Hey, it's Wangma... wa... wha?

As a postscript to my magisterial treatise on Yongary, Monster From the Deep from earlier in the week, I thought I'd link to this review over at the Koreanfilm.org website of Space Monster, Wangmagwi, another Korean kaiju film from 1967. (Scroll about three quarters of the way down the page to see the review.) At the moment, the only way to see it is by paying a visit to the Korean Film Archive in Seoul, but it's at least good to know that the film still exists and is being properly cared for. Given that, there's plenty of room for nursing our deluded hopes of a DVD release sometime in the future.

Friday's best pop song ever

Zzzzzzzz

October is Lovecraft month over at Teleport City, and all I got was this stupid Beyond the Wall of Sleep. Read my full review here.

It's the 4DK Animalympics! Round 4

Peter from Rani aur Jaani

Skill Set: Marksmanship

In Rani Aur Jaani, Peter belongs to the character played by Aruna Irani, so he gets extra points for having a cute owner. And when his mistress's life is in danger, and the only weapon at hand is a revolver, Peter's motto seems to be, "Opposable thumbs, my ass!" Take that, Shetty! When I saw this scene I literally thought it was the most outrageous thing I'd seen in an Indian movie. And I'm talking all week!

Gerak Kilat (Singapore, 1966)

Back in the 1960s, every nation on the globe wanted to get into the spy movie game. After all, what kind of player on the world stage were you if some madman with an eye patch didn't want to irradiate your gold reserves or blackmail you with nuclear weapons? Such threats require countermeasures, of course, and so we ended up with such far-flung international men of mystery as Tony Falcon, the Filipino James Bond, Golden Boy, the Turkish James Bond, James Bond 777, the South Indian James Bond, and, with 1966's Gerak Kilat, Jeffri Zain, the Singaporean James Bond.

The Jeffri Zain movies were actually products of the Shaw Brothers' Malaysian language division. The studio had also produced Malay versions of its Mandarin spy thrillers, such as Summons To Death and the Angel With The Iron Fists films, filming them alongside the Chinese versions using the same sets and resources, but replacing the Mandarin speaking stars with homegrown talent more recognizable to the Southeast Asian audience. However, the Jeffri Zain movies -- of which there were at least three, to my knowledge -- were made exclusively for the Malay language market, bolstered by the star power of Malaysian-born actor, soon-to-be director, and later politician Jins Shamsuddin.

Gerak Kilat, the first of the Jeffri Zain films, immediately sets itself apart from Shaw's Mandarin spy efforts by its comparatively meager production values and black-and-white cinematography. However, while other Shaw titles basically used the James Bond films as a jumping-off point, Gerak Kilat, despite its obviously limited resources, goes to much greater lengths to mimic their trademark structure and tone. Thus we start with a 007-style pre-credits set piece that segues directly into a title sequence set to a slinky, female-voiced theme tune (sample lyric; "Jeffri Zain! Oh, Jeffri Zain!"). After that, we're dumped immediately into the action, with a dead agent's corpse washing up on the beach where our hero is frolicking with a coterie of beach bunnies (and Caucasian ones, no less). While covering the body, Jeffri surreptitiously slips a microfilm he finds in the agent's shoe into his pocket. Unbeknownst to him, he is photographed doing so by one of his blonde playmates, who is in reality "No. 4", an operative of the film's bad guy organization.

Jeffri whisks the microfilm back to his HQ, which is located under his house and accessed via a secret passage underneath his bathtub. There we meet the Jeffri Zane universe's equivalents of Miss Moneypenny and Q (though it seems pretty clear that Jeffri is acting as his own M). Together they examine the contents of the film, seeing that it contains photographic evidence of a well-armed paramilitary style terrorist group with God-knows-what dastardly plot in mind against Singapore and its people. At the same time, that group's uniformed commander and his minions -- who consist of No. 4, a brawny bald guy, and an impressively bouffant-ed femme fatale with a taste for cigarette holders and sparkly cat suits - are themselves taking a gander at No. 4's photos of Jeffri pocketing the microfilm. The commander then turns to his crew and barks some orders in Malay that, in essence, need no translation: "Get Jeffri Zain!"

