Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on July 19, 2005, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
This year, there’s more to my visit to Montreal’s Fantasia film festival than just seeing movies. I’m here as the screenwriter accompanying the world premiere screening of Shadow: Dead Riot, joining producer Carl Morano to introduce the film and take questions this coming Saturday night. But well before that happens, I also fulfill another mission: I’m bearing six copies of Sazuma’s two-DVD set of Subconscious Cruelty to give to the film’s producer/Fantasia programmer Mitch Davis. Since receiving multiple copies would suggest an “intent to distribute” on Mitch’s part and get him in trouble with Canadian customs, he’s had the discs sent to me in New York, and I smuggle them across the border. The operation goes without incident; after all, the customs agent, when he asked if I had any “firearms, alcohol or tobacco” on me, didn’t add “sexually explicit, graphically violent and subversively blasphemous movies” to the list.
By now, Montreal feels like a second home, especially given all the friends I have there and who accompany me on the trip. I head up with Fango scribe Matt Kiernan and screenwriter Eric Struble, and am soon hanging with Mitch, Synapse Films’ Don May Jr., FAB Press’ Harvey Fenton, writer Marcelle Perks and her husband Ingo, local actress Isabelle Stephen and her artist boyfriend Rick (Motion Picture Purgatory) Trembles and others. Matt, Eric and I arrive at the Concordia Hall theater just in time to catch the Small Gauge Trauma showcase of strange and unusual short films, most specifically Rick’s latest animated work, (Expletive Deleted). Only one minute long, Expletive manages to pack in more perversion than any number of similarly inclined feature films, daring your eye to explore the entire frame and discover some new taboo-shattering tableau.
The next movie reminds my group of the situation several years back, where the very first film we saw at Fantasia (Attack the Gas Station) was an unexpected and funny treat. Cromartie High School (pictured) was directed by Yudai Yamaguchi, whose previous movie Battlefield Baseball doesn’t have the greatest rep among my crowd (I haven’t seen it myself). Cromartie, on the other hand, is lots of fun despite a serious lull at about the hour mark. Based, like many of the features at Fantasia this year, on a manga (in this case, by Eiji Nonaka), Cromartie opens with a hilarious history of the titular educational establishment, which has already been destroyed and rebuilt a half-dozen times before the actual story begins, and follows a new student as he deals with the freaks, strange creatures and assorted nutcases who populate its classrooms. Proceeding as a series of sketches for the first half, with each amusingly incorporating elements of the last, the movie develops something of a plot in the latter sections, and while the setup for it loses energy, the film rallies for a laugh-out-loud and literally explosive climax.
Things get serious for the next feature, which has been known as Neighbor No. 13 in its English promotional material but is titled The Neighbor in 13 on screen. Whatever you call it, it’s a bleak and nasty revenge saga (again manga-based, derived from Santa Inoue’s work) in which a young man manifests a scarred alter ego who sets out for payback against those who have mistreated him both in childhood and the present day. Director Yasuo Inoue (apparently no relation) clearly wants to be Park Chan-wook (OldBoy) in the worst way, and unfortunately succeeds; pointless and slow, Neighbor gives us no one worth being interested in (caring about them is evidently beside the point) and takes way too long to tell its simple (and simplistic) story. The experience of watching it is summed up by a gratuitous close-up of a turd in a toilet bowl; even those who usually enjoy Asian cinema-of-cruelty fare epitomized by the work of Takashi Miike (who has a small role here) may find this a tough sit.
Most of the rest of the group hang around the Hall to catch John Roecker’s blasphemous Manson-claymation epic Live Freaky! Die Freaky!, but I’ve heard so many good things about the Thai chiller Shutter, playing across the street at the J.A. de Sève auditorium, that I have to go check it out. Directed by Banjon Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom, it’s undeniably accomplished on a craft level, but storywise it’s little more than a highlight reel of the past decade of Asian horror cinema. The tale of a photographer whose pictures and then real life are haunted by a ghostly apparition, Shutter borrows both story points and individual setpieces from Ringu, Ju-On/The Grudge and The Eye, with a touch of I Know What You Did Last Summer thrown in for good measure. A couple of original setpieces—a spirit attack in a darkened studio and a nasty twist ending—deliver the jolts, and the filmmakers do a nice job sustaining general tension, but the familiarity of it all takes some of the edge off.
Sunday morning and early afternoon are spent recovering from Saturday’s long drive and the first in a series of late nights out with the Fantasia gang, and thus I miss the first installment of Steve Bissette’s two-part lecture presentation Journeys Into Fear. Circumstances lead me to miss the second part as well on Monday, which I regret, because those who do attend tell me the presentations are terrific. Sorry, Steve! My first movie Sunday is White Dragon from Wilson Yip, which begins and ends as a period martial arts adventure but whose lengthy midsection is mostly concerned with romantic farce. There’s a lot of fun to be had with Yip’s deliberate anachronisms (jokes about McDonald’s and Windows, among other things), and while action junkies might find it somewhat lacking, there are plenty of entertaining compensations.
Even better is Otakus in Love, Matsuo Suzuki’s directorial debut (after acting in films like Ichi the Killer) that is not only based on a manga (by Jun Hanyunyu), it’s about the art form, too. Specifically, it charts the unsteady romance between an aspiring young artist who uses rocks as his canvas and a girl devoted to cosplay. These two would seem to have plenty in common, but the course of their love doesn’t run smooth—yet it’s enormously entertaining, endlessly inventive and has lots of fun with the world of fan-obsessives without being condescending. It’s the discovery of the festival so far.
From the sublime, sadly, we proceed to the ridiculous. Fighter in the Wind is based on the true story of a Korean martial artist who rose to the top of the post-WWII Japanese fight circuit, but writer/director Yang Yoon-ho indulges in one moldy cliché after another, treating them all as if they’re fresh and new. There’s a certain amount of eye-rolling amusement to be had as these conventions are trotted out with a completely straight face, but after a while, I was just waiting for the damn thing to end already. To make matters worse, although some of the hand-to-hand combat appears well-staged, Yang shoots and edits it in gimmicky fashion that consistently undercuts viewer engagement with it.
Monday’s fact-based Korean action entry, Kang Woo-suk’s Silmido, is a vast improvement. A huge box-office hit at home, this is a tough, meaty military drama based on the true saga (set in 1968) of a group of convicts taken by South Korean intelligence to the titular island, where they undergo brutal training to prepare for a mission to infiltrate North Korea and assassinate its leader Kim Il-sung. Brutal and stirring, the movie also sheds light on the political machinations behind the events, and weaves in themes of honor and duty amongst the action and strong performances. In so doing, it joins the recent string of fine Korean war dramas that also includes JSA: Joint Security Area and Tae Guk Gi.
The next and final film of the night is Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, and, well, you probably don’t need me to tell you much more about this one (my review is here). All I can say is that seeing it with a huge Fantasia crowd (after first viewing it in a screening room) is quite an experience; everyone really digs the film, some even applauding and cheering at moments (involving the deaths of innocent victims) that perhaps they shouldn’t. The crowd borders on standing-room-only, and actually becomes that way when a number of the audience get up and start to leave before the movie is finished, believing the end credits are about to roll! Without giving anything away, here’s a hint: You may think the film is over at a certain point, but it’s not—not by a longshot.
TO BE CONTINUED
