Animal Factory (2000)

Animal Factory (2000) 94 Minutes. Steve Buscemi, Director.

Animal Factory tells the story of Ron Decker, played by Edward Furlong, a young felon sent to prison for two years after being convicted for dealing in large quantities of marijuana, and his relationship with Earl Copen, a long term convict, played by Willem DaFoe. Decker is clearly in over his head, being sent to a prison full of hardened criminals, while he is inexperienced and naive. He falls in with Earl Copen after a short while and is taken in by Copen and his friends, and struggles to adapt to prison life.

Edward Furlong gives a good performance as Ron Decker. He comes of as inexperienced and uncertain of how to best interact with the other inmates. Furlong looks androgynous in the context of the other inmates, carries himself kind of shyly, and frankly, looks like the kind of guy who would wind up being a rape victim within the first few weeks of incarceration. As the film progresses, his character changes, becoming darker, and more acclimated to prison and prison culture.


Willem DaFoe is excellent as Earl Copen. DaFoe portrays Copen as haggard and wise, a jaded prisoner in a way that seems more genuine than say Morgan Freeman's turn as Red in Shawshank Redemption. (This is not meant as a slight against Shawshank Redemption, which I am also a fan of). There is a tired look in his eyes sometimes, and a calculating reptilian expression at others. The performance is sometimes very subtle, and at other times, animated. Copen has been incarcerated for so long that he knows how to exploit the place to suit his needs. DaFoe performance changes showing Copen's adaptation to what the situation needs to achieve his goal. He takes Decker under his wing and shows him the ropes, so to speak. He helps Decker find a better job in the prison, and helps him make the best of his situation, while Decker worries what he wants in return.

The film also stars Danny Trejo, whom Bunker befriended in Folsom Prison. Many other familiar character actors turn up in the film as well, such as John Heard (C.H.U.D., Chumscrubber), Mark Boone Junior (Memento, Seven), Chris Bauer (The Wire, 8mm), Tom Arnold (Rosanne, Freddy's Dead), Seymour Cassel (Convoy, Rushmore), and Mickey Rourke (Angel Heart, The Wrestler).


Mickey Rourke turns in a particularly noteworthy performance as a trans gender convict, who is Decker's first roommate. He gives a great monologue at one point in the film about how he was born the wrong sex. In the DVD's special features, there is a really amusing interview with Rourke where he talks about the lengths he went to in order to get into character for the movie, including flying across country wearing a bra and outfit similar to what he wears in the film. In the film's commentary, Danny Trejo points out that Rourke also wrote some of his own dialog for the film.


The film touches on other interesting aspects of prison life, such as race relations. There's a scene in the film where the African American convicts are staging a demonstration for better working conditions and one of the characters tells Decker that he'd join them except that they are all black, that he'd be shut out by some of his white friends if he did. In another instance, a white inmate is attacked by a black one who is mentally unstable, and tension ensues despite it not being a race related issue. It also touches on things like how the convicts perform certain actions and make decisions based on how that action will appear to other convicts. As Copen says at one point in the film, “All a convict has is his name, remember that.”


The film has a great atmosphere to it. The set design is excellent. The prison looks run down and aging, and provides opportunities for great visual moments. The place looks so beat up and old that you can almost smell the old building musty odor of the place. There is very little scored music in the film, with most of the sounds present being ambient noises such as footsteps, doors closing, alarms sounding and the like. The majority of the music is heard when a convict is playing a song on a guitar and the others are listening to it.


This was the second feature film by long time actor Steve Buscemi, who also directed Trees Lounge, and later went on to direct many TV series episodes such as Oz, The Sopranos, and Nurse Jackie. It was based on a book written by Edward Bunker, an ex-convict who passed away in 2005 at the age of 71, and also wrote the screenplay. Bunker, who wrote several books and films including the Dustin Hoffman vehicle, Straight Time, served time for bank robbery, drug dealing, extortion, armed robbery, and forgery. (This is according to Wikipedia which admittedly is not always the most reliable source of information, but I've read interviews with Bunker where he talks about several of these crimes.) He started out with juvenile detention centers while a minor, and in 1951, at age 17 he became the youngest inmate at San Quentin Prison. Bunker was in (and occasionally out) of prison for various offenses until 1975. Discovering that he was earning a living from writing and acting, he put his criminal days behind him. Edward Bunker appears in Animal Factory in a brief cameo, which is what most of his film performances amounted to, including his role as Mr. Blue in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs.


