ZONE FILM CHALLENGE: YOU OWN IT, WATCH IT
Spoilers for Ichi the Killer (2001, dir. Takashi Miike) and In the House of Flies (2014 dir. Gabriel Carrer)
Alex McDonough: This is the first edition of the Zone Film Challenge, an evolution of the Zone Film Club. This is a weekly column where we pose a prompt and the two of us, or any guests we have, try to watch a film that fits the prompt and we do a brief discussion about what we watched. We try to keep it relatively short, relatively brief, and see what we can mine out of it. This week’s prompt was “You Own It, Watch It.” The goal was to watch a film that you’ve owned for years or months or however long and finally knock it off your to-do list. Both of us picked films that I believe we’ve owned for over a year at this point.
John Wright: It’s a little closer to six or seven months for me.
AM: You’re quick. I owned mine for about seven years before I watched it.
JW: The vintage on that, boy that’s been aging.
AM: Yes, so; you did Takashi Miike’s Ichi The Killer. I did Gabriel Carrer’s In the House of Flies. Two very different movies, but both of them have off-putting reputations, although my movie is practically unknown.
So my first question to you, and then we can bounce back over to me, is how did you come to own Ichi The Killer? Where did you spot it? What made you pick it up?
JW: I was living in Scranton and had a lot of time on my hands. So I got into going to used DVD and record stores and just buying whatever looked interesting. I knew of this movie by reputation and I knew of Takashi Miike by reputation, and I had the good fortune of just seeing it in the stack there at a certain used video store in Scranton that I don’t want to namedrop just because they’re currently on my pay-no-mind list for selling me a broken copy of Michael Mann’s Heat. I just thought: “well where am I going to find this again?” Plus, it’s a nice little rarity for the collection. So I just put it on my stack and it survived the inevitable cut you do before you go up to the register at places like that.
AM: So you picked it up about seven months ago and you’ve owned it since then. But why’d it take you so long to watch it?
JW: Because I was told by you, among other people, that it had a lot of off-putting elements and so I had this idea that I needed to be in a certain head-space to enjoy it properly. That did not end up being true, as I just sort of watched it in the mid-afternoon yesterday without much going on in my life either way. We can get more into this in a bit but it honestly wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.
AM: Yeah I think that’s a common phenomenon you see with movies, videogames, books, whatever, people buy things and they’re like “I want to be in a certain head-space before I take it in.” I do that a lot. I want to watch a lot of things at night. Because I feel as if; watching things at night you’re just in a different head-space. People wanna watch things high or drunk or whatever and sometimes it’s a good call but other times it’s just eh. If it’s something’s that’s good or of objective quality it’ll probably work on its own merits regardless of when or how you watch it. Unless the situation’s really dire, if you’re watching a Bergman film in a daycare it probably won’t register the same way.
Miike’s style feels so fueled by junk food and energy drinks. It’s got that real dirty, workmanlike B-movie grime
JW: I’m inclined to agree, it’s a lot of pageantry that you don’t need. I feel like I’ve learned this and unlearned it a number of times and every time I’m not sure why I got myself so worked up.
AM: Sometimes it is really exciting to just watch like a sleazy film at 1 in the morning though
JW: Oh yeah absolutely
AM: Going into Ichi the Killer, what were your expectations for the movie? I had said and you had heard that it was very violent and brutal
JW: I was basically expecting a mob movie with a higher than average amount of blood and some horror elements. For the first bit of the movie that ended up being kind of what I ended up with. Do you remember, by chance, the late season arc in the Sopranos where Chris makes a horror movie as a tax-shelter deal?
AM: Yea; Cleaver.
JW: If Chris were into J-Horror and just a better filmmaker overall the first bits of this are basically what Cleaver would have been.
AM: So did it subvert those expectations at all?
JW: Honestly, it swung much more towards a very dark superhero movie or slasher film with some torture porn elements more than a mob or yakuza movie. That’s where it runs into some problems. There are some obvious peaks of unpleasantness that I just found, more than anything gratuitous. I wasn’t disturbed by it or anything, it was just a little much for me. But the thing that took me out of it more than anything was that it started meandering when it had a lot of momentum built up. That momentum is a very strong element of Miike’s filmmaking. But again I’m getting ahead of myself
AM: So in regards to its pacing issues and the way it meanders; now you haven’t read the manga this is based on right?
His filmmaking style is very comic-booky, very video-gamey, which sounds like a backhanded compliment but I do like it.
JW: No and I suspect it would be better in the manga just because you’ve got more room to kind of spread the story out and more room to develop some of the themes that just sort of get off-hand mentioned. Miike’s style feels so fueled by junk food and energy drinks. It’s got that real dirty, workmanlike B-movie grime. I find that very appealing but you get the sense he’s kind of trampling on the garden just to take a shortcut to the next bit where he can attach the hose that shoots out fake blood to somebody’s neck.
