Reviewed by Robert Hood

Mecha is one of the most popular sub-categories of anime and has produced some of the best and longest-running animated sci-fi series ever. Though quintessentially Japanese when considered in terms of this genre, mecha’s tropes and central characteristics have also been adapted across cultural borders. Godaizer, a luminous, 18-minute animated film made by an independent creator, comes from Singapore. Producer/director Yeo plays upon the genre’s Japanese heritage in many different ways, not just via signage.

Godaizer is not the kind of frenetic anime that is all action and noise, certainly during its opening third. In some ways it is more suggestive of Miyazaki’s cinematic style (not so much visually as in general ambiance). Its opening sequence, showing the start of what is obviously another typical day, is slow and contemplative, as the youthful main character, awoken by a bedside clock, looks out upon the morning and the chooks, pushes open rusting gates and then pulls switches to start up the vast repair shop in which he lives. The roof slides back to let in the sun, service gates grind open and lights come on.

A wealth of information, both situational and emotional, is conveyed in this initial sequence, all without words. As the boy shuffles through a vast workshop, we see that it is full of large robots of various kinds, from toy-like to militarist: a virtual history of giant robot design. This robot construction and repair shop has clearly seen better days, however, and its staff – the boy and an old man he finds asleep under one of the machines – are to an extent just going through the motions. The glory days are past.

Mecha anime features huge robots created for military purposes and most typically controlled by youthful pilots. Sometimes the relationship between human and machine is simply that of pilot and aircraft. But the nature of the bond can also be metaphysical, as in Neon Genesis Evangelion, or based on deliberate physical and mental imprinting. Often, the particular human pilot is the only one able to effectively control the giant machine.

In Godaizer, it becomes clear that the boy is the pilot of the workshop’s ultimate robot – the largest most impressive in the building – and to do so effectively, mental discipline is required. But both he and his robot have seen little action for some time and the air of ennui he exudes resembles a “holding pattern”. Yeo gives us a glimpse into the past through the simple device of a wall covered in newspaper clippings and a photograph of a youthful pilot and his family – clearly the boy’s father with wife and young son. The implied tragedy is never elaborated upon. However, the emotional significance is clear. Can the boy live up to the past and the expectations of his grandfather? Will he be given a chance to do so?

As a genre, mecha crosses over into daikaiju (or “giant monster”) territory, as the giant machine becomes Earth’s only effective defense against monstrous giants and gargantuan alien invaders. In the 70s and 80s in particular several television series tried to exploit the immense popularity of Ultraman by taking this approach, as in, for example, the 1972 series Iron King. Such is also the case in Godaizer. After the opening sequence, the film cuts to a modern scientific laboratory just as an experiment is taking place. As a result of the experiment a huge creature awakens and breaks out of its confinement, heading off to engage in the kind of rampage through city streets and countryside that Godzilla and his friends made famous. So our young protagonist is required to don the uniform and put aside self-doubts to face the challenge.

Godaizer embraces the dynamics of daikaiju conflict as thoroughly as it exploits the tropes of the human/machine dynamic lying at the heart of the genre. It is a superb work of animation – lacking the “clean” lines of both traditional cel animation and modern CG imaging, but replacing them with a luminous, painterly quality that emphasises brush strokes and texture. It comes over as an animated painting, beautifully rendered, colours vibrant and surfaces finely textured. This enhances the story, what there is of it, very effectively indeed. In some ways, this artistic execution is more important than the plot.

A mecha/daikaiju classic in miniature, Godaizer may be short, but what it lacks in direct narrative complexity it makes up for in attention to suggestive detail. Everything is there, conveyed through beautifully rendered visuals (by Ray Toh), an artist’s attention to emotional detail, and an effective soundtrack that may be wordless but is not lacking in suggestiveness. The film is truly cinematic in the sense that it is the imagery and the atmosphere created by the art and the sound effects that carry the narrative and emotional meaning — by implication rather than through dialogue. Though it doesn’t exactly work like a film from the early silent era, it has adopted the visual essence that is the soul of cinema – and the result is both entertaining and accurate to its genre.

See it when it comes to a festival near you – or when it appears on DVD. You won’t regret it.

