Jong-chan Yun's Sorum (2001)

Jong-chan Yun's Sorum (2001) is an affecting drama about two lovers, Sun-yeong (Jin-Young Jang) and Yong-hyun (Myeong-min Kim). Yong-hyun moves into a dilapidated apartment building on the outskirts of Seoul. He's a taxi driver who works the night shift. Sun-yeong lives down the hall from his apartment and works as the night clerk at the local 7-Eleven. Sun-yeong's husband is abusive towards her and takes her earnings to gamble and drink. Thirty-year-old Yong-hyun is flighty but one evening, Sun-yeong appears in the hallway covered in blood. Yong-hyun helps her that evening, and that evening's events are the catalyst for their subsequent intense relationship. Or maybe not.

A writer also shares the floor with Sun-yeong and Yong-hyun and whatever novel he is writing is based upon events which occurred in their apartment building. Yong-hyun's apartment, number 504, houses some dark secrets.

The background of Sorum plays on the idea of determinism in several forms: the relationship between the characters' past, present, and future; the idea of fate and destiny; and the idea that maybe a "curse" lingers where tragic events have once occurred and is influencing the present surroundings. This background is very much pervasive yet subdued. The foreground is dominated by a very intense and intimate portrayal of the relationship between Sun-yeoung and Yong-hyun.

Both Sun-yeong and Yong-hyun have mysterious pasts; and at least for one, this mysterious past is tragic. What do people talk about when they talk about love?

Yong-hyun takes Sun-yeong on a trip to an abandoned village early in their relationship where Yong-hyun likes to visit often when he's alone. Yong-hyun is initially depicted in Sorum as a little weird and a loner. He has a real fondness for spontaneously imitating Bruce Lee's animated facial expressions, fight poses, and battle cries. He also has a pet mouse of which he is quite fond. "What is so great about him," Yong-hyun tells Sun-yeong about the mouse, "is that I can leave him alone for a week and he survives." At the village, he attempts a high kick, Bruce Lee- style for Sun-yeong's entertainment. He slips, and she doesn't laugh. She walks over and tells him to stand still and ties his shoe laces. This act by Sun-yeong may be the catalyst for their subsequent intense relationship.

Jin-Young Jang as Sun-yeong gives a stellar performance. There is one scene in Sorum with Sun-yeong and her husband, really only included for viewer clarity, and while it's melodramatic, it's effective. While drunk, Sun-yeong's husband beats on her and takes her month's wages to gamble. The husband hints also with his dialogue that he feels justified with his actions because of an earlier event between the two. Jang, the actress, carries her performance as Sun-yeong, especially her emotion in the absence of dramatic scenes. In other words, the growth of her character is shown through how she lives in mundane action. As a night clerk in the 7-Eleven, she drops and breaks a bottle while stocking the freezer. How she reacts to this event or watching her walk home after work is where Sun-yeong's emotion lies. After she is beaten by her husband and her face is mangled, Sun-yeong goes to the roof on a starless night. For whatever reason, Yong-hyun walks the roof's stairs to encounter her. Director Yun shows no dialogue in the two's encounter. This act by by Yong-hyun may be the catalyst for their subsequent intense relationship.

So what do these two lovers talk about when they talk about love? While Yun likes to depict his two lovers in various scenarios (which speak louder than their dialogue), when Sun-yeong and Yong-hyun do speak, they talk about tragedy. In a moment of vulnerability, Yong-hyun shares with Sun-yeong perhaps his biggest secret and the one past event which has shaped him the most. As they begin to open up to each other over the course of their relationship, the secrets between the two become revealed. Sun-yeong has a very tragic secret, about which Yong-hyun questions her uncomfortably; and Yong-hyun admits to some very dark and sinister behavior. While the Korean setting and culture may be alien to outsiders, nearly every viewer who has ever lived in a metropolitan area can relate to a Sun-yeong or Yong-hyun. Jong-chan Yun in Sorum is presenting two characters, like the convenience store night clerk and taxi driver, who all metro dwellers have encountered. They are representative characters of the myriad people met in fleeting interactions yet often, like most people, have complex lives and experience-filled pasts. In other words, there is a concrete reason(s) why the pretty night clerk is sad and there is a concrete reason(s) why the kooky taxi driver is kind of weird.The final act of Jong-chan Yun's Sorum is its most affecting. It begins very unassuming as Yong-hyun asks Sun-yeong for a day trip, as the two both have the day off. It begins with their dinner and goes well into the night to end the film. The richly-filled background idea of determinism comes to the forefront of the film as the credits roll. Jong-chan Yun has directed few films since. Sadly, Jin-Young Jang died in 2009. Sorum is a quiet, intense, often violent, and poetic film.

