Tag Archives: Fantasy

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CAPSULE: MERMAID IN A MANHOLE (1988)

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Ginî piggu: Manhôru no naka no ningyo; AKA Guinea Pig 5: Mermaid in the Manhole

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DIRECTED BY: Hideshi Hino

FEATURING: Shigeru Shaiki, Mari Somei, Masami Hisamoto

PLOT: An artist is inspired by an infected mermaid found in the sewers.

Still from Mermaid in a Manhole (1988)

COMMENTS: The “Guinea Pig” series is an infamous Japanese extreme gore franchise of the 1980s. The first two installments are pioneers of the torture porn subgenre, creating the tropes such films now rely on. Later installments become more conceptually creative, however, with Mermaid in a Manhole—the only entry with fantasy elements—-the prime example.

The story follows an unnamed, grief-stricken artist. After the loss of his wife, he finds solace by exploring the sewers, painting dismembered pieces of an idolized past he finds scattered around.  Among these broken mementos, he discovers a beautiful mermaid. He is shocked to notice she is infected with something,  so he decides to take her home to look after her. And an odyssey of blood and flesh begins.

Despite the lyrical set-up, this cinematic experience is as extreme and as nauseating as it can get.  “Extreme Cinema: Affective Strategies in Transnational Media” by Aaron Michael Kerner and Jonathan L. Knapp will prove useful in anatomizing the grotesqueries. As it often is with extreme horror,  parallels can be traced with pornography in the way the (female) body is depicted (and dissected).

Mermaid features a plethora of meat shots, with close-ups on the creature’s beautiful feminine body as it is gradually desecrated by a cancerous (if phantasmagorical) illness. The descent is accompanied by moaning. Everything culminates in a series of increasingly disturbing shots, as weird, multi-colored secretions ooze  from the tumors engulfing the mermaid’s body. This is truly body-horror at its most disgusting and depraved.

There are hints of artistic ambition under the monstrosity,  however. The film’s visual palette combines dark tones with more vibrant ones to reflect on nostalgia and the passage of time. Piano tunes create the necessary ambience and enhance the sense of dread.  And there is something of an allegorical meditation on sepsis and decay.

The movie could work better, however, with a more elliptical approach.  Mermaid unnecessarily indulges in brutal realism. Secondary characters add nothing substantial, except some clumsy exposition. And the finale is simplistic and out-of-place in its attempt to rationalize the events prior to it. Yes, the movie doesn’t provide certainty, but the way it blurs the lines between what is real and what is not is unnecessary in this context, looking like a banal gimmick out of a psychological thriller.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:  

“…repulses and intrigues at the same time, and feeds not only your appetite for onscreen weirdness, but also your brain.”–Ian Jane, Rock! Shock! Pop! (“Guinea Pig” box set)

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FANTASIA 2026: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: HER PRIVATE HELL (2026)

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DIRECTED BY: Nicolas Winding Refn

FEATURING: Sophie Thatcher, , , Charles Melton, Dougray Scott, Diego Calva

PLOT: It’s Elle’s birthday, and her father is heading out of town, leaving her in the company of her BFF-turned-step-mother and a beautiful new “sister,” as a sinister fog heralds the arrival of The Leather Man.

Still from Her Private Hell (2026)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Refn doesn’t waste our time with nonsense like clarity. Space encounters with Candy Flux ray-guns, mega-crystal caverns, rent rib cages, and daddy issues laid on as thick as the ambient mist is all we need to get by in this surreal fairytale.

COMMENTS: It’s kind of a chamber drama, with a cast of six. Plus two. Plus some flashback goons. And it all takes place in the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel. Except, of course, those bits on a movie set. And that violent string in post-WWII occupied Japan. And, now that I think of it, that club consisting primarily of sharp shadows, strobing neon, and dozens and dozens of Romanesque statues. Oh, and that nebulous underworld with the jutting rods of serrated crystal, too. And Refn’s exploration of a lachrymose psyche would have been incomplete without the pair of seamstress-cum-manitous manipulating events, one of them maneuvering like an interpretive dancer.

Suffice to say, the story is one of remorse, grief, sibling rivalry, and just about everyone being very attractive and dressed in the highest of bleak-chic.

This last bit is true, at least for the trio-plus-two of the female protagonists. The fellows look more along the lines of middle-aged Harry Dean Stanton (Elle’s father, Johnny Thunders), young Harry Dean Stanton (Nico, adversary of said father), and violently clean-cut angel of vengeance in a US army uniform (Private “K,” also a father, who’s lost his daughter to a mythical murderer who manifests mainly with diamond-studded gloves and seems unbound by temporal limitations). Regardless, these half-dozen orphic oddities keep events moving forward, from the lobby to the suite to the sinister backrooms of 1940s Japan to the candy crystal caves.

