The male mind is full of splitting skulls, winged pink elephants, and unicorn-mounted knights. So is this animated music video for “The Male Mind” by We Cut Corners.
POD 366, EP. 110: SOUTH AFRICA’S “STREET TRASH” – RYAN KRUGER AND SEAN C. MICHAEL
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Discussed in this episode:
Ash (2025): An astronaut wakes up on a spaceship to find her crew dead, and wonders if she can trust the man who arrives claiming to be a rescuer. Some psychedelic scenes highlight this sophomore feature from Flying Lotus. No official site located.
Harlequin (1980): Read Giles Edwards’ review. The “mystical oddity” gets a physical media upgrade from Indicator. Blu-ray and 4K UHD editions are sold separately. Buy Harlequin.
Thirst (1979): Read Pamela De Graff’s review. As with Harlequin, you can purchase this Australian vampire flick in either Blu-ray or 4K UHD. Buy Thirst.
Tommy (1975): Read Scott Sentinella’s List Candidate review. Visit the Acid Queen again with this 50th Anniversary reissue in a 2-disc 4K UHD/Blu-ray set (curiously, no special features on offer). Buy Tommy.
WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE: No guest officially scheduled for next week’s Pod 366, but Giles and Greg will return with a look at the week’s weird news and releases. In written reviews, Shane Wilson handles one that Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue with the Christian puppeteer documentary Hands of God (2005), Giles Edwards tracks down another reader suggestion in the impressively-titled Oh Dad, Poor Dad (Momma’s Hung You In the Closet & I’m Feeling So Sad) (1961), Enar Clarke enters The Mountains of Madness (1972), and Gregory J. Smalley plans to catch (and report on) cosmic sci-fi/horror Ash (above). Onward and weirdward!
CAPSULE: LOVE & CRIME (1969)
Meiji · Taishô · Shôwa: Ryôki onna hanzai-shi
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DIRECTED BY: Teruo Ishii
FEATURING: Teruo Yoshida, Rika Fujie, Yukie Kagawa, Yoshio Kodaira, Teruko Yumi
PLOT: His wife’s suicide inspires a mortician to consider four famous Japanese crimes of passion.
COMMENTS: The fact that Love & Crime begins with a gory autopsy of an attractive nude woman should let you know where it’s coming from. Even more perversely, said autopsy is performed by the decedent’s husband—shouldn’t the morgue have a rule against that?—and he’s not as visibly torn up about it as you might assume. The verdict is suicide, complicated by the fact that another man’s semen was found in the body.
Instead of a) mourning or b) launching an investigation into his dead wife’s private life, the doctor instead opts to c) travel around Japan and interview people associated with infamous recent crimes of passion, in hopes of gaining insight into his wife’s psychological state (?) These consist of the noirish story of a seductress in a love quadrangle who directly and indirectly murders to gain possession of an inn, the case of Sada Abe (who cut off her lover’s penis and whose story would later form the basis for Nagisa Ôshima‘s In the Realm of the Senses), a serial killer rapist, and a woman who becomes a killer after her husband develops leprosy.
These case studies are all told as flashbacks, and each of the flashbacks themselves consistently include at least one more flashback. This confusing structure can make the stories difficult to follow, especially for modern Western viewers who aren’t the least bit familiar with the true crime inspirations. (At least one reviewer didn’t realize the beheaded woman and the leper’s wife were the same story, and it’s not hard to see how the confusion arises.) Adding to the disjointed feel, the third story—that of the postwar rapist—is completely out of tone with the other two. It’s the only one in black and white and the only one where a male killer is the chief subject. And while the previous two stories ranged from naughty to gruesome, this one is brutally unpleasant and unrewarding. Unlike the more story-based segments that came before, it’s essentially a series of repeated rape/killing re-enactments, with the perp using exactly the same m.o. each time. Why was this segment even included in the doctor’s purported search to find the root causes of female crime? In a classic bit of patriarchal logic, our doctor wonders, “Did the evil that lives within all women cry out to him? Is it women’s bodies that drive men to madness? Or rather, is it women themselves that they drive mad?” Huh?