René Cardona's Santo en la venganza de la momia (1971) versus Alfredo B. Crevenna's Santo contra la magia negra (1973)

First up is René Cardona's Santo en la venganza de la momia (1971) in which cinema's greatest superhero, El Santo, is the bodyguard to an archaeological expedition, led by Professor Romero (César del Campo) with crew in tow, headed deep into the jungle to uncover the tomb of Prince Nonoc. Entering second is Alfredo B. Crevenna's Santo contra la magia negra (1973) in which cinema's greatest superhero, El Santo, is saboteur under the reaching hand of Interpol into Haiti where two professors have gone missing and one, Professor Jordan (Guillermo Gálvez), has a secret formula for a destructive, uranium-fueled weapon. Santo's opponents are the mummy of Prince Nonoc and the gorgeous, voodoo queen, Bellamira (Sasha Montenegro), respectively. Let us see how these flicks fare in Santo fashion, two out of three falls.

Crevenna seems to have a tough gig in front of him with Santo contra la magia negra. According to the final frame of the film where FIN appears, it is a co-production between Mexico and Haiti, shot on location in the latter. A huge, festive carnival was happening in the city, and obviously Crevenna and crew believed it would make an excellent backdrop for the film. Unfortunately, a lot of the festival footage is shot for coverage. Likewise, there are numerous dancing sequences, over which Bellamira presides before executing her voodoo magic, and these sequences are also shot for coverage. Finally, when Santo takes on a group of reanimated corpses, not Romero's gut-munchers but corpses-cum-puppets under Bellamira's voodoo strings, these sequences are also shot for coverage. By coverage it is to mean that it appears Crevenna shot everything wide, and more often than not also static, with the film becoming wholly uninteresting on a visual level. Santo contra la magia negra is like a cracked mirror, appearing documentary-like instead of Dogme. The contrived, dramatic scenes appear more artificial when offset by the coverage footage. As Crevenna could rarely manipulate the film's on-screen action, he is left with what is given to him...save when he films Montenegro's Bellamira.

Cardona does not fare any better with Santo en la venganza de la momia. The first act is hampered by the archaeological crew's journey into the jungle. Cardona spends the first third of his film with the exposition and dramatic set-up which could have been boiled down to a few minutes. The descendants of Prince Nonoc's people continue to live in the outside region; when Santo attempts to hire a local guide and crew, he is met with derision. City folks should not come where they are not welcomed and profane the tomb of one of their ancestors, even if it is under the guise of science and "civilization." Professor Romero and crew do not believe in curses and the like, so they are going to profane the tomb anyway. Tomb profanation is kind of inherent in the title of the film. Isn't it?

Cardona's film does shine, perhaps in reflection, by creating a film where Santo is almost wholly ineffectual. When Prince Nonoc's mummy does rise, it begins systematic killing of everyone. Santo is a spectator instead of a bodyguard, as he mostly runs in on corpses while other on-lookers debate as to whether a mummy could have committed the crime. Interestingly, this plot shows our hero as more human, and there are two interesting scenes which emphasize this. The local guide's grandson, who accompanied the crew, is orphaned after the mummy kills the guide. The boy is crying alone, and Santo consoles him while also teaching him what it means to be a man. Likewise, during all the commotion, not knowing if they would live or die, Santo has to take a moment to express his burgeoning love to Susana (Mary Montiel), a photographer and journalist. Susana is touched by the gesture and feels the same. Both are seen ringside at the end of the film cheering on Santo in his wrestling match...only after they escape from the jungle, having buried almost everyone. Sasha Montenegro, as Bellamira, in Santo contra la magia negra has hypnotic beauty. When her character is described as having a profound influence over the country's populace, beyond her supernatural powers, it is believable. Crevenna's continued static shooting when it is of Montenegro gives the voodoo queen an angelic and reverent air. When she enters frame, regardless of the frame's other inhabitants, Montenegro's Bellamira becomes focal. She radiates charisma. Santo contra la magia negra should have dumped its perfunctory plot and become more minimal. As in Crevenna's later Santo y el aguila real (1973) with Santo and Irma Serrano, he should have focused almost solely on Montenegro and Santo and built the film around them. Montegro's Bellamira and Santo do have an understated final confrontation over a basket of poisonous snakes.Cinema's greatest superhero, El Santo, Enmascardo de Plata, the mutitude's hero, is cool. Although I did not appreciate Cardona dropping a seemingly sedated panther on Santo's head in Santo en la venganza de la momia, so Santo could roll on the ground with it in mock battle. He picks the animal up by the throat and throws it. The panther deserves a rematch. I never tire from watching a Santo wrestling match within a film and I cannot immediately think of one where it is absent. How amazing it must have been in Santo's heyday to go and watch him wrestle in a large arena and then on the weekend watch Santo battle bigger-than-life, supernatural foes on the big screen. Watching the crowd carry Santo on their shoulders or hearing the crowd shout his name in the arena is emotional. While neither Santo en la venganza de la momia nor Santo contra la magia negra is great cinema, El Santo is still cinema's greatest superhero.

