Neang Sak Pus, aka Snake Haired Girl (Cambodia, 197?)

I’d never claim that there weren’t benefits to living in the West, but one way in which we definitely pale in comparison to Asia is in the area of snake-based folklore. Such tales of snake women, snake-like women, and snakes and the women who love them have provided inspiration for colorful fantasy films on the part of film industries everywhere from India to Indonesia to Hong Kong. Not surprisingly, the Khmer language cinema of Cambodia also embraced that subject matter during its brief golden age, with Neang Sak Pus being a solid example of the result. Meanwhile, America continues to wow the world with output like Mega-Python vs. Gatoroid.

Like the previously reviewed Crocodile Man, Neang Sak Pus was the product of Khmer cinema power couple Dy Saveth and Hui Keung, the married actors, producers and sometime directors whose company Sovann Kiry produced numerous popular films in the years leading up to Pol Pot’s takeover. In 1970, the ubiquitous Saveth had starred in the similarly themed Puos Keng Kang, aka The Snake King’s Wife, a movie that went on to massive success throughout Southeast Asia and spawned a string of official and unofficial sequels starring the actress. In the case of Neang Sak Pus, Saveth stars, while Hui Keung directs, although the Chinese subbed print that I watched credits him under his pseudonym Chin Wan.

Neang Sak Pus begins as the tale of two adulterous lovers who engage a sorcerer to do away with their respective spouses. Upon the death of the woman’s wealthy husband, the two are married, only for the woman to find that it is her virtuous sister, Ah-hua (Saveth), whom her lover truly has eyes for. Despite the fact that these attentions are unwanted by Ah-hua, the enraged sister has her servants drag the poor girl to a remote cave and toss her into a snake pit. It turns out, however, that the resident snakes have interests in Ah-hua other than biting her, and that those interests are sexy interests. As a result, Ah-hua later dies in the process of birthing a baby which the snakes then raise to adulthood. And, yes, that does mean that you get to thrill to the sight of an actual human baby surrounded by many actual live snakes, because Asian cinema does not fuck around when it comes to things like that.

Skip forward a few years, and that baby has grown up to be Dy Saveth (again), resplendent in a Flinstones style mini and crop top and a hat that looks like an oversized shower cap. This snake-spawned lass, who will come to be known as Ah-mei, is an untarnished creature of nature, unlearned in the Ways of Man, who swings from vine to vine like Tarzan. And it is in the course of doing just that that she comes to the attention of Lung (Kong Sam Oeun), the handsome son of the very woman who condemned Ah-mei’s mother to that snake pit in the first place. Despite Ah-mei’s inability to express herself in anything other than snake talk, love blossoms between the two -- that is until Lung accidentally knocks off Ah-mei’s hat to reveal, to his horror, that her hair is a mass of living snakes (and, at least in part, real ones, by the looks of it). Eventually, of course, true love wins out over visceral repulsion and the lovers are reunited, though sadly not before Lung’s parents have decided to turn to the black arts in order to drive them apart.

I should note that Dy Saveth’s portrayal of Neang Sak Pus’ titular character -- as a childlike innocent who is, at her worst, only playfully mischievous -- is worlds away from the more typically spine chilling snake ladies we’ve seen personified by the likes of Indonesian horror queen Suzzanna. In fact, for much of its running time, there’s a kind of sweetness to the film’s treatment of the romance between its central couple –- a sort of boy meets snake girl, boy loses snake girl, boy fights to win snake girl back tale. And then, during its final act, Neang Sak Pus takes an abrupt turn into what will probably be rough waters for some viewers, essentially taking us on a grizzly tour of regional folk magic at its most visceral and potentially alienating.