The wraparound story is terrible, a shameless and poorly-though-out pretext for introducing scenes of sex and violence. But Ishii nevertheless proves a talented stylist. The camerawork is superior. Scenes are thoughtfully framed and staged. There are numerous artistic closeups. At trial, Sada Abe recounts her love affair and as she becomes absorbed in her memories, the background spectators fade into shadow and the camera zooms in on her schoolgirl-prim, spotlit face. The score, which utilizes what sounds like footsteps echoing down a hallway and other atmospheric noises as percussive effects, is impressive. These sleazy misogynist melodramas don’t deserve the cinematic style Ishii expends on them. Fortunately, the prolific director would find material worthier of his talents with his next two projects, the Edogawa Rampo adaptation Horrors of Malformed Men and the supernatural samurai film Blind Woman’s Curse.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
![Love And Crime [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51eRpuKbO7L._SL500_.jpg)
- Director Teruo Ishii delivers four dramatized tales of real-life crimes of passion involving women across the ages in this grotesque anthology.
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: LOWLIFE (2012)
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DIRECTED BY: Seth A. Smith
FEATURING: Chik White, Kate Hartigan, Mitchell Wiebe, voice of John Urich
PLOT: Asa reappears after six months to join his friend Elle before a bad trip triggers a journey to a remote island littered with drug-secreting starfish.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Though hewing toward gritty realism, the plot hook—starfish drug—as well as the recurring hallucinations—narrated by a mystical dog—combine to create a singular something which is as strange as it is unsettling.
COMMENTS: Addiction has rarely looked this icky. A typical drug movie usually takes some effort to showcase the fun part: gathering with friends, experiencing euphoria, and the overall feeling of jolliness before the tragic results of substance abuse rear their heads. Lowlife diminishes these easy-times considerably through the drug in question: the brownish secretions of rather unhealthy looking starfish. While the characters do appear to appreciate the ensuing, loopy high, Seth Smith obliges the audience to endure a smearful dampness; and then, of course, hits his characters with the nasty ramifications.
The movie’s time-flow is somewhat uncertain, with three different narrative chains interlocking. The segments in color feature Asa, increasingly disheveled, as he roots through the murk of shallow streams in search of something. Black and white footage is used for the sequences involving Asa, Elle, and eventually the foppishly mysterious drug dealer Damon. Asa and Elle have a reunion—a reluctant one, as far as Elle’s concerned—which begins icily, but improves to the point that Asa reveals and shares what’s in his cooler. When these entities die from exposure (Asa is convinced Elle left the cooler lid off on purpose; Elle insists otherwise), the drug movie tragedy kicks off, catalyzed by a visit to Damon, who really creeps out Elle—her fear of telephoning him is palpable—but who also has two well-cared-for starfish to share.
The third block of narrative is the most cryptic. Black and white, and projected, it seems, 8mm-style, with a thick narration provided with its own subtitles, despite being in English. Nature, breezes, and words of fate, doom, and redemption. These are from the perspective of a dog, or perhaps dog spirit. (Smith is not hung-up on the viewer knowing what’s happening at the moment, so long as they feel what’s happening.) The dog-visions culminate alongside Asa’s arrival at his nadir, when Lowlife tilts briefly but fantastically to existentially unsettling body horror.