• Film website: www.godaizer.com

Laputa: Castle in the Sky

Reviewed by Robert Hood

There is a distinctly steampunk — or perhaps more accurately retro, post-Industrial — aesthetic  to Hayao Miyazaki’s typically luminous fantasy anime, Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Technological imagery combines with more fantastical elements to create the sort of magical ambiance  quintessential to Miyazaki’s grandmaster status in the field of animation. Though science fiction in general appearance, replete with flying machines, robots and advanced, if ancient, technology, much of the film feels like magic. The combination makes for a wonderful two-hours of family entertainment — profound simplicity, darkness wrapped in auras of light.

After an opening scene in which a young girl (Sheeta) falls from a huge dirigible while trying to escape both a mysterious enemy and air-pirates, the action shifts to Pazu, an engineer’s apprentice at work in a vast mining construct, clearly well past its prime. He sees the young girl not so much falling as floating down from the sky, apparently carried to safety by the glowing pendant she wears around her neck. He catches her in his arms.

This encounter is the beginning of an adventurous journey that involves spectacular chase scenes, pseudo-fascist troops, air battles, puzzles to be solved — and a mythical flying castle that is what remains of an ancient civilisation whose power had been vast but has long since been lost to ground-dwelling humanity. Many seek the source of that power, however, and Pazu must not only help Sheeta escape them, but also unravel the mystery of who she is and how she is connected to Laputa.

Though the sinister pirates convincingly turn into eccentric comrades during the unravelling of the narrative,  and the overall tone of the film is one of well-meaning optimism, there is a dark and melancholy undercurrent as well. It is this that creates the film’s complexity and gives an effective texture to the story. If nothing else, evidence of human civilisation here is in various stages of decay — from the mining township of Slag Ravine, which appears to be living under the shadow of economic decline, to Laputa itself, which is the last evidence of an advanced civilisation that has now all but disappeared. Parts of it are overgrown, crumbling, with only the natural reserves — kept up by a strange and strangely endearing robotic ecologist — surviving to the end. In that end the island in the sky becomes more or less a huge tree (the Tree of Life?), with the debris of greatness entangled in its roots — a significant symbol of the continuity of the natural world and the ephemeral nature of humanity’s creations, no matter how magnificent.

This new Blu-ray edition of Laputa: Castle in the Sky is absolutely beautiful, evidence, if any were needed, that traditional cel animation can stand up to scrutiny against CGI and in some areas perhaps even surpass it. Apparently 69,262 traditional “cels” and 381 colors were needed to give Laputa its radiant splendor, and there is no stinting on the quality of the animation itself. The luminosity of this transfer to Blu-ray has to be the best the film has ever looked and is more than worthy of this great work of animated cinema.

If you love Miyazaki’s work, you will need to upgrade to this edition, which you can watch with its original Japanese soundtrack or with an effective English dub. If you don’t love Miyazaki’s work… what’s your problem?

Laputa: Castle in the Sky is released on DVD and on Blu-ray by Madman Entertainment.

To quote Wikipedia: “Midges comprise many kinds of very small two-winged flies found world-wide. The term does not encapsulate a well-defined taxonomic group, but includes animals in several families of Nematoceran Diptera.”

The short film, The Midge, directed with style by Rory Lowe, gives little back-story or explanation for its events, but uses sensuous, high-resolution photography and a subtly disturbing soundscape to forge a connection between sexual uncertainty and a horror scenario involving a new breed of insect. Flesh, sex, infestation and insemination are intertwined through superb close-up photography of insects and CGI imagery, as well as subtle performances from its two human principles.

Without being overly insistent, Lowe and his team fill the woodland in which a young woman and her sexually inexperienced boyfriend take part in a game of seduction with menace and a growing sense of dread — the external threat giving metaphorical force to the young man’s sexual fear. It is subtle, happening without the methodology becoming obvious, at least in most instances. Take a look at the film and I think you’ll see what I mean. The imagery is carefully chosen, so that the young man’s internal uncertainties are everywhere reflected and enhanced — until consummation brings sex and fear together in a bloody moment of conception.

Sound is used beautifully, too, giving the soundscape of the woods and the growing presence of the insects a music of their own. It is a quiet symphony, in which human dialogue seems almost discordant, and making the end even more inevitable.

Trailer:

The Midge trailer from Once Were Farmers on Vimeo.

Director Rory Lowe gave Undead Backbrain an insight into the making of the film:

It was quite an experience making the film, a huge learning process. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but I’m proud of it and I’ve learnt a hell of a lot along the way!