This begins when Lung’s parents, convinced that their son has been possessed against his will, consult with a trio of shaman, who are then shown performing a lengthy ritual that involves them driving long needles through their cheeks and slicing their tongues with daggers. Later, in another ceremony, a live rabbit is beheaded onscreen. It is these types of rituals that were exploited and exoticized in the Shaw Brothers’ Hong Kong produced Black Magic films during the 1970s (the popularity of which might explain why Neang Sak Pus received a Mandarin subtitled home video release), though coming to them here, aware of the deeply held belief in black magic that still holds sway throughout much of Southeast Asia, their depiction is leant a matter-of-factness that gives them an even greater power to disturb. It also doesn’t help that none of the mutilations depicted appear to be simulated.

Still, I’m gladdened to spoil that, despite such grueling trials, love triumphs over all at the end of Neang Sak Pus, if then only with the help of an army of vengeful snakes. Evil is smote and the lovers are reunited, convinced by their tribulations to leave the world of humanity behind for good. It’s a blandly satisfying conclusion that anyone can relate to. And, as with Crocodile Man, no small amount of guileless charm has been exhibited in the course of getting us there -- even if that charm, for the uninitiated viewer, sits somewhat uneasily alongside the film’s harsher documentary content. (Though it always behooves the uninitiated viewer to remind him/herself that it’s really not about him/her anyway.) I have to admit, though, that the tension between the two energies gives the film overall something of a welcome charge, like a reminder that magic doesn’t just fuel fairy tales, but nightmares as well.

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Devil! Take the Train to Hell (South Korea, 1977)

It turns out that YouTube’s lifting of its length restrictions has been one of the greatest boons to world popular cinema fans to come along in a good while, with the only inherent difficulty lying not in finding the gems, but in knowing what gems exist to be found. The latest mother lode comes courtesy of the Korean Film Archive, who recently uploaded a large collection of vintage Korean popular cinema to the site -- with English subtitles, no less -- for our enjoyment and edification. Given the previous unavailability of such films in our part of the world, we Westerners have a lot to learn from them. For instance, from Devil! Take the Train to Hell I learned that -- like movie audiences pretty much everywhere else in the world during the 1970s -- South Koreans had a healthy taste for funky revenge thrillers.

D4TH is one of a handful of films directed by the actor No-Shik Park, a prolific star of action films with a career spanning back to the 1950s. Here Park casts himself as Donghyuk, a blind saxophone player leading a double life as a Korean national living in Japan. Following his gigs at the smoky burlesque club where he works, Donghyuk, using his specially honed skills, determinedly feels his way along the darkened city streets, seeking to mete out revenge against the four former Japanese soldiers who, eighteen years earlier, blinded him and murdered his father. Arriving at the home of one of these men to find that someone has already done his dirty work for him, Donghyuk is reunited with Yeji (Bo-yeong Ahn), a girl from his village who also lost her father in the same incident. As Yeji has clearly assigned herself to the same mission of vengeance as Donghyuk, the two decide to pool their resources and take on the three remaining scoundrels as a team.

Having thus established itself as a film that doesn’t put too high a premium on credibility, D4TH proceeds to place our two protagonists in a series of increasingly outlandish and coincidence dependent scenarios. As Yeji and Donghyuk’s targets have all in the intervening years gone on to become powerful crime figures, breaching the walls of security around them requires some improbable, “Mission Impossible” style escapades on their part. One of these involves the sightless Donghyuk learning to both drive a car and to catch arrows in mid flight. Another involves a box containing poisonous snakes upon which Yeji seems to exert some kind of psychic control. And finally, in order to trap a victim who is an amateur photographer, we have Yeji infiltrating a model shoot dressed as a sexy cowgirl.