Jean-Pierre Bastid's Salut les copines (via Cresse?) (1966)

According to its Amazon page, the Cinema Epoch DVD release of Little Girls (1966) is credited to a director named "Benjamin Andrews" and starring Michelle Angelo. Its DVD release date, also according to the same page, is July 8, 2008, and I purchased the release slightly after. According to its sleeve, the film is part of Cinema Epoch's "Grindhouse Sexploitation Collection," so I must have purchased it when still reeling from Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (2007) (my favorite of the director's work), and this would be the type of obscure film that perhaps QT had watched and had been influenced by. I was under the impression that the film was American from, I suppose, the Anglicized name of the director (but I really don't know). In any case, I only watched the DVD recently and discovered that it is American...and a French film.

One of the interesting extras included on the DVD release of Little Girls is an essay by Bill Gibron which is also posted here and dated, according to that page, as July 6, 2008. The focus of the essay is the film's American distributor, Bob Cresse, a notorious figure whom I had known through his "collaboration" with French film maker, Jose Benazeraf and his 1960s films. Gibron's essay is a good introduction into Cresse's legacy/infamy and also into his raison d'etre toward his cinema distribution. His American cut of Le concerto de la peur (1963) radically changed the film, especially its tone, lyricism, and energy. Cresse upped the sex quotient with the addition of more nudity with primarily stripteases (scenes shot under the hand of Cresse) and added an English voice-over narration. The voice-over narration, by an unidentified speaker, takes a documentary-like/expose-style commentary towards the film's action; in other words, the narration adopts an objective, detached, or often condemning commentary upon the film's events. This narration perhaps allowed Cresse to sell the sex, violence, or whatever (even with scenes he created) to one culture (e.g. America), because the events belong to another country's culture (in Le concerto, Paris, France). Americans could take comfort that their ways weren't the ways of others and enjoy all the seedy action exposed and be educated at the same time (and maybe even, feel better about themselves). Cresse used this same style of voice-over narration for Little Girls (more didactic possibly) as in Le concerto. The motives of narrator in both films are totally transparent, and the substance of the commentary is often shit. Like poor English-dubbing in a fantastic Shaw Brothers film, the narration creates a nostalgia of another time, and there is some humor behind its inclusion. Unfortunately, a lot of the artistry is killed in Le Concerto with the Cresse cut. So the biggest question that I had after viewing Little Girls was: whose original film was it? Gibron's essay didn't answer my question, so took it upon myself to see if I could find out. Here is my virtual paper trail:

On the Amazon sales page (which is the first hyperlink in this entry) for the DVD of Little Girls, there is a link on that page which allows you to link to the IMDb and seek more information on the film. That link takes the browser here. Interestingly, that page credits the film to director, Gilbert Womack, and its cast listing identifies who Michelle Angelo and Bob Cresse are in the film (Gibron notes in his essay where the two appear). Under the trivia section of the page, a note indicates from which film the Cresse cut originates. A link to that page is included, identified as Salut les copines (1967), directed by Jean-Pierre Bastid. Now on this page, by clicking the trivia link on the left side, two notes are indicated which read: Banned by French censors. In the main title of the American version, Jean-Pierre Bastid is credited as Benjamin Andrews. So there are two IMDb pages for the same film in two different versions? While I believe The Internet Movie Database is a fantastic and often reliable resource, with the volume of information on the site, errors are bound to occur (two pages for two versions for one film?). So to corroborate the information on the IMDb, I did a Google search of "Jean-Pierre Bastid," which led me to this fantastic blog, and its entry dated March 11, 2010. This entry appears a playbill for an event in Paris at the French Cinematheque to take place March 2 until May 7 2010, "Carte blanche a Jean-Pierre Bastid." (It looks like a fantastic event with Bastid and Jean-Pierre Bouyxou in attendance, amongst others.) There is a listing of films to be shown along with a commentary, and for his films listed, Bastid provides his commentary. Under the film listing of Massacre pour une orgie, Bastid writes:

Un distributeur américain (Bob Cresse) ayant acheté un duplicata du négatif avant que la censure ne commît son forfait, il subsiste de ce film une version en langue anglaise. Il a en retiré des passages jugés odieusement outrageux et, pour compléter le massacre, ajouté des dialogues de son cru. Il a agi de même façon avec le film qui a suivi.

