I Saw Jesus Die

Jeg så Jesus dø (1975 - Ib Fyrsting, Carl Nielsen)

This is a weird one. The Gospel According to Danish pornographers. Statements from Jesus related to sex is (porno)graphically elaborated. Note that there is no blasphemy here. The scenes featuring Jesus are straightforward interpretations of the text and the sex is edited in as illustration.

This is extreme low budget. A narrator reads all the dialog, the disciples are clad in blankets and modern day interiors are painted with coal to make it look more rustic. 

One can wonder what the intention behind this venture was. An effort to legitimate early hardcore porn by associating itself with this subject matter is one possibility. A dodgy strategy that easily could misfire, but could possibly work in Denmark in the mid 70thies (and only then and there). But more likely it’s just a piece of exploitation based on a “defendable” provocation.

Viewed on a file downloaded at Cinemageddon. The picture quality is watchable and the sound is Danish with English subtitles.

Letterboxd

Recently I have started using the service Letterboxd – a simple way to maintain a film-diary and keep track of the dubious viewing pleasures of friends. A list of my recent film digest is here.

Regrettably the film data is supplied by this site http://www.themoviedb.org/. They are not as comprehensive as IMDB and lately I have experienced that the film I wanted to submit weren’t listed.

The more obscure example is Zoom In: Sex Apartments /Zûmu in: Bôkô danchi (Naosuke Kurosawa - 1980). Once again its Japanese art-house bondage, but this is one of the more disturbing and interesting in its category. 

The other recent viewing that didn’t existed in the database is While I Live aka. The Dream of Olwen (John Harlow - 1947). An intriguing drama concerning identity and lass with an original storyline.  

The shortcomings of TheMovieDB are irritating, but otherwise it’s great fun.

Visit Letterboxd.com

Lady Vengeance

Chinjeolhan geumjass (Chan-wook Park - 2005)

For some odd and unexplainable reason the cinema of the east has been a bit out of my focus in later years. Lady Vengeance was picked up as a low prized secondhand DVD and sat for some time in my shelves besides assorted Japanese, Hong Kong and Korean film. When I finally sat down to view this, I expected to see a leggy, silent babe going around shooting bad guys with big guns. 

Seconds into the film I realized this was an eastern art-house effort. The start had a “Santa Sangre”-like opraesque flair that gripped my attention. The film as a whole holds the interest as it has many inventive scenes to offer. I was particularly gripped with the scene where the main character is reenacting a murder of a child before the police, jury and the press. The offbeat carnival of a film moves towards an ending providing the conclusion that one expects and it comes off as a satisfactory experience. 

I blame the lurid cover, but if I had read the back cover I would have known better. I viewed a screening of Oldboy in its day and was reasonably impressed. The Lady V has given me appetite for more and if I’m not mistaken I already have Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance in my collection. Maybe I spend an hour trying to locate it somewhere in my mess. 

Viewed on a Scandinavian DVD release.

Weekend Update

It’s EM footy time, but I managed to squeeze inn some feature films.

The Redeemer: Son of Satan! (Constantine S. Gochis - 1978)

Another high school reunion gone bad. A proto-slasher on low budget with some twisted charm.  The CodeRed edition is a crisp and clear representation of a print that has seen better days, but that’s just adds some patina to the experience.  

The Boogeyman (Ulli Lommel - 1980)  

This was a nice one. Creepy and entertaining on many levels. Had previously seen a movie with similar title Boogeyman (Stephen Kay - 2005). That one was a total mess and for a long time I confused those two entries.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

My Son, MySon, What Have Ye Done (Werner Herzog - 2009) 

Most of the time the film has a “moderate weirdness” that doesn’t disconnects the narrative to much from reality, but from time to time there is overly arty elements that seems “inserted”. The story behind it all is to shallow and simple to generate any lasting interest, as we follow a semi-young man’s journey into madness leading up to the slaying his controlling mother.

There are some good scenes brooding with inner unrest reminiscent of the tone of the superior “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans” (2009) that makes this and interesting experience. Particularly the long takes depicting the villa with cactuses and flamingos in the garden has a “postcard gone bad”-quality. 

Viewed on a Scandinavian Blu-ray release.

Trailer Park of Terror

Trailer Park of Terror (Steven Goldmann - 2008)  

A young woman avenges the death of her lover by shooting all the redneck residents at a derelict trailer park before she kills herself. But the South will rise again, this time in form of zombies. A bunch of derelict teenagers are stranded in the desert and find their way to the trailer park and the killings can commence. Supposedly the film is based on a comic series. 

From that point on it’s a gore comedy/horror that in style positions itself somewhere between early Peter Jackson and Rob Zombie. The low budget shows, but there has been done some skillful efforts to make this look good. The acting is tongue-in-cheek suitable to a movie hell-bent on presenting very unpretentious fun.

Viewed on and anamorphic, PAL DVD from Kaleidoscope Entertainment.

Love in the Afternoon

L'amourl'après-midi (Eric Rohmer - 1972)  

It is an entry in Rohmer's Six Moral Tales and tells the story about a married man, Frederic, who contemplates a fling with a lady friend of the past. Clever dialogue, shot on a budget with few locations and good and believable acting. Sometimes less is more.

The film succeeds in making Frederic’s struggle engaging on an emphatic level and at the same time allows a disinterested view on the moral dilemma. I have never been able to explain to myself what makes Rohmer a great artist, but I think the answer may have something to do with the seemingly laidback, often whimsical, manner he treats the story and textual intentions behind it.

The classical dramaturgical movie does not merely present a string of events, but every element in the film is invested with meaning that leads up to the conclusion. This was challenged by the realist movement with movies that just unfold and let the viewer draw their own conclusions. On that axis Rohmer is somewhere in the middle.

Like Woody Allen the theme is not a subtle subtext you have to look for, but jumps right at your face from early on. The central character states loud and clear a fact about life and the rest of the film tests that claim. The characters representing positions (fidelity, conformity etc.) are exposed to “life” and at the end there is an evaluation if the initial claim.

To a greater extent than Allen chance and diversions can make the plot stray away from the issues at hand and muddle the conclusion. The entertainment value is not only seen the characters playing ball against a wall of textual construction, but the underlying subtext is in itself at play. In Rohmer’s films “life” can win over text”.

Viewed on a 2003 DVD release from Arrow Films featuring a 4:3 AR image.