Throughout, D4TH distinguishes itself by saturating its oddball thriller trappings in an almost comically heightened level of melodrama. Truly, it’s a wonder that Yeji and Donghyuk ever get around to killing anybody, given all the time they spend crumbling into a collective heap of tears and self recrimination. Donghyuk is perhaps the least stoic disabled person in the history of cinema, never missing an opportunity to go on a self pitying tirade, and furthermore -- for reasons I won’t go into here -- considers himself partially responsible for what happened to Yeji’s father. Yeji, for her part, feels Donghyuk’s pain perhaps a little bit too acutely, and for some reason finds herself unable to tell him once she realizes that she’s fallen in love with him. She does, however, tell us -- in a series of voiceovers that are increasingly utilized to make us privy to the leads’ tortured internal monologues. All of this extravagant hair tearing builds up to an appropriately absurd and bathetic last minute twist that has to be seen to be truly appreciated.

Stylistically, D4TH is a bit bare bones, with the odd, attention grabbing flourish here and there. Park exhibits a shrewd use of slow motion to heighten dramatic scenes, and elsewhere strategically drops the audio out to underscore a character’s subjective isolation. A brief nightclub dance worthy of a Jess Franco film also bears mentioning. But what the film otherwise lacks in aesthetic razzle dazzle it more than makes up for in its loopy conceits. Donghyuk and Yeji clearly live in a world in which the rules of everyday logic that the rest of us have to contend with don’t apply, yet we are nonetheless asked to identify with their tragic humanity. After all, whether you’re a blind jazzman with preternatural martial arts skills or a woman who can inexplicably telepathically command snakes, you’re still not immune to the pain of loss, the depredations of war, or the ravages of personal guilt. As the film’s title seems to suggest, that’s a train ride we’ve all got our tickets punched for.

Friday's best pop song ever

He will RISE AND KILL!

Hey, did you feel that Lucio Fulci's Zombie was lacking pyramids and fashion models? Frank Agrama apparently did, because he made Dawn of the Mummy. Please check out my full review, just posted over at Teleport City.

Critter chat with Beth and Todd

If I have not until now mentioned that my good friend Beth over at Beth Loves Bollywood writes a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal's RealTime India blog, it should not necessarily be assumed that that is because I have not until now been personally featured in that column. That said, check me out! The topic, an old favorite of Beth's and mine, is Bollywood's plethora of furry, four-legged and flying animal heroes.

Toofan Rani (India, 1985)

As I’ve mentioned again and again, pioneering Indian action director KSR Doss had a gift for focusing on powerful women in physically demanding roles. In the 70s, these assignments typically fell to Jyothi Laxmi or Vijaya Lalitha, but, come the 80s -- and with them Toofan Rani, a Hindi dubbed version of the director’s Telegu hit Toofan Mail -- we see that he had found a worthy successor to those formidable stars in South Indian sex bomb Silk Smitha.

The tragically abbreviated life of Smitha, who died of an apparent suicide at the age of 35, was the basis for the recent Bollywood biopic The Dirty Picture. As that title suggests, she was primarily known for appearing in so-called Indian “erotic” films. That said, the actual viewing of one of those films is much less likely to provide erotic thrills than it is to underscore the deep conservatism of Indian cinema as a whole. For, while Smitha on occasion wore onscreen just about as little clothing as an Indian starlet could get away with, what remained still left a considerable amount to the imagination.

Despite such chastity, the Indian sex film’s treatment of the female form is oftentimes marked by a kind of leering, shame-based furtiveness that nonetheless renders it sleazier than outright pornography. Smitha counteracted that somewhat by exuding a powerful physical confidence and lack of self consciousness, and was rewarded for it with a fame that was apparently as constricting as it was elevating. It’s reported that, at her peak, the insertion of a dance number featuring Smitha into an otherwise unrelated, unreleased film was enough to make a difference between that film moldering on the shelf and going on to reap rich box office receipts.