AM: Miike’s really interesting because he’s one of those filmmakers that makes like five films a year. He makes stuff to be theatrically released. He makes television films.He makes direct to video films. He’ll make like three theater films two direct to video a year. Really hardworking guy. I feel as if he has films like Ichi the Killer that are reputation-wise probably more in line with the stuff that’s more professionally made like 12 Assassins, or Audition, or the Ryu Ga Gotoko movie he did in 1999. But Ichi the Killer is probably closer in style and form to the direct to video films he does.
JW: It definitely has some of those direct-to-video sleaze elements. Obviously this was more the time than anything else but there is a lot of very silly-looking early 2000s CGI which, at this point, is very charming. I would be very interested to see more of Miike’s movies just because I find that energy he provides very appealing. I would like to see more of his anime adaptations because he does have that Robert Rodriguez type eye for making things look like a comic book come to life.
AM: That’s a really good comparison.
JW: It seems unfair to say that. His filmmaking style is very comic-booky, very video-gamey, which sounds like a backhanded compliment but I do like it.
AM: I think Rodriguez is a very talented filmmaker in the tradition that he’s trying to make things in, and cultural moment. He kind of gets passed over I think in the cultural eye because he’s most affiliated with like Spy Kids. but Rodriguez really did make a name for himself making very cheap but well-made and efficient action and crime thrillers
JW: Unapologetic B-movies
…a mean, nasty little B-movie…
AM: The films he was influenced by were maybe not the exact same films Miike was influenced by but in a very similar tradition. Like a tradition of Corman, and these filmmakers who were working with not a lot of time, not a lot of money, but had an idea and ran with it and wanted to get stuff out on time and into theaters before the fiscal year ended. More often than not it really worked for them. I think Miike’s in that tradition. There’s a lot of other people in that scene like Sion Sono who draw from a similar well.
So if you had to downsize your collection would you be keeping this?
JW: I would keep this one with an asterisk that if I were to find cheap blu-ray copy I would take that instead because I’m convinced that the DVD I have may as well be a bootleg. It’s one of those production companies where you’re raising one eyebrow as your looking at the logo. One of those import companies that sprung up in the late 90s and early aughts for anime and pro wrestling and such. In the wake of the American remake of The Ring, J-horror kind of blew up over here for a brief period. There’s that enthusiast market with stuff like The Grudge or the original One Missed Call (which was actually directed by Miike) and you get these little operations that bring these over. But to return to the question I would absolutely keep this because the way I think of it is: you ever go to get wings and they have like the atomic heat level at the top of the board with all the sauces on it?
AM: Yeah.
JW: I need something like that just in case somebody baits me.
AM: So Ichi the Killer would be your atomic fireball?
JW: Someone can say “Man I wanna see the most twisted movie you have” and I can just say: “Are you sure?”
AM: I got a few of those in my collection.
JW: You gotta have the super hot chili man, just in case, people gotta know, we can go there if you want to.
AM: Final question: would you recommend Ichi The Killer to an interested party?
JW: I would say if you like this sort of thing this is the sort of thing you like.
AM: And what sort of thing is that?
JW: Unapologetically silly. Charmingly so. I didn’t have time to praise the performances; Tadanobu Asano is just great here, just owns this movie. If you like just a mean, nasty little B-movie with a few really genuinely unpleasant peaks yeah go for it. If you like that sort of thing this is the sort of thing you like.
AM: It’s good scum cinema.
JW: Yeah that’s a good way to put it.
How Did You Come to Own In The House of Flies?
AM: I won [In The House of Flies] in a raffle at the Hudson Horror Show in 2014. So it’s a 2014 independent Canadian horror film made in the Toronto area. It doesn’t have anyone famous in it except for one person, I’ll bring him up later, but even then, it’s just his voice. Anyway, these events have drawings and raffles and I was lucky enough to get a free copy of the DVD. It looked weird and I was like “oh cool, this is a prize. I’m gonna keep it as a souvenir, maybe I’ll watch it, maybe I’ll donate it” but it just lingered in my collection for years.
JW: Seven years, you said.
AM: Yes, just about seven years. Probably six years and ten months if I had to wager a guess.
JW: Why did it take you so long to watch In The House of Flies?
AM: I would guess that I didn’t want to watch it because it didn’t look like my type of movie. If you look it up online, you’ll see the poster for it and it’s these two people, a man and a woman, and they look like they just escaped from the house in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and they’re dirtied and covered in blood and not looking so hot.
JW: So, that was the general reason it took you so long to watch it despite owning it? Just the general sense that it wasn’t your type of movie?
It’s good scum cinema.
AM: Yeah, I would say it just didn’t look appealing. It was a Canadian micro budget film that had no clout. It had all these awards, it won stuff — or it showed at a bunch of independent film festivals including the Philadelphia Film Festival but it just didn’t seem like anything that I’d be interested in. Looking at the back of the case, it was being compared to stuff like Hostel and other torture porn films that I’m not really super into and it kept being described on the DVD case as a “retro 80s thriller.” That appeals to me but I can tell just looking at the film that it wasn’t that, that it’s just some type of put-on.
