came into the mainstream after many years of existing underground and being somewhat out of fashion. And 2002 was the year it started. 28 Days Later was one major part of that, although "purists" will argue it's not really a zombie film since the attackers depicted are technically infected living people.

But this is an exercise in futile semantics. Technical details aside, the plot devices are those of the zombie movie, the setting, the structure, the methods of evoking fear--purism aside, 28 Days Later helped usher in a golden age of zombie films, with its depiction of manic, rabid, and--controversy of controversies--fast-moving "zombies".

But if a more old-school approach was more your cup of tea, then the other half of 2002's one-two punch of zombie goodness delivered what you were looking for--to a degree. Based on a successful video game, Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil is the other film that usually gets pointed to as kicking off the zombie renaissance.

While not as good a horror film as 28 Days Later, it was just as popular, if not more so, owing largely to the vast popularity of the game. And while it gave us traditional, slow-moving zombies, it mixed things up a bit with an assortment of other bizarre mutated monsters from the game.

And most importantly, it reached a mainstream audience to a degree almost unheard of for a zombie movie, due largely to its lack of gore. While this didn't sit well with hardcore horror fans, it did expose middle-of-the-road America to the zombie phenomenon, and so may deserve even more credit than 28 Days for spawning the wave of ghoul cinema that continues to this day.

The trend of Asian horror cinema and its effect on the American genre gained greater steam than ever, with the most high profile U.S. remake of them all, The Ring. Taken from 1998's Ringu, this amped-up ghost story was a major hit, with some even preferring it to the Japanese original. Unlike what mostly had been happening, with paltry, inferior remakes of Asian horror, The Ring captured the attention of a lot of horror fans. And although most still prefer the original, it is a quality film.

For many casual horror fans, The Ring would become the benchmark of scary for the decade's fright films. The American version was able to assert a completely separate identity, which was a large part of why it became one of the decade's most memorable horror films. But meanwhile, overseas in Asia, more excellent horror was being created. Both Ju-On from Japan and Jian Gui from China would have a strong impact, and later be remade in America as The Grudge and The Eye, respectively.

Genre directors would make their mark in a big way in 2002. M. Night Shyamalan, who had debuted with the Oscar-nominated The Sixth Sense three years earlier, gave us Signs, a moody sci-fi/horror flick about hostile alien invaders. Although it ends with one of the director's increasingly tiresome twisty climaxes, along the way it delivered some solid scares.

And another young director, Eli Roth, crashed on to the scene with Cabin Fever, a wicked little horror comedy that instantly got him the attention of fright fans. There's no question that film divides horror fandom, but I fall amongst those who found it to be a delightfully sick little laugh riot. A ballsy film that put Roth on the map, leading to the continued impact he would have on the genre as the decade moved along.

Horror movies in general got more interesting in 2002 than they had been in a long time. Within the same 12-month span, we got the ingenious and truly original werewolf picture Dog Soldiers, as well as the boldly imaginative comedy Bubba Ho-Tep, which added one more shining gem to the crown of horror's reigning king, Bruce Campbell. Just one of those films in any given year in recent memory would be impressive--to have both come out within months of each other is testament to the blockbuster horror years that was 2002.

But OK, if you'd like me to balance things out a bit, I can point out that 2002 also gave us the abysmal Anne Rice adaptation Queen of the Damned, which made the previous decade's Interview with the Vampire look like Nosferatu; the famously atrocious FeardotCom; and perhaps the saddest entry in the adventures of Michael Myers, Halloween: Resurrection, in which Mikey tangles with Busta and Tyra...

Nevertheless, 2002 was indeed the year the decade came into its own. And there would only be more good stuff to come--including lots and LOTS of zombies.

Also from 2002:

• Blade 2
• Eight-Legged Freaks
• Ghost Ship
• The Mothman Prophecies

Part 1: 2000
Part 2: 2001

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TRAILER TRASH: J-Horror Edition!

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Having Fun with Blood: The Last Vampire

There's been much made in the horror blogosphere of late regarding The Vampire Diaries, and by all accounts it seems that you're most likely to get some enjoyment out of it if you shut off your brain and try not to take it all too seriously. That said, I had a similar reaction to checking out the French-Japanese co-production Blood: The Last Vampire, although I suspect it is probably a lot more fun than Diaries.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I walked into the NYC sneak preview of this flick, and I'm glad I had no pre-conceived notions, because I think if I had gone in expecting a straight-up horror flick, I might've been less than pleased. The best way to describe this film would be to call it a horror-flavored Hong Kong-style action flick--and one which never, ever makes the mistake of playing it too straight.