As one might expect in a film directed by Doss, Smitha’s unabashed physicality is dedicated to violence as much as seduction in Toofan Rani, and the lusty abandon with which she throws herself into its many brawls and acrobatic stunts both recalls and easily matches that of Laxmi and Lalitha before her. Of course, either scenario serves as much as a means of display as it does of moving the action forward, with the result that the girl-on-guy fights veer recklessly from liberating to exploitative. An initial scrap between Smitha and a hulking goon is a demonstration of pwnage at its most comically devastating, with the star laying waste to her opponent in an unrelenting flurry of high kicks and back flipping body blows. Doss here shows that the years have done anything but teach him restraint, and brings to the scene his trademark rolling camera style, with the result that the combatants’ appear to be propelling themselves up the walls and ceilings of the room by the power of their very ferocity.

Elsewhere, fight scenes against multiple male opponents take on a somewhat more porny quality, with Smitha, in the course of her thrashings, giving her body over to the anonymous stuntmen to be bent every which way for the camera’s benefit. In one of these, she wears a sensible shorts ensemble that could easily be seen as an attempt on the part of the filmmakers to underscore her place as a heroine in the tradition of Fearless Nadia, who made such outfits a personal trademark during her heyday. And while the association is unquestionably appropriate and deserved, it’s doubtful that Nadia ever had to submit to her opponents forcefully splaying her legs open to give the viewer an eyeful.

Toofan Rani came along just in time to catch India’s ill-timed 1980s flirtation with disco fever, meaning that, if you ever wondered what Disco Dancer might have looked like if it were directed by Doss, this is probably the closest you’ll come. Smitha’s numerous dance numbers, set to the inoffensively percolating tunes of music director Satyam, are so shiny you could almost swear you see yourself in the copious tinsel adorning the dancers’ bodies. As for Smitha’s dancing skills, while it can’t be said that she’s particularly graceful, it likewise can’t be said that she doesn’t get the point across. Bringing to the task the same natural fire that renders her so credible as a vengeance-crazed heroine, she’s a truly stirring screen presence (with what exactly it is that’s being stirred dependent upon the individual viewer). This is also due in no small part to her smoldering looks, which bear a rare ethnic cast that ironically renders her something of an exotic within the relatively whitewashed world of Indian commercial cinema.

Smitha’s presence aside, Toofan Rani is otherwise a minimal update of the signature Doss style, positively stuffed to bursting with under-cranked action, monolithic pompadours, absurdly pitched melodrama and crazy comic book flourishes. My favorite example of the latter is a section in which a young police inspector tries to determine whether his wheelchair bound father, whom he suspects of being the film’s mysterious “Boss” figure, is faking his disability, doing so by way of a variety of cartoonish means -- first by setting a cobra loose in the old man’s room and later by practically setting the whole house alight. And then there is the long lost brother of Smitha’s character, played by the conspicuous Kamal Hassan ringer Naresh, a karate champion whose family home is adorned throughout with giant posters of him in various karate poses, one of which is directly over his bed.

Toofan Rani ends in a manner almost identical to Doss’ earlier classic Rani Mera Naam, with its heroine refusing to be denied vengeance against her parents’ killers despite the consequences, and then, once the deed is done, accepting those consequences with resigned stoicism. Thus we end on a shot of Silk Smitha being lead, handcuffed, into a police wagon, followed by the sad glances of both those she has liberated in the climactic melee and the law enforcement officers whose jobs she has essentially done for them. Over the preceding two hours, we’ve had a blast watching her kick ass, uninhibitedly shake her junk, and crash motorcycles through walls, but, in the end, someone clearly has to pay. And once again -- for the time being, at least -- it ain’t going to be us.

Friday's best pop song ever

Baghdad Ka Jadoo, aka Magic of Baghdad (India, 1956)

Despite the contributions of Indian special effects wizard Babubhai Mistry, Baghdad Ka Jadoo's title is something of a misnomer. For the most part, the only magic that the film alludes to is that of star Fearless Nadia's 1930s heyday, the recapturing of which seems to have been at least a tertiary goal. And, in that, Baghdad Ka Jadoo appears to have been largely successful. For present here are all those fabled elements that second hand knowledge has taught us were the hallmarks of Nadia's -- sadly, now largely unseen and unseeable -- classic stunt films:  our heroine's lusty laughter in the face of danger, the wall-to-wall acts of daredevilry punctuated by the frequent trademark "HEEYY!"; the men hoisted up on shoulders and gleefully tossed, etc. We even see that Nadia can still do the splits!

