PLOT: Five tales loosely based on Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.”
COMMENTS: Masunaga’s debut is a decent, if somewhat clumsy, attempt at a collaboration with Hollywood’s studios. Even if it plays it by the book—this is a children’s film, after all—it remains a hidden gem, making it of some interest for those loving obscure and long-forgotten cartoons.
This anthology, loosely based on Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” starts with Peter Ustinov’s pompous voice-over. Ustinov is the only voice in the film—none of the characters speak for themselves. This admittedly cheapens the experience a bit, but in the end it doesn’t prove too distracting. The stories take place in the heaven of Greco-Roman mythology, with a young boy playing a different role in each tale. It may seem unnecessary to have the same character as a different protagonist each time, but works for younger viewers by creating a point of familiarity.
The stories are familiar to older viewers. We have the doomed love affair between Orpheus and Euridice, the campaign of Perseus against Medusa, and the tragedy of Phaethon. Light psychedelia accompanies everything—we are in the seventies, after all —with some segments even recalling “Alice in Wonderland.” With its lush environments full of cute animals as well as eerie secrets, the art style will appeal to fans of Disney’s animated classics. Fantasia (1940) is a point of reference, even if Winds of Change remains mild in comparison. We can’t really talk about dream logic or surreal imagery here; instead, we have a magical realist visual feast with a rich soundtrack on top. Anachronistic pop ballads, classical tunes, and a hint of Africa complement the visuals, creating a sense of phantasmagoria.
Let it be noted that the alternate edit titled Metamorphoses from 1977, with songs by Joan Baez and Mick Jagger, is unavailable.
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DIRECTED BY: Sisworo Gautama Putra
FEATURING: Suzzanna, Advent Bangun, George Rudy, Nina Anwar
PLOT: A criminal seeks out the Snake Goddess (also called the Snake Queen), who promises him wealth if he kills three women, drinks their blood, and eats their breasts, but instead, at the instigation of a rival Snake Woman, he betrays the Snake Goddess by sticking a pin into her neck while making love, changing her back into a snake.
COMMENTS: Mythology is weird, but mythology seen through the eyes of exploitation film directors is even weirder. Hungry Snake Woman feels at least loosely connected to feverish legends from the Indonesian jungles, but it adds a lot of sex, blood, and kung fu. It cares not a whit for logic, dropping plotlines as if they were squirming scorpions and rushing off to the next diversion.
This is the kind of movie were it’s tempting to give a simple recap of the plot, but it’s probably better to let the viewer discover the madness for themselves. Still, running through a few of the highlights should be enough to pique your interest. We can’t pass up the major spoiler, because it’s too tempting: the Snake Goddess literally turns the film’s antagonist into Dracula at one point—not into a generic vampire, but the public domain Count himself, complete with black cloak, plastic fangs, and cheesy bat-transformation. The only alteration from the traditional template is that he now dines on the breasts of maidens after drinking their blood. It’s also worth noting that, indicative of the script’s short-attention span, our intrepid antihero quickly abandons his bloodsucking role after getting rudely stomped on the foot by a potential victim. Also keep an eye out for a menacing stock footage giraffe, incongruous day-for-night shooting, sex with a snake, centipede vomiting, and an Indonesian mullet. And kung fu. And a chainsaw. It’s that kind of movie. Hungry Snake Woman has everything a film fanatic could ask for, except for purpose or meaning. As one of the characters says midway through, “If you ask me, this doesn’t make much sense.”
Despite its indifference to logic, its mediocre acting, and its general cheapness, Hungry Snake Woman has some genuine visual appeal. The special effects are chintzy—usually just editing to make things disappear and reappear—but the costuming, makeup, set design, and lighting are superior, verging on sumptuous at times. The Snake Queen/Goddess glitters in her bejeweled regalia; her harem girls tantalize in their sheer chiffon tops and colorful bikini bottoms; and the Snake Woman looks dramatic painted head-to-toe in mottled green. The Snake Goddess’ entrance, levitating in front of her cave wall like a sexy Buddha, is imposing. These points of visual interest suggest divine grandeur, when things on the ground otherwise get totally absurd.
Suzzanna (who plays a double role here) was a huge horror star in Indonesia and is credited onscreen before the title appears; she was 46 when this was released, but still looks glamorous (and even has a nude scene, though shot at distance). The Hungry Snake Woman is actually a sequel to 1982’s The Snake Queen, which is essentially lost (although you might be able to track down a low quality VHS copy). I suspect you won’t miss anything by not having seen the first one. The Mondo Macabro Snake Woman Blu-ray is restored in 2K and looks fantastic, with vibrant colors and no visible damage. The voices on the English dub sound familiar from Hong Kong movies of the period; subtitles are also available, but this is the type of schlock that actually benefits from a dub job. And a six-pack.
