Hold you he is folks, it's showtime. People say, good money to
see this movie. When they go out to a theater. They want cold
sodas from hot popcorn and no monsters in the protection booth. Everyone pretend podcasting
isn't boring. Doun it off it sting you you know what's on your at
know what someone came you Marca m h Hello, Hello? Oh the low
di you you I said, I said, cry more now any more me
talking about stuck gouse. I'm saying, come on, come on, yeah,
I mean, how are you taking? Don't you gonna move? Ja?
Can go go? Come? You eat twice some mores? Okay?
So ak, Yeah, you got you the more your love sty Welcome to
the projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White joined me once again.
Is miss sam Degan. Hello. Also back in the booth is Miss Emily
and Travia Hey. We conclude a month discussing Japanese films with a look at
Toshio Matsumoto's nineteen seventy one film Demons aka Pandemonium aka Shurra aka anything else.
I don't think so. The story of the film is part of the fabric
of the larger forty seven Ronan narrative, just like the Canna Reeves movie,
and it is the story of a Ronan who is cheated by Geisha and who
now has to carve a bloody path for revenge. That is just the tip
of the iceberg when it comes to this movie. We're going to be spoiling
the film, So if you don't want anything ruined, please turn off the
podcast and watch the movie. Will be here. This is going to be
one of those movies where we get a lot of flak that this isn't easily
available, but I'll tell you one thing, it's out up YouTube at fault
with something else. So, Sam, had you seen Shura before? Yes,
I watched it last year for the first time, along with Matsumoto's final
featured Doggeramagara, and was just absolutely blown away by both of them. Definitely
an instant favorite. And Emily about yourself, I had not, and I
knew nothing of it, and even when I first heard the title from you,
I started looking it up and it took me way too long to realize
it was the same filmmaker behind Funeral Parade of Roses, which I had only
seen for the first time. Maybe a year or so ago, and when
I watched that film, I had one of those moments of Oh my god,
how have I never seen this or heard of this before? How is
this not better known? Because that film, in particular, which I'm sure
we'll touch on, is ground breaking, holds up today, feels so modern,
ahead and ahead of its time. So then realizing, oh my god,
and his next film was a feudal revenge horror film. How did I
not immediately seek that out? Oh? Because it's really hard to find.
I've seen Funeral Parade of Roses. Before we did it on a there was
a Mike White May where it was all Japanese New Wave over on the culture
cast, Poor Chris and poor Chris's wife, who has to put up with
my weirdo choices. When it comes to Mike White March or White Mike white
May, he always gives me one month a year. And I had known
of this film. I used to be very big into Japanese new wave stuff
and Matsumoto is one of those new wave filmmakers. But I had never seen
this film until I decided to do it for the show, forced myself to
finally watch it. I was blown away. I just was completely blown away
by this. I had heard, oh it's black and white, very stark,
but nothing prepared me for just how inky black this movie is, how
beautiful it looks. Even if you just turn off all audio, this movie
is just a treat to the eyes. But then you get the story,
you get the sound effects, you get the acting, you get all that.
Wow. It just really was quite incredible. I love the beginning with
that beautiful sunset. The sun goes down and the rest of the movie is
in black and white. Like I said, super stark, it is one
hundred percent told at nighttime. I don't think we ever see the sun again
after that point, and our characters live in this nightmare that just gets to
be more nightmarish as we go through the film. I think I'm so conditioned
now with the movies I watched that Every movie begins with seven different production company
logos that go so long that I actually thought watching this when I when I'm
watching it, in this the sun comes and then it goes and then the
movie starts. In my mind, I thought, oh, that was the
production company because it feel so different, and then realizing by the end of
it and immediately going back and catching some things of Oh no, that's a
choice, and it's a very good one. If it does, it very
much tells you the day is over. We're gonna get real, it's gonna
get dark, and sit back. Funeral Parade of Roses is super famous,
especially in the last decade since it got restored and got a Blu ray release
because of that pop art new wave aesthetic. I think people have caught on
to it because of those visuals, and I should say before I forget to
bring him up later. Both of these films and that third film I mentioned,
Dagaramagara, which is also similarly to Real and dream Like. All of
them were shot by Tatsua Suzuki, who worked with Matsumoto a lot. He
also worked with people like Terry Amashuji. He shot Pastoral to Die in the
Country, the second Lady Snowblood movie. He just I think is a really
underrated talent in the later kind of end of the Japanese New Wave and into
the eighties. But this is a film that I would probably kill a person
to be able to see on thirty five milimeter in a theater because it's just
so beautiful, like outrageous. You would kill them, and then we'd have
to see you killing them three times at slightly different AGAs, and I would
have to make a really incredible dramatic speech about how the world is a sea
of blood, which I'm here to do. Emily, you brought it up
in this whole thing of We are two minutes into the movie and you get
our main character jing Gopi, and he does this thing where he's being pursued
by these people quote unquote, even though we don't see the people, we
just see the lanterns at this point. It almost looks like he's being chased
by ghosts at this point, and turns to look at them, and then
he turns, and then he turns, and then he turns, and you
just get this repeated action from all of these different angles, and it really
tips us off to what we're going to be experiencing through the rest of this
movie. And I think it was probably pretty radical for audiences in nineteen seventy
one, and I don't think that we had now. It's like in a
comedy or sometimes even a drama film, you get these moments where you get
to see a character do something and then it cuts and you see the character
before the action happened, and then you see them do it again and you're
like, Oh, that was all in their head. Oh okay, I
get this. That's what's going on in this movie, though you never know
when it's going to happen. There's not really a tip off for us.