Of course, alongside this are telltale concessions to Nadia's age, among them the cutaways to stunt doubles that were a rare occurrence in her salad days, as well as a scene where a dance started by Nadia is quickly taken up by another, younger female star. But the tone of Baghdad Ka Jadoo is so jaunty and good natured that it's hard to see much pathos in any of that, as, overall, one gets a sense of a past that is being celebrated every bit as much as it is being relived.

At the time of making Baghdad Ka Jadoo, Nadia had been with longtime lover Homi Wadia's Basant Pictures for fourteen years. Though it was under the Wadia Brothers/Movietone banner that she had first achieved fame, her career continued at full steam following the split that lead to Basant's formation. Still, by 1956, public enthusiasm for the stunt film formula was on the wain, and the regular release of Nadia's trademark actioners would trickle to a stop within just a couple of years. Given that, it's hard not to see something elegiac in a later film like Baghdad Ka Jadoo, whether it was intentional or not. For instance, along with the aforementioned return of many narrative elements warmly familiar to Nadia's fans, we also have a return by Nadia's frequent costar, John Cavas, here not only taking his customary place at  her side, but also directing.

Given its stunt film framework, the plot of Baghdad Ka Jadoo is impressively convoluted (the original program booklet's synopsis, reprinted over at Indian Film Trade,  manages to go on at dizzying length without even touching upon the whole "lost and found" aspect of the story). Suffice it to say that Nadia and Cavas play a pair of merrily thieving gypsies who fall on the wrong side of a corrupt sultan, thus necessitating their repeated breach of the castle walls in order to free members of their band who have been wrongly imprisoned, not to mention cause other varying forms of righteous trouble. This scenario provides the opportunity for all manner of showy leaping up and down parapets and onto the backs of charging horses, much of which is thrillingly impressive regardless of who was actually doing it.

One such episode involves Nadia entering the palace in the guise of a visiting prince -- such gender bending masquerades being another signature aspect of her classic screen adventures -- and meeting with the unintended consequence that the young princess' heart is set aflutter by her dashingly bearded visage. Nadia then goes so far as to woo the young girl, even performing a romantic duet with her in which a concealed Cavas, in the tradition of Cyrano, acts as her personal on-site playback singer. And while these scenes are played for laughs, they nonetheless can't help but carry a racy, transgressive charge; all told a pointed demonstration of how, when it came to Fearless Nadia, Bollywood's normally rigid gender boundaries somehow found themselves helplessly crashing in on themselves.

Baghdad Ka Jadoo ultimately fulfills its titular promise during its final minutes, folding in elements of the Arabian Nights style fantasies that were, at the time, Basant's bread and butter. This episode sees Nadia sidetracked on an abbreviated magical quest that ends with her riding to the rescue on a flying chariot as, meanwhile, Cavas leads a rousing peasant revolt against the palace. In the spirit of Baghdad Ka Jadoo overall, it's gloriously, triumphantly silly. And if throughout Nadia and Cavas aren't having the absolute time of their lives, they're certainly doing an uncannily good job of acting it.

Friday's best pop song ever

The cat came back

This month, the hairless apes over at M.O.S.S. -- of which I am a proud member -- are paying tribute to hairy beasts in the world of cinema. My first modest contribution, just posted over at Teleport City, is a newly revised version of my 4DK review of Da Khwar Lasme Spogmay, aka Cat Beast, that incontestably classy treasure of Pakistani cinema starring Shehnaz Begum as a ferocious feline avenger who uses rapists for a scratching post. Check it out, won't you?

Friday's best pop song ever