Month: August 2025

I’m counting this as a first time watch for this project, because it may as well be… I first saw it on DVD around maybe 2007 or 2008 when Siren were still handling the Shaw Brothers catalogue here; this was a particularly inadequate disc, because not only was it non-anamorphic (never a good thing, but even less so with a proper ‘Scope film like this) but the fucking disc jammed at some point so I never saw it in full. So this is technically the first time I’ve really seen it, in blu-ray form, anamorphic and complete, and GODDAMN it was worth waiting for that ending (disc only arrived in the mail today, too, so I’ve been unusually quick to get to it)… Don’t know much about director Sun Chung, other than that I have another one of his films in one of the Shawscope boxes, but I saw an IMDB reviewer claim he was an unsung hero of Shaws as an action durector, but never got as good a story to work with as Chang Cheh or Lau Kar-Leung. Our story involves a couple of rival martial arts masters in a Chinese town, one of whom hires an former enemy of his (Lo Lieh, making his second appearance in this project) to help him beat the other at the forthcoming lantern festival; the latter, however, has a more vested interest in gaining revenge on his new client. The film is never quite as lurid as I wish it was, though it certainly is that; the blood is plentiful and of a redness that Herschell Gordon Lewis might’ve called unnatural, and a couple of scenes are still kind of grisly and unpleasant. But it’s the martial arts action that works best here, especially in the aforementioned ending which is just 15 minutes of the characters going berserk. This is one I think will reward repeat viewings.

Um… yeah. If I characterised our previous film as “berserk”, how can I not say the same thing about… whatever the fuck this was? This, it should be said, is considered one of the defining works of Japanese cyberpunk cinema, so it was pretty much bound to be one of the damnedest things I’ve ever seen; I have read descriptions of other extreme Japanese horror films next to which Tetsuo may seem comparatively mild, but on its own terms… yeah, I don’t think I’ve seen much else that was quite this out there. The story, if you can call it, revolves around two men, a “metal fetishist” and a salaryman who runs him over in a car accident; the latter gradually finds his life turning more metallic as it becomes clear he should’ve made sure the metal guy was in fact dead before trying to dispose of him. It’s actually more coherent than some critics seem to think it is, basically being a particularly fucked kind of supernatural revenge story, but the story’s not the point, the style is… indeed, Tetsuo is a pretty astounding case of style as substance rather than just over it. I feel like the budgetary constraints on the film (which only cost about $100,000), having to shoot on black and white 16mm film and so forth, actually make the film what it is, this would’ve been an entirely different film in 35mm and colour (like its sequel) because the grotty b/w visual just define the tone so much. Tetsuo is all about those visuals, the editing, the sound and music design, and especially the startling use of pixillation; throughout the film you can see it visibly fighting its limitations. It does get kind of wearing before the end—this is a somewhat long 67 minutes—but once I got into its peculiar vibe I enjoyed it a fair bit. Really should see more of Shinya Tsukamoto’s stuff.

OH, isn’t it a grand thing to rewatch a film you haven’t seen in over a quarter of a century and discover that, not only is it as berserk as you remember it being, but even more so? That was the somewhat astounding position I found myself in tonight… I believe I’ve only seen The Wicked City once, back in the late 90s when I was first exploring Hong Kong cinema; it was on SBS and for some reason I don’t think I taped it in the way I did with pretty much all the other HK stuff SBS showed back then, so I haven’t had an opportunity to see it since then (and if I did tape it, I don’t have a VCR to play it)… I did watch the anime on which this was based a long time ago too, but I haven’t seen this live-action version of it since way back when. And I mostly remembered it being, as I said, berserk. Our story is laid in Hong Kong which is kind of connected to the world of demon-like creatures called Rapters; a drug from the latter’s world that makes humans evaporate has started to appear in ours, and the anti-Rapter agents must find the source and stop it. How this story is told, though, is what matters, it’s the bizarre details and the way some things just… happen, for want of a better word, especially in rhe second half. And, as I said, it was even MORE berserk than I remembered it being, cos I’d somehow forgotten some of those details, like the agents suddenly manifesting their own unexplained telekinetic and magnetic powers, the astounding wirework battle, the, er, pinball machine… I was terrified it wouldn’t live up to my increasingly dim memories of something I saw once in the late ’90s, but it actually exceeded them and I can’t complain about that. Really should rewatch the anime some time, too…