Short of the Week #12: Junk Head

I mentioned a film yesterday that played What the Film Fest called Junk Head. It is a stop-motion animated opus from Japanese filmmaker Takahide Hori. Essentially made by just Hori himself over the course of five years, it is an amazing achievement of dark wonder and whimsy. Below is the 2014 short that started it all and became the first chapter of his two-hour epic. Enjoy!

What The Weekend!

Over the last few days, I've had an extremely busy and fruitful weekend splitting my time between two festivals. The inaugural Hexploitation Film Festival in Hamilton and the fourth edition of What the Film Fest in Toronto. All told I saw seven features and fifteen shorts. 

At Hexfest, we got some great feedback this year, especially for the shorts programme that made me very happy. It was great to see one of my current faves, Asaf Livni's My First Time, flourish on the big screen as well as screening the world premiere of Niall Shukla's trippy nightmare A Doll Distorted. 

As for features, I really responded to Eduardo Clorio's I Wish I Wish which is basically what you would get if the Monkey's Paw was an eighties style board game. Clorio even made the trip up from Mexico and was humbled by the overwhelmingly positive reception. 

I also like Chad Archibald's The Heretics. The trio of actors in the piece (Nina Kiri, Jorja Cadence & Ry Barrett) really brought it, as well as some fantastic effects work. I've been saying for a while that each subsequent Black Fawn title increases in quality and this one is no different.

The second half of my weekend was taken up by Peter Kuplowsky's WTF Fest. His showcasing of weird, offbeat cinema continued with the likes of Terry Chiu's Mangoshake, Armando Lamberti's Green House and Takehide Hori's Junk Head.

It was a terrific three days of fringe cinema.

Japan Gonna Pump... You up!

Last Saturday for its third year in a row, The Royal Cinema hosted the What The Film Festival.

A satellite event of the Laser Blast Film Society, the WTFF caters to the eclectic and experimental. Programmer Peter Kuplowsky scowers the globe for stuff outside the mainstream and this year gave us three such examples in Shinichi Fukazawa's Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell, Kentucker Audley's Sylvio and Michael Reich's She's Allergic To Cats.

Due to a family engagement, I was only able to catch the first show, but what a time it was.

You may have heard this movie referred to as the Japanese Evil Dead and that is pretty accurate. However, though there were many bits and pieces that were ripped right out of Raimi's beloved splat-stick trilogy, Fukazawa did make this his own thing by mixing in traditional Asian ghost story tropes and the aforementioned bodybuilding obsession. It did take a while to get going, but once the vengeful spirit was unleashed, the balls-to-the-wall inventiveness took over.

Here's blood in your eye! (sorry, couldn't resist)

As a huge Sam Raimi fan, it was impossible for me to not find this incredibly endearing. Body Builder was as fun as it was gory with a delightful everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to practical effects. Shot mostly in confined spaces, you could tell how difficult and time consuming - much like Evil Dead - some of these sequences must have been to shoot. It's the kind of DIY filmmaking that not only entertains, but also inspires.

Writer/Director & also lead actor Shinichi Fukazawa.

It is sad to think that this movie almost did not see the light of day. It was shot in 1995, but not fully put together for another fifteen years. It was then only available underground on DVD-R until UK company TerraCotta finally did an official release this year. I feel the world of splatter cinema is now a little redder for it.

DKTM 256

Hey all. Well, the clocks are now turned ahead, so things are looking up on this side of The Wall. More sun, means more heat, which means less bone-chilling,ball-shrivelling cold. Hallelujah!

Vive La France.

Here's a trailer for a cool looking French film that premiered at Fantastic Fest last year called Horsehead.

Though the trailer isn't new, I bring it up because Horsehead was recently picked up for distribution in Canada by Black Fawn Films, so hopefully I'll be getting a crack at this visually stunning flick this May.

Tape Heads.

Check out this cool book from Tom Hodge of The Dude Designs (take a moment to check out his site, because he's pretty great).

This is a collection of over two-hundred and forty covers from the VHS era with a forward from Mondo's Justin Ismael. What makes this book even more special it is an exploration of VHS art from the UK, so a good deal of them will not be familiar to those of us this side of the pond.

VHS Video Cover Art is currently available for pre-order through Amazon for release May 28th.

Don't Use The Good China.

Here's another example that anything can be re-appropriated for more horrifying means. Check out these pieces from Israeli ceramic sculptor Ronit Baranga.

This rattles my brain. It's like that test where it's hard to read off the names of colours, because the words are printed in a different colour that the word (“red” in yellow and so on). Baranga has tapped into that, as dishes are not supposed to have mouths in them;

“The useful, passive, tableware can now be perceived as an active object, aware of itself and its surroundings – responding to it. It does not allow to be taken for granted, to be used. It decides on its own how to behave in the situation.”

Weeeeeeird. To see the rest of the set, click here.

Trailer Tuesdays: Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell.

I watched the Japanese 1968 flick Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell last night.

As you can see, this one’s a wee bit strange. With equal parts aliens and vampires, it gives you about as much as a decidedly PG-rated film can.

One of the four genre efforts (Genocide, The X From Outer Space and The Living Skeleton being the others) from Japanese studio Shochiku, a label better known for straight-up dramas, I can see the visual style of the film’s opening sequence influencing both Mike Hodges’ Flash Gordon (1980) and Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (2003).

All four aforementioned titles are currently available through Criterion in a four-disc set entitled When Horror Came To Shochiku.

Trailer Tuesdays: Night Train To Terror

Just when I thought it would be a while before i saw anything as enjoyable as Bloody Birthday, along comes a chance encounter with 1985's Night Train To Terror. Holy fuck. THIS movie!!!

My previous knowledge of this movie did not go beyond the poster.

I always figured it was a second rate slasher, but it is actually an anthology about God and Satan battling over souls on a train. The first half-hour is largely incoherent, but my, does it have countless gifts to give if you stick around.

Musical interludes, complete with sax and break dancing! 

Richard “Bull” Moll - inexplicably credited as Charles Moll - in two different unconnected roles!

Random stop motion animation creatures!

Gratuitous Nudity!

And Cameron Mitchell!

Vinegar Syndrome recently released a Blu-ray, so it shouldn't be too hard to find it in some capacity. And oh boy, do you ever want to check this one out!