Same text in English via Google translate:

A U.S. distributor (Cresse Bob) bought a duplicate negative before the Censorship would commit his crime, he remains in the film version in English. He retired in passages deemed outrageous and heinous, to complete the massacre, added his own dialogues. He did the same thing with the film that followed.

While the translation is crude, Bastid's final sentence is fairly clear. On Bastid's IMDb page, Massacre pour une orgie is listed as his first directorial credit with his second film being Salut les copines. Here is the entire listing for the showing of Salut les copines from the event listing:

Salut les copines
de Jean-Loup Grosdard (alias Jean-Pierre Bastid)/Luxembourg/1966/50’/35mm

Co-sénariste Jean-Patrick Manchette sous le nom de Michelangelo Astruc.
Avec José Diaz, Hans Meyer, Dominique Erlanger, Pascale Cori-Deville, Joël Barbouth, Ghislaine Paulou, Valentine Pratz, Hamera, Ernst Mernzer, Jean Mazéas, Jean-Marie Estève.
Il s’agit d’une pochade-pochetronnade que j’avais tournée dans la foulée et qui, pour son salut, avait battu d’entrée pavillon luxembourgeois. Deux films livrés pour le prix d’un. Vous êtes condamné à les voir. (JPBd)

Here is the same text in English via Google translate:

Hello girlfriends
Jean-Loup Grosdard (aka Jean-Pierre Bastid) / Luxembourg/1966/50 '/ 35mm
Co-Senar Jean-Manchette under the name of Michelangelo Astruc.
With Jose Diaz, Hans Meyer, Dominique Erlanger, Pascale Cori-Deville, Joel Barbouth, Ghislaine Paulou Valentine Pratz, Hamera, Ernst Mernzer Jean Mazéas, Jean-Marie Esteve.
This is a sketch-pochetronnade I turned the heels and, for his hello, defeated input Luxembourg flag. Two films delivered for the price of one. You are condemned to see them. (JPBd)

Again, this translation is crude, but the cast of and co-screenwriter above match the cast and co-screenwriter on Salut's IMDb page. I also think Bastid's joke at the end of the entry: " Vous êtes condamné à les voir," is a joke on the film's original censorship, also corroborated via the trivia link on the same page.

So what's the point? 1) I enjoy sticking it to the "man" by spending worthwhile time on endeavors such as this; 2) I discovered Jean-Pierre Bastid, and if Little Girls contains his compositions, I hope to see his original and more of his work; and 3) I really enjoy writing on this blog. Perhaps after the retrospective, Bastid's films may get released on DVD.

As to the plot of Little Girls/Salut les copines, I refer you to Gibron's essay. Bastid is cryptic in his description of Salut les copines, so who knows what it's about. Possibly it doesn't matter. It does seem, however, that Bastid was being wilful and playful with Salut and almost certainly wilfully provocative. As to what energy was originally there, one can only look to its images which are often striking. It is highly probable that Cresse's voice-over narration made the goings-on in the film seedier than intended. Also, I have little doubt that his cut changed the tone: in the Cresse/Angelo sequence, which Gibron identifies in his essay, in Little Girls, it becomes the harshest juxtaposition in its short running time. Two lovers are cuddling and playing in a cinema while Cresse and Angelo's sequence plays on screen. The two lovers are oblivious to what is going on around them and quite oblivious to what's on screen. However, people in the theatre's hallways would have entered the auditorium after hearing the sounds emitted from the Cresse/Angelo sequence. More than likely, it would have killed any romantic mood for any pulsating-heart, breathing person.

In any case, here are some fantastic images culled from Cinema Epoch DVD, highly recommended.

Walter Hill's Streets of Fire (1984)

A rock n' roll fable. Another time...another place.

Immediately, just beyond Ry Cooder's fantastic score, Streets of Fire (1984) shows its creative conception, especially with its editing and set design: this rock n' roll fable is set in a time that is a mix of 1950s Americana, Art Deco archeitecture, sentimental innocence and emotion and 1980s coolness, hair and fashion, and glitz. The setting is "The Richmond" which looks like a little neighborhood under an EL train where a Nighthawks-ish diner takes center focus. Local girl, Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) and her band, the Attackers, are performing a concert which is going well until pale, smooth-faced, pleather-clad Raven (Willem Dafoe) enters the concert hall with his gang, the Bombers, and kidnaps Aim. Reva (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) was at the concert and witnessed the kidnapping. She owns the diner in the Richmond and writes a terse letter to her brother, Tom Cody (Michael Pare): "Please come home."