Thus is set in motion the series of set pieces that will allow the undeniably charismatic Shamsuddin to display his personal brand of secret agent cool, hopping in and out of his nifty gull-winged Jag, demonstrating his deadly skill in the art of "ka-ra-te", and bringing a cold heart and warm hands to the task of wooing whatever nefarious bombshell comes between him and his target. Though perhaps a little young and slight-of-build for those expecting a more Connery-esque Bond simulacrum, the actor exhibits a style of swaggering confidence and good humor that is distinctly his own, thus clearly delineating the difference between being Singapore's answer to James Bond and merely being an imitation.

Despite being strapped with an almost poignantly low budget, Gerak Kilat is a hell of a lot of fun. Like another of my favorite low-rent Bond-a-likes, the Indian film Spy In Rome, it makes a sincere and tireless effort to deliver the same level of nonstop excitement as the vastly more well-funded entertainments that it models itself upon. This gives it an almost irresistible underdog appeal. But, in saying that, I don't want to give short shrift to just how successful it is in achieving its aims. For, while its thrills are indeed slipshod, they come at you at such a pace that you are never allowed too much time to ponder their second-rate nature.

I also want to give the film props for the fact that, unlike Shaw's Mandarin espionage thrillers, which typically appropriated sizeable swaths of John Barry's 007 music for their scores, it boasts a soundtrack that is both original and refreshingly homegrown. Of course, this should come as no surprise to anyone who owns any of those compilation CDs of Southeast Asian go-go music. These are a people who clearly know their way around a twangy, Dwayne Eddy-style guitar riff, and such sonics make a perfect accompaniment to the funky spy hijinks we've got here.

Also, as with Filipino films like James Batman, there is a cheekiness to Gerak Kilat's appropriation of the Bond films' iconography that I really love. Given the Bond movies' rampant orientalism, it feels like a kind of taking back. Granted, some might say that a national cinema like Singapore's should have been trying to change the conversation altogether. But, when it comes to the encroachment of Western pop culture upon the cultures of its less opulent Eastern neighbors, it's at least nice to see that that conversation was less one-sided than one might think.

I'll buy that for a dollar: Yongary, Monster From The Deep (South Korea, 1967)

Now that the reputations of Eiji Tsuburaya and Ishiro Honda have been rehabilitated, films like Yongary, Monster From The Deep are more important than ever. Those men are now rightly considered geniuses worthy of our reverence, rather than as purveyors of movies in which men in silly monster suits stomp on toys. But what if you don't feel like respectfully marveling at the level of finely crafted detail in Tsubaraya's miniatures, or the deep layers of allegory in Gojira? What if you just want to laugh at men in silly monster suits stomping on toys?

Well, that's why we have on hand those few competing kaiju efforts that Tsuburaya's and Honda's Toho output consigned to the margins. I'm talking about stuff like Shochiku's The X From Outer Space, Nikkatsu's Gappa, The Triphibian Monster, and, of course, Yongary.

Yongary is South Korea's most widely known entry in the Kaiju boom of the mid 60s, thanks largely to it being purchased by AIP and dubbed for American television. It is not, however, the country's only such film. In the 60s alone, it was followed by Space Monster, Wangmagwi in 1967, and preceded by a few years by 1962's Pulgasari. While both of those titles inhabit a circle of obscurity even deeper than that of Yongary, it is Pulgasari that holds the honor of precipitating one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of Korean cinema, if not also in the history of relations between the country's North and South. I speak, of course, of Kim Jong-Il's kidnapping of noted South Korean director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife for the purpose of remaking Pulgasari to North Korean specifications in the 1980s.

For its part, Yongary was directed -- not under duress, as far as I know -- by Kim Ki-Duk. Though I don't think we're talking about the same Kim Ki-Duk who's responsible for recent disturbing psychosexual art films like The Isle and Samaritan Girl. I could be wrong, however. Anyway, whoever directed it, Yongary is marked by a charming crudity. At the same time, I have to say that its special effects are no worse than those of many Japanese Tokusatsu television series of its era, those produced by Tsuburaya included. It's just that Yongary obviously aspires to be so much more, and hence its inherent adorableness.