In true horror film style we had some fairly major incidents along the way, too. On the first take of the first day the Steadicam guy had an accident and smashed the RED cam, not a good start but we managed to sort it out enough to tentatively continue. The actress — Amy — became ill on the second day of the shoot – something to do with swimming in that lake possibly… It was her 30th birthday and she was stuck in a little cottage in the middle of nowhere with no-one about and no phone reception. She got well enough to shoot again but for some of the Macro scenes we had to prop her up whilst we filmed around her in extreme Macro! We also nearly killed the boy — Sean — he hyperventilated shooting the scene at the end where you see his face upside down looking more and more freaked out. It was a great shot and we struggled to contain ourselves from bursting out with laughter as he performed it several times. We didn’t have the time or money to set any of that up in a studio so it was all filmed in a tent in the hot sun at the edge of a field. It got very, very hot in there and shooting the last part when Amy has her head on Sean’s chest, he is heavy breathing and the breathing suddenly stops. We’d done about 4 takes when Sean suddenly did it completely wrong. He went all floppy and lay down. He gave me a blank look as I called first positions again and got ready for another take. After a couple of blinks he asked if he could have a moment and it became apparent that he’d blacked out from hyperventilation. Imagine it from his perspective, as he told us afterwards: he woke up in a hot sweaty tent in the middle of nowhere, not knowing what was going on or how he’d got there — he didn’t know any of us before hand — he had a hot young scantily clad lady on top of him ready to ride him like a wild animal and a bunch of big hairy sweaty men around him filming it all! For a moment he wondered where his life had gone wrong and he’d got into porn!

We had a great time making and I’m hugely grateful to everyone who helped out. It was made for next to nothing, just enough for us to hire the camera and feed everyone! Just. I learned a massive amount in the process and I’m really looking forward to pushing it further in the future.

Lowe added that he hoped he might be able to turn The Midge into a feature film one day.

Note: Currently you can view The Midge on the website of I’ve Seen Films — International Film Festival 2011 Internet Short Film Contest. Go there now to watch the film and vote on it!

Gallery:

Sources: Rory Lowe via Avery Guerra. Written by Robert Hood.

Monsters (US-2010; dir. Gareth Edwards)

Reviewed by Robert Hood

To some extent, the title tells the story. Monsters is indeed a movie with monsters in it. They’re big, very alien and of daikaiju proportions. But is Monsters a Monster Movie? Ah, there’s the rub.

Six years before Monsters begins, a NASA probe carrying biological research material gathered from elsewhere in the solar system exploded over Central America. Strange alien life took hold across Mexico. The entire area — the “Infected Zone” — has been walled off to stop the infection from spreading.

That’s the background. The movie itself gets underway with a POV film record of a US military unit coming under attack from a huge cephalopodic monstrosity. The creature looms over buildings, smashes walls with its many tentacles, sends equipment flying and generally acts like a giant monster. This is revealed to be news footage watched in a Mexican bar by US photojournalist, Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy), who is subsequently called upon to get his current employer’s daughter Whitney (Samantha Wynden) back to America. He tries, at first reluctantly, but his plans all go awry, and they end up treading a dangerous path through the Infected Zone itself, at the mercy of profiteers, mercenaries and assorted inhabitants of the Zone. In the course of their up-river journey, through jungles and ruins, they get to know each other beyond the superficialities that initially defined them. They also get to know the alien creatures better. And that’s the point.

There’s nothing overly generic about Monsters — or rather in terms of genre it’s worth keeping in mind that the film leans as much toward road-trip drama as it does thriller or monster flick, despite the presence of elements from both. The monsters, though omni-present, play a sort of background role, albeit a resonant one — McGuffins to the protagonists’ road-trip relationship drama and to a complex of themes and metaphorical resonances that director Edwards weaves into his sci-fi travelogue. Thematically, there’s evidence of commentary on US/Mexican border relations and the problem of illegal immigrants; the tendency of US foreign policy to demonise its perceived enemies; the role of targeted bombing on foreign territory. You could almost miss references made to the consequences of bombing strikes directed against the alien creatures, but in the final analysis it’s easy to assume that much of the destruction we see may be the result of air strikes rather than the monsters themselves. The monsters don’t seem to attack except when provoked. All they want to do is survive. In the end it’s the wider theme that life is not monstrous unless we make it so that is encapsulated in the film’s final scenes.

