Yes, it’s that time of year once again – we’ll be heading into the festive season, which serves us up the perfect chance to look back at all the movies watched in 2021 and the real standouts there. We had a whole host of themed months as part of proceedings this annum, as well as plenty of ‘mixed bag’ months, and we’ll be looking to continue some of those specials as we push into 2022! But for now, let’s reflect on the very finest of this year…

5) OVER YOUR DEAD BODY (9/10)
Takashi Miike month was not surprisingly packed with very good films, and my first watch of Over Your Dead Body proved to be a revelation. A sort of ‘story within a story’, this intriguing take on the Japanese ghost tale presented a play that began to spill all too painfully into the real life of its performers. Probably not Miike’s most brutal or confronting, but a powerful and complex offering nonetheless – I’ve not got round to my rewatch yet, but I sure will be giving it a second viewing to unpick it further.

4) ANTIVIRAL (9/10)
And similarly, Cronenberg month featured some exceptionally fine movies, but it was Brandon Cronenberg’s contribution that stood out the most for me. Playing out like a JG Ballard story that never was, this plot felt all too real, entering the strange world of bugs and diseases extracted from celebrities being sold to superfans in a near-future world. It feels like we’re only a few years off this becoming a reality if I’m completely honest. Stark, cold and involved, this is well worth a look and follows a fine family tradition of paranoid body horror.

3) DAHMER (9/10)
A movie that genuinely surprised me, with a strong central performance by a young Jeremy Renner, and one that zoomed in on the psychology and character of Dahmer rather than the hideous nature of his crimes. The slow-burn nature of this one drew me in bit by bit until I felt absolutely mesmerised by it, and the excellent script and acting performances boosted this one up immensely too. Not what I would have expected from a serial killer flick, but ultimately all the better for it!

2) AUDITION (10/10)
This was a movie that I remembered loving on first watch – though that first watch would have been about 15 years ago. And it certainly stood up to a second viewing – another serious slow-burner and a film probably best seen knowing little about it. This one has generally gone down as one of Takashi Miike’s best films, and that’s a reputation it’s well worthy of – and you can rest assured there’s plenty of competition in that particular filmography…

1) MOEBIUS (10/10)
A film I went into knowing literally nothing about that absolutely blew my socks off. A sort of modern Greek tragedy, without one word of dialogue in its whole runtime, this was totally unlike anything I’d ever seen before. It’s seriously dark and twisted, and crosses all sorts of taboos, but was just an absolutely compelling watch. All credit to the cast for conveying this with a script without a single line of dialogue in!

So, there we have the top 5 – I’m also going to add in a couple of honourable mentions that nearly made the list…
MEAT GRINDER (8.5/10) – this Thai horror movie was just brutal and nihilistic, but still incredibly hard to take your eyes off. The lead performance from Mai Charoenpura was awesome to boot, and while it did nothing to lift my spirits, I was very impressed all told.
THE LAST SUPPER (8.5/10) – This Japanese cannibal movie was surprisingly measured, although it did have its grotesque moments. Everyone absolutely loves our lead’s mystery meat, although it’s not a mystery to us as viewers. I’d also add this one certainly had an ending I’m never liable to forget…

So there we have it, another year of Film Gutter is officially in the books! As always, we’ll be bringing you plenty more extreme horror goodness every week as we push into 2022 – who knows what fresh delights we’ll find in the next twelve months? Hope everyone has a great Christmas and New Year, and we’ll see you again in January!

A blind man tormented by the mysterious disappearance of his dog, is one day visited by a sadistic childhood friend, igniting a disturbing journey of self discovery.
Director
M.P. Wills
Writer
M.P. Wills
Stars
Rahel Romahn Matt Levett  Richard James Allen

Well, 2021 is almost at end – or at the very least, it is for Film Gutter. This has been a consistently strange year, with a lot of ups and downs, and in many regards that seems to sum up our annum of reviewing too. And we’re wrapping things up with another short film offering from the good folks at Alter, who continue to serve up a broad range of offerings of all subgenres from all over the world via the magic of YouTube. Today’s offer I again come to knowing absolutely nothing about, although the words ‘CONTENT WARNING’ after the title do tend to stand out as a beacon this is liable to be a good bet for the Film Gutter treatment. And so it proved…