The film starts with some business about a space capsule, and then we're told about some kind of traveling earthquake that's heading straight toward South Korea. I'm not really clear on whether those two things were meant to be related, or whether it's the fault of me or the filmmakers that I missed the connection. To tell the truth, when I pay a dollar for a film, I'm really just looking for something that I can throw on while I have a drink, check my email, and do whatever, so I'm not really going to be subjecting its various narrative details to close scrutiny. In other words, those of you who were hoping for a detailed synopsis are just going to have to suck it.

By the way, while a traveling earthquake might sound terrifying to many of you, I think it would be awesome, because the advance warning would for once allow me to make sure that I had my pants and shoes within easy reach when it struck. That's, of course, assuming that it struck in the wee hours, as the last major quake I was in, L.A.'s Northridge quake, did. On that occasion, however, I received a handy instruction in how you can actually manage to entirely dress yourself before even waking up. Seriously, within a fraction of a second of that quake striking, I awoke to find that I'd somehow managed to leap out of bed, find and put on all of my clothing, and get my ass under a doorway before even consciously registering any of what was going on. A good thing, really, because when I looked back at the bed where I had been slumbering, there was a bookcase lying across it. San Francisco's Loma Prieta quake didn't pose any such problems (yes, I've been fortunate enough to be at whichever end of California was suffering one of the state's worst earthquakes of the last twenty years when it was occurring), as it was considerate enough to take place during work hours, when most people already have their pants and shoes on. Unless they're whores, of course. Or Tarzan.

Anyway, as you might have guessed, the traveling earthquake turns out all along to have been Yongary, the fabled Monster From The Deep, and once he makes his appearance on the surface, it's time for some concerted smashing of tiny buildings and tanks. One of the things I like about Yongary is how it keeps its narrative very basic. There are no subplots about gangsters and stolen diamonds, or corrupt businessmen, or space princesses; just people wanting to kill Yongary and Yongary stepping on them. Granted, those sequences that involve the film's human stars do seem to have a strange, somnambulant quality -- sort of as if everyone were trying to act while submerged underwater -- but that may be as much due to the affectless English dub that AIP saddled the film with as it does with the original performers. The kid who voiced the film's "Kenny" surrogate, in particular, recites his lines as if he's being forced to read his own ransom note.

Yongary also includes that famous moment where Yongary breaks the fourth wall by suddenly starting to go-go dance to the twangy guitar music that's playing on the soundtrack. And then at the end, when Korea finally kills him, he appears to be bleeding out of his ass. After that, people seem to spend an awful lot of time standing around congratulating themselves, but, when you look at the finished product, who would begrudge S. Korea their moment of pride. They set out to make a kaiju film that aspired to the grandeur of Godzilla, but with a tenth of the budget and -- judging from what stands in for crowd scenes here -- about a thousandth of the extras. And they, of course, failed. But in the process they made a film that allowed me to once again laugh idiotically at the spectacle of a grown man in a rubber suit kicking around toy tanks without having to worry about someone chiding me about how the person who made it was actually quite a genius. Thank you, Yongary.

4DK Indexed

In another example of this blog's pitiful aspirations toward actual usefulness, I have finally created an index, with links, of all of the films that I've reviewed here over the past year and a half or so. Said index will from this point on be accessible via the link at the top of yon sidebar. This turned out to be more of a labor intensive process than I had anticipated, and I have to confess to becoming a bit cross-eyed at points. So, if any of you come upon any bad links or other errors, I'd lavishly appreciate your letting me know.

Also, please be advised that, in compiling this index, I used just about the broadest definition of "review" possible, as some of the linked posts are simply comprised of me putting up a few screen grabs and then linking to someone else's review. That's just the way I work sometimes. I'm not saying it's right.

Friday's best pop song ever

Darna At Ding (Philippines, 1980)

What better way to continue 4DK’s Week Of The Woman than with our old pal Darna? Darna At Ding was the last Darna film to star Filipino screen icon Vilma Santos, as well as the last Darna film, period, for quite a few years, marking the start of a Darna drought that would see the character absent from the P.I.’s cinema screens until 1991, when the series was resurrected with the Nanette Medved fronted Darna. As such, Darna At Ding offers up something of a “Darna’s Greatest Hits” package, emulating the episodic structure that was used in Lipad, Darna, Lipad!, Santos’ hit 1973 debut in the role.