We don't get like a splash of color or a sound effect or anything like
that. We just get him thinking about things, and then we'll have a
hard cut and then it'll go back a little ways, and then we'll go
on and sometimes that might happen a few times, but we don't know when
that's going to happ and we don't know what is fantasy what's reality. So
they're putting us in this position where it's like, oh, gosh, I
hope this is a dream. There's one moment especially we'll talk about where I
just go God in Heaven, I hope that was a dream and that we're
going to reset. And when it doesn't, it makes it even worse that
it actually happened, or at least happened in the world of this movie,
which is very much set up like a play. This is based off of
a play, feels very much like a play, and you even get inter
titles throughout here that we'll tell you several hours later at the same time several
weeks later, or the World is a Sea of Blood. My favorite.
What I love about what it does and it's you know what you said.
It makes you immediately not trust what you're seeing, You don't fully trust the
characters, you don't know what's real at any given time. And then it
lets you raise your hopes and lets you think this didn't really happen, This
couldn't have happened, This couldn't have happened. And it just builds because and
because it's so erratic about when it's real and when it's not, when it's
real, just it takes you so much of a gasp after to realize,
oh that one did happen. Oh, And it's heavy and just makes you
in puts you in such a negative, dark, dark space, which I
love. If there's anyone who is listening and is not really familiar with a
lot of the film adaptations of kabuki plays, which, as Mike pointed out,
this is based on this play called Kami Kakkeete Sano Tai Setsu, and
it really captures a lot of stylistically what makes kabuki so distinct, and so
if you're watching this and you're thinking, like, why is all the acting
so over the top, it's because they're also intentionally taking from kabuki acting style,
and it's so effective at enhancing exactly what you're both talking about. Just
this like feeling of absolute other worldly despair that goes beyond it's like noir ish
at times, but I think it goes beyond the more grounded Hollywood film noir
into this just hell world, which is where the original title comes from.
The shura is it's basically I think you could infer that he's found his way
into this Buddhist hell of perpetually repeating cycles of violence. You get a lot
of Buddhist imagery and Buddha himself throughout here. I think there's at least two
Buddhist statues where you see close ups or they just hold on that for a
while, so you're getting those kind of clues. The whole movie just gets
more and more nightmares, even as it starts with kind of a dream sequence
that when gen Kolbe comes I guess he's coming home and goes in and there's
just all of these dead bodies, all over the floor, severed hand.
He goes to his main squeeze coman and she has blood trickling out of her
mouth, and he looks up and he sees himself hanging there. And it
took me until the second time for me to realize. At first, I
was like, is that him? And then the second time I saw it,
because that image comes back a few times, then I'm like, oh,
yeah, that's him. Is this his fate? Because as the movie
plays on, we get to see that severed hand, we get to see
her being murdered and standing for her being murdered as well. So you get
these images that are repeating, and it's is he fulfilling almost a prophecy?
Or to your point, Sam, is he trapped there forever just going through
this cycle and having to watch his world fall apart every single time? Is
this like him trying to make amends? Like the first time he breaks in
to talk about Cooman? Is that what he wished wi as he was doing?
Is that how it played out the first time? Is this just this
never ending hellscape that he's constantly going through. Is that where all these repetitions
are coming from. I don't know what the answer is. But I sure
do like the way that it's being presented. I mean, he's such a
kind of sad, pathetic man, and even when he is fantasizing both the
positive and the vengeful bloodiness, it feels like the fantasy is of a very
small man. And I think, and this is in part, I think
there's a little bit of just kind of cultural difference in watching this today.
It's hard to not watch it with a very twenty first century modern sensibility of
even the idea of inheriting these feuds and thinking of what Coomen and Sengoro go
through, and you're like, what are you rains baby, be happy,
don't give every just got one hundred bucks, We're much more than that.
Just go use this and raise your family. Who cares about events this thing?
And that's a very obviously Western way of looking at this. But even
I think outside of that context, he's and I don't think you are,
at least for me. You're never seeing him for what he wants himself to
be and thinks he should be. But he's only that kind of because of
birthright and because of where he hasn't earned or done anything to keep what he
had in terms of honor. So it just makes everything in a way.
It's good because it gives you a distance where you never root for him.
I don't think even in terms of him making the right decision. It feels
like he's never going to make the right decision. But I feel like that's
every character in this whole world is. As the film goes on, we
learn that everybody has an ulterior motive. Everyone's trying to get something back,
whether they're trying to get revenge or gn Gobe who's trying to get back into
to go to esteem in the eyes of other samurai. It's like everyone owes
someone something, and often it's money. And the fact that he I think
what makes him such a tragic figure is even though he has these aims at,
these goals and these motives, it's a surprise to him when other people
do, and it's like he has this totally unrealistic view of everyone around him.
His absolute shock when he learns that Koman, his lover, is married
to someone else and has her own motivations. It just like the fact that's
enough to basically drive him insane. It's buddy, how do you not see
the world around you? Everyone is in misery. His whole thing is he
loves to drink, he loves to eat, he loves to gamble, and
loves this prostitute. And buddy, there's no sex in the champagne room.
You are not should not set your hopes on Coleman, But he does and
his I guess. In the play version it is his uncle. In the
movie version, it feels more like his servant hat Yima. He finally gets
all of this money, a hundred riu, in order to reinstate our main
character back into good graces and is able to take part in the whole revenge
that is going on. Like I said, this is part of the whole
forty seven Ronan narrative, and he's the opening title calls him the forty eighth
thrown in. He's the guy who doesn't make it because he's such a fuck
up. Get to your point, he is a total fuck up. And
we should probably talk about the spoiler, the biggest twist of this movie,
which is that he basically gets this hundred rieu taken from him. He you
know, he pays off for Coleman just because she's about to get taken by
another guy and he's no, She's my main squeeze. He ends up paying
for her, and then you realize, no, he actually just paid her
debt and that she's now going to go back with her husband. He gets
really upset when finds out that it's her husband. She and him Koman and
the husband son Goro. They are doing all this stuff so they can get
one hundred dollars or a hundred yo sorry, to basically give to San Goorl's
father. So he's back in Sang Girl's father's good graces. And then San
Goorl's father wants that hundred to you to give to his master or to the
guy who's supposed to become part of the forty seven Ronin or the forty eighth
Ronan, who is our main character. So we just went in a huge
fucking circle here, and he basically is getting the money back that he was
out of that humiliated him. And of course I think it was more that
he was having sex with another guy's wife, which really humiliated him. But
this whole thing, he set this emotion and then he's on that wheel again,
just running and has no idea what the hell to do with anything.