Directed by French music video and commercial auteur Chris Nahon, the movie is a live-action adaptation of a popular 2000 short Japanese anime film. And I've got to hand it to Nahon and his crew, because they managed to create exactly that--a living, breathing, live-action anime. If that sounds like something that would interest you, than you are going enjoy the piss out of Blood: The Last Vampire.

The intense and beautiful Gianna Jun plays Saya, a vampire hunter who is herself a reluctant bloodsucker (in actuality, the creatures are referred to mainly as "demons" in the film). Saya is employed by a mysterious secret society out to rid the world of the evil vampire overlord Onigen and her vicious minions. Along the way, she crosses paths with token American Sharon (played by the less-than-stellar Masiela Lusha), the daughter of the general in charge of the army base where she is secretly stationed.

Liam Cunningham and J.J. Feild play Saya's caretakers, two mysterious agents who literally look and speak like they just walked out of an episode of Speed Racer. It's pretty stiff and awful, unless you kick back and soak it in as part of the whole "live action anime" thing. Once I "got" it, I was able to have fun with it. The same can be said for much of the movie itself.

The highlight of the flick is easily the action, some of the best-filmed and choreographed you're likely to see anywhere. The melding of the horror and samurai genres yields some enjoyable fruit here; think of it as Buffy meets Kills Bill. That said, I could've done without the plentiful CGI blood, which ruins any good horror movie for me, but here was particularly egregious. In fact, the CG in general is notably bad, with creature rendering that isn't even at contemporary video game levels.

The shining moment in the film is easily the final confrontation between Saya and Onigen, played by the stunning model-turned-actress Koyuki. The CG here finally rises to impressive levels, and an epic feel is communicated unlike anything else in the film. You really do feel like you're watching anime come to life. It's also filmed beautifully by cinematographer Hang-Sang Poon, a veteran of Jackie Chan and Jet Li vehicles.

Adding to the comic-book, pulpy look and feel of Poon's camera work is the impressive production design work of Chia-Yi Rene Chao. Clearly, they were going for a Sin City/300/Watchmen kind of vibe, and although it falls far short of that, the result is a slick, kinetic production, a richly rendered world that is as much fun to look at as the action that's taking place in it.

I encourage you to have fun with Blood: The Last Vampire. Look past the often-cheesy dialogue and wooden acting--or better yet, appreciate them for what they are. This is Japanese/Hong Kong-style mindless (yet mindblowing) action at its best, with a healthy dose of horror thrills tossed in for good measure. It's actually a pretty unique film, unlike anything you're likely to see this year. Definitely worth a look, just don't expect anything more than a rollicking good time.

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Asian Horror Cinema

Greetings readers, this is Karl Hungus (of karlhungus.com fame) contributing an article for The Vault of Horror, so I'd like to pay my respects to B-Sol for running an excellent blog, and I hope everyone finds this a worth addition to the Vault. The subject for this is of course Asian Horror, so without further delay, I'll begin.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man from director Shinya Tsukamoto was my first introduction to Japanese horror, and I think it was pivotal in bringing the darker side of Japanese cinema to western audiences. It was a terrifying black & white nightmare, an extremely twisted evolution of David Cronenberg's "Body Horror" where a man is slowly being transformed into living metal. That film absolutely chilled me one night when I was a teenager, and I'd say it started a love affair with horror from the east.

It was one of a few films that came out of Japan in the late 80's that widely set the bar for part of what we know as J-Horror today; the more visceral films that take their inspiration from the likes of Cannibal Holocaust. 1988's Evil Dead Trap (An unfortunate title, as the original Japanese name translates as "Prudent Trap") gave us a fairly thrashy, yet competent gore movie, where a female news reporter receives what appears to be a snuff video, and sets off to investigate whether or not it's real, leading her crew into a literally deadly trap, where they are tortured and killed in grotesque fashion.