The film begins with a pre-credit sequence recounting, once again, Darna’s origin. Apparently the notion of Darna’s alter ego having a bum leg, introduced in the previous film Darna and the Planet Women, has since been abandoned, as humble village girl Narda is here presented as being once again fully able-bodied. After Narda has found and swallowed the magic space stone that will facilitate her transformation into the titular super-heroine, we’re whisked into a series of brief vignettes in which we see Darna make very short work of both her old foe Hawk-Woman and one of the giants from Darna and the Giants.

Then it’s time for the first half of Darna At Ding’s main narrative, which could easily be called “Darna vs. The Zombies”.

As is typical of the series, Darna At Ding shows Narda’s tiny rural village to be the locus of every imaginable kind of extraterrestrial, criminal and paranormal activity -- and shambling, green slime slobbering ghouls are apparently no exception. The responsible party in this case is an angry lady scientist named Dr. Vontesberg -- played by Marissa Delgado in an eye-flashing, telenovela-worthy performance -- who is addressing a past injustice by raising the recently dead and setting them upon the villagers. This provides for a lot of creepy moments, but also an abundance of funereal comedic hijinks, as a good portion of Darna At Ding is played for laughs. Corny gags abound, boosted by the presence of beloved Filipino comedian Panchito (last seen here at 4DK as the Penguin in Alyas Batman en Robin) in a key role. Gay zombies who shamble with a swish, adjacent funeral parties trying to aggressively out-mourn one another, people running in fast motion from recently resurrected love ones -- no brow, clearly, is too low.

Darna’s little brother and sidekick Ding is played this time around by popular child star Nino Muhlach, and true to his name-in-title billing, Darna At Ding is really his time to shine. The Mars Ravelo website reports that Muhlach’s family owned D’Wonder Films, the production company responsible for the film, but I won’t speculate upon how much that had to with his heavy presence in it. (Although I just kind of did.) In any case, the fact that Narda spends a great deal of the movie’s first half chained up in Dr. Vontesberg’s dungeon frees up a lot of screen time for Ding to take center stage. Thus we have, among other things, a memorable sequence in which Ding swallows Darna’s magic stone and turns into a sort of pre-pubescent male version of Darna -- a first, as far as I’m aware -- and then flies around punching zombies in the head.

Once the zombie threat is wrapped up, we get another brief episode in which Darna and Ding round up a gang of escaped convicts. For the most part, this bit comes off as an opportunity for Vilma Santos’ to display her faux kung fu skills, but then it takes a darker turn, with one of the cons gunning down an innocent bystander. Given that Darna is rarely shown to be ruthless in these movies, it comes as a bit of a shock when she then grimly doles out justice to the offender by swiftly snapping his neck. Elsewhere, the other cons wisely respond to Darna’s reasoned arguments by giving up their weapons. Interestingly, while the film was unsubtitled, it appeared to me that, on more than one occasion, Darna was shown to eschew violence in favor of simply trying to talk sense into her foes in this manner. Darna: so awesome.

Darna At Ding’s final episode sees the pair following a trail of missing children to the doorstep of Lei Ming, an evil Chinese sorceress played -- in yet another eye-flashing, telenovela-worthy performance -- by Celia Rodriguez. Much as with Dr. Vontesberg, there seems to be a tragic dimension to Lei Ming, as she follows many of her acts of evil with extended crying jags. This nonetheless doesn’t prevent her from committing some pretty heinous acts of devilry, such as when she tortures poor Ding with a voodoo doll.

The climax of this “Darna vs. the Dragon Lady” part of Darna At Ding sees Lei Ming conjure up an evil double of Darna to keep our heroine busy while, elsewhere in her lair, a towering robot bears menacingly down upon Ding. It’s a suitably whiz-bang finale to this loopy, kitchen sink confection, and one that makes the long, strange and circuitous route that we’ve taken to get to it seem perhaps less arduous in retrospect.