The main character of Blood Orange is Eli, who has become blind in recent years and depends heavily on his dog Hugo to get around. But we kick off with an interesting frontispiece, which is beautifully narrated to boot, about a child beating the wings of his friend’s pet quail with a hammer. A no-nonsense opening for sure, and sadly the animal cruelty is going to come around again – though obviously staged, unlike the horrors of the likes of Cannibal Holocaust. Because poor Hugo has gone missing – taken by Eli’s sadistic former friend Michael, who proceeds to trim a lock of hair off the dog before burning it alive. We don’t see anything graphic, but this one is still liable to be fairly upsetting to any animal lovers out there.

Eli reports Hugo missing, but the police don’t seem to take him seriously, and his neighbours mostly seem to be complete douchebags, with one in particular taking the opportunity to soak Eli with the garden hose. It’s not long before Michael turns up, ready to revel in the success of his murderous act, even offering Eli a pipe filled in part with the literal ‘hair of the dog’. But Eli is ready for his friend’s antics, and he has a cold, refreshing slice of violence of his own to serve up…

Blood Orange is an intriguing concept, and something that I enjoyed in a cathartic sort of way – it was great to see the most awful protagonist get his comeuppance, as well as the many minor villains of the piece, and while you can’t exactly consider Eli squeaky clean he is the nearest thing we have to a hero of the piece. The outside world has this odd plasticky, unreal feel to it here, just amping up the darkness of Eli’s world that bit further, and the voiceover we have at the start and end of the film are excellent, very well written and also delivered with some real panache in order to effectively deliver both the set-up and denouement outside of the main runtime here.

Blood Orange may not be the very best short film you’re ever liable to see, but everything here is doubtless effective, and the plot is solidly delivered if not staggeringly original. The acting performances are well done, for the limited time that we have, and everyone fits the bill nicely in their parts. Ultimately there’s no real weak areas, but equally no areas that absolutely smash it out of the park – a good all-rounder, you could say.

RATING: 7/10. A quirky and entertaining offering, with a dark sense of humour riddled throughout, enhanced by some lovely voiceover. It’s hard not to find the ending satisfying given what has come before it, and that only adds to the wry touch of the macabre employed here. It almost feels like a short episode of Tales of the Unexpected or something similar, but with more of a modern spin to it. You could spend a quarter of an hour plenty of worse ways!

Jill's got the snake. Julia's got the flute. Alone, they have nothing. But together, they have a secret weapon to fight the darkness.
Director
David Mahmoudieh
Writer
David Mahmoudieh
Stars
Poppy Drayton Micah Fitzgerald Ross Francis

I’ve always been a lover of short films, and over the six years or so of Film Gutter we’ve covered more than a handful, taking in the good, the bad and of course the deeply weird. So, I figured that – with the close of 2021 almost upon us (Ed. time got away from us at the end of the month, but what is time if nothing but an construct of our minds)  – I’d take the opportunity to check out a couple of shorter offerings before closing with the now-traditional annual Top 5 list. Although given the range of particularly good films I’ve watched this year, I might have to expand to a Top 10…

Before I get into it, I’d like to give a quick shout out to the Alter channel on YouTube, where you can find Snake Dick among a whole host of other short films. They do some great work in putting really interesting material out, and if you consider yourself a lover of horror in the short form then their channel is well worth dropping by.