Yeah, it's just so wild the way that this plays out and plays with
your expectations, and I do think Funeral Parade of Roses does that where it
messes with your sense of the temporal narrative flow and is this actually happening?
Is it not? And Dogramagara, which is set at an asylum and deals
with these characters who are experiencing sort of generational madness in a more psychiatric way
than this film. It's like, he's just so great at telling a story
that draws you in but leaving you confused a lot of the time, in
the same way that the characters are confused. It's just it's masterful. The
other thing too, that it shares with Funeral pre of Roses is the theatrical
classical, dramatic irony structure of Funeral Parade is Oedipus. And this one,
again, it's based directly on a Japanese what is the term for it again,
it's kamik sangotay setsu is what it's called. It's a mouthful. I'm
gonna let you say that, not me. Yes, that one exactly had
it tip of my tongue, tip of my tongue. It's that same,
a little bit, that dramatic irony. It plays off very Edwardian and Shakespearean,
but that's just because those are closer to my references. But it is
that complete identity, hidden identity for no good reason other than it leading to
things that then makes everybody's decisions that much worse and aimed at the wrong people
when like, all of this could have been solved if we just talk to
each other. But that's the beauty of that kind of theater, that is
every Greek play, and it just makes once you realize, once that kicks
in, I think there's that moment of knowing, oh, this is just
going to get worse and worse because now we know that it shouldn't get worse,
but it's going to get much worse, and it does. It's so
wonderful. It definitely to your point about Shakespeare, it reminds me of definitely
that era of revenge tragedies. I don't know if either of you have read
Duchess of Malfi, but yes, huge, oh yeah, Duchess of Malfie
fan and a way that it, yes, that that great type of really
violent, bloody tragedy that Shakespeare borrows from for something like Macbeth, where there
are all these like more self conscious horror and occasionally supernatural elements. But just
like the fact that every single thing that happens funnels these characters into just going
totally insane, that's a plus. And that it didn't have to happen,
None of it has to happen the way it is. If anybody just stopped
and communicated or thought about why they were doing what they were doing and to
whom they were doing it too, it all could have been fine. But
just even when the realizations come, and it's towards the very end when Gingobie
figures things out, and just the utter lack of reaction that he shows,
because it just feels like there is nothing left inside of him, even this
revelation that it didn't have to be this way. It's just he's done.
He's gone so far that he can't even feel bad about how far he went.
It's gone. He is gone as a person. I know my point
of reference is a little bit more pedestrian, but I was definitely thinking of
Hamlet, especially when it comes to the play within the play and the whole
play is the thing to capture the imagination of the king when he gets the
hunter for you and then Sengorro shows up and Sangoro's basically the devil on his
shoulder, Wahachiomance the angel on his shoulder, and Sangorl's, hey, man,
I got this note for you. Comen's going to be sold to this
guy. We really need to go there, and the price is exactly one
hundred REU. And I'm like, oh boy. And when he gets there,
he sees it is five people all sitting there around Koman and they are
totally perfectly facing him, looking it is a play being put on for him,
to the point where I'm like, how long before he showed up did
they start talking? Because everything that's there is them belittling him, talking about
how he doesn't have two cents to rub together, or just all of these
things. Oh boy. There was some good stage management going on there in
terms of giving those cues when they had to go, and then the actual
Mison Sin having that great screen behind them with the waves on it, and
then we get that great pan across them later on when you have Sangoro she's
my wife or I'm her husband, just over and over again as he's starting
to have a breakdown recalling that because some of the flashes that we get our
memories. Some of them are wishful feelings. And even though you say that
we shouldn't be rooting for our main character, I was rooting for him quite
a few times, especially with the poison Sake. I was really up for
that. Oh I definitely room for him. Oh I was Tim Coleman,
I was Tim Comen and Singoro they seemed in love when the baby came up.
When you saw what a good dad Singrol was gonna be like he was
playing with the baby. There was a moment of all this. They actually
do love each other, and this they swindled a man, but he didn't
do anything not to deserve it. There was nothing more honorable about him to
me than about them. So I was rooting for them. I wanted them
to make it work, but Earthly knew they would not know. I think
that is an important point to bring up that you can watch so and this
movie, as incredible as I think it is, it doesn't exist in a
vacuum. There are other similar things. And one of the things that I
think does make this a little bit different is, especially if you think about
this in comparison to some of the revenge ghost stories, you often have people
betraying each other for no reason other than their fucking assholes, whereas here it's
I think, giving you a chance to get to know Comen and giving her
lines like about how Geisha's entire life is just a series of lies, like
she's working, She's there to do a job that she has to do.