Some critics have complained of a lack of connection between the human story and the actions of the huge, alien, awesomely beautiful creatures that take place behind it. All I can say in response is that those critics must not have been paying attention. Or they were paying the wrong sort of attention. McGuffins the monsters may be, but they and their “story” play a major role in the film’s thematic undercurrents. Yes, Monsters is a Monster Movie, its creatures affecting or reflecting on everything else in the film — but it’s not an overly generic one.

Made on a shoestring budget, filmed on location by Edwards himself (without lighting rigs or complex equipment), the film looks a little like a Discovery Channel documentary, with supporting roles undertaken by locals. There are spectacular vistas and lots of South American colour. The wreckage of human civilisation through which Andrew and Whitney wander is extensive and impressive — possibly, in real life, the aftermath of natural disasters, with a touch of CGI added here and there for effect. In fact, Monsters is a miracle of editing and direction. Not frenetic, but taut and purposeful, it conveys information with minimal dialogue — compact, multi-layered and, though non-commercial, not at all obtuse in approach. The SFX work needs no apology either; any limitations could as easily be artistic choices. The CGI creatures appear mainly in the night, but their Cthulhan presence is all the more potent for the shadowy impressionism of their attacks and their alien nature is more effectively conveyed than more costly attempts to create a sense of otherness in bigger-budgeted films.

Unlike much independent cinema, Monsters feels both expansive and multi-layered, a complex of metaphors that belies the simplicity suggested by its basic premise. Certainly there is excitement and tension, but don’t expect a thriller-style aesthetic to be at work here. What you get is a great deal of beauty, even from scenes depicting the aftermath of monstrous destruction, a sense of awe, occasional suspense and affecting, underplayed drama. Good acting, excellent cinematography and intelligent direction make Monsters a thrilling experience in whatever genre you want to place it.

The Blu-ray transfer is excellent, too, and though night scenes can be overly dark (a consequence of the on-the-spot filming), the image provides enough detail to make obscurity evocative rather than an annoyance. The lossless sound transfer is the greatest beneficiary of high-definition technology, however. The film’s soundscape, especially during the night-in-the-jungle scenes and at the climax, is both awesome and beautiful, like the monsters themselves, their growls and whale-song cries shifting from frightening to melodic as our perception of them deepens.

Monsters is released in Australia by Madman Entertainment, on DVD and Blu-ray.

Reviewed by Robert Hood

Anyone who knows anything about anime knows Ghost in the Shell. Based on the classic manga of Masamune Shirow, Ghost in the Shell was a stunning work of SF animation in 1995 and, I’m happy to say, remains so now. It visualized and enhanced the cyberpunk aesthetic of writers such as William Gibson in his Sprawl trilogy, and directly influenced such important live-action SF as The Matrix, spawning a franchise that includes two more films (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence and Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. Solid State Society) and two television series (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG). All of them are worth seeing.

Read the rest of this review on Robot War Espresso.

Blu-ray edition reviewed by Robert Hood

Giant robots (known as mecha) and giant monsters (known as daikaiju): two of the most iconic elements of Japanese fantasy cinema. Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone mingles the two to surprising and indeed complex effect.

When Neon Genesis Evangelion came on the scene back in 1995/1996, it proved to be a massive success, both as a 26-episode TV series written and directed by Hideaki Anno and as a “supporting” manga by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. A remarkable work that profoundly influenced anime as a genre, it became compulsive viewing for many — as well as a lifetime obsession for Hideaki Anno, its primary creator. It has since been built upon, extended, re-worked … and yet never completely finished. Anno (in conjunction with others) has taken several shots at the ending, which, in the original series, was so metaphysical and abstract as to be well-nigh impenetrable — fascinating and suggestive without a doubt, and giving rise to interesting speculation, but slightly unsatisfying as well, with animation that was reduced to a series of static and surreal images by budgetary restraints. The show’s subsequent popularity allowed its creator to re-edit the penultimate episodes into Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death and then to re-do the ending in a less narratively opaque manner in Neon Genesis Evangelion: Re-Birth, and again, later, as The End of Evangelion – an alternate view of how the events played out. Yet still Anno’s ambition for the franchise remained incomplete.

