The Phantom Museum: Random Forays Into the Vaults of Sir Henry Wellcome's Medical Collection: A most strange advertisement! Sir Henry Wellcome's expansive collection of medical curios gets an unusual appreciation from the Quay Brothers, as they document how some of this equipment works in their unique way. Some of the artifacts on display here are so wild that it is actually amazing that they
weren't original creations of the brothers, giving them ample material to work with in their "demonstrations" of how various apparatuses and figures work. And yet, knowing that they didn't create anything here beyond the animations themselves, to go with some grainy black & white footage of an unseen, white gloved figure ascending stairs frequently, does make this feel a bit impersonal as far as their talents are concerned, making one wish they used what they found in the vaults as inspiration for an original film, or that they assisted on a more traditional documentary short about the facilities, which does manage to speak for themselves with the glimpses of the sections that they obviously couldn't animate without causing damage to those pieces. It's a tough film to love for those reasons, but it does offer enough of the Quays' unique brand of appreciation for impossible, unwanted devices and machinations to make it a worthwhile watch.
His Girl Friday: I don't know if this is screwball perfection, but I'll be damned if it isn't close enough.
The Weavers of Nishijin: Proof that if you try hard enough, even menial labor can produce rich and alien visuals that entrance you for their duration. I have to imagine that the folks backing this documentary short would have preferred something more conventional, but Toshio Matsumoto's near avant-garde treatment of the titular district in Kyoto turns out to be a small stunner from start to finish, finding the beautiful geometry in hard labor and the the sinister machinations in the trade of such goods. It certainly helps add to the atmosphere that the score sounds very much like something one would hear from a horror-leaning sci-fi feature, though footage like a street market filled with goods that seem to have always been there or a top-down viewing of an executive board meeting to discuss how to bring the youth back to Nishijin hardly need additional help in eliciting strong sensations. Though I did skip ahead somewhat in the Matsumoto timeline when I watched Demons almost two years back, going back to go forward is already yielding promising results that make it easy to believe he was just that damn talented all along, making the wait to his feature film debut all the more exciting.
The Song of Stone: Yet again, I'm fascinated at anyone coming up with the funds for a documentary short and getting something this audacious. This time, Matsuomoto turns to a stone-cutters town, albeit through the lens of still photography, to produce something that's less a document and more of a staged ritual of sorts. Indeed, it's hard not to feel a bit unnerved with the way the film pans across the various stills, accompanied by a score that feels less like music and more like an occasionally rhythmic soundscape that captures some kind of entity in transition. If not exactly the stuff that cosmic nightmares are made of, it's about as close as you're likely to get with this sort of treatment, leaving one with the impression that there's some kind of life force that human eyes cannot simply see inside of stone, yet exists all the same to those attuned to its unique frequency. A rather engaging piece that keeps one entranced, though I would scarcely blame anyone for getting really nervous at the thought of passing a quarry any time soon!
Funeral Parade of Roses: As if one was watching the queerest adaptation of Oedipus Rex ever, projected onto broken shards of a mirror that was being picked up and attempted to be rearranged back in "order" by the director himself. Folks requiring traditional narratives need not apply here, but even those with that preference are likely to find something to love about this daring and exciting feature for how fearless it is in charging forth to the beat of its own drum and managing the near-impossible feat of looking, sounding and feeling like it was shot yesterday for a 50-year-old film. A truly dazzling, dizzying experience that one needs to experience for themselves.
Ecstasis: Not much more than a longer version of Guevera's short film in
Funeral Parade of Roses, though I will admit that it makes his intentions of using his film as a kind of projection of whatever ability he thinks he has, directly into the minds of all that view it, a lot clearer. One certainly can appreciate a lot of the scattered images on display throughout it as well, including the image that would go on to be featured on the cover of the Blu-ray Arbelos Films (then Cineliscious Pics) put out, and the effect of creating a trance-like state is achieved. Perhaps not as effective without the context that the feature-length film that it belongs to provides, but a fascinating trip to take all the same.
Metastasis: A toilet bowl possibly goes supernova! Undoubtedly a pioneering and almost assuredly unintentional use of electro-color processing for non-medical purposes, one can get the sense that this art piece must've been something else in its intended venue back in 1971, but as it stands, it manages to achieve the impossible task of making a static image of a toilet bowl compelling for eight minutes with the way the image is able to change through color manipulation. Definitely not the kind of thing where you go in asking what it all means, and instead has you reflect on what it made you feel instead. For me? Well, that's between me and the toilet, thank you very much!
Expansion: Proving that he wasn't
just quite done with this footage from
Funeral Parade of Roses yet,
Ecstasis gets reworked again into an electro-color odyssey, accompanied with footage from an installation that Matsumoto did elsewhere and scored to a hard-hitting psych rock score. The results? Well, it certainly is a hell of a trip, with the color shifts coming more frequently and seemingly unending in their variety, truly transforming an existing work into something else altogether. A personal theory of mine: perhaps this is the effect Guevera intended with his original film in the first place? No matter the reason why, this one definitely jackhammers into your consciousness in an aggressive yet strangely satisfying way.
Mona Lisa: ...well, you probably get the idea now from who made it and the title being what it is. The world's most famous portrait goes on quite the trip herself, transporting in and out of her natural backdrop as the video effects recolor, distort and even threaten to wash her out of the image altogether that doesn't seem altogether unlike a ritual of rebirth and cleansing. It can feel a bit slight at a mere three minutes in length, but perhaps Matsumoto felt he got everything he needed out of the old girl for a more directed experience.