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DIRECTED BY: Ansel Faraj
FEATURING: Ethan Walker, Kelly Erin Decker, Nathan Wilson, David Selby
PLOT: Todd Tarantula’s prized motorcycle is stolen; more disconcertingly, he keeps slipping through time.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Todd Tarantula renders L.A. in neon-sparked hues, a surreal effect heightened by the underlying grit of the smog-soaked city. The slippery narrative coursing beneath the death-candy visuals touches on ancient Pueblo lore, modern ennui, technological immortality, and a pleasing finish that is fairly rare in our corner of cinema. Also, there’s a skull-headlight time-travel motorbike.
COMMENTS:
I can’t tell if this is blood or snot! Can somebody help?
The scene is set with efficiency, because for Ansel Faraj, time is of the essence. This pressing speed is somewhat ironic when one considers that the protagonist, ne’er-do-well business scion Todd Tarantula, has time on his side. Well, more accurately, he has time at his disposal. This stubbled James Dean stand-in has his share of troubles—deceased mother, estranged father, dead-end life—but at least hehas a bitchin’ bike: his treasured means of escape from the demons that pursue him. But over the course of an evening, he loses that, and considerably more.
Tell me one—just one dream—that’s all I ask.
Rotoscoping is a wondrous technique, creating what is possibly the uncanniest of valleys. Grafting animation on to filmed reality anchors us in form and flow, while allowing unfettered tinkering. Faraj’s peripheral tinkering is limited, for the most part, to a glorious color skew. Murky nights shift from green to black. Dazzling sun-lit cityscapes become a Technicolor kaleidoscope. Negative space morphs into clingy radiance. When Todd finally encounters his father, the wire-and-bandage-wrapped patriarch appears as a tethered angel amidst his array of hospital machines and plastic draping. During a car ride with Lucifer (a business rival of his father), the power of animation emphasizes Todd’s claustrophobia and draws the eye to the old gentleman’s skull-topped cane, hinting at the unspoken cost of the business deal playing at the tip of Lucifer’s tongue.
News of death travels fast; dare I say, ‘I’m sorry’?
Ansel Faraj’s film is not perfect. The performances are inconsistent, and the narrative thread sometimes veers too far from the main stitching. However, he has an interesting story to tell here, and it is told entertainingly, with many clever bursts. When he learns of his father’s demise, and the deceased’s disrupted attempt to achieve digital immortality, Todd is idling at the La Brea Tarpits—site of others who have failed to achieve a favorable form of perpetuity.
I don’t know what’s real any more, and I’m really fucking tired of it.
As events unfold (and, in some cases, re-fold), Todd Tarantula slows its pace, drawing everything together at the end for a finish that some will consider a touch too trite. I, on the other hand, was pleased, and relieved to see something pleasant and astounding befall this troubled bohemian nomad. Todd Tarantula sears the eyes, bends the mind, and has the good manners to elicit a satisfied grin.
“You can do anything in animation” is a truism, a promise of unlimited potential that is frequently untapped beyond a surface-level dive into the unusual. Enough people stumble at “the animals can talk?” issue to make it unfair to expect more. However, it is also true that those filmmakers who are willing to go deeper into the realm of the possible do so with gusto. And so we arrive at a pair of short films that readily embrace the horror that ensues from making the wrong choice.
Raoul Servais’ legend in animation circles is due in large part to 1979’s Harpya. (The film won the Palme d’Or for short films at that year’s Cannes Film Festival.) The tale of a man who saves the life of a horrible-beautiful creature, only for it to methodically destroy his life, is a very simple demonstration of cause and effect.
When he intervenes to stop what looks like a cold-blooded murder, the action seems noble and moral. His decency continues when comes home with the near-victim, a giant, feathered, bare-breasted creature, but his good intentions immediately backfire. The house guest eats everything, denying the man even a morsel, and when he attempts to leave, the monster eats his legs for good measure. Even when he manages to distract the beast and escape the house, she pursues him and takes his food once more, leading him to attempt to murder her himself. It’s like a horror version of One Froggy Evening.
Servais’ technique is what lifts the movie into the rare air of our consideration. Using a method of his own invention, he shot live-action footage and projected animated settings onto the film using clear sheets. The result is something like a daguerreotype given life.
There’s a troubling undercurrent of misogyny in the film, however. In fairness to Servais, this is not explicit, but inherent in the mythological character he is invoking. (For his own part, Servais has described Harpya as a parody of a vampire tale.) If anything, it presents the danger of reading too deeply into a story; the harpy functions quite sufficiently as a movie monster, but it’s all too easy to infer a manifesto. In my research, I found at least one review that unironically celebrated the film as an attack on the shrewishness of women, which is pretty awful but speaks to the power of the piece.