Japan became rather infamous for extreme torture films, and in essence, fake snuff videos. Guinea Pig: Flowers of Flesh and Blood was quite an ordeal to watch, and while I can appreciate the surreal display of poetry interjected with dismemberment, as a man dressed as a samurai warrior recites haiku in between butchering a young girl, it's not something I'd be too thrilled to see again. The only other film in the notorious Guinea Pig series I've seen is the 4th one Mermaid in a Manhole, which serves not so much as a fake snuff film, but offers up a genuinely disturbing and unique experience.

It's without a doubt that filmmakers in Japan had reached the pinnacle of extreme gore movies, but rather than continue into farce, a more mature kind of film emerged. In 1999, director Takashi Miike brought us Audition, which not only became one of my favourites, it was one of the first wave of films that put J-Horror on the map big time. It's a dark, slow burning affair that builds it's characters first, playing out like a drama, before taking a shift in tone towards more of a mystery, building the suspense, and finally grabbing the audience by the throat in the shocking finale. It's the kind of film Alfred Hitchcock would make if he had ever directed a gore movie, sombre and reserved, like a Psycho for modern times, an introspective into themes of recurring violence and it's consequences.

Miike didn't stop there, and while Audition was quietly tempered, Ichi The Killer was excess itself. A powerfully over the top Yakuza slasher, steeped in sadism, and moments of David Lynch like ambiguity. Further down the Lynchian ladder, we have Gozu which is much more surreal than anything that has come before it, but none the less an extremely good film, that is both disturbing and quite comical at times.

2000's Battle Royale was another of that first wave, along with Audition and Ring, a combination of B-movie sensibilities and ultra-slick direction. Plot wise, it's a half way between Lord Of The Flies and an 80's low budget sci-fi action movie. However, under Kinji Fukasaku's direction, it becomes one of the slickest pieces of action and brutality there is, so while not strictly a horror, it's definitely an important film.

This brings us to the film that needs no introduction, easily the most influential of all J-horrors, Ring. Director Hideo Nakata created one of the most perfect horror films ever, and cemented the image of pale women with long, black hair into popular culture. To say this had a knock-on effect would be to sell it's influence short, as the film paved the way for numerous others like The Grudge, from director Takashi Shimizu who also went on to work with Shinya Tsukamoto in the excellent Marebito. Before long, we had a vast amount of Japanese horrors that took their queue from Ring, Dark Water and Pulse being just a few in many. Sadly, the film had also sparked a revolution in remakes, when The Ring came out, nobody could stop Hollywood from cannibalising all Asian horrors they could get their hands on.

This brings us neatly to K-Horror, as South Korea were the first to remake Ring back in 1999 as The Ring Virus. I felt that for the most part, Korean ghost stories had been inferior to their Japanese counterparts. They weren't bad films by any stretch, but by the time 2003's Acacia came along, it felt like I've seen it all before. A Tale Of Two Sisters however, absolutely blew me away, it was a breath of fresh air that was greatly needed, and director Ji-woon Kim was certainly a talented individual. If you were to ask me what scared me the most, I would say it's probably this one, I hadn't be frightened by a film so deeply since I first watched Ring. Kim also directed the darkly comic The Quiet Family in 1998, which in turn was remade by Takashi Miike as The Happiness of the Katakuris, both versions I would seriously recommend.

Another Korean title that came out in 2003 is the absolutely bonkers Save The Green Planet, which is part black comedy, part sci-fi, and part torture film, with liberal sprinklings of drama. Others such as Into The Mirror and military ghost story R-Point are also extremely well done, and worth a look, even if they are quite unoriginal. Taking us on a completely different path in 2006 was the excellent monster movie The Host, throwing up some comic laughs with an extremely compelling rampage.

Other Asian countries also had their go at the horror genre, with Hong-Kong/Singapore co-production The Eye being one film that really scared me witless at the time, and Abnormal Beauty is another psycho-sexual horror, which takes it's queue from the more gore orientated films of the 80's I've mentioned above. Thailand has also tried it's hand with the excellent Shutter, which isn't particularly original, but it's just so well made and scary that you can forgive the formulaic effort.

Overall, Asia has a lot to offer the horror fan, and while a lot of the ghost stories can be very by the numbers story wise, they can still be worthwhile and very scary experiences. In fact, I've seen a hell of a lot of Asain horrors, and there's really only been one that I thought was a complete waste of my time, and that's Thai film Bangkok Haunted.

So, I hope this has been an enjoyable read, and that you've gleaned something from it.