Still, at a solid two hours, Darna At Ding is an example of a movie that pulls out all the stops, but perhaps shouldn’t have. While it’s combination of horror movie chills, superhero thrills and slapstick spills might have been catnip for the Filipino audience of its day, for the rest of us it might prove mildly exhausting. Nonetheless, I find Vilma Santos so appealing in her role that it’s hard for me to imagine hating any Darna movie that she appears in, and this one’s no exception.

It's the 4DK Animalympics! Round 3

Pedro, The Ape Bomb

Skill Set: Marksman, acrobat, cocktailier, chimp of many faces

Like Moti, Pedro, star of the soul-pummelingly awesome Zimbo movies, almost seems to have an unfair advantage in this competition. He's just such a prodigious talent. However, due to his self destructive nature, Pedro also faces challenges that his competitors don't. Of all of the animals featured in the Animalympics, he is far and away the most likely to find himself embroiled in a Phil Spector-like tragedy involving an ill-advised combination of alcohol and gunfoolery. Nonetheless, his light, when it shines, does so oh, so very brightly.

Ver Ni Aag (India, 1982)

So I feel there’s some urgency to my finding a more woman-friendly film to post about this week. After all, it’s been kind of smelling like a locker room up in here, what with all the yelling Pakistani men and weird Taiwanese movies about flaming comets seeking out lady parts. Clearly if I don’t flip the script my female readers are going to quite understandably flee en masse, leaving this just one more of those countless cult film blogs whose readership is exclusively male. (Hey, I love you guys, but you know it can’t be all about you, right?) As is, one of my ill-considered recommendations has already got poor Memsaab busy building a time machine so that she can go back and prevent Haseena Atom Bomb from ever being made. 4DK needs an estrogen infusion STAT, and I was thinking that Ver Ni Aag just might fit the bill.

Back in my review of Rani Aur Jaani, I remarked upon how much I enjoyed seeing Aruna Irani in a rare action heroine role. For those who don’t know, Irani was a Bollywood actress and item girl of the 60s and 70s who, as the former, never managed to make it beyond supporting roles and, as the latter, never quite made it out from under the shadow of the ubiquitous Helen. Her turn in Rani Aur Jaani made me hopeful for the possibility that she had, like Helen, forged an alternate career as a leading lady outside the Bollywood mainstream, perhaps either in B films or in one of the many regional cinemas of India. Well, sure enough, it turns out that Irani did indeed find considerable popularity as a heroine in Gujarati language action films, of which Ver Ni Aag is one example.

There’s a new D.I.G. in town, Inspector Jaydeep Singh (Kiran Kumar), and he’s determined to clean things up, as is exemplified in a rapid-fire series of scenes in which he shuts down four operations representing a litany of all the most un-Indian of criminal enterprises: those being the smuggling out of grain and religious artifacts, and the smuggling in of narcotics and liquor. The leaders of these respective operations then band together to combat this new threat to their villainous livelihoods, dubbing themselves “The Mischievous Four” – an appellation which falls somewhere well below “The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants” and “COBRA” on the scale of intimidating-sounding names for a cabal of super-villains. It’s quite fitting, then, that the Mischievous Four’s initial attempts at shutting Jaydeep Singh down meet with all the success of Wile E Coyote’s efforts to catch the Road Runner.

For starters, they attempt to kidnap Jaydeep’s sister. Jaydeep’s sister, however, turns out to be Parul, played by Aruna Irani, who responds to their threatening advances by kung fu-ing them all into the middle of next week, all the while doling out pithy wisecracks at their expense. Those of the Mischievous Four’s minions who don’t immediately turn tail and run are then summarily dealt with by Parul with the help of handsome police cadet Amar (Firoz Irani, I think), who just happens upon the scene at a fortuitous moment. This affords Parul and Amar the opportunity to do a “meet cute” while simultaneously pummeling a bunch of thugs into unconsciousness.