So, on to Snake Dick – and I hate to say it, but it’s just another one of those titles that drew me in. I’m a sucker for a film with a great moniker, and this was another classic case here. The story itself concerns Jill and Julia, who are on their travels and stop at a garage to see what they can do to fix their evidently broken-down car. The garage is combined with a diner and motel, and the minute they step out of the car they get cat-called by Hillbilly Joe and Hillbilly Earl (not the titles I gave them, but their official character names on IMDB). However, Jill and Julia have no intention of putting up with that sort of nonsense, and Jill draws a gun, forcing Joe to his knees and demanding that he squeal like a pig. Earl isn’t going to have any of that, and draws a knife in an attempt to even the odds, but Jill and Julia have one more secret weapon up their sleeves… although it’s not technically up their sleeves…

Given the runtime, this one is of course relatively light, but it was shot nicely – making good use of the limited space that it was created within – and each character comes across as believable, if we do lean back on stereotypes a touch. While it did live up to the title, it did not do it in the way I had expected whatsoever which I think is also well worth of some credit. The end of the movie, with the leads driving off into the distance with smoke climbing into the sky, made me think that this was possibly a sort of ‘calling card’ with a view to something bigger perhaps happening in time, and I’d be open to that. There’s an implication of some larger event in the world, and the strangest element of the movie could easily be expanded and offer some more explanation if granted that extra bit of runtime. Some have suggested it could even make a TV series in the reviews, and again that could be intriguing. As a standalone, it’s plenty likeable and I felt like I’d certainly be happy to check out more from this director going forward.

RATING: 8/10. This one uses some old horror tropes, sure, but it’s done well enough – and then the trope you might expect here is absolutely thrown out of the window for something far more unpredictable. It has the sense of a road movie, obviously without too much time on the road, but there could be scope to make something more of this one, and it’s still recent enough to yet hope that might happen! As I mentioned above, you can check this one our on Alter’s channel on YouTube, and I don’t think you’ll regret giving up your time to give this a watch.

The idea of games seems to be central to a host of horror films these days – you could no doubt reel off a whole host of movies with this concept at the core, twisted games with the winners being allowed to survive and the losers being brutally killed, often with the people involved having to kill or torture one another in the process. And we’ve covered our fair share over the years, though I do try not to overdo it – given the number of films in the pantheon, you could spend a year or more covering these alone. And Play or Die is – as the title would intimate – another example of deadly games with horribly high, real stakes for everyone involved…

Lucas and Chloe are both avid gamers, and the start of the film here seems to be reunited after some time apart. We find out they previously spent years trying to track down a secret game online called Paranoia, and Chloe claims that she’s now incredibly close to unlocking it. With a bit of tech wizardry, they’re soon off to a secret underground rave and – after beating a round of what I think is Street Fighter – they find themselves part of the game, locked in an abandoned asylum with a handful of other gamers. A series of fiendish puzzles ensue, each one serving up more danger than the last, until (inevitably – this is not even much of a spoiler) the game boils down to just Lucas and Chloe.

The whole thing looks decent, and the puzzles in the game feel reasonably believable – I’m stuffed if I could have figured some of them out. As things wear on, some of the traps and devices do begin to get a bit far-fetched, but I think the minute you go into something like this you have to suspend disbelief in order to really get something out of it. The acting performances were OK, if nothing mind-blowing, and the whole thing at large was an entertaining enough romp for a horror fan such as myself. After an hour or so of this one I was willing to give this a perfectly passable mark, something in the 6 or 6.5 range.

However – and I will say this without trying to spoil it – the ending to this movie is just terrible. We’d come to a point, really, where there was nothing else to do or add, but there just had to be something else for the filmmakers to throw in. To be fair, this is based on a novel, so I suppose if it was in the original source material then I shouldn’t really lay this at the feet of the director. But this unravels big time in the last fifteen minutes, and the mark I wanted to give it seemed to slide literally second by second. If you’d hit a home run – or even bunted it to first base – with the finale I’d have given this something perfectly decent, but this was a big-time strike out of an ending which is going to drag it down.

If you wanted to take a look for yourself, you’ll find this one on Sky Cinema – or at least you could at the time of writing – but brace yourself for it. You might get a bit more out of it, or be a bit more forgiving, if you have an idea what’s coming…

RATING: 3/10. Out of the many ‘do you wanna play a game’ style horror movies I’ve seen, sadly this has to rate among the worst. Most of it is perfectly serviceable, but you’re never secured a decent grade until the credits roll, and I just can’t let go of this finale – I could hardly believe what I was seeing, and I don’t mean that in a good way here! This had potential but it seemed to be frittered away – I’d be interested to check out the book and see if it goes down the same road as this one, or if it’s different to the end result here. Honestly I think you could do better even if this is just the sort of movie you love.

