Sure Death

Director: Masahisa Sadanaga
Writer: Tatsuo Nogami, Tsuyoshi Yoshida
Producer: Yoshiki Nomura, Hisashi Yamanochi
Cast: Makoto Fujita, Kunihiko Mitamura, Izumi Ayukawa
Year of release: 1984
Country: Japan
Reviewed from: VHS screener (Artsmagic)

This is an enormously entertaining way to pass a couple of hours and wonderful insight into a rarely seen part of Japanese popular culture, but if I said that I could follow what was going on in any significant way, I would be a lying git.

The print used by Artsmagic has the original on-screen English title The Hissatsu. Now, Hissatsu (‘determined to kill’) was a Japanese TV series which ran for several years in the 1970s in various incarnations, and which has spawned various movies, of which this seems to be the first.

In mid-19th century Edo, a group of professional assassins find that someone else is picking off their number one by one. And, um, that is the sole extent of the plot that I was able to work out. One of the assassins has a day-job as a corrupt cop, and there is some sort of comic subplot involving his wife and mother-in-law. A famous puppeteer is also involved in some way, and a couple of assassins work as roofing tilers, their preferred method of despatch being a well-thrown, sharp-edged tile. There’s a local gangster who runs an illegal brothel where he mistreats the girls, one of whom wants him dead because he killed the only thing she cared about in the whole world, a little kitten.

But as for who is who, who does what or why, I am stumped.

It’s a fantastic film to look at. The cinematography is gorgeous and the use of colour and geometric shapes in the compositions sometimes takes your breath away with its audacity. Though made in 1984 and based on a series which ran from 1972, the film looks much more like a product of the 1960s, especially in terms of editing, title sequence and music, which has a very spaghetti western feel to it.

What I suspect is that there’s a lot of comedy in this which just doesn’t make it through to this subtitled version. Without being silly or wacky, there is definitely a slightly tongue-in-cheek element, as in a sequence where they look to recruit other assassins and we meet one guy who runs a pet shop and has trained a small bird to peck poison onto people, and another who is a professional earwax remover and uses a concealed needle to stab people in the brain. Another assassin uses the ‘mole’ technique, of burying himself by corkscrewing straight down, then burrowing up to his victim before leaping out. This part of the film reminded me of the audition scene in Mystery Men.

But if there’s any element of humour in the dialogue it does not make it through to the English subtitles, and any character comedy is entirely lost on a British audience by our unfamiliarity with these characters. Because this is a spin-off from a popular TV series, there’s just no explanation of who anyone is; it’s aimed fairly and squarely at fans of the show.

The cast includes Isuzu Yamada (Throne of Blood, Yojimbo), Izumi Ayukawa (Baby Cart at the River Styx), Kunihiko Mitamura (Godzilla Vs Biollante, Gamera III) and Makoto Fujita (Zatoichi’s Cane Sword). Mitamura and Fujita were also in the Kinji Fukasaku-directed sequel Sure Death 4.

A terrific, exciting piece of period drama, but completely mystifying. Don’t expect the DVD notes to put the film in context or explain anything, because I wrote them and you can see precisely how little I’ve been able to find out about the film!

MJS rating: B
Review originally posted 27th February 2007.

Twister Kicker

Director: Hon Bo Chang
Writer: Mo Hung Ki
Producer: Ku Che Chin
Cast: Yang Oi Hwa, Ding Hwa Sun, Yee Hung
Country: Hong Kong
Year of release: 1984
Reviewed from: UK VHS

'Cover photo/image may not be from this film' says the small print on the back of the video sleeve and they're dead right on this occasion as the photo is from some historical chop-socky feature and this movie is very definitely set in the present day. However the photo on the back is from the film and the synopsis is, unusually for this sort of movie, spot on.

A guy called Chao Ming discovers that he has cancer and only has a month or so to live. At the same time, the orphanage where his girlfriend, Su-An Fang, works needs money for some reason and his godfather, Mr Ho (whom we never see) is in trouble with the law, accused of drug-smuggling. Actually, the Mr Ho subplot is never really followed up and seems completely pointless.

Su-An takes an evening job at a nightclub while Chao starts teaching martial arts at a local gym. Wanting to maximise his income while he can, he takes on a job for a local gangster which involves threatening another local gangster and telling him to clear out of town.