And so I think it's important that the film does make you sympathetic towards her
and her husband while not painting them as heroic, And it just makes the
violence that follows even more unhinged, because it's you don't want anyone in this
situation to be totally miserable, and yet they all are. Yeah, they
are all imperfect. There is no nobody who comes out of this movie saying
at least that guy, because even I guess the closest you come is it
Hatchaman. But it's he's just as his main motivation is simply I understand that
honor is the important thing, So you have to go do this? And
who cares about this crazed vixen? Which is at least the translation we get
of what he calls her. And again, is it to an audience today,
I think, to a certain sensibility. You watch that and say,
no, this woman could use he's in love, like why does he have
to pick this over that? But ultimately everybody is with the exception of where
things go. Everybody comes just kind of starts on a right nobody's good,
nobody's terrible. They do bad things, but not terrible things. But it
just takes that a terrible a bad thing done to a weak man with a
lot of power, turns into absolute horror. What I find so compelling about
a lot of these seventies films, whether you're thinking about something like Lady Snowblood
that's more popular, or some of the Zatouici sequels, there's this sense that
in also in a lot of the new wave films, especially things by somebody
like Oshima, who the guy who plays Gng Gobi, Katsuo Nakamura is also
in this Oshima film called Pleasures of the Flesh that has some similar vibes,
even though it's modern set. And it seems like all these films have this
message that people aren't inherently bad, but they live in this world, in
this society that turns them into bad people by not giving them better options,
and it just I think makes it feel so grim and so nihilistic, even
though they do care about each other sometimes and they do want to do the
right thing, it's just hopeless. Yeah, you're set up to feel so
hopeless in this movie. Everything is shabby. His place is completely bereft of
anything. He sold, the heirloom scroll, all of the little paper windows,
like there's so many of them that have holes in them. It just
feels very not cared for. And then, like I said, this whole
world is darkness. And when I talk about darkness, darkness like when he
comes in at one point too, I can't remember which building it is,
but there's one point of it's not when he has that huge fucking hat on.
It's another moment where he just walks through a door and you don't see
him until he's like an inch away from that doorway because they keep that door
just completely black. And then he sits there and the whole world is black
behind him. Even though he's inside of his place, the world is black
around him completely. There's no joy to be found elsewhere. There's no music
playing, there's no animals, there's something just very In terms of the set
design, there are no extra every prop there's a very important hairpin that travels
and becomes a key element in storyteller. But because there's nothing else, there's
no other things. So you pinpoint those things, and everything has some kind
of meaning, because otherwise it just wouldn't be there, there's no room for
it. Matsumoto does such a great job at connecting that literal physical darkness with
the moral darkness going on. And I don't think we've said yet, but
this is maybe the last or one of the last, I think great films
in this subgenre of jedi geky movies, which are period set. Usually they
follow samurai, but they're called zenkoku and they're basically, I think known in
English as cruel samurai films or cruel Jedi geky movies, and sort of doom
Is I think maybe the most famous one of those, though you could probably
Shoehorn Corn Echo in there too, because it has some of the most awful
samurai ever and is similarly bleak. But it's just fascinating that you have these
new wave directors mostly choosing to make these periods set black and white films,
which seems like it wouldn't be anything associated with the New wave that is more
traditional, but it's like they managed to create something totally new with these more
traditional genre cinema elements. It's just amazing. It's this really interesting combination.
I remember thinking the same with Funeral Parade of Roses, is that Matsumoto had
a theater background then he came also very It's like that era of theater of
the absurd, and that very much of pushing trying to figure out on stage
what you can do differently, what you can do to push harder and go
darker and get a response that you couldn't get otherwise. And a lot of
times when you translate that to film, it just does. It has a
very theatrical venear on it. And I think what's really interesting about this is
that it feels theatrical on some level as far as this actual storytelling. I
think what we're saying about the being very dramatic, irony and faded from the
beginning, and there's certainly elements within of a play within a play, but
it doesn't ever feel like if I didn't know, I wouldn't say, oh,
this was this director came from theater. It feels that this is Phil,
this is somebody using cinema to tell this story and to pull out some
very odd, awful themes that make you think about them. And it's done
with sound and lack of sound, And it's not necessarily about the performances.
It's not about staging. It's all of these things put together. But it
feels very much born out of cinema, not theater. It's fascinating. I
don't know if you guys saw this, but there's a great footnote in Keiko
McDonald's book where she's talking about this film, and apparently the Guiso Shimo was
not a big fan of it, she wrote. Nigiso Oshima has criticized Pandemonium,
claiming that it fails to accomplish the filmmaker's task of determining quote who is
basically the victim and who is the victimizer unquote. He adds that Matsumoto's fundamental
the error lies quote in his complete ignorance of Ginko bay as stupid and victimizer
unquote. Matsumota has replied that assigning such formulas to characters ignores the fact that
each of these embodies dichotomy of good, bad and victim victimizer. For further
information, see I Love this oh Shima Nagisa nome wa fushiana ka, which
translates as is Nagisa Oshima blind? That quote is so insane because that the
film that I mentioned that shares a star with Shurra Pleasures of the Flash.
Almost all of Oshima's films from the mid sixties to early seventies are are explicitly
about characters who are not a victim or a victimizer, but they're both.
But I think also for anyone who doesn't know him and hasn't read any interviews
with him, Oshimo was like the grumpiest, most cantankerous man alive. My
gut feeling here is that he saw the film and liked it and was mad
that he didn't make it and so found some shit to talk. I mean,
it is an unusual film to make in nineteen seventy one to say I'm
going to make this old kabuki play into a movie. And here's this guy
who's only made the one feature film before major experimental filmmaker. That's where Matsumoto
really made his bones was through experimental films for years and years while but before
he made this, after he made this, and that was his thing.
While he was teaching, he was making movies. But yeah, it's just
a bizarro to consider thinking about the times that they made this in. But
then I'm thinking to myself, now, this is pretty spot on as far
as like you're saying, the victim and victimizer and who's to blame and this
whole thing of chasing money. His money is at the heart of this whole
thing, and you just keep going round and around with this, and yet
it means nothing, which is one of my favorite the little tricks in any
story where it is about some kind of needing them doing something terrible for money,
and then it ultimately what happens to it? Who knows all we And
I also, I don't want to jump ahead, but the ambiguity, ambiguity
of that ending and knowing enough that it's not a good one, but not
knowing exactly, but having you know the movie gives you little things where you
could put an ending together from what you get or does it? Can you
trust anything you've seen? It's really brilliant. More I think you think through
the different ways you can say what he was trying to do here, I
think I don't there's one answer, and that's very cool. I feel like
the only clear answer, and I've said it before, is that the world
is a sea of blood. It's a great line. It's better than the
dog eating your homework. I'm just gonna use that line from now on whenever
I don't want to deal with something. The world's sea of blood. I
cannot turn in this work, project's delayed. The world's see blood. What
can I say? And who's going to disagree with that? Right now?