It’s not all that often we get to look at a documentary here at Film Gutter, but this one feels mightily relevant in delving into the myths and truths behind one of the most notorious extreme horror films of all time. I Spit On Your Grave in and of itself barely needs an introduction – in fact, some time back we did a full month on the topic, taking in reviews of the original, the remake trilogy and the unofficial sequel, Savage Vengeance (or as its title card read, Savage Vengance). And this documentary, made by the son of the original director Meir Zarchi, sets out to explore the origins, fan reactions, critical response and indeed moral panic surrounding ISOYG.

Documentaries sometimes don’t make for the easiest things to review, and for today I’m going to zoom in on two elements – the actual look and feel of the thing, as well as the information and background that it provided. From the get-go this movie doesn’t look all that great – it’s obviously filmed fairly cheap, and some of the digital stuff does look pretty poor. The interviews in and of themselves all look fine, though maybe there could be a bit more visual interest created with more camera angles and the like. However, I don’t want to be too hard on that element because it’s obviously a real passion project by Terry Zarchi, who produced and directed, and it feels to me like he really does want to explore this topic almost as a sort of catharsis, of dealing with the many contrary emotions that this movie must have brought about. Most of the junior Zarchi’s work has been in casting, with this being only a third time behind the camera – and those movies spread pretty wide apart – so there’s a definite sense this meant something to him personally, which I have to applaud.

In terms of offering fresh insight into the movie and its history, I feel like it does a decent if not spectacular job there – some of this I was familiar with, although I’m not a novice or a newbie where it comes to these movies. There were some interesting insights here though – for example, one of the actors deciding never to act again after this experience, and Camille Keaton – naturally one of the main interviewees here – offers plenty of fascinating on-set stories, as well as some of her experiences beyond the movie as the star of this film. Parts of the movie looking at the distribution and the controversy surrounding it – including Siskel and Ebert’s brutal reviews and efforts to get the movie pulled – were familiar to me but ultimately had to be covered in the interest of fullness. I was pretty stunned to learn that the model on the well-known poster for the movie was in fact a young Demi Moore – not world-shaking, but an intriguing nugget nonetheless.

Overall, this is a solid effort as a study of one of the most infamous movies ever released, for all that a higher budget might have helped. It could also have done with a slight trim, feeling a bit overlong at nearly an hour and three-quarters. All the main players in the movie are here barring a handful who didn’t want to take part, and it certainly adds relevant context and flavour to a viewing of the film – it’d be interesting to watch the original back with all these splashes of extra info in mind. Honestly, I’d like to see more extreme horror movies given this sort of treatment – we have A Serbian Documentary on the way, as well as Revisiting Melancholie Der Engel out there yet to review as well. Maybe these offerings can usher in more critical and analytical looks at some of those films that have stirred so much controversy and emotional reaction over the years.

RATING: 7/10. This was a good, even-handed look at a movie with a long and confused history, one that fell at several hurdles before finding any sort of audience at all and has been the subject of intense debate and discussion ever since. If you’re already a fan of ISOYG this will probably present plenty for you, and even those of you with only a passing knowledge of it might even find it an interesting watch. It’s worth your time if maybe it could have been cut a bit shorter.

THE BURNING HELL (1974)
Southern Baptist preacher Estus W. Pirkle vividly depicts where non-believers and sinners go unless they become saved.
Dir. Ron Ormond, 57 mins

It’s that time again…

Last week we looked at the first extended sermon from one Estus W. Pirkle, which wouldn’t usually have been our patch at all – that is apart from the fact it was directed by famed exploitation director turned born-again Christian Ron Ormond. However, Ormond seemed to take those old filmmaking sensibilities with him to his new career path, with men, women and children getting gunned down by communists left, right and centre and a pretty staggering scene where a child literally gets decapitated for hanging on to his faith rather than renouncing Jesus. Now we’re pretty hardened around here, but that shocked me nonetheless, so you can probably imagine the effect this might have had on conservative Christians in the early 1970s.