Director Walter Hill's previous film, 48 Hours (1982), was a massive box-office hit and is a classic today. Streets of Fire did not do well at the box office nor with critics. A lot of the flaws of Streets of Fire are obvious when compared with Hill's previous 48 Hours or with another earlier film and also a classic, The Warriors (1979).

All three of the films share a tight temporal setting: 48 Hours is set...in about two days give or take, as is Streets of Fire. The main thrust of the action within Streets takes place over a long night, a rescue mission into "the Battery," where the Bombers hole up and where Aim has been taken. Perhaps cinema has never seen The Warriors's equal in terms of its tight temporal setting: only Snake Plissken from John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981) can say that he had a rougher and seemingly interminable night on the streets of New York. There is a real immediacy, spontaneity, and energy associated with a tight, temporal setting; and Hill showed a real adeptness at channeling it. Beyond the setting, the return to world of street gangs is also familiar in Streets from The Warriors: the Bombers are just as flamboyant and colorful as any in The Warriors. Even the small group of punks who bust into Reva's diner near the beginning of Streets (led by Paul Mones who played another gang leader in Tuff Turf) are reminiscent of the Orphans. 48 Hours, to some extent, is Eddie Murphy's character taking down his old gang, under the friendly police coercion of Nick Nolte's character. These are familiar Hill motifs, but the most familiar one, which has drawn comparisons between him and John Woo, is the sense of doomed romanticism and sentimentalism in his cinema. Take, for example, Michael Beck's Swan and Deborah Van Valkenburgh's Mercy in The Warriors or, more specifically, Murphy's and Nolte's relationship in 48 Hours. Through the intense circumstances, the characters form a kinship that kindles as intensely as the circumstances. Murphy and Nolte are wise-cracking, reluctant adversaries at the beginning but at the end of the film, a strong friendship is formed (or maybe even, like in Woo's cinema, the male characters fall in love with each other).

Streets of Fire does not have the immediacy in its setting of Hill's previous work. However, it is not without trying. After Aim's rescue by Cody, the film really slows. There is not much left for its hero to do after rescuing his damsel, except beat up the bad guy. The film's pulpy, fifties-style dialogue really hurts the film as it plays out, as well: when the characters are gearing up for a fight or in the middle of one, when Pare's Cody, Amy Madigan's McCoy, or even Rick Moranis's Fish delivers an acid-tongued, tough-guy one-liner, it works. When there is no background energy with the characters' actions, the dialogue sounds even more artificial and contrived. After the rescue, Raven and the Bombers practically disappear from the screen until Streets's anti-climatic showdown. Finally, the doomed romanticism and sentimentalism is all here, as virtually every character runs on emotion. Rick Moranis, as Billy Fish, Aim's manager and new boyfriend, is the only character who delivers any dialogue stemming from objective thought or common sense. (There are a lot of characters in Streets, by the way.) Swan's and Mercy's relationship in The Warriors is wonderfully complex in simple circumstances, whereas most relationships, especially Cody's and Aim's, in Streets are simple in confused and complex circumstances.

As with most of my criticism, an auteur theory, critical approach to Hill's work with Streets of Fire when it is negative, shows the limitations of the auteur theory. For all of its utility, it may be one of the best critical approaches but its flaws are glaring. Comparing Streets of Fire to Hill's previous work, ultimately penalizes the director for not being predictable with themes and motifs and trying something different. Often also, as the auteur theory looks at a director's work as a whole, when it may be incomplete, subsequent films from the director have to come to form a unity. In other words, later works and maybe even time itself, inform the film under review, as here in Streets, and appreciation can come much later. A film can suffer critically and commercially at the time of its release, just because its different. While Streets of Fire does share a lot with his previous work, it is a fairly bold artistic risk from Hill, as it appears he was trying something new.

The film's conception, "Another time...another place," is quite exciting and really creative. Setting a film in an alternative "history," for lack of a better term, where discernible, familiar historical settings are slightly altered or mismatched, like the 50s and 80s in Streets, really flips viewers out. Sometimes not in a good way. It can be too disorienting mixing the familiar and the unfamiliar, so audiences really never get into the story. The screenplay, by Hill and Larry Gross (who worked on 48 Hours), to soften the impact of possible disorientation, goes for a simple narrative to follow with simple, cliched dialogue. The flashy visuals, from the set design and the editing, accompanied with the music (it's a fantastic soundtrack) had a real chance to supplant the story, the characters, and the dialogue: a rock n' roll fable, just to kick back, relax, and take it all in.