In 2006 Gainax (the show’s production company) announced the coming of an animated film series referred to as Rebuild of Evangelion. It would be a four-film remake of the anime series, intended to finally fulfill Anno’s ambition for it — something he could not realise with the meagre budget and technology of the time. The animation would be upgraded according to modern technological advances and the story edited into a more cinematic narrative structure. The first two of these films have been completed: Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone (aka Evangerion shin gekijôban: Jo; 2007) and Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance (aka Evangerion shin gekijôban: Ha; 2009). Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone achieved the distinction of being 4th highest grossing anime film at the Japanese box office during 2007, and then went to DVD and further success, though the latter version was subsequently tweaked after complaints about overly dark scenes and various technical glitches. This led Anno to release Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone, which has now arrived on Blu-ray, with colour-correction, contrast fixes and the insertion of new footage. It would be easy to describe the result as a masterpiece if the original show itself hadn’t already appropriated that status.

In essence the story of Shinji Ikari is that of a boy, his father and a “squad” of hybrid robots — classic Japanese mecha — though that description nowhere near does it justice. It’s what Anno has done to the standard tropes of the mecha subgenre that makes the franchise so distinctive. Metaphysical nuancing, psychoanalytic examination of human relationships, political intrigue and narrative complexities abound, as a group of teenagers — born in the aftermath of the near-apocalyptic “Second Impact” (part of a complex back-story that only gradually reveals itself) — are revealed to be the only ones capable of piloting huge humanoid mechanisms, Evangelions or Evas, ostensibly built by the mysterious para-military organization NERV to fight a string of monstrous creatures known as “Angels”. These “Angels” arrive one after the other — bizarre in appearance and apparently malicious in intent, threatening a devastating “Third Impact” and the destruction of humanity. The narrative uses this framework to weave a complex set of themes that range from personal issues of depression and alienation to the nature of existence itself.

The Blu-ray of Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone is a wonder to behold. Rich in colour and detail, it has a powerful soundscape, flowing animation and stunning imagery – a mingling of traditional cel-animation and CGI that works beautifully. It comes with the original Japanese soundtrack (featuring excellent voice actors whose interpretation of the characters is definitive), clear and readable English subtitles, and an English-language dub option. Some decent extras (including the 1.0 version) and a 20-page booklet complete the package.

Despite being criticized as a “dumbing-down” of the first six episodes of the series, Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone remains a complex, metaphorically rich work that plays well in its own right. Dramatically it is more coherent than the original, though some depth may be lost through the tightening of events and the loss of story detail. Nevertheless this remake is a stunning upgrade of the earlier material. Visually it is rich and dynamic; narratively it remains exciting, intellectually challenging and emotionally involving. Though much is left unanswered by the end of this first film, it should be obvious even to the uninitiated that there are many aspects of the plot and the mysteries surrounding NERV, the Evas, the Angels, the teenage pilots and the connections between them left to be unraveled, and that subsequent films are likely to be doing just that. It isn’t a matter of there being no answers (as those who have seen the original Neon Genesis Evangelion would realize); simply that gaining those answers is the whole point of the series. In fact, the “re-build” should not be seen as replacing the original show, but as part of an ongoing dialogue between Anno and his vision – and a rebuild that can be easily appreciated by those unfamiliar with Neon Genesis Evangelion and its developmental history. One way or another, this is a must for anyone interested in anime or indeed in involving, intelligent SF/fantasy cinema.

Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone is available in Australia on Blu-ray (and on standard DVD) through Madman Entertainment.

Home (Australia-2010; short [approx. 11 min.]; dir. Cameron McCulloch)

Aussie filmmaker Cameron McCulloch has produced a damn fine short zombie film in Home. Made for AUS$2,000, it is, as it were, but a moment in the Romeroesque, post-Night of the Living Dead apocalypse, almost a vignette, though with the help of actress Jamie Mcdowell it achieves an emotionally epic quality.

With no dialogue (“apart from zombie moans”), but powerful imagery, beautiful cinematography, an evocative soundscape, effective music and leisurely pacing, it offers up a story that — like a breath of fresh air in a genre that is too often careless and derivative — takes its subject seriously, filling its meagre 11 minutes with enough atmospheric suspense, thrills and pathos to guarantee it will stay in the memory long after its wrenching final moments.

If you get a chance to see it when it comes to a festival near you, make sure you do.

The Backbrain asked director McCulloch some questions about his work.

Undead Backbrain: Have you had any previous experience with zombies?

Cameron McCulloch: None with zombies, though I have had experience directing horror, action and comedy. This is my first zombie film, or as we dubbed it, a romzom.

UB: Why this subject for a film?