Everything Visible is Empty: You
will reach Enlightenment, whether you want to or not! Buddhist script and imagery fills this dazzling display that seemingly sets out to achieve just what that first sentence describes, literally ending in a light show that feels about right for the pinnacle of ascension that practitioners aspire to experience. Visually and aurally potent stuff from start to finish!
Atman: This feels an awful lot like what one would see after they die and realize that they're going to some version of hell! A simple setup, that of a person in a Hannya mask sitting on the shore of a lake as the camera pans around them, Matsumoto takes the opportunity to play around with the color timing, framerate, zoom length and, really, any damn thing he pleases for a supremely creepy piece that hits the spot for anyone wanting something with more of a horror vibe that his other shorts aren't interested in achieving, or for those who simply want something in the same vein as Demons when it comes to using simple yet striking imagery to drive the needles deep into your nerves. Perhaps the scariest thing of all: realizing that the subject probably isn't sitting on a chair, suggesting that they have thighs of steel or might actual be a demon waiting for you to wash up on her shores. I want to believe the former, but after watching something effective, I know deep down it must be the latter.
Oh, and I finally began a deep dive into the works of James Cameron, just because.
Xenogenesis: James Cameron made a name for himself in this co-directed effort, one that he had hoped would eventually spawn into a feature film of its own. While history did not see it the same way, it's hard not to be awfully impressed by Cameron's technological prowess here all the same, offering up impressive effects on a pittance of a budget, particularly in the climatic robot duel. It's certainly not hard to see where just about everything else couldn't be improved on, as the actors here are probably only considered as such on a scientific basis (lead actor William Wisher Jr. does become a rather important figure in Cameron's immediate future, though!), the
in media res approach to the story still produces a rather anemic hook and, while understandable at this point in his career, it doesn't have nearly the kind of polish on all levels that he's used. Still, for what amounts to a glorified pitch film, it's hard not to see why Roger Corman and company hired him in short order to work on several projects for them, as he turned in rather impressive results on tiny budgets, securing at least that kind of future in filmmaking if the chips were to land that way. Part of me does wish that this did wind up getting resurrected down the line, but I have no doubt that Cameron already strip-mined everything worthwhile he had planned for this concept, which makes one wonder if anyone ever asked him about that aspect. A bright future certainly lays ahead for our budding intrepid filmmaker, though perhaps not without a bump in the road as we're likely about to experience...
Piranha II: The Spawning:
As the story goes, James Cameron, replacing another director who had been fired, barely lasted days into the shoot for this film before its producer Ovidio G. Assonitis decided that he didn't have what it took to deliver the film that he wanted to see, making himself the de facto director for the rest of the shoot. Despite already being heavily involved in multiple levels of the production, as the original special effects supervisor and as a screenwriter, and already being second-guessed on literally every choice he was making by Assonitis already, it must've hurt Cameron quite a bit to be so close to making a feature film of his own, only to have it wrestled away from him in such a disappointing fashion. The tales of him allegedly breaking into the editing bay on the film to get something close to his original vision don't sound all that crazy for the kind of passion he's known for on his other projects, even if those parts may carry a tall tale or two. Alas, his best efforts can't overcome contractual deals, and we are stuck with this being his first credited feature film as a director.
Naturally, little distinguishes this film for anything resembling his filmmaking ability, aside from the short sequences featuring flying piranha that bear an unmistakable similarity to the effects that would be employed for the facehuggers in Aliens, but what's more disappointing is that this barely resembles what one would have wanted out of a sequel to Piranha in the first place. The de facto best Jaws ripoff, Piranha's uncommon yet genuine wit and crowd-pleasing brutality helped make it a quick cult classic, yet you'd be hard-pressed to find either here in some of the dullest cheapie B-movie filmmaking ever made. One wonders if the reason why Assonitis was so adamant about kicking Cameron off the project was because he feared that he might actually make something halfway remarkable, putting into sharp relief just how dull and pedestrian his own talents were by comparison. Here, there's literally nothing that helps to make this stand out from the pack that's not something a person could read into the premise of flying piranhas eventually attacking folks on land. Sure, it's got some gore and female nudity in it, but I'm pretty sure that even those would have fared better in the hands of someone with a good eye, rather than someone who seems proud that they can see at all.
Well, there is one thing that does help make this stick out from the pack, though it's a highly dubious honor at best. In my time watching many a horror movie of a certain budget bracket, I don't think I can recall a single one that hates black people as much as this one, as it not only goes out of its way to ethnically cleanse anyone of that racial background, but the film reserves its bloodiest, most violent moments for them as well, lingering on their death throes in an almost perverse fashion. And given that the setting of the film is apparently Jamaica, getting rid of your black cast is no small feat!
The lesson Cameron learned here is an obvious one, given how frequently he would clash with producers thereafter and assert his authority far more definitively than he could have here, though making a good friend in the form of Lance Henriksen, soon to be a regular in his films, was certainly worth the headache in the long. Ironically, one of the few scenes that Cameron shot and was retained in the film was apparently the guffaw-inducing moment towards the end, where Henriksen is tasked with bailing on his helicopter for no particular reason, resulting in an explosion. A stunt that nearly killed both men, it's a sublimely stupid moment that called attention to the fact that the film had precious few of them to begin with. That is about as damning a statement for the state that this film is in: even when James Cameron does something really dumb, it's worth commenting on far more than anything else the film has going for it. You'll wish that the film was more inept on the whole to give you something to feel other than fatal indifference.