And so, the viewer is doomed with Asa; and Smith quietly shocks and awes in his feature debut. He would continue his evil-organism-tinged angst some years later with his sophomore effort, Tin Can. (This time with ill-omened fungus.) Lowlife is an unpleasant experience, but a worthwhile one—and a worthy member of the drug tragedy canon.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: FATA MORGANA (1966)
AKA Left–Handed Fate; Fata/Morgana
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DIRECTED BY: Vincente Aranda
FEATURING: Teresa Gimpera, Marianne Benet, Antonio Ferrandes, Alberto Dalbés
PLOT: When a literature professor predicts an advertising model will be the next victim of a black-gloved serial killer, a secret agent sets out to save her life.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Inspired by quick-change artist extraordinaire Leopoldo Fregoli, Fata/Morgana dons the garb of several genres (fumetti, spy thriller, science fiction, giallo) only to disrobe just as quickly. Set during an unspecified cataclysmic event anticipating Peter Greenaway‘s The Falls, the viewing experience mirrors an unsettled narrative reality. The killer’s identity is revealed early on but leads to an entirely unexpected outcome, and a closing scene eerily similar to Blow–Up‘s contentious and equally inconclusive ending (released the same year). Like the main character, the viewer is adrift amidst a world of shifting symbols. The eclectic style, along with the mysterious backdrop, ambiguous characters, and a uniquely bizarre murder weapon combine to create a Pop Art concoction with a seriously unhinged vibe.
COMMENTS: What would you do if you accidentally bumped into a blind man on the street and he said you were going to be murdered today? Poor Gim understandably freaks out. She doesn’t want to die, but she’s decided to stay behind while the rest of her unnamed city’s residents flee en masse. A mysterious catastrophe has occurred in London, and fear of it happening in other cities has rapidly spread around the globe.
Introduced via comic book panels set to an uptempo jazz beat, Fata Morgana aligns itself with the artistic sensibility of European adult comics and the beginnings of the giallo craze (Mario Bava‘s Blood and Black Lace was released two years earlier). The Professor (Ferrandis) prepares to present a lecture on the career of an unidentified serial killer, seen in black and white photographs clad in classic fedora with black trench coat and leather gloves. His victims are all young female models. The Professor’s careful study of horror literature, advertising imagery, and popular films leads to his “premonition” that cologne spokesmodel Gim (Gimpera) will be the killer’s next target.
Gim meets with friends and attends her modeling shoots, trying to retain some semblance of normality. Someone slashes her car tires, so she’s left to walk deserted streets between appointments. Her chance encounters with the city’s remaining inhabitants become increasingly threatening. A gang of silent teenage boys roams the city stealing billboards and appliances to create their own modernist clubhouse. The Professor gives a lecture on how to identify the victims of future crime, then stalks Gim while wearing a series of improbable disguises. Miriam (Benet), a survivor of the London event, spends hours in an “art chamber” staring at sculptures, before wandering the city in an aimless quest to find her lover Jerry (though enigmatic flashbacks suggest he’s already dead). Meanwhile, Agent JJ (Martí) desperately tries to save Gim from the killer while being thwarted by The Professor and everyone else he meets.
All Gim’s friends spout philosophy while trying to process their own impending doom in revealing yet pretentious dialogue:
“When we are awake, we all live in the same world, but when we dream, each lives in his own.”
“A chessboard has no place for dreams. Who wins in chess, loses in life.”
“To be or not to be. To die. To sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream,” Gim chants in stream of consciousness while displaying a bottle of cologne. “But I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”
“Very good, very good. Repeat just the last sentence,” says the photographer, “but this time smile.”
Like Blow–Up seen from the other side of the camera, the female model grapples with the deceptive nature of photographic images, well aware of advertising’s false promises. In a collapsing world, do luxury goods and status symbols still have meaning? When official loudspeakers announce that people can actually live without “superfluous objects” and all you need to start a new life is a suitcase small enough to carry onto a plane? The anti-consumerism now seems like another random element in a narrative constructed of jumbled ideas, but Fata Morgana‘s themes obviously resonated at the time of its release. Echoes can be seen in films by directors as disparate as Dario Argento, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Peter Greenaway.
The tone, alternating fatalism and optimism, still feels relevant today. In the end, the professor’s theory proves to be wrong, the London event goes unexplained, but Gim’s valiant struggle to maintain her humanity continues. She keeps walking, leaving the city behind as the camera moves away from her until a green field fills the frame.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
![Fata Morgana [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51A24agWXPL._SL500_.jpg)
- First U.S. Blu-ray release for this 1960’s psychedelic Euro-thriller.