All of which brings us to today’s movie, the second collaboration between Pirkle and Ormond, entitled The Burning Hell. It won’t be much of a revelation that this one concerns the lake of fire that awaits all ye sinners, and we kick off with a weird scene where Pirkle is visited by two biker/hippie guys (the cultural references here feel so off-kilter, by the way) who are sort of religious but believe in some new form of Christianity that doesn’t believe in Hell. Of course, Pirkle isn’t having any of that, and invites them to his sermon. And one of them does turn up to his sermon – only one, mind, because in the meantime his friend has died in a motorcycle accident. Pirkle doesn’t seem to worry at all about plugging this into his sermon, which feels more than a little insensitive, and over the course of the preaching our lead is eventually persuaded to join the faith.

Oh yes, and before we forget, we see a whole lot of images of hell throughout.

As per If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, Pirkle’s sermon is intercut with all sorts of horrifying imagery designed to frighten and shock you into religion. The shots of hell are plenty fiery and unpleasant, and I must admit there is a scene or two here that is unsettling, despite acting performances ranging from dodgy to hammy. But people are crying and wailing, covered in blood and shit (or a combination of both?) and obviously suffering a terrible fate. This of course is a fate destined to last for eternity, which Pirkle demonstrates with a ridiculous board covered with zeros. ‘This is a million years! Here is a billion years! This represents a trillion years…’ and so on. We get it – eternity is a bloody long time, and no amount of fatuous maths will help drive that home further.

As well as Pirkle, we get a few guest speakers, who appear to be sliced in pretty much at random and add very little. To be fair, even though I’m not the church type, Pirkle does deliver a mean sermon and his speech flows well. I could see to some extent why people were drawn to him around this time. Pirkle published five books in his time, as well as three movies, and given the cinematic output I’d say wasn’t one to question exactly how he converted people to the cause – the ends apparently justified the means in his mind for these sorts of films to come out. Some of this stuff would probably have fallen fall of the censors, or if they’d been about ten years later might even have got caught up in the video nasty panic, were it not for their wholesome religious message.

As mentioned in passing last week, there is another part of the trilogy, 1977’s The Believer’s Heaven, but I won’t be including it within this extended special feature. While that’s also directed by Ormond, it’s very much the positive side of the coin, and I can’t quite justify giving in the Film Gutter treatment. What strikes me most about that one is the claim it was ‘photographed on five continents’ – I’m sure the budget for these films would absolutely stretch to that, right? Right? It’s mostly the same cast for the two we have looked at, so I don’t think these were exactly no expense spared…

Anyway, we’ll be moving back to our regular programming from next week on, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief foray into the weird and wonderful worlds of Pirkle and Ormond!

If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? is a 1971 Christian propaganda film directed by Ron Ormond. 
Initial release: 1972
Director: Ron Ormond
Cast: Estus Pirkle, Cecil Scaiffe, Gene McFall, Wes Saunders, MORE
Screenplay: Estus Pirkle, Ron Ormond

I’ll say up front before I start – this is not going to strictly be a review per se. You might want to consider it the start of a couple of special features on these very unusual curios of exploitation cinema, kicking off today with If Footmen Tire You… and continuing next time around with The Burning Hell. I’ve fancied watching these two short features for a while, going back many years to the fabulous reviews of these films by The Cinema Snob – a favourite Youtuber of mine, and someone who so often wanders similar ground to us here at Film Gutter.

So, let’s get into the background of this one, and tell you what drew me to it. Both films are effectively extended sermons from one Estus Pirkle, a Baptist minister from Mississippi who was an author, speaker and film producer. Pirkle is a real ‘fire and brimstone’ type and the sermons featured here are certainly impassioned if nothing else. I’m not much of a religious type, so I don’t have much of a frame of reference, but Estus is doubtless giving everything to get his point across.

But If Footmen Tire You… is no ordinary sermon, oh no. What we have here is effectively a communist scare film, and the title here is a bible quote (if there was any doubt that would be the case). What makes this and its follow-up notable for Film Gutter viewers is that they are directed by Ron Ormond, a legend of exploitation cinema of the 50s and 60s and renowned for movies such as Untamed Mistress, Please Don’t Touch Me and The Exotic Ones. Later in his life Ormond became a born-again Christian, and his last few offerings were all expression of his new religious beliefs.

