In honor of the month of October, here are my top 10 horror films from Japan. Watching these 10 films is absolutely mandatory, not just for Asian horror fans but really horror fans in general. Also, yes, yes, I know, where the fuck is Ringu? Great, by far one of the better new wave J-horror films, but too overexposed. Juon? Not a big fan. Why doesn't this include horror films from other Asian countries? Haven't seen enough of those to make a top 10 list. So without further adeau, I present what I personally are the 10 greatest horror films to come out of Japan, not objectively, but more based on my personal taste.
10. Evil Dead Trap (1988)Evil Dead Trap is an absolutely top notch 80s J-horror film. The film, directed by Toshiharu Ikeda, is heavily influenced by such Italian masters as Argento and Fulci and really shows it in it's nicely slick style. The music even, as Michael Weldon of Psychotronic once noted, sounds like Goblin. From the absolutely wince inducing snuff film opening to the creepy shock ending, Evil Dead Trap is one of those kind of films that never lets up in it's intensity and insanity. The whole action ark takes place in an abandoned military base which makes for a nice, eerie backdrop for the gruesome killings and general weirdness that soon follows. Highly recommended for those with a strong stomach.
9. House (1977)Where does one even begin when writing about Nobuhiko Obayashi's 1977 horror cult masterpiece? According to the wonderful source of information that is Tokyoscope: The Japanese Cult Film Companion, all Obayashi was asked to do was make a horror film that would sell well with youth. Obayashi did do that, but he did so much more, using every avant garde cinematic technique you could think of to create what resembles a horror themed music video 10 times better than Michael Jackson's Thriller. This is no doubt the strangest thing ever to greenlit by Tomoyuki Tanaka himself and boasts an insane, completely erratic feel and numerous absolutely arresting visuals.
8. Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell (1968)Now, thanks to Quentin Tarantino, this is best known as "that movie where the blood red sky in Kill Bill came from" but is still sadly unreleased on R1 DVD and underappreciated in the West. I first saw this film when I was the tender age of 11 and it scared the ever living fuck out of me. Basically an apocalyptic sci-fi/horror hybrid and modern day vampire tale heavily influenced, stylistically, by the films of Mario Bava but also boasting a very unique "Japaneseness" with a heavy anti-war element and surprisingly gorgeous cinematography. It's a pretty depressing, unsettling movie in actuality. Particularly unsettling is the film's somewhat infamous "possession" sequence, in which a blue alien blob enters the skull of the film's main villian, a white suited terrorist, through a vagina shaped gash in his forehead. That, my friend, is cinema!
7. Wicked City (1987)The only anime film on this list, this is no doubt one of the roughest, coolest horror-themed anime around and one of all time favorites in the genre. Directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri from a novel by Hideyuki Kikuchi (Vampire Hunter D), Wicked City is a surpremely badass film with everything you could ever hope for, from spider women with snapping sharp tooth vaginas, grisly demonic transformations and loads of sex and violence, bringing the film up to easy NC-17 terrority. Fuck anybody who calls this a hentai, however, as the graphic sex in this film is hardly the main attraction. Kawajiri would later give us the almost equally good Ninja Scroll, another anime work that nicely mingles the worlds of sex, violence and the supernatural.
6. Jigoku (1960)Jigoku (or Hell) is an absolutely fucking incredible film from Japanese horror master Nobuo Nakagawa, the man who, prior to this, gave us Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan (or Ghost of Yotsuya) his own unique, Hitchcockian vision of the famous Japanese Yotsuya Kaidan legend. For this film, Nakagawa goes way further, taking us into, where else, but the depths of Hell itself. After an amazing intro, the film actually plays it pretty subtle for it's first half, with everything simply playing out as a drama. However, no sooner does it start to get boring than does, literally, all Hell break loose as the main characters are all mercilessly sent down into the infernal depths of Hades, where they, for the next thirty minutes, wander around eerily lit landscapes and breathtaking sets that would have made Mario Bava jealous and are subjected to various grisly tortures that predated H.G. Lewis' Blood Feast by three years.
5. Chushingura Gaiden Yotsuya Kaidan (1994)Speaking of the Yotsuya Kaidan legend, here's our next selection, one of the later films of Kinji Fukasaku, one of the greatest directorial geniuses to come out of Japan. Fukasaku was no stranger to Japanese literature, having adapted the Chushingura (47 Ronin) legend in 1978 as The Fall of Ako Castle and the Satomi Hakkenden legend twice as Message From Space and Legend of the Eight Samurai. For this film, not only was he taking another shot at Chushingura, but he also combined it with the Yotsuya Kaidan story, an idea he had wanted to do back in 1978, making Iuemon, the main character of Yotsuya Kaidan, one of the loyal 47 retainers. From the film's almost Kubrick-like use of Wagner's O Fortuna to sharp editing and fine direction, the film is, as usual with Fukasaku, one of the finest, most entertaining examples of it's genre.
4. Audition (2000)No doubt the best film the otherwise rather overrated Takashi Miike has made and likely ever will make. What starts out as a simple, almost dull drama gets creepier and creepier, until, in the last, grotesque, hyper disturbing, sadomasochistic reel, the film gives you what is the cinematic equvalent to a drop kick in the nuts. Whether it's more of a fucked up drama and less of a horror film I'm not sure, but that does not change the fact it is likely the scariest thing to come out of Japan, making Ringu and Juon look like The Adventures of Milo and Otis and it's easily twice as gnarly as Hostel.
3. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1988)Tetsuo is the breakout film of Japanese cyberpunk director Shinya Tsukamoto and is, to me, quite frankly a fucking incredible piece of experimental cinema, like Kafka's The Metamorphosis on crack. It's also far more a horror film than sci-fi, as there is no real scientific explanation for the goings on. The film's got loads of gnarly gore, nightmarish imagery a plenty, a superb use of pixelation animation, a thundering metal score by Chu Ishikawa and yes, the film's infamous "power drill penis" sequence which you really have to see to believe. The B&W 16mm cinematography, interestingly enough, is surprisingly beautiful and the whole film is quite insanely entertaining.
2. Matango (1963)In terms of my favorite classic Ishiro Honda/Eiji Tsuburaya film, I frequently go back and forth between Gojira (Godzilla) and this film, once best known as Attack of the Mushroom People, which I could best describe to anyone unfamiliar with it as a Japanese Gilligan's Island on shrooms. That said, it's a lot deeper than that, if Gojira was Honda's own warning against atomic weapons, this is Honda's own warning against the dehumanizing effects of narcotics and it's hell of a lot more scary and effective (not to mention far more entertaing) than say, Reefer Madness. It's got some of the best production design and cinematography around in a Toho flick and was as some of Tsuburaya's best, most subtle FX work and film's titular "mushroom people" are some of the creepiest monsters to come out of Toho's FX workshops. It also features some of the best performances of such veterans as Akira Kubo, Kumi Mizuno, Yoshio Tsuchiya and company.
1. Onibaba (1964)Onibaba is an absolutely amazing piece of cinema, a genuinely fucking scary film with vague but very much present horror elements. It's a stunning work of art directed by the ingenius Kaneto Shindo with absolutely amazing B&W cinematography and is a gritty, stark, highly sexual film boasting with some of the eeriest, loveliest monochromatic images you will see in a film from the terrifying visage of the film's hanya mask to the corpse filled hole to the swaying reeds that look almost unreal. It's a truly arresting piece of cinema and totally deserves it's number one spot. Kaneto Shindo's next foray into period horror: Kuroneko, well not quite as powerful, would be nearly as good.
iAutoblog the premier autoblogger software
No comments:
Post a Comment