Can we talk about how rare we see poison used as an implemented murder on
screen in a way that makes it seem as terrible as it probably actually is.
Yeah, the poisoning scene in here, because there's multiple, because there's
one fantasy maybe a couple fantasy versions of that, and then there's the one
what we consider reality with the brother in law. As I was watching it,
I was just like, this is probably what real poisoning is like.
As he just struggles and nobody has a quick death scene in this movie.
This is not, you know, to said Duro, or you know even
the Lone Wolf and cub movies where you just like right through somebody and then
they're dead. The struggle. He was not sharpening his sword he was letting
that get dull. Also, the Poison to me feels like a nod to
some of the more traditional horror movies because in the fifties, I would say
starting in the fifties, but definitely kicking off more in the sixties, you
get this wave of really grim ghost stories where it's often somebody is killed,
usually a woman by poison, and the sequences are really grotesque. Usually it
involves the woman drinks some poison or it's thrown on her and she has this
horrible death, and she's also disfigured in the process, so that when she
comes back as a ghost, she's extra terrifying. And the way that it's
just drawn out, I feel like he lets you know like how angry and
hateful these people are, and the lack of music, and it's really throughout
the film, and I watched it notice it at a certain point. I
think I noticed it during probably Comen's Big Very Long That Seen, because most
toolmakers would be scoring a lot of this, and there's no music during most
of the violence. And what happens is you instead every single sound that the
body makes, the gurgles or the banging into a wall or pulling a pot
as you fall and it clanging on the ground. Everything hits because it would
if you were in that room, and it's just so disturbing as a result,
it makes it brutal. There was one moment where I thought there was
music, and then I found that it was actually Buddhist chanting. So it's
at the very end and it's very guttural, and I'm assuming that it's seng
Gooro's father who is chanting for him because now the wife, the baby,
and the son are all dead and that's happening as our main character is leaving.
It's not a freeze frame though. Right at the very end, he's
just standing there at the end, because he's in hell, He's standing there.
Yeah. The note I wrote down was it sounds like angry rumbling demons.
Also, that is a sound of grief that you would make. It's
funny. Is it unrelated? But it made me think a little bit watching
it, because I started to really think about the music and lack thereof,
but how a sound was being used, and it made me think of zone
of interest, just in that same way of a movie that I had gone
to see in part because I was excited about hearing Amika Levy score on the
big screen, and then at a certain point where I was like, oh,
there's no the music. It's there's no music in this movie. It's
all the other sounds. But then one the best, the Oscar for best,
and you realize why, because there is something in this and Demons does
it of every sound of the actual thing that's happening is so much more horrific
than somebody composing something to fit the horror of what you're seeing. And it
also I think fits the starkness of this movie and just not embellishing anything that
you wouldn't need to embellish. Yeah, I can't imagine this with a score
like I can definitely see a scenario in which he decided to use some kind
of more experimental Japanese new wave type of score, but it would have made
it not nearly as brutal of an experience, especially those death scenes like where
Coleman and the baby get killed. Imagine somebody putting melodramatic music over that.
It just I think it would take away from the power of those and the
real, like visceral quality of those scenes. That death of the baby.
That's what I I was hoping was a fantasy or a dream or would get
reset because I'm just like, no, that couldn't have happened. That did
not happen. Right now, it happened. Oh, it happened. It
definitely happened. Spoilers, there's a baby death. Yes, be prepared,
everybody. I was watching a video essay on YouTube where the guy was trying
to break this movie apart. During that, they actually blurred the screen,
the entire screen. I was like, Yeah, that's the way to do
it, because it's too horrific. It is just so awful. And the
way it happens that he forces Coman to literally have a hand in it,
and there is no need to do that. He's about she is dying,
he's about to kill her. She wants to die anyway. There is just
what a absolute act of cruelty to put her hand on the sword in a
way that lets that be the last thing she does before she does that,
more than anything else, is what makes me think of Jacobean revenge tragedy like
to Titus Andronicus, Duchess of mal Fee. Yep, just pity. She's
a horror, just that sort of very John Webster like, how nasty,
how much nastier. Can we make it? It's how dark? How dark?
Can we go here? Yeah? Can we do cannibalism, No work
for cannibalism. Correct, We'll just kill a baby. It's dead and really
good severed head effect and we haven't even talked about the severed head. One
of my favorite things in any movies when a severed head becomes a key part
of the story. Looking severed head, yeah, yep, and so well
shot. It's like that scene has it's like unexpected, how beautifully shot it
is. I think, especially if you grow up watching American and Western horror
movies where the emphasis is more on gore, especially if our watching things post
Night of the Living Dead, and as great as the gore effects look,
you can especially in newer restorations and watching it four K, it's like you
can tell that it's a prop. But the way they did that scene,
it's so understated, which going back exactly to what you said about the lack
of a score, it makes it worse because it just lingers for so long
and it huh, that's perfection. It feels like some of that is the
actress with her head sticking through the floor, it is, Yeah, I
think whenever it's an actual shot of her face, it must be which always
looks great when she keeps her face very still, so she still has that
a little bit of vitality to the face. And then when they actually have
the head that he can hold, that still also looks great. And it's
such a tricky thing because it's like a very specific rule I think of both
movies in theater is if you're going to have a beheading, you either have
the greatest perfectly made head cast that you can get, or you don't show
it, because if you show it and it doesn't look good, it is
funny. The effect is funny and dumb. Yeah, And from the heror
completely it's heads. Severed heads are funny on their own, and this one
there's a little bit of I think you could watch this with a very dark
sense of humor and find it very darkly funny in a way that isn't offensive
to the movie. I think you can just watch it as this ridiculously waste
of a man who causes all of this, and because it is so grandiose
in what happens, it is almost funny. I think you can laugh at
things in this in a dark way. In a way that I don't think
is offensive to the movie, and certainly with the head, certainly when at
the very end when Sangoro is dying and his dad just runs and brings the
head to him, because that seems like the and if then you do in
that situation, it's very funny, it's horrific, it's sad, it's terrible.