The story of If Footmen Tire You… concerns young Judy, who’s never been much persuaded by church but goes to keep her ill mother quiet and happy. As Pirkle delivers his fiercely anti-Communist sermon – basically claiming that if religious faith doesn’t grow then Communists will invariably take America over – Judy is finally swayed to Christianity and accepts God into her heart. The exploitation angle comes in because the sermon numerous times cuts away to shots of Communists (with awful Russian accents) taking over the US of A, worshipping Fidel Castro rather than Jesus and insisting that the whole of America gives up its Christian faith. To be fair, it doesn’t mince its words, and we see whole groups of believers simply gunned down, men, women and children alike. The blood there isn’t entirely convincing, but in watching this I found myself thinking that this probably would absolutely frighten the pants off anyone not familiar with this sort of thing, especially in the early 1970s. There’s a totally overdone scene towards the end in which a child says right to camera ‘Jesus was willing to die for me, and I’m willing to die for him’ before being decapitated by his Soviet tormentor, his head rolling off and away on the ground. To say my jaw was on the floor is no understatement – I’ve seen much better known and far more notorious films not go down that particular road.

Obviously time made rather a fool of Estus Pirkle, who vociferously insisted that within a mere two years the US would fall to communism – we’re still waiting for that one to happen, of course. But him and Ormond sure as hell meant business in shaking their audience up, and if you just want to freak people out enough to bring them to religion this probably isn’t a bad effort in that regard. This was just a total oddball of a movie offering, and the good news for us is that Ormond directed another Pirkle sermon by the name of The Burning Hell. I should mention here is a third, The Believer’s Heaven, but that looks far too nice and comfy for us to take a look at. I suppose that they felt they had to deliver some sort of good news by the time they came to the end of the trilogy…

If you can find a copy of this one, it’s certainly a fascinating little watch as a time capsule, and also if you ever wondered what would happen when a hard-line minster and an exploitation movie director got together. Then again, you wonder if there are some questions you never really needed answered…

IMPRINT (2006)
"Imprint" is the thirteenth episode of the first season of Masters of Horror. Directed by Takashi Miike, the episode was scheduled to premiere on January 27, 2006—but was shelved by Showtime over concerns about its extremely graphic and disturbing content. It was later released to DVD on September 26, 2006.
Release date: 7 April 2006 (United Kingdom)
Director: Takashi Miike
Featured music: Kōji Endō
Episode no: Season 1; Episode 13

Hands up who remembers Masters of Horror? I always thought this was a fun series, although of course like any anthology show did have the capacity to be hit or miss. But it often had some great directors involved and is one I do find myself coming back to now and then, even if only to watch selective episodes. However, there was one episode that rather went astray, and that was the proposed final episode of series 1 – Takashi Miike’s Imprint. While Miike felt he had pushed only up to the limit of what was allowed on US television, the studio obviously felt differently and prevented this one from airing, although it would thankfully be included in the DVD boxset when that was released. A good thing too – having a director with the cache of Miike involved in the series is no small matter, and Imprint was a fascinating – if not flawless – entry into this collection of shorter one-hour  horror films.

Our story here follows Billy Drago as Christopher, a man arriving to a brothel island in Japan during the Victorian era where he seeks a lost lover in the form of Komomo, whom he left behind with a promise that he would bring her back to America with him in time. But when he arrives at the island, Komomo is not there, and he strikes up a conversation with an unnamed, badly disfigured woman who promises to tell him the whole tale of why Komomo isn’t there. She works her way through the deeply disturbing story of Komomo’s disappearance, as well as her own nightmarish childhood, before we come to a truly shocking conclusion…