This disjointed recollection of the characters and events is, upon consideration, probably more true to a narrative through line than I credit. Her Private Hell is very much about Elle: she is the first character we see, aside from the truly bizarre cityscape with towers, lights, a massive Ozymandiosian bust, and fog, fog, fog, which is a character in its own right. The hotel (named, I believe, “Fog Tower” or something like that) is a grim-glittery wonderment, as if gave ‘s Megalopolis a good once over. The props for the movie within the movie look like the best low budget doo-dads a groovy ’60s space epic could ask for. And while Elle’s birthday cake looks delicious, I’m not sure how we’re supposed to feel about her former BFF hand-feeding it to the anniversary girl before breaking into dog-speak.

At an early point in the movie, a choice presents itself: ponder deeply about symbolism and implications for clinical understanding of this grisly vision, or turn your brain off and allow scattered mental impulses to soar and bounce amongst the cavalcade of sickly grandeur summoned by this witch’s brew. I opted for the latter, and I believe Refn would approve. As he explained during his introduction, the point of a film is to enjoy it, with all the sex, violence, sickness, and humor that may have been tossed in the cauldron.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a bizarre new fantasia moodscape, a midnight movie of fear and dreamy disquiet…resists interpretation, like so many of Refn’s recent films, but executes a slow dervish swirl of hypnotic strangeness.”–Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (Cannes screening)

Capsules

CAPSULE: DUST BUNNY (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Bryan Fuller

FEATURING: , Sophie Sloan, Sheila Atim, Sigourney Weaver

PLOT: An orphan girl hires a middle-aged killer-for-hire to kill the monster living under her bed.

Still from Dust Bunny (2025)

COMMENTS: Bryan Fuller has established himself as a unique voice and a major name in the entertainment industry , producing and writing a variety of TV shows both based on well-known franchises (“Star Trek: Discovery”) and more personal in tone (“Pushing Daisies,” “Wonderfalls”). The latter category is the perfect showcase for his idiosyncratic vision combining the playful and macabre.

In Fuller’s debut as a feature film director, this combination is apparent in the relationship between the two protagonists. Mikkelsen plays a hardened and cynical hit man, an anti-hero bringing to mind his leading role in Fuller’s iconic show “Hannibal.” Sophie Sloan, in contrast, plays Aurora, a young girl tormented by the monster lurking under her bed. These two couldn’t seem more different, but those differences are what makes them perfect complements.

Fuller establishes the connection between the girl and the killer early on in a purely visual way, without dialogue or unnecessary exposition, just with a firefly leading the viewers’ gaze. The characters’ eyes intersect; they are neighbors in the same apartment building. And when a “dust bunny”—our tale’s monster—devours the girl’s parents, she doesn’t hesitate to ask her intriguing neighbor for help. Gradually, a connection blossoms between them, notably similar to the central dynamic in ‘s Léon: The Professional.

Not everything is as it looks. A  game of unreliable narrators and deceptive POVs takes place, blurring what is real and what is pure imagination—at least for a while. Dim lighting and foggy environments create a sense of ambiguity, enhancing an already hypnotic atmosphere.

Dust Bunny is uninterested in maintaining this uncertainty for long, however, especially in regards to the nature of the monster. The special effects used for the creature haunting the girl lose their subtlety in the second half of the narrative, dramatically degrading the horror aspect. Instead, it remains a character-driven drama with action elements and hints of the supernatural. There is an attempt at commentary about the monsters in ourselves, but it seems like an afterthought. Some twists will make for an entertaining ride, for sure, but not enough for a truly memorable experience. In the end, Dust Bunny is too much style and not enough substance.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Strange, bizarre, and terrifically weird, writer/director Bryan Fuller’s ambitious ‘Dust Bunny’ should whet the appetite of fantasy fans hungry for a mature fairy tale… [the] script is like a Lewis Carroll fever dream. The peculiar setting teases a sweet children’s story akin to ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,’ but Fuller embraces the darkness.”–Jonathan Hickman, The Newnan Times-Herald (contemporaneous)

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE KINGDOM OF CROOKED MIRRORS (1963)

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Korolevstvo krivykh zerkal

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DIRECTED BY: Aleksandr Rou

FEATURING: Olga Yukina, Tatyana Yukina, Andrey Fayt, Lidiya Vertinskaya, Arkadi Tsinman, Andrei Stapran

PLOT: A spoiled young girl enters the Land of Mirrors, where she goes on a quest with her mirror twin to rescue a boy imprisoned by the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors and his devious daughter and Toad courtier.

Still from Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors (1963)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: A colorful explosion of baroque and fantastic conceits that’s a set designer’s dream project, the lavish fantasy Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors never fails to astound with its visual invention (not to mention odd details like the piano-playing monkey). To be properly considered for the Apocrypha, however, we’d like to see an actual restored version rather than the cheapo dubbed Something Weird print currently available. But by all means, keep the English language version as a supplement.