And, um, that's about it. Chao orders his own coffin and funeral clothes and oversees the digging of his own grave as a sort of comic subplot. There are a few lacklustre fights and eventually it transpires, to no-one's surprise, that the doctor was wrong and Chao doesn't have cancer after all. There's some sort of subplot involving another woman named Anna, and Chao lives with a comic relief friend, but that's all incidental to the fighting.

Sadly, the fighting isn't anything to write home about. There's a brief bit of interest when Chao is fighting the gangster's goons around the guy's villa after delivering his initial threat. Some nice overhead shots and creative use of a balcony mark this fight out as vaguely interesting but the other punch-ups, including one in an undertaker's shop and a final one involving students from the gym, are frankly soporific.

Despite the title there is no distinctive fighting style on display here involving either twisting or kicking. Nevertheless this is the original title, seen in a lengthy credit sequence which plays out over completely unrelated polarised footage of a guy doing gymnastics.

Not one of the cast or crew names turns up a single hit on Google, but for what it's worth the film 'stars' Yang Oi Hwa, Ding Hwa Sun, Lam Ying and Wang Hoi with Yee Hung credited as 'guest star'. the other actors listed are Sun Yat, Wang Lan, Chan Kuen and Ng Tung Chiu, the last of whom may or may not be the same as the Ng Tung Chue who is credited as 'martial arts director'.

Other credited crew are: supervisor Wu Se Yee, assistant director Chung Fok Man, cameraman Tao Tung Sang, lighting technician Ng Lung Chin and production manager Sung Yee Hung. Yang Che Kin is credited with 'planning', Hon Hoi Lee was the make-up artist and the continuty (sic) clerk was Chu Qua Fat. The movie was produced by the Dachin Film Co Ltd and distributed by L&T Film Corporation Ltd.

MJS rating: C-

Moontrek

Director: Jean Image
Writer: France Image, Jean Image
Producer: Jean Image
Cast: Who can tell?
Country: France
Year of release: 1984
Reviewed from: UK VHS

I love animation, me. I love it all (with the sole exception, as previously mentioned, of anime, but let’s not go into that here). I love Disney and Warner Brothers and Terrytoons and Fleischer and Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network and Klasky-Csupo. I love American and Canadian and European and Australian animation. I love feature films and TV series and six-minute shorts and student films and weird experimental stuff. I love cartoons. Cartoons kick arse.

Except this one.

Le Secret des Selenites (to use its original title) is far and away the worst feature-length animated film that I have ever seen. It makes Bevanfield’s Beauty and the Beast look like, well, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

Apart from being diabolically awful in every respect, the other extraordinary thing about this film - which one cannot guess from either the French or English title - is that it is about Baron Munchausen. Who knew? I expect that most of us are familiar with Terry Gilliam’s gloriously extravagant The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and I have fond memories of catching the 1940s German Munchausen movie - a stunning film riven with alarming Nazi subtexts - on a rare TV screening many years ago. There have been a handful of other Munchausen movies, but I had no idea that there were not one but two French animated features about the notorious liar.

In 1979, Jean Image released Les Fabuleuses Aventures du Legendaire Baron de Munchausen which premiered at no less than the Moscow Film Festival; I have no information on any English language version of that. Le Secret des Selenites was the sequel, produced over 1981-82 and eventually released in February 1984.

And good sir, it’s bobbins.

In 1757 ‘famous astronomer’ and/or astrologer Sirius is convinced that there are sentient creatures living on the Moon - “according to my teacher, the eminent Dr Keppler” - who have the secret of eternal life. He is visited by his good friend Baron von Munchausen and we see a flashback as the Baron relates how he was captured by the Turks and forced to work as a beekeeper. Attacked by some particularly fierce bees, he defended himself by throwing a hatchet which flew up to the Moon. The Baron then planted a magic 'Spanish bean' which grew into a beanstalk “faster than a jolly green giant” and enabled him to retrieve his hatchet.