But he'd also is because the head rolls at one point, and it
rolls in a way that is you almost want to make a little laugh at
it, and then you feel terrible when you do, And that I think
is what he's trying to get you in terms of what that's supposed to evoke.
And I think there's a lot of that comes from Kabooki too, Just
like how intentionally Fever pitch over the top, it is so that you're always
experiencing something extreme, even if the extremes wander from hard to satire to eroticism.
Sometimes it's just always ratcheted up. Before I knew just how dark this
movie was going to get, when he has that repeated thing where he's trying
to buy Koman and the first time you see it, when he's looking through
and he sees the five people that are making fun of him, and then
Cooman there in the foreground and he leaves there and marches over and he's got
Sangora behind him, and he throws open the door and he's just I'm jig
kobay blah blah blah, I'm here from my woman kind of thing, and
throws down the money and his total badass and then his manservant or whoever hatching
him on comes in. He's just say, hey, sir, what are
you doing. We're supposed to have that money for your revengeance, and then
boom cut back to him looking through that hole. And that second time,
which I think is the reality time, it's Sangoro grabbing him by the hand
and basically pulling him over, and he's the one that opens the door and
marches in. And then again Kobe is very reticent to walk through that door.
I guess I can give you the money. You going back and forth,
and it really takes her threatening to stab herself, and that happens,
I believe a few times. She takes the little sword, then sticks the
hairpin, and we're like resetting each time until she doesn't kill herself. And
then he carries on with the thing. I guess I'll give you the one
hundred riyo. Now, yeah, the amount of work it takes to get
him to be the version of himself he thinks he is and he never is.
And even the reveal, I thought it was a really interesting way of
doing it because I think I couldn't quite figure out. And part of this
is because you're seeing things from gong Gobi's point of view of the cruelty or
not cruelty of did they're not mocking him the rest of the group is or
are they? Is that what he's seeing in order to make it easier for
him to kill everybody that they just it felt like Comen just felt pretty bad
because she must have been again oh who knows how long this was all going
on for, but she was very aware that he was intoxicated by her and
her kind of thing like, yeah, I think sucked that I had to
do that, but I don't regret it, and this is what we had
to do. But because not they're not mocking him, it's just a sad
sack and it's I think that's also why to me they I did feel for
them because they also then they could joke about things but they weren't always mocking
him. It was there's a great little I thought it was like a very
charming moment when they're together and they think they're safe, and he's been drinking,
so he's a little drunk, and they start saying, oh, what
if gon go Bee came inside? And he's Oh, I'd fight him,
She sa, would you really? No? No, I'd run and hide,
And it's very cute, like they just they feel like a real couple
at that point, and I know that there is this breaking through, there's
a little bit of humanity before it is very brutally destroyed. I don't think
it would be as horrifying if we didn't see their humanity and we weren't given
justifications for why they're doing that. And it's funny to think about it in
comparison to something like some of those later Zatuchi sequels, where he's often righting
wrongs and rescuing people from people who are just really awful and cruel and selfish,
which I think, even though he's horrified in every movie he's horrified by
the violence that he has to carry out, it always feels justified, even
if you can see it destroying him. But here it's like these people are
really just trying to survive, and it's not her fault that she has a
geisha contract and in order to get out of it has to pay a debt.
And yes, they could have been more upfront with him, but I
guess to me, the real crux is if she's going to take advantage of
someone, couldn't it be some sort of wealthy lord for whom that hundred rio
doesn't mean his whole reputation. Does she even have that contract? Because they
take that hundred ryu and give it to his father. I don't think she
even had one, But I also don't think she had the status and ability
to find that millionaire who would want her. I think they describe her,
and I don't know enough about the difference in geisha dam but it feels like
she is not a She's a low tier sure, And a lot of these
movies do deal with those geisha who are not upper class and didn't have a
ton of the artistic training, and they're basically they're called geisha in the films,
and you do see them singing and playing the shamasen, but they're basically
just working class sex workers, which is is clearly what she is. To
your point, when you think about Sangoro, here is his wife, they've
had to give up, his son. His wife is sleeping with this Genko
Bay who's just this kind of lazy lout, likes to gamble, likes to
fuck my wife. And I guess I would be pretty upset too and do
whatever I could. And it feels like he's on the outs with his father.
And then when his father's oh, great, i'll have this money now,
I'll give it to this other guy, and I thought, what are
you doing giving my money? But it's no. This is a good cause
he's gonna go fight this other guy. So I gotta support this. All
right, all right, dad, at least we're friends now, and now
we're back where we should be. It's me and my wife and my son.
So yeah, I can really see now as we're talking about this,
like his point of view, it's not like he knew she was married.
He thought they were brother and sister. And so it's just like I was
saying at the beginning of the episode, it's just like layers of all kind
of relatively innocuous deceptions where people have these justified motivations for doing what they're trying
to do. They just all clash horribly against each other at once because Emily
said, no one will talk to each other, and be honest, I
would wager that can go be never actually said to Comyn, tell me about
your family life, that he actually didn't know anything about her. That he
is, that it's that very he has cast her in the role of this
is my this poor woman who I have to save, and I am her
hero and she will love me. And he could have looked, he probably
could have figured out that she had a baby three months earlier if he ever
took a minute to think about it. So there's that too, that very
to me, just him in particular, just this very selfish creature who was
he was a samurai and he has a duty and everybody the fact that farmers
and poor people in town scrounged up whatever they could to fund his one hundred
ryu to go back into the samurai. For this guy and to him,
it's yeah, of course for me because of who I am, So I'm
telling you I am. The more we're talking, the more team Coleman I
am. I am anti Goby. Not to keep defending Gang Kobe, but
I do think a lot of the new wave films from this period, and
even some of the more exploitation samurai films from the early seventies really have a
lot to say about class issues in Japan. And it's not just like he's
unusually selfish. I think he is a fuck up and he is lazy.