COMMENTS: In the 1950s and 60s, American producers, desperate for B-inventory to fill the teeming drive-ins, increasingly turned to foreign productions to stock their larders. This was especially true of children’s films: kids are less discriminating moviegoers, just throw some spectacle and slapstick on screen and you can keep them busy for 90 minutes while moms and dads do whatever it is moms and dads do when the kids aren’t paying attention. To meet this market,  plundered Mexico for dime store fairy tales. made inroads into the Soviet Union, re-editing halfway decent movies like the planetary exploration saga Planeta Bur (1962) with newly shot footage into ridiculous cut-n-paste monstrosities such as Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968). More to the point for today’s topic, AIP Pictures acquired 3 respectable folklore-based films from talented Soviet director Aleksandr Ptushko and desecrated them with shoddy editing and bad dubbing (in the case of Sadko, they turned the eponymous Russian hero into “Sinbad,” trying to fool viewers into thinking they were seeing a Ray Harryhausen epic.) These AIP knockoffs were so cheap and weird that they became popular entries in the canon.

Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors falls loosely into this genre, with one difference: although a dubbed version of this Soviet variation on “Through the Looking Glass” was prepared, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence it screened in the USA. The American version was copyrighted by Walter Manley Enterprises, a company whose only other known contribution to cinema history are a series of compilations of the Japanese superhero series “Starman” that they edited together into semi-coherent feature films for the television market. Kingdom may have seen a few televised screenings after midnight or Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE KINGDOM OF CROOKED MIRRORS (1963) →

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: OBEX (2025)

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OBEX is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

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DIRECTED BY: Albert Birney

FEATURING: Albert Birney, ,

PLOT: Conor, a gentle shut-in, must navigate the dangerous world of a computer game when it kidnaps his dog.

Still from Obex (2025)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Strange cicadan adversaries, point-and-click logic, and a celebratory eccentricity make OBEX an obvious odd-ball. Bonus points for being wholesome in its weirdness.

COMMENTS: 1987 was a year for cicadas. Billions of them globally, and who knows how many thousands emerging from their slumber to provide Baltimore a whirring, chirping Summer soundtrack. Reason enough to stay indoors—though left to his own device, Conor would do so anyway: he is a shut-in. For reasons only hinted at during Albert Birney’s low-key adventure film, OBEX, Conor only leaves his property when his dog Sandy is stolen by the the demon Ixaroth and spirited away to the mysterious land of Obex.

“Spirited away” may not be the correct phrase. Birney’s film exists at a strange intersection between (period) technology and classical fantasy, and Sandy’s plight is revealed through the monitor of ye olde Macintosh computer. Conor’s life, quiet and regular, relies on (then) state of the art home computers. His income is earned via text art portraits—lines and lines of punctuation forming a Pointalist-style image—and he ends the day with one or more machines running with midi-ambient or midi-karaoke music before bedtime. He lives alone with his dog, and his computers, and his stack of three cathode-ray televisions which, except on movie nights, all play different channels in the background. And every night he dreams about aimlessly driving his deceased mother in her old car.

The coziness of Conor’s space couldn’t be more different than the vast fields and forests of Obex, which our determined hero explores in the film’s second half. He encounters human-sized bug monsters, a kindly shopkeeper (a hold-over from his corporeal life, Maria, who does Conor’s grocery shopping every Wednesday), and makes a new friend out of an old one: an RCA Victor Model 14S774G—but call him “Victor.” His travels with Victor bring him to an automobile incongruously parked in the middle of an open stretch of greenery, its keys tucked in the visor, just like where Conor’s mother stored them. Other connections connect as well, and while we’re fairly sure we’re in the benighted land of Obex, we are almost certainly somewhere more allegorical as well.

From his small home to the wilds of Obex and into the heart of Ixaroth’s nightmare realm, Birney recounts Conor’s Quest (complete with a hat lifted, I swear, from King’s Quest) with heart, flourish, and more than a few sound-and-sight jests. And the film is more than just nostalgia, although there is plenty of that. OBEX is an unlikely adventure, an eccentric character study, and, to borrow another director’s observation, an unexpectedly gentle film. Capturing its combination of mirth, melancholy, innocence, and self-awareness in words is difficult—though perhaps the complimentary side of “quaint” might do. Cinematographer (and script co-writer) captures the television-feel to a T, and having seen OBEX first on the big screen and recently on my laptop, it felt “right” in both sizes.

That’s what this is: a big adventure that fits right in your pocket, ready for when the whirring and chirping swarm of humdrum life is poised to overwhelm you.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Shades of David Lynch and Wes Craven merged with Birney’s own idiosyncratic Baltimore sensibilities…  Better still, for as decidedly weird as OBEX intends to be, there’s a rational, coherent center to it all.”–Chad Collins, Dread Central (festival screening)