Masters of Horror was always interesting, as it was a chance to see how directors would cope in this fresh context and give them the opportunity to make things that the cinema industry might not want to touch. Given Miike’s history with cinema in Japan he probably could have got this made as a feature, but it does feel like something better suited to this concise runtime – much more and this one would have started to feel drawn-out. As it is it keeps a taut pace and delivers a whole host of unpleasant scenes that would probably not have flown too well with a TV audience, and definitely have the biggest shock value of the whole series. I squirmed severely during a couple of moments, though I won’t spoil which they were. The acting from the Japanese contingent is generally strong, though for me Drago is pretty overblown in the lead, which did lessen this one in my opinion. Visually this one looks great – both in its darkest and only somewhat dark moments – and it has that distinctly Takashi Miike style that I don’t think anyone else could pull off adequately. It’s a setting and milieu that works well too, and I don’t think I’ve seen a movie set during this period and place before. This might not be the easiest one to get hold of these days but does remain a worthwhile addition into the horror canon of Miike’s work.

RATING: 8/10. As always, this director produces something very intriguing, and this one is also well shot in my mind, loaded with atmosphere and having strong effects too. Everything feels believable visually, and this shorter span feels a better fit for this particular storyline. It’s held back a little by some elements of the plot in the middle (I don’t want to explore that too much here in the interest of not giving too much away) and a distinctly overdone lead performance that just jolted me out of things here and there. Besides that, there are a lot of strong elements here, and while it might not scale the heights of some of the previous work from these quarters it is still worth checking out – if you can find it, and especially if you’re a fan of what has come before. All the hallmarks are there to be seen from a unique talent.

That brings to a close our look at just some of the disturbing, strange and extreme horror for this cinematic legend – I hope everyone has a very Happy Hallowe’en!

​THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS (2001)
The Katakuri family relocates to establish a rustic mountain inn, but their plans are derailed when their guests meet with untimely deaths.
Release date: 16 February 2002 (Japan)
Director: Takashi Miike
Music by: Koji Endo; Kouji Makaino;
Language: Japanese
Production company: Shochiku
Cinematography: Akio Nomura

A Film Gutter Review by Alex Davis 

It’s on to our third week of Takashi Miike month, and today we’re looking back at a film that I remember as ranking among the strangest I ever saw – mind you, that was a while back, and a lot of water has passed under the bridge. And floating in that water were a lot of very bizarre movies. Still, I was looking forward to a revisit of this one, which has the distinctive honour of being one of a very exclusive list of musicals I actually liked. That particular list comprises South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, Team America: World Police and Anna and the Apocalypse, so what I say exclusive I mean it. Anyway, on with The Happiness of the Katakuris…

Happiness is a surreal, and significantly darker, parody of the likes of The Sound of Music, with the Katakuri family opening up a guest house in a location set to take advantage of a new road being built. Business is slow at first, and the tensions and cracks among the family are starting to show until a handful of initial visitors arrive to stay. However, things are off to an inauspicious start when the first guest commits suicide in his room, and sadly much worse is yet to come as one client after another dies in the guest house. Alongside all this we have family dramas, a splash of romance and plenty of songs too. There’s no arguing this is a flat-out musical – the cast break out into song at some truly odd moments, including when they find the body of their first guest after he’s killed himself. The numbers themselves are catchy, but obviously made for comedic effect, and I found myself generally laughing in the right places, though at times I did feel like this one was maybe trying a bit hard. For my mind, it’s also way too long at the better part of two hours – you could easily have done this as a snappy, short hour and a half and trimmed out some of what I would consider the fluff along the way. By the end of proceedings, I did feel like my attention was definitely wandering and things were starting to get indulgent.

It’s a testament to Miike that not only has he had such a lengthy and successful career, but also that he’s a sort of cinematic chameleon – in three weeks we’ve already seen a broad range of styles, and that’s without getting into his many dramas, yakuza films, samurai movies and more besides. I couldn’t comfortably call The Happiness of the Katakuris a misstep, but it wouldn’t be my favourite of his movies, and I think it has shrunk a little in my mind with this rewatch. Some of it is funny, for sure, and it has the trademark Miike freshness and weirdness. But what had stuck in my mind were very much highlights, and there’s a lot I had forgotten because it just ultimately wasn’t all that memorable. If you’re up for a bizarre, unorthodox musical with plenty of death and drama, this is a solid watch for you. but if you were asking me to pick you out a Takashi Miike film to watch, this one has its merits but would be a fair way down the list – a testament to just how good the director’s work has tended to be.