But this idea that the entire town would support him getting back in with this
group of samurai. It makes the whole town look good and it benefits them,
so it's I do think you also have to consider some of those larger
class and cultural issues. They are doing something really nice for him, and
he is clearly moved by it, but he can't stop thinking with his dick.
Basically it makes him even worse when you think about it. And I
have to say, Katsu Nakamura his performance, everybody's performance, and this is
great, but some of the things where like Matsumoto or sorry the DP lighting
him with the light behind him, where you see all those hair sticking out,
and he just has this demonic look on his face and will laugh,
Oh my god, he just sends chills. Three, or when he's being
haunted, when he's leaving the town and he is thinking about ha Chuman,
who gave up his life for getting Kobe, and he pictures and I don't
think he's seeing this in real life. I think it's in his head where
Hachiman is basically crucified and stabbed in the side, like fucking Christ. I'm
like, okay. And then he runs into a graveyard and starts to see
the ghosts of all the people that he has murdered, all calling out his
name. Did it's his reactions to that I think are perfect, And yes,
we have to amp everything up because this is kabuki, but I think
at that point I'm one hundred percent all in, so I'm like, yes,
give it to me, give it to me big. This is fantastic.
This performance is just tearing my heart out. Yeah. I don't know
why he didn't have a bigger career. He did have an extremely prolific career
that started, I think when he was a child in the fifties, And
it just boggles my mind why he was just this like supporting character actor most
of the time and he wasn't a star. He's in quite on. He
stars in one of those segments. He's in that Pleasure to the Flesh movie
I mentioned and he's amazing there too, and it's you do see him pop
up, especially in some of the oh and I don't think we talked about
this yet some of the Art Theater Guild productions. For anyone who doesn't know
Art Theater Guild, they are a production company who basically funded the Japanese New
Wave when some of the bigger companies said no, you can't make this insane
film like, they made Oshima's second half of his career possible and he would
go on and work on some of their productions. But it's also in recent
decades, I would say, even since the eighties or nineties, I think
people have really lauded a lot of the Art Theater Guilt productions, and so
why not this one. It's just it's like, how did this one get
lost in the mix. It's very strange that this is so unknown, and
it really I have a pretty pretty thorough knowledge of horror titles or anything adjacent,
and that I had never heard of this or known anything about it.
This has never shown up on a list of little known Japanese revenge films or
anything to that effect. And I guess part of it is just that it
doesn't have a release or hasn't had one for a very long time. But
it is very odd because there is so much here and I didn't specifically clock
anything that was anything that I could say, Oh, clearly this filmmaker saw
this movie and use some shots. But that's another whole thing. I'm sure
there are because this feels so confident and specific in when it's doing that.
If I had seen this as a young person who is going to make movies
growing up, I would one day want to just take a lot from it,
those head shots. I want to say that when this was released in
Japan, that it was released on DVD initially obviously with subtitles, and that
I had that version for a long time. I don't know about the Blu
Ray version. I don't think that it does have subtitles. So I've seen
the Blu Ray version with English subtitles, but I want to say that they
might not be official subtitles, they might be fan subs. But it's it's
the sort of thing that you should see on as big as screen as possible
or as darker room as possible. Don't get one of those TVs where the
black is like gray like that will just ruin this movie for you, well,
even to think that the lighting on her arm when she's getting her tattoo
completed, and you just see like almost every poor every hair on her arm,
it is just lovely what they're doing with this. Especially happens to that
arm later in the movie. Yeah, no limbs are saying, no limbs,
no babies, nothing is safe in this film. We get the ending,
we get Sunguru stabbing himself, we get a several months later, the
forty seven rown in took on their duty and Gengobi was not among them.
And that's it. And even though the movie starts, it opens with Gengob
hanging, which we see again at one point in the film. I think
that's what I thought was also really interesting because I feel like what Matsumoto does,
he has taken the audience has filled in blanks of obviously at some point
he hangs himself, but no, we never see that happen. We see
glimpses of a dream of that happening, where him may be fantasizing about that
happen, but the movie ends. We don't know if he is wandering in
madness, if he has taken his life, if he is just begging somewhere.
We have no idea, but we can deduce it's not a good time
whatever it might be having. And in kind of a more vague way,
it just for me reinforced this idea that he really is like living in hell.
And I don't think that he gives that map because apparently that map is
a big deal that she finds. And I guess that was another difference between
the play and the movie is that there's this whole thing with the guy who
finds the map and brings the map to them, and they just eliminated that
altogether and just said, hey, look a map. It's okay, great.
I don't think we needed all that stuff. I didn't fully understand all
the map stuff. I will confess it was the whole thing of the brother
in law being from one faction and the Sengoro being from another faction, and
so there's this whole thing. And that's why with this forty eight forty seven
Ronan, like, this whole thing is like this war between these two factions
and stuff, and so it's, oh, hey, here's this map of
this guy's place with a secret entrance. We could go over there and kill
him, or if we give this to the forty seven ronan and they'll be
able to use this is fantastic. Oh my god, my dad's gonna be
so happy with me when I give this over to them. And then when
that map shows back up and the dad's given it to our main character with
the one hundred ryu with the same hanky that he used to tie that up,
the look on his face, Oh my god. Again, just a
powerhouse performance that's going on. I just couldn't get over it. And then
yeah, that stark end comment of he was not among them, it's oh
man, oh so good. It is a great last line of a movie,
a great last subtitle of a movie. It's so bitchy, yes,
passive aggressive, just because it didn't have to be worded that way. It
could have just been he was never seen again. Instead it's oh no,
this thing happened, didn't He wasn't there, but it happened. And I'm
not saying like this, Oh my god, this has to be in the
cannon and stuff. But it's got to be easier to see, because this
is a great movie and something that I've not seen before, especially with these
the multiple cuts and all this kind of stuff. I see that now in
movies today and here it is back in nineteen seventy one. I'm like,
oh, this is really neat that they're doing this, and just that it
seems very motivated. And it also, like we said at the very beginning,
keeps us on edge because we don't know what's fantasy what's reality. So
when those moments happen, is oh, okay, kind of jolted out of
it. And I know that probably upset people at the time watching it.