Robert Morgan’s Bobby Yeah is less likely to garner sociological blowback, but only because it’s so much more obviously grotesque. Where Servais’ harpy was a lone example of a disgusting supernatural, everything in Bobby Yeah is bloody or slimy or both. That includes our ostensible protagonist, a bunny-eared, troll-faced creature who makes trouble for himself by literally pushing other people’s buttons.
The little rabbit guy is a classic protagonist who keeps stumbling from one terrible situation into another. Of course, he’s hideous, but he earns a tiny amount of sympathy by being the least hideous thing in the film. At every turn, he confronts a new bruised and twisted creature, often displaying unmistakably phallic characteristics and ready to attack the bunny guy for his most recent misdeed. (The film is replete with symbolism, particularly sexual, but it has significant impact even before you start to delve.) It’s an unrelentingly anxious 23 minutes, replete with violence, body horror, and building dread.
The eyes are often the giveaway in CGI animation, the evidence of unreality that disrupts the sense of reality. In Morgan’s production, the eyes have the opposite effect: disturbingly realistic eyes that peer out of misshapen doll faces, wall ornaments that resemble pizzas, and koosh-ball-headed serpents that stare out with unnerving authenticity. While the production design may seem to earn the title of “grossest film of all time,” it should be noted that the physical revulsion is easily matched by the psychic discomfort that lingers. Bobby Yeah isn’t just gross; it’s gross in very powerful ways.
As noted, you can do anything in animation, but what’s interesting is when a filmmaker really wants to do anything. Servais and Morgan both tap into primal fears that by turns intrigue and appall. Harpya packs a lot of horror and surrealism into its eight minutes, but it’s ultimately too slight to earn a place in the Apocrypha. Bobby Yeah, however, has the advantages of being longer and more viscerally unsettling. It’s a genuinely transcendent and transgressive work, and it’s worthy of future consideration as a candidate. Both movies, though, have a lengthy half-life in the brain, showing how a burst of animation can easily take up residence in your scared, scarred soul.
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DIRECTED BY: Bill Watterson
FEATURING: Meera Rohit Kumbhani, Nick Thune, Adam Busch, James Urbaniak
PLOT: Annie returns home to find her apartment’s living room dominated by a cardboard construct inside which her boyfriend claims to be trapped.
COMMENTS: There is an easy route I could take for this review, but I’m going to put that pathway aside. For now. When we are first introduced to the titular maze, we probably feel just like Annie, who has returned home after a weekend away to find an unwieldy, idiotic edifice taking up far too much space right in the middle of her front room. Seemingly a mere construct of refrigerator boxes with other cardboard accoutrements, it’s a pointless structure, held together by tape, glue, and self-indulgence. The titular man-child inside greets her warmly, sounding a bit muffled and further away than the waist-high craft project should allow. She is nonplussed, and her impatience is immediate. My own impatience was on a hair-trigger, as a hipster party comprised of millennial stereotypes assembled around this monument to immaturity. I joined Annie in pushing aside my agitation as she and the revelers entered the maze to rescue Dave.
Whatever might be (rightly) said in criticism of the pretentious entities in the movie’s “real world,” there was a growing case of wonder creep as they explored the maze-world’s corridors and themed chambers. As Dave’s longtime buddy Gordon observes, the compound must have the traps littered throughout, you see, because “it’s a labyrinth, if it didn’t, it would just be a series of articulated hallways.” In one of the many cute/creative touches, all bodily harm to the victims of these traps (including ‘roid-quirky Jane and Greg approval-junkie Brynn) is conveyed through bursts of blood-red yarn as the traps slice their bodies. One chamber features cardboard-rendered stalactites; another a pit guarded by violent paper cranes; and one toys mischievously with perspective as the cameraman in the distance lifts a large cup that appeared to be resting on a front table. Leaning heavily into the metaphor (which despite its flimsy construction, turns out to be rather robust), there is also the requisite Minotaur stalking the visitors, and Dave.
Oh, Dave (and Dave). I was so primed to hate you both. To hate you and your stupid maze. But ultimately I felt a reluctant respect for this petulant hero for having finally followed through with something. And by the film’s end, I even found two characters I actually liked: the much put-upon Gordon who, though pretentious like the rest, turned out to be one of those ever-reliable types, bravely luring the Minotaur from the survivors once a plot is hatched to escape the arts-and-crafts abattoir. And then there’s Harry, the documentarian friend (for as you know, all true hipsters have a buddy who makes documentaries). Having dabbled briefly in filmmaking myself back many years ago, I understood his dueling urges to both capture what exists and to surreptitiously bend reality to his inclinations. Dave achieves what Harry and the rest of the Scooby gang could not: transposing a deep-seated sense of doubt and angst into a tangible challenge to physically overcome. As a movie, Dave Made a Maze kind of works; as therapy made manifest, Dave grasps a widespread anxiety by the horns and shows that the only way out is to get to the heart of the matter.
![The Hungry Snake Woman [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51-1iLdNfDL._SL500_.jpg)
(both films)