After assorted inanities, Sirius puts his entire personal fortune at the Baron’s disposal if he will agree to fly to the Moon and take a look. Munchausen hires a sailing ship, the Claire de Lune and rounds up his five loyal servants: Hercules (who is very strong), Hurricane (who can blow very hard), Earful (a little fellow with huge ears who can hear at great distances), Nimrod (who can run very fast) and Cavalo (the nature of whose special talent, frankly, eluded me).

The ship heads for the South Seas where it is becalmed. The captain and crew leave in a longboat for ‘Paradise Island’ while Munchausen and his servants raise up three large balloons which are sufficient to fly them to the Moon. Descending towards a large crater, they breathe oxygen from a barrel.

Landing on the Moon, Hercules fights off a giant, blue bee before the expedition is attacked by three-eyed, two-legged red dragons; fortunately they are rescued by large, flying, green seahorses. Then some blue rock monsters attack but the humans are saved by some friendly Selenites. These are roughly humanoid but have three legs and a detached, floating head which is in the shape of a crescent moon, with a pointy chin and a single, large horn in the centre of the forehead. Shown around the Moon, Munchausen is told that the Selenites eat solid honey, that they use vegetables as weapons and that they are hatched from giant nuts.

The Selenites are threatened, however, by the Green Means, little pepperpot-like aliens with concertina jaws who fly down to the Moon in small flying saucers, intent on stealing the Selenites’ ‘Talisman of Life’. The Green Means capture and threaten the Selenite’s King and Queen, who wear Inca-style head-dresses, but Munchausen and his servants successfully repel the invaders. As a reward, all six are given a talisman by the King which will grant them eternal life.

Presumably they are given a spare one too because the epilogue sees Munchausen and Sirius, with long grey beards, still alive in the far distant year of 1997, while the Baron’s five servants fly between the futuristic skyscrapers in a variety of advanced aircraft.

This is just terrible. The animation is some of the worst I have ever seen, based entirely on simple repeated loops of motion. Nothing happens that doesn’t then happen four or five times again in succession, sometimes in two alternating directions. This even extends to characters standing still - no-one stands still in this movie! Every character on screen is constantly bobbing up and down or side to side in a loop of animation - watching this is enough to drive you batty. The character design is really crude, almost like a child would do. And every character has a single angle from which they are seen: humans and Green Means in three-quarter, Selenites in profile, Selenite King and Queen full face. No-one ever turns in any direction except the opposite one.

To complement the pisspoor design and animation is an appalling script, devoid of wit, characterisation or interest. It should not be possible to destroy a character as wonderful as Baron Munchausen but Jean Image and chums have managed it. Obviously I’m working here from the uncredited American script, but given the general low quality of the film I very much doubt that the original was much better. A lot of the film is just characters saying “Aha. Um. Oh. Aha.” over and over again as they bob endlessly back and forth in an effort to pad out the flimsy storyline and stretch this to feature-length.

No voice actors are credited on the English-language but the original French version featured Jacques Ciron (Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier) as the lead Selenite with Dominique Paturel as Munchausen. Jean Image was born Imre Hadju in Hungary in 1910 and emigrated to France in 1932. Apart from the two Munchausen pictures, his other films were Jeannot l’Intrepide/Johnny the Giant Killer, Bonjour Paris, Aladdin et la Lampe Merveilleuse/Aladdin and his Magic Lamp, Joe Petit Boum-Boum/Johnny in the Valley of the Giants and Pluk, Naufrage de l’Espace/Little Orbit the Astrodog and the Screechers from Space which I want to see, just on the basis of its English title. All except the first were co-written with France Image who was presumably Mrs Hadju.

The Images also created an early 1960s cartoon series, Les Aventures de Joe, about a boy who was shrunk to the size of an insect, and a later stop-motion series, Kiri le Clown. One of Jean Image’s lesser known credits is the special effects in the 1951 British short documentary River of Steel, which was shown at Cannes.

But the most curious credit on this film is the annoyingly catchy theme song, based around the English translation of the French title. Words and music are by Haim Saban and Shuki Levy, who later went on to found Saban Entertainment and bring us, among many other things, Power Rangers!

Anyway, Moontrek is awful. I can’t imagine even the youngest, most easily pleased child being anything other than bored or frightened by this rubbish. It is a chore to watch and has no redeeming features whatsoever.

MJS rating: D

review originally posted 25th October 2005