CM: I began writing the project as an exercise. I wanted to tell a story about isolation and loneliness with as much emotion as possible, but no dialogue. I began writing, showing the woman alone, the pulley system to warn that something is out there. When I got to the scene where we see the first zombie, I was trying to think what it could be and well zombies! came to mind and I just ran with it. Being a genre fan and a zombie fan, I thought it was about time for a cool zombie short. Plus at the time of writing the film, zombies were not all that popular, unlike now.

UB: Your own background?

CM: Since graduating film school, I have been working as a editor / director, mainly directing music videos and shorts and editing commercials. I have been making films since I was 13 so, for 20 years now. But good ones for only about 10!

UB: What about this description you gave me of the filming: “It was shot under grueling fucked up conditions”?

CM: We shot in the middle of winter over two weekends, We had a remote location for the first weekend. On our first day, which was one of the coldest winter days in 10 years, it rained constantly, our lead actress had a chest infection and because the film relies solely on her emotive performance it was really tough for her physically, particularly with a bastard like me pushing her to do more takes when she was sick as a dog. Jamie was great though — she never complained and was always ready to shoot.

UB: Where can our readers get to see “Home”?

CM: We have already screened twice in Melbourne [taking out first prize at the Made in Melbourne Film Festival in December, I might add -- ed.]. There will be some screenings soon in the near future. I am confirming some details on them very soon.

UB: Ambitions for the future?

CM: My next production will be a 12-part romantic/comedy/zombie web series (so a “romcomzom” — or maybe I’ll just stick with “romzom”), which I’m in the final stages of writing. It’s a blend of comedy and romance with some zombies in there as well, just for good measure. Unlike “Home”, this series will be dialogue-heavy and a lot less depressing, focusing on characters and the comedy of the situation. I like a bit of gore with my comedy and romance.

Also I have just finished a script for a new short which I will shoot late in the year, and have some feature scripts ready to go.

• Reviewed by Robert Hood. Thanks to Avery Guerra for finding the material in the addendum.

Addendum: Poster

Addendum: Trailer

Zombie Videoshoot ‘Home’ from Tinny Tang on Vimeo.

Gallery:

Muckman (US-2010; dir. Brett Piper)

Low-budget independent B-film maven, Brett Piper’s new cryptozoological comedy-thriller, Muckman, is a satirical excursion into a backwater wilderness inhabited by more than mosquitoes and alligators. Featuring a plotline churning with deception, false identities and self-serving exploitation, the film chronicles the experiences of a rather hapless reality TV crew who have ostensibly come to seek out the elusive Muckman and to make a TV film documenting the search — but who do, in fact, harbour diverse individual agendas.

I don’t think I’m dropping any spoilers by revealing that though few if any of them really believe that the legendary creature actually exists, they soon discover that it most emphatically does.

Piper’s witty script (written with B-film comrade Mark Polonia) plays the increasingly tangled scenario for all it’s worth, pursuing stereotypical male/female interaction, TV-industry satire, hillbilly humour, false expectations, thrills, comedy and comeuppance directed at the bad guys with admirable aplomb.

Piper has gone on record as saying that Muckman is the cheapest film he’s made. Cheap though it may be, Muckman delivers its B-film aesthetic with style. The cheapness shows mainly in its lack of the sort of full hyperactive cinematic processing we’re used to from big-budget Hollywood films, especially in regards to editing style, on-location lighting and sound. Meanwhile, however, good comedic performances from its cast (especially lead actresses Anju McIntyre and Alison Whitney) and decent old-school SFX by Piper and his crew raise it above the norm for such things. Piper’s old-school FX techniques may not be overly familiar to contemporary multiplex audiences, but the full creature suit itself is excellent and the climactic attack of a gigantic tentacled swamp creature guaranteed to bring a gleeful smile to the face of stop-motion fans everywhere.

Basically, Muckman is a fun monster flick, with effectively created characters, a decent critter and enough spirit and originality to make its B-film homage much more than a simple uninspired re-hash.

Piper has just finalised a deal for distribution of the film on DVD and expects it to be available from his website soon. Look out for it.

• Reviewed from a screener version of the film.

Gallery:

Impressed patrons admire (and as it happens recognise) King’s modus operandi and beg for help, an appeal to altruism in a matter of vampires that is given greater force by wads of cash. The scene is now set for a titanic struggle in an isolated community between King and the extremely non-sparkly bloodsucker hordes. We also meet up with an unexpected visitor from issue one, whose presence and commentary on events is indicative of the fact that these are no isolated incidents, but steps along a continuing narrative line.