When I was nine or ten, I loved Streets of Fire. Now older, I realize why: it's really juvenile. Streets is completely innocent with its PG rating, very little foul language and provocative material. This okay, though, but it could still use an edge. Remember Swan and Mercy? They have an edge and they didn't have scream profanities at each other or rip each other's clothes off to gain it. That would have been okay, too, but not necessary. Diane Lane as Ellen Aim gives another performance of my youth as my ideal girlfriend when I was a little boy, after her previous roles in The Outsiders and Rumble Fish. Lane is electric and charismatic: she gives a great role with very little to do. I really didn't appreciate the scene where Pare's character knocks the shit out of her on the train and still don't understand it today. As for Michael Pare, I have forgotten how damn handsome he is and as Cody, he is fairly credible as a bad ass. Rick Moranis gives the best performance as Billy Fish, however, as his character is the only one with any complexity. Kind of a film which exists in "another time...another place." All objective facts are taken from this well-written piece here.

Jess Franco's Christina, princesse de l'erotisme (1973)

Christina (Christina von Blanc) arrives at a small coastal village from a boarding school in London to attend the will reading of her late father (whom she has never met and only seen in photos sent to her by her aunt and uncle). At the village inn, she is met by Basilio (Franco) who escorts her to the family villa where she meets Uncle Howard (Howard Vernon), Aunt Abigail (Rosa Palomar), and lovely Carmence (Britt Nichols). Despite some eccentric behavior from villa's "open" inhabitants, they are kind people towards Christina as she is welcomed. Following breakfast the following morning, Christina strolls the villa's grounds and meets a young man. Christina invites the young man inside the villa, and he is shooed away by Uncle Howard. The young man believed the villa was empty and always avoided it. In fact, Christina was told no one was living in the villa upon her arrival in the coastal town at the inn but she disputes the fact--her whole family lives there. She has been receiving letters.

Jess Franco's quiet and poetic Christina, princesse de l'erotisme (1973) is notable for its "closed" characters at the villa, Linda (Linda Hastreiter), Anne Libert's character, a queen, and Paul Muller's character and for its final act. However, before describing Christina for what it is, here is a look at what it is not (or what others tried to make it), from Obsession: The Films of Jess Franco:

One [of] the most widely distributed of Franco's films, "Christina queen of sex" is also one of the most worked-over of his films. Originally a a nouvelle vague style horror film, it was first presented at Cannes Film Festival. When Robert de Nesle's Comptoir du Film Francais released it theatrically three years later, soft core inserts for the X market had been added [note: the Obsession authors date this film as 1971]. Of course, the new footage badly distorted Franco's original concept. Worse was still to come... In the early eighties Eurocine bought back the original copyright and hired director Jean Rollin to shoot several zombie scenes to replace the softcore footage. This version, which better fitted the sales title, Virgin Among the Living Dead, is the one now available on video in the U.S. and some European countries. An Italian distributor even released the film in an edited version mixing in one of Jean Rollin's vampire films as Exorcismo per una Vergine (the poster showed a drawing of Vincent Price in Diary of a Madman!).

Image Entertainment, thankfully, released a region-one DVD of Christina under the title, A Virgin Among the Living Dead (the Amazon link also interestingly credits actors who do not appear in this version, such as Arno who was cast for De Nesle's erotic inserts (Obsession)). The version on Image's DVD appears to be Franco's original cut, as there is an absence of scenes as described above. Included are thirteen minutes of deleted scenes as an extra, most of which are obviously Rollin's work. This image is quintessential Rollin:De Nesle added sex to a Franco film, and Rollin added zombie footage, like corpses rising from the ground, in the eighties (did any influential zombie films appear after 1973?). Another interesting note, Christina's French-language credits from the Image DVD credit the film's composer and conductor, the legendary Bruno Nicolai, as having one other credit: special effects. According to Nicolai's IMDb entry, Nicolai has one hundred and nineteen "Musical Department" credits, ninety-five "Composer" credits, and one credit for "Special Effects" with Christina. Why not? His music for Christina is signature Nicolai, haunting and beautiful. Franco writes the character Christina as innocent and sheltered and von Blanc plays her that way, wide-eyed and curious. Christina's character bridges the "open" characters and the "closed" characters who populate the narrative. The "open" figures, such as Vernon's Howard, Franco's Basilio, and Nichols's Carmence, are eccentric but superficially harmless. These characters have darker sides but walk openly in the villa and with Christina. The "closed" characters of the narrative, such as Libert's and Muller's characters, hide in the shadows of the villa with little interaction with Christina (until the final act). These characters are very dark. One of the images that Franco repeats within Christina is this one of Christina ascending the stairs:There is also a small chapel on the villa's grounds, and it perhaps houses the darkest secret within Christina and also represents the films strongest theme: supposedly, according to an elderly man who has been perpetually waiting for the chapel to open, one may receive a special blessing from a Saint within. The chapel is not open to him. Christina does not enter the chapel but the villa is open to her: "open" and "closed," light and shadows, blessings and curses. A personal favorite in Franco's filmography.