The above-described scene put me in an optimistic frame of mind as to what the rest of Ver Ni Aag might be like. Unfortunately, I was to find myself a bit disappointed. Because, all told, Ver Ni Aag just isn’t all that well made of a film. For starters, its low budget is made overly apparent by its cramped, nondescript sets, it’s frequently under-lit look and it’s dodgy sound mix. Of course, it goes without saying that low-rent trappings like that don’t necessarily exclude a film from being, at the very least, entertaining, and frequently even awesome. Sadly, however, Ver Ni Aag also commits the all too frequent Indian B movie sin of relying far too heavily on comic relief and padding to fill out its running time, going so far as to include a superfluous scene set in a movie theater so that a sizeable portion of a musical number from an Amitabh Bachchan film can be shoehorned in. Gestures like that -- essentially trying to cajole the audience by showing them bits from an obviously better made film -- are the ultimate admission of defeat by a filmmaker, and amount to telling the audience straight out that they would have been better off staying at home.

Worst of all, though, is the fact that director S. J. Taluqdar just doesn’t seem all that good at filming action. The fights in Ver Ni Aag, when they do occur, are clearly the film’s reason for being, yet are frustratingly lacking in the excitement that a more dynamic approach to staging and filming would have engendered. While the film was refreshing for lacking the sleaziness that marks similar women-centric actioners from Tollywood and Lollywood (indeed, Aruna Irani’s outfits are all downright demure here), I sorely missed the hyperactive verve that a director like Tollywood’s K.S.R. Doss would have brought to the proceedings. As such, while the many dust-ups are a welcome break from the monotony that surrounds them -- and it’s certainly fun to watch Irani’s enthusiastic participation in them -- the somewhat nailed-down approach to filming them keeps them from being the suitably ample reward that our patience deserves.

Anyway, back in the business of Ver Ni Aag’s plot, the Mischievous Four, after further fumbling their attempts to stop the heroic Jaydeep Singh -- first with an unsuccessful assassination-by-sniper at a village festival (a toddler dressed as Krishna shoots the gun out of the sniper’s hand with an arrow), and then with a truly “what were they thinking” attempt to bribe Parul and Amar -- finally get it right by luring the inspector into a deserted area and running him down with a truck. This event, occurring at the film’s sixty-minute mark, finally lights the “fire of revenge” within Parul that will energize Ver Ni Aag’s remaining half. Though let’s not be too hasty about things. After all, that still leaves plenty of time for us to be treated to yet more of the comedic shenanigans of the same trio of bumbling policemen who have already taken up a sizeable chunk of the first half.

I had mixed feelings watching Ver Ni Aag. Aruna Irani was just as charming and appealingly scrappy as she was in Rani Aur Jaani, and I was happy to see her once again taking on a lead role of this type. I only hope that Ver Ni Aag isn’t indicative of the overall quality of her other ventures as a heroine of Gujarati cinema. She deserves better.

Make that a double

True story: When I first moved to San Francisco from the East Bay all those many years ago, I suddenly found myself being mistaken for someone else. This wasn't just one of those momentary errors of recognition, where the person would realize their mistake immediately upon getting a better look at me. In one case, a woman who I had never seen before in my life kept insisting that she knew me, and became quite offended when I didn't recognize her in return.

At the same time, my friends began reporting seeing me in places that I couldn't have been -- like, for instance, riding on a city bus during hours when I would have been at work. This came to a head when one friends told me of running into someone at a club whom they were certain was me, only to realize that it wasn't after engaging that person in conversation for several minutes. Eventually these occurrences dwindled in frequency and stopped, perhaps because my apparent double had either moved, gotten a new haircut, become a masked luchadore, or maybe been the victim of some kind of disfiguring accident.

I bring this up because yesterday, while in the process of being bored into a state of past life regression by From Istanbul, Orders to Kill, it occurred to me that the movie was about the zillionth I'd seen in the last couple years whose plot depended on the device of one person looking exactly like another. Often a character in these movies will remark upon how rare such instances are, but to my understanding -- my own experience notwithstanding -- it is actually something that never happens. Ever. Which makes it even stranger that it's such a common trope. Or am I wrong about this?

I mean, I know we instinctively look for resemblances between people, and are often saying that so-and-so looks like so-and-so. But has anyone out there ever actually encountered someone whose resemblance to someone else was so striking that they could conceivably actually substitute for that person?