I know there were some reviews where it's just like, how dare you?
I don't know if this is real or not. It's the same people that
were like, I didn't know who to root for us I didn't like it.
But it's also bizarre considering when it came out, because you do have
directors, like new wave directors like Tashigahara doing similar stuff with face of Another
and even to a different degree, women in the Dunes, So it's like
you have Japanese directors playing around with editing and cineamhotography. But I wonder if
maybe where he got into trouble or he didn't get into trouble, but maybe
where critics and audiences got confused is like something like the more obvious new wave
films, even Funeral Parade of Roses, It's like, you go into it
and they feel like art films, they feel experimental, yes, whereas this,
I think if this is being sold to you as like a samurai horror
movie and then you get all of this experimental art stuff, you're like,
what the fuck is happening? Yeah. And also I think if you go
into it just thinking you're watching a new movie and it immediately is a feudal
story told tradition, even though it's not traditional, but on its face it
is a traditional adaptation of a you know, folk tale and so on,
and that probably to the other side of that audience who wants something modern,
who wanted another funeral Pread of Roses, it feels like a very star change
of Wait, you're adapting a play. Yeah. I think maybe the problem
is that it's just two in the middle. But it also doesn't belong in
that same category as the lone Wolf in cub movies and things like Lady Snowblood,
which are more obviously genre exploitation films. It's just in this no man's
land between period horror exploitation and art house and people seem to get confused when
they can't just have a film follow a set of guidelines, which to me
is insane. It's like today it would be an a twenty four film and
then people would all go crazy for it. Oh my god, don't even
say that. That's so insulting. Wait for the remake, Darnania Taylor Joey.
When I think about the first Lone Wolf in cub movie, when you
think of ohka, I'm itto when he's got a sword under the water and
he brings it up to kill one of the brothers from the clan from Redsseudo's
clan and it flashes like multiple times and stuff before it kills the guys.
Okay, that's pretty experimental, but yeah, to your point. Yeah,
and it's guys. We have had the Japanese New Wave around for quite a
few years now. Well it started in fifty nine sixty, so it's this
is the tail end of the Japanese New Wave here. I don't know why
this one. Yeah, there's so many films from just like oh wow,
I didn't expect that to happen, or like the you can get way out
there and just do the funky forest type of things where it's just this is
gonna be fucked up from the beginning to the end. But this has just
those little moments of fuck upery where you're like, oh that was surprising,
But it keeps you on your toes and I really liked it. Yeah,
it demands us a different kind of energy. It's not fun. There's nothing
cool about this movie in that regard. There's nothing, no shot call.
Even the violence. The violence is messy and clumsy and not done in a
way that either like it upsets you, it doesn't scare you. And so
I think there's that too. It would be hard to have seen this movie,
especially back in the day where you're seeing the movie once, you're not
immediately going back and going through things. To have gone to a theater and
seen this and then leave. It's a hard movie to grapple with that way,
I think. And I can't imagine somebody going anywhere and saying you need
to I think maybe at a certain level or a certain type of person would
know they need to see it again. Yeah, I would be jumping right
back in line for the next screening. Yeah. I almost watched this two
times in a row. Last night when I was watching it again, because
it was just like, this is so good and just really, yeah,
it's astounding. It's a great movie, and one yeah, I definitely it's
a tough watch, definitely, but it's one I highly recommend. And when
I'm really glad that we were able to talk about Yeah, I'm so glad
I was introduced to it. Yeah, I think it's pretty much a perfect
film, and more people need to watch it, especially if you're at all
a fan of Japanese cinema from the sixties and seventies. All right, we're
going to take a break and play a preview for next week's show right after
these brief messages. This is one of the hot scenes that is about heat
and chemistrysting the artistic question of the film. That's right, So just give
her a little room react normally, be sensitive above all because in the scene,
Days is going to take off her blouse. Wi Steve Market if you're
offering yourself to him in order to save the planet and any Yeah, bull
Finger in it. Great. That's right. We are back next month doing
something completely different. No more Japanese films for a little while. We're going
to be talking about comedies, including the film bow Finger. Next week until
then, I want to thank my co hosts Emily and Sam. So Sam,
what is happening with you? Please? Every time you ask me that,
I always want to talk about something vinegar syndrome related, but I can
never remember when things are actually going to get announced, and I don't want
to get in trouble, so let's just say I. I think by the
time this comes out, for sure, we will have a new episode of
my podcast Twitch of the Death Nerve, which Mike will be on talking all
about Frank Herbert and Dune and sandworms spiciness. I can't stand that Frank Herbert
can't say that whole Dune franchise, oh Man timely, Yeah, really hitting
on that pzeitgeist. I usually hate doing that, but what can you do
when somebody makes a popcorn bucket that looks like a sandworm that you could have
sex with, you have to do a podcast episode on it. And Emily,
how about you? What's going on with you? The usual? You
can find my writing at Diddley dolls House dot com, where I just generally
write about bad horror films, and then I do a podcast with the fantastic
Christine nk Peace, who you both know has been a guest on the show
before. We do a podcast called The Feminine Critique. We have been on
a little bit of a break just because of life stuff, but there are
plenty of back episodes. One of our last episodes we covered we were doing
the Criterion Channel, so we did Testament and The Day the Earth Caught Fire,
which were two very different end of the world films that I thought was
a very fun discussion in a very dark way that was very unthuttling fun for
the whole family. Thank you again, ladies for being on the show.
Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting
off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on,
like Feminine Critique. They are all available over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com.
Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community,
visit patreon dot com. Slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps some
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