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From Post-Mortem to Postmodern: A History of Horror Movies, Part 6

It seemed like the horror genre had nowhere else to go after the blood-drenched, boundary-pushing 1970s and '80s. And in a way, that was true.The 1990s is remembered by many as a lowpoint in the history of scary movies. And while that's a slightly inaccurate generalization, the decade did suffer in some respects as a result of the excesses of the years that preceded it.

On the one hand, you had many of the deathless franchises of the 1980s lurching forward, series like Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween churning out sequel after sequel, burning out the moviegoing public in the process. New slasher series like Child's Play, Leprechaun and Candyman, while offering some new ideas, also added more fuel to the fire.

In addition to that, a backlash occured. Beyond the genre, American moviemaking in general became more conservative, reacting to the unbridled violence and sex of the previous generation with more restraint and less gratuitousness. Criticisms of the business had begun to have an effect, and filmmakers had finally gotten over the fact they could do certain things they couldn't before. Now they were being more prudent about when and how often to do them.

Within horror, the gore factor was greatly reduced. Of course there were some exceptions--the most notable of which was a certain 1992 horror comedy by New Zealand director Peter Jackson called Brain Dead (or Dead Alive in America). That offbeat zombie flick ratcheted up the onscreen violence to ridiculously unheard of levels, but played it for laughs all the way. Perhaps that was the only way Jackson got away with it.

Ironically, once the splatter scene became old hat, Hollywood made something of a return to the grand guignol of a bygone era. Gothic horror made a brief comeback, and even the old monsters got taken out of mothballs for movies like Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), Wolf (1994) and The Mummy (1999) (though the latter was reimagined as more of an action film.) Vampires in particular benefited from a "goth" movement that buoyed Anne Rice's series of novels to worlwide acclaim and led to a motion picture version of Interview with the Vampire starring mega-stars Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.

The genre was lost in a way, heading in several different directions at once, unable to find its bearings. It was playing, after all, to an audience that felt as if it had seen it all. In hindsight, it seems only natural that the only thing to do under the circumstances was to deconstruct. For the first time, horror films became self-aware and self-reflective.

Just as he had been among the pioneers of the previous era, director Wes Craven led the pack again. Toying with the concept with 1994's New Nightmare, something of a coda to his Elm Street saga in which dream killer Freddy Krueger crosses over into the real world, Craven committed fully to self-aware horror with Scream (1996). A slasher flick in which all the characters seem to know about slasher flicks and all their cliches, the movie plays upon our expectations, injecting new life into a tired subject with a healthy dose of postmodern irony. Scream and its sequels, along with pics like I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), led to an unlikely rebirth of the hack-and-slash subgenre.

After years of searching for a new identity, the horror genre benefited from the shot in the arm, and by the end of the decade seemed to be on the road to recovery. Yet it also seemed as if horror filmmakers everywhere had learned over the course of the 1990s that they didn't necessarily need buckets of guts to effectively generate terror.

Witness the types of films that led the renaissance in the late 1990s. In America, it was newcomer M. Night Shyamalan and his atmospheric, Oscar-nominated ghost story The Sixth Sense (1999). There was also the ground-breaking Blair Witch Project of the same year. Although the overdose of internet hype that accompanied the film may have sabotaged it to a certain degree, it was the ingenious decision to inspire fear through the hyper-realism of a so-called "mock-umentary" approach that makes the movie a landmark--and one of the biggest influences on the genre to this day.

Meanwhile, from overseas in Japan, a movement was spreading abroad that would have an even greater impact in America in the years to come. With Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998) being the most well-known, Japanese horror would further reinvigorate the genre and open up new avenues to explore.

Horror had proven that it had a lot more life left in it. In fact, with the dawn of a new decade, it would soon become unimaginable that it had ever been in trouble in the first place. If the 1990s saw horror go into hiding, then the start of the 21st century saw it make up for lost time, exploding into the mainstream consciousness like never before.

Other major releases:

• Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993)
• In the Mouth of Madness (1995)
• Cube (1997)
• The Haunted Lantern (1997)
• Urban Legend (1998)

Part 1: The Silent Dead

Part 2: Gods & Monsters

Part 3: It Came from Hollywood

Part 4: The Times They Are a-Changin'

Part 5: Blood & Guts

Soon to come: Part 7 - Gore Goes Mainstream (a.k.a. The Final Chapter)

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