JW: Without wishing to derail too much, for the first edition of this column, we basically did a torture porn double bill which I am sure will lead to huge audience of very well adjusted people reading our work.
AM: That’s who I want *laughs*
JW: What were your expectations?
AM: My expectations were that it would be a really small budget film. I was expecting it to be pretty gory, mostly amateurish.
There’s other stuff that would be more worth your time and attention…
JW: You were expecting lots of fake blood that looked like jam.
AM: Kind of, yeah. I was expecting squibs and a lot of cost-saving FXs, lots of amateur acting. I saw that it was a trapped in the basement type of thriller, so maximum violence in minimal space was my thought.
JW: Did it meet or subvert your expectations?
AM: It subverted my expectations a little bit. It really does not move location a lot — and especially compared to Ichi the Killer, it is not a gorefest at all. It’s more of a psychological horror but not in the way where it’s fucking with the viewer, instead the tortures are psychologically manipulating the characters which keeps the viewers & characters on edge, like, how many people are there? Is there one torturer or two? One of the voices is the actual villain and presumably the guy they hired to be onscreen and the other is Henry Rollins who is the famous guy I alluded to before.
JW: Presumably he recorded his lines in his house and emailed them the sound file.
AM: Hearing Rollins’ voice is cool, I guess. It’s nice that he’s doing an indie film, probably as a favor because he thinks these guys are cool or inventive or maybe he’s friends with them. But I would definitely say it subverted my expectations. It was shot well, it was shot digitally obviously, but it was very competently done. The acting was good, there is a lot of facial acting and it works as an actor showcase for the two main characters because you’re pressed up against them in the basement for a while. It had a good sense of location, considering its budget, they were really getting as much out of that basement as they could. They affect a pretty good setting, but at the end of the day, it just was not my thing.
JW: I was gonna say, you’re somewhat damning it with faint praise. Nowhere in any of this do I hear “it was good.”
AM: Yeah, it was fine. It’s not my genre for one; for two, it’s not inventive or shocking or exemplary or extraordinary. It’s quite good for what they set out to do. That’s all you really need — is that these people put their heart and soul into the project and you know, it shines through, but you can’t get everyone.
JW: Are there any weird quirks of any kind or is it just vanilla as far as indie horror goes?
AM: There’s Rollins. There’s also the opening scene which is a montage — so the film says it takes place in 1988 and that mostly seems to be flavor, because in the early 2010s 80s nostalgia was huge, it was such a big thing and I don’t think that was a marketing tactic [for this film], I just think it was “oh, we’re going to try and do a cultural read” but I didn’t get too much out of that. But there is a montage sequence on the main couple’s date that is set to this hilariously goofy 80s rock song by — uh, do you know Bill Paxton’s band, Martini Ranch?
JW: I did not know Bill Paxton had a band in the 80s. Martini Ranch, my God…
AM: It’s pretty good, considering, it’s an 80s rock band — kinda new-wave. This is like a 5th string version of that, the song is probably by Brighton Rock. That’s one of the bands featured on the back of the case so I’m presuming it’s either by them or Saga. They call them “80s icons”, I can’t vouch for that. Those are probably the weirdest quirk.
JW: Before I ask if this entices you to check out any more of the director’s work…is there any more work by this director?
AM: There is. I looked it up, they just did a documentary [Underbelly] which sounds pretty interesting and then they did another horror film [For the Sake of the Vicious, The Demolisher] but this film did not entice me to watch more of the director’s work. I think Gabriel Carrer is talented, it seems like they know what they’re doing with the camera but I think we have different sensibilities.
Hearing (Henry) Rollins’ voice is cool, I guess.
JW: That was something I kind of got — just to knit the two together — with Miike as well. I respect the man as a filmmaker but I get the sense that what he’s into is not what I’m into.
AM: Thankfully for you and Miike, Miike has like, a hundred films, and Carrer’s got four.
JW: If you had to downsize your collection, would you hold onto this one?
AM: Not a chance.
JW: Cold.
So, that’s a “Would not recommend?”
AM: I would not recommend it, no. It has some positive reviews, if it sounds — if a micro budget psychological horror film that isn’t really well known sounds up your alley, it might be worth a look but if you aren’t specifically in that niche, I would skip over it. There’s other stuff that would be more worth your time and attention, maybe the director is someone you want to watch out for in the micro budget scene but there’s better stuff out there for sure.
JW: 15 words or fewer summary of your film; Think Quick Cowboy!
AM: Two lovers are abducted and held hostage by a mysterious man and psychologically tormented.
JW: Really dark Japanese Batman with a slasher twist. Too convoluted for its own good.
AM: That about wraps us up for this inaugural edition of the Zone Film Challenge.
Wanna take the challenge yourself? Next week’s prompt is: Bleed for This. Watch a movie with a notable on-set injury to a cast or crew member.