The textual/visual narrative flow is even smoother than in the previous issue and the humour more finely tuned, which makes King! issue 2 loads of fun and a pleasure to read. With the introduction of some of King’s personal history as a wrestler and as the arcing storyline ramps up, there’s no reason for any comic fan not to take the series in a loving stranglehold and clutch it to their metaphorical breast.

In all its 32-page, full-colour visual glory, it’s a “Rock ‘N’ Wrestling Monsterfest” that doesn’t disappoint. King! issue 2 becomes available on December 27 for US$3.99 from Blacklist Studios. Highly recommended.

• Reviewed by Robert Hood.

Wake in Fright (Australia/US-1971; dir. Ted Kotcheff)

Reviewed by Robert Hood

A movie that is generally considered by film historians to be a classic of Australian cinema, but which has only existed in poor-quality later-generation prints for many decades and was thought lost otherwise, has just been released by Madman Entertainment, looking better than ever.

Wake in Fright (directed by Canadian Ted Kotcheff) is a grim, relentless descent into an antipodean hell, made in 1971 just as the Australian film industry was on the brink of a major revival. An intense piece of cinema, it gives a dusty, sweaty, rather confronting picture of small-town outback life that explores the violent and repressive nature of this isolated wasteland culture — a culture that displays antagonism toward the “outsider” (that is, anyone who isn’t “a good bloke” and willing to conform to its norms), sexual segregation and domination, bizarre mateship rituals (including the infamous bloody, shocking and almost surreal kangaroo hunt), and an oppressive air of violence and debilitation.

Bonded school teacher John Grant (played by English actor Gary Bond) — who looks and sounds a bit like a young Peter O’Toole — leaves his one-room school in Tiboonda for the end-of-year holidays, demoralized and looking with longing toward Sydney and the coast. He doesn’t get there. Instead, a stop-over in a country town known to the locals as “The Yabba” results in his initiation and absorption into a rough, oppressively matey and ultimately brutalizing male society. Fueled by alcohol, the dominance rituals and violence drag him into nightmare — and even his end-game attempts at redemption may come too late.

Is it a horror movie? Well, though naturalistic in approach, it replicates a classic horror trope: a civilised man who finds himself exposed to a brutal alien environment infested with monsters and demons that inexorably drag him into their maw, chew him up and spit him out — morally broken and mortally wounded by an awareness of his own essential monstrosity. It’s Lovecraft without literal tentacles, and Wake in Fright is still, after all these years, a shocking experience for its sense of awful authenticity.

Is it an accurate depiction of Australian society? Audiences at the time didn’t think so, but now, rescued from oblivion by the fortuitous discovery of original elements and a magnificent restoration effort on the part of the National Film and Sound Archive and AtLab Deluxe, it is startling how relevent an “outsider’s” reflection on a major aspect of Australian culture it seems, with themes that have universal applicability.

From the opening panoramic 360° sweep over a flat, outback landscape — the only sign of humanity a railway line and two small buildings — to focus on a small railway station in the middle of nowhere, designated TIBOONDA, and a clock with no hands, to its end shot of the same locale, as the camera pans back on a scene that hasn’t changed, it looks stunning, with a visual clarity it probably never had before this. At the premiere showing of the restored version at the 2009 Sydney Film Festival, the director commented that he’d never seen the film looking so good — ever. A brief extra comparing scenes from the original negative with those on the digital restoration clearly illustrates this.

Wake in Fright is a powerful and significant Australian film that deserves to be better known, featuring excellent and surprisingly subtle performances from the likes of Chips Rafferty (his last), Jack Thompson (his first), Donald Pleasance and John Meillon. Back in the 1970s, Wake in Fright was released overseas under the title Outback, to some critical success — though it didn’t do well in Australia. Now it’s back. If you haven’t seen it, do so. If you saw it back then, take another look — it might surprise you.

The high-definition Blu-ray image is superb, bright (when appropriate) and clear while retaining enough filmic grain and over-exposure to accurately capture its dusty, often sun-bleached character. Though it doesn’t have the startling colours and universally clear lines of modern HD digital cinematography, it is exactly what it should be for the film and incredible for its age. The package includes an interview with Ted Kotcheff, an audio commentary from Kotcheff and editor Anthony Buckley and other features examining the film and its re-discovery. It comes with an excellent full-colour 32-page booklet about the film and its history.

Available on DVD and Blu-ray from Madman Entertainment.

This review was originally published on Horrorscope.