Matthew Chapman's Heart of Midnight (1988)

From her uncle Fletcher, Carol inherits a nightclub that is located in a shitty part of town. It is quite a nice building, architecturally, reminiscent of 1930s and 1940s club scene where crooners and big-band jazz probably swung. Carol, likewise, has a romantic idea for its restoration and makes it her goal. Unfortunately, she is probably not suited for such a task. Carol has suffered a recent breakdown and, according to her mother, any stress will cause irreparable harm to her very sensitive psychiatric condition. Carol moves into the living quarters atop of the club, and those quarters of several rooms are weird. While trying on a neglected party dress in a cluttered room, three young men watch her changing. The three young men enter the building to rape Carol, and she is saved by one of the three who has a change of heart.

Carol is played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, an actress most often identified by her unconventional role choices. When her career ends one day, few will be able to dispute the fact that Leigh took serious artistic risks in her role choices. While the quality and success of the films in which she appeared may waver, Leigh's determination to pick roles very different from her contemporaries is quite admirable. Her presence and performance in a film, subsequently, are often its main attraction. Hence a recent viewing of the rather obscure and seemingly missing from region-one DVD film, Heart of Midnight (1988), directed by Matthew Chapman.

The most notable feature of the first act of Heart of Midnight, beyond its exposition and character introduction, is its very mechanical nature (which never wavers for its duration). The mechanical wins over the director's attempts at methodical, for for the second and final acts of the film, the themes of the film shift with the second act being a viewer witnessing a woman possibly detach from reality and descend into madness while the final act is revelation and plot-driven (so if Heart of Midnight is either a mystery, thriller, or character portrait, the viewer will know then). The conservative, mechanical structure of the film allows for a provocative canvas for its themes and imagery. Unfortunately, the mechanical structure again wins, as any wilful and provocative motifs or set-ups are not quite incendiary enough to cause a stir.

Carol's uncle Fletcher was quite the scumbag, and the living quarters above the club housed themed rooms of sexual deviancy. Visually, rendering these rooms would be potentially interesting and a creative opportunity. However, stencilling the words "master" and "slave" on opposing walls while a mannequin is posed in the room's center donned in fetish garb is far from creative or provocative. The set design is overwhelmingly conservative, as if its artist watched Andrew Blake's or Rinse Dream's films on fast forward for a day. Perhaps such contrived compositions should at least instill emotions of either arousal or repulsion, instead of looking strained.

Uniquely, most viewers with Heart of Midnight will never experience being handheld through disorientation, in this manner. A cursory read of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" should at least set a blueprint. When Carol's mind begins to slip in the second act and trippy things begin to appear around the nightclub (Heart almost never leaves the club), rarely will a viewer witness such contrived attempts to let him/her know that "appearances" are changing. There is a scene of Leigh's Carol dumping all of her psychiatric medicine into the garbage, so hint, hint. When very handsome Detective Sharpe (Peter Coyote) comes for a follow-up investigation with Carol, any disorienting effect by this storyline is undercut by a later scene of another Detective Sharpe visiting. It does not help the film either when Frank Stallone's detective character takes every opportunity to refer to Carol as a "psycho" and roll his eyes whenever he is in her presence. Although, watching Frank and company rock out with a country music tune, later, is still staying with me.

The biggest, perverse thrill in Heart of Midnight is in watching Leigh give another whole-hearted, engrossing performance. Thankfully, she is not deterred from anything else in the film from always being compelling. The devil is truly in the details in her character, and if the viewer can focus on her, then Heart is well worth seeing. Leigh's performance is really the only organic, breathing aspect of the film. The little, subtle features which a talented actress brings to a performance are all here with Leigh. Leigh's character is saddled with a walking cast through most of the film, and her character having one is really not that important. Leigh never forgets her character is wearing one and shapes her performance with it. Some of the delirium scenes are quite effective as in an overt one when Carol is riding a bicycle alone in the hallway; or in a subtle scene where Carol finds a symbolic apple in an empty refrigerator. Leigh and Coyote have a strong chemistry together, and unfortunately, the plot deters the two actors from interacting meaningfully. Jennifer Jason Leigh, as she is often able to do, pulls a coup d'etat with her performance and steals the film.

Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi's El perro (1976)

Jason Miller gave, unequivocally, one of the best performances in the 1970s as Father Damien Karras in William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973). Also an accomplished playwright, Miller won both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for his play, That Championship Season, in 1973. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards for his role as Karras. Following The Exorcist, Miller starred in Robert Mulligan's truly-underrated and excellent The Nickel Ride (1974). A brilliant actor, capable of generating both emotional intensity and true emotional vulnerability, his subsequent roles in cinema never truly reached the heights of his debut character. Nonetheless, whenever an opportunity to view the actor in a film, it should be seized upon heartily. In 1976, Miller appeared in a Spanish production, El perro, directed by Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi of Summertime Killer (1972) fame. (All objective facts within about Jason Miller are from here and here.)

Miller is Aristides Ungria, a mathematician and intellectual and political prisoner, in a South American jail. The country is run by a military dictatorship, and Aristides is privy to important information: he holds a mental list of the country's rebel conspirators with whom he is also a participant. Under auspicious circumstances, Aristides and the chain gang are being transported to a work site when their truck gets stuck near the top of a hill. The guard orders all the prisoners to push to free the truck. Aristides is chained to a fellow prisoner who gets his arm wedged under the truck's wheel. The guard pulls a machete and cuts the prisoner's arm off. Aristide is now free and takes the opportunity to dash. He heads into the country's marshland and escapes. A couple of days later, Aristides is found by the prison's tracker and his dog. Miller's character manages to kill the tracker, but with his dying breath, the tracker commands the dog to kill Aristides. The chase begins.The set-up for El perro has all of the potential for an at-least interesting action/exploitation film. Subsequent to his escape from the tracker and the dog, Aristides wanders into a rebel camp where he is welcomed and fed. The rebels are met by a helicopter troop of soldiers, and a firefight plays out, ending with the helicopter's explosion. Aristides continues and for the rest of the first act, El perro remains firmly rooted in exploitation territory. Taking the opportunity to bathe in a lagoon, Aristides has his clothes and weaponry on the shore. The dog tracks him down and makes a mad dash into the lagoon to kill. A nude Jason Miller and a ferocious dog engage in a fist-to-paw/claws/jagged-toothed-jaw battle in and out of the lake. Aristides subdues the animal, only to lose his weapons and his clothes. He continues on foot, butt-naked, into the arms of a gorgeous farmer whose husband is away. "How long were you locked up?" she asks. Miller's Aristides looks intensely yet sweetly (in Miller's signature style) and says, "A very long time." She gives him a very good rogering before clothing and feeding him. The dog arrives to attack the farm, only after Miller's character has gratefully been shagged, clothed, and fed. Aristides escapes, again.

The exploitation elements of El perro are strong and familiar and well-rendered by Isasi-Isasmendi who from time to time drops a subjective p.o.v. shot from the dog. With the cross-cutting, it appears from the first act that El perro will play out with two parallel storylines of the film's opponents who meet for battle at intersecting opportunities. Isasi-Isasmendi does not abandon this narrative technique but widely increases the scope of the story. Aristides takes a journey leading him all the way to the country's capital where he reunites with the rebels. As Isai-Isasmendi widens his scope, the story focuses more on drama, and El perro becomes more than an exploitation picture yet still retaining its action roots. Aristide's information is highly valuable to the rebels yet understandingly, he wants to see Muriel (Lea Massari) his long-lost love. She's been put up financially by the government (to keep tabs on her), and in an effective sequence, Aristides and Muriel meet for a risky rendezvous. Miller and Massari are quite good together, as they appear as two lovers who are going to spend their short time together as intensely as possible. Unsurprisingly, the sequence is endearing and a nice touch.

El perro is in the capital, too, and it takes its own journey. Unsurprisingly, here, this storyline is either far-fetched or truly amazing. It is still a killer and at times, a powerful symbol to both Aristides and the film. This schism in the narrative, and the schism in tone between the three acts may have contributed to El perro's obscurity. All expectations of the film should lead to a simple exploitation film but Isasi-Isasamendi does not stay in that realm exclusively, so the film appears disjointed. If this is a flaw to most viewers, then it is a flaw here and perhaps a glaring one. Miller gives a fantastic performance, because he is Jason Miller. The very handsome, charismatic, and talented Antonio Mayans (aka Robert Foster) appears in a small yet very pivotal role as does the very beautiful, charismatic, and talented Marisa Paredes. El perro is available on DVD as part of the Tales of Voodoo, Vol. 5, under the title "A Dog Called Vengeance." It is a terrible VHS fullscreen transfer.