​RATING: 6.5/10. Parts of this movies are tremendous fun, and it’s likely you’ve never seen anything much like it – at least I’m not aware of anything like it out there, though I’m more than willing to be corrected. But I would definitely say parts, and that maybe the longer runtime means that things are thrown in that are unnecessary and dare I say that it just gets a bit too silly here and there. It still ranks well within my top five musicals, but then again, my typical ratings for musicals would be way, way down the scale – they’re simply just not my bag. This one is definitely an interesting curio, and another feather in the cap of Takashi to make and get funding to get made, but there would be better entries in the filmography to check out.

Fiction begins to bleed into reality for actors (Ebizô Ichikawa, Ko Shibasaki, Hideaki Ito) as they rehearse a stage production of a classic Japanese ghost story.
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Release date: 23 August 2014 (Japan)
Director: Takashi Miike
Music by: Koji Endo

As we mentioned last week, Miike is not only a prolific director, but one who has worked across a multitude of genres over the years. I’d personally argue that in terms of international appeal his horror movies as well among the best-known – maybe Yakuza and samurai films just don’t travel quite as well beyond Japan. Last time around we looked at the brilliant Audition, which was a rewatch, but Over Your Dead Body is entirely new on me. And while this wouldn’t necessarily by the most violent of Miike’s films, there’s a massive amount to like here regardless.

Over Your Dead Body centres on the cast of a play, Yotsuya Kwaidan, a classic-style Japanese ghost story centring on a samurai character who disgraces his wife, a character who is ultimately destined to return as a vengeful spirit. The play within the film is gorgeously presented and is something you’d probably be more than willing to watch as a piece in its own right. However, the main conceit of the film is that, while the play is going on, the actors find themselves drawn into a real-life scenario that bears a starting similarity to the fictional content. The star of the play, Miyuki, manages to land her lover Kosuke a leading role despite him being a relatively unknown actor. But soon enough Kosuke and Miyuki find themselves the focus of attraction of their co-stars, and a dark story of twisted romance and betrayal begins to spin out into real life also.

The plot isn’t that easy to summarise, because the movie deliberately blurs the lines between fantasy and fiction, and there’s every bit as much focus on the play as there is the real-life horror starting to play out. Both elements are equally fascinating, and of course the two threads come together very closely in a really unsettling finale. It has many of the tenets of a classic Japanese ghost story, but it does have that distinctly Miike styling, with some graphic scenes along the way and some non-traditional narrative elements. It’s one of those strange offerings that I have to say I didn’t fully grasp but still enjoyed mightily nonetheless – it feels like it might well be something to warrant a rewatch to try and fully understand all its layers.

There are some very strong acting performances here, and visually the whole thing just feels dreamy, or maybe more nightmarish, with lots of darkness throughout punctuated with only limited amounts of light. The costumes are gorgeous too, and that all adds up to a really heady mix in the hands of a master director.

There is a sort of stylistic similarity to Audition here, in that we begin very slow-burn before really going full-tilt as we head inexorably towards the finale. There are also some similar themes here, and the two do make a ‘piece’ quite nicely – although I certainly can’t claim to be the first to make that comparison. It’s a very fine addition to the Miike cannon, and it’s very much haunted me ever since I watch it – if you’ll excuse the pun. I’m sure those of you with a finer grasp of Japanese culture will get even more out of it than me as well.

RATING: 9/10. This one is certainly more subtle than some of the director’s other work but loses nothing for it – Miike seems to be able to turn his hand to virtually anything and still achieve remarkable artistic and critical success. Part old-fashioned Japanese ghost story, part true-life interpersonal horror unfolding to a shocking climax, this is a fascinating blend of two vastly different things and a very worthy take on both. It’s also very intricate, and I suspect I’ll be coming back a second time to try and really pick up on all its nuances. Despite that, I was pretty blown away by the time this one came to a close. If you’d like to check it out, it’s up to watch for free on Amazon Prime, and I’d suggest going for a look!