What sets Animal Factory apart from the majority of prison films I have seen is that it feels very realistic. People going into this film expecting the typical prison film will be a bit disappointed. While films like Shawshank Redemption and American Me feel appropriately bleak and gritty, this film has an authenticity about it that struck me as fascinating. The interactions between the convicts feels very real. Even the way that they walk and the conversations that they have with each other feel somehow more authentic than I've seen in other prison films.

I've never spent time in prison, and I've only knowingly been acquainted with a few people who have over the years, so I can't speak as an expert on the prison experience. But the few times I have spoken with ex-convicts and literature I've read, such as Jack Henry Abbott's In The Belly Of The Beast, have lead me to believe that prison life is better exemplified by Animal Factory than by Shawshank Redemption or Oz. If anyone who reads this has served time and feels compelled to comment on this, I'd be very interested to hear what you have to say.


The commentary track on the DVD by Edward Bunker and Danny Trejo is really interesting. They both talk about the different people that they know that they served time with and how many of the characters in the film are based on those people. It's filled with anecdotes about prison life on everything from the boredom of prison and comments on prison food to explaining how some of the different scams that convicts pull on each other work. They point out many of the extras in the film were ex-convicts that they served time with, telling their stories. Bunker talks about working to get the film made, how it took five years to get made, and some of the aspects of filming the movie in a prison with actual inmates.


I really love this movie, and have always felt like it's been overlooked. I highly recommend it to fans of prison dramas. I love the performances in it, I think the set design is great, and that it's got great atmosphere. I really hope that people who haven't seen it check it out.

As always, comments are welcome!

Calvaire (2004)

Calvaire (2004) 88 Minutes. Fabrice du Welz, Director.


Calvaire tells the story of singer Marc Stevens, a traveling performer at retirement communities and Christmas parties, who has car trouble one night while traveling through the wilderness of southern Belgium on his way to perform at a holiday gala. When his van breaks down in the rainy evening, he encounters a strange young man looking for his dog who agrees to lead him to Bartel's Inn for the night. Paul Bartel, a lonely innkeeper, at first seems very friendly and eager to have Stevens as a guest, but things become more troubling as Stevens tries to get his van fixed and move on to his next gig. Marc finds himself in an increasingly disturbing position as his situation becomes more and more out of hand between dealing with Bartel's strange behavior and the even stranger population of the nearby village, whom Bartel clearly fears.


This is the first feature film by Belgian writer/director Fabrice du Welz, who would later write and direct Vinyan, a harrowing descent into madness film about a couple seeking their lost child in the jungles of Thailand. Calvaire stars Laurent Lucas as protagonist Marc Stevens, who's other film work I am unfamiliar with, but does a decent job in the film's lead role. Jackie Berroyer gives us an excellent and strangely moving performance as Paul Bartel, the innkeeper. Also starring the great Phillipe Nahon, best known to me from his roles in Brotherhood of the Wolf, I Stand Alone, and as the psychotic madman in High Tension, as the leader of the villagers. The last member of the cast that I felt was particularly noteworthy was Brigitte Lahaie, star of many 70s and 80's French exploitation and horror films (even the occasional hardcore film), who has a minor role in the film as Mademoiselle Vicky, one of the nurses at the retirement home.


Even though this film is presented to us as a horror film with a sprinkling of what may be darkly comic moments, I find it to be primarily a very bleak drama about loneliness. Almost every character in the film feels desperately lonely and isolated, and it's clearly had profound effects on them. The innkeeper is the most clear example of this, as he reveals early on that his wife, Gloria, has left him some time ago. We learn early on that Bartel was a comedian before becoming an innkeeper and that he quit doing comedy when Gloria left, as she broke his heart. His longing for companionship is clear from the beginning, and in Stevens, he sees a kinship as they were both performers. But the loneliness is clear in seemingly everyone that Marc encounters from Mademoiselle Vicky at the beginning to Boris, the strange man looking for his missing dog, Bella. The struggle to escape the sadness and loneliness that many of the characters appear to feel is what seems to be the primary motivation for their extreme actions.


The film, while having a simple premise and rather linear plot as a survival/escape from wilderness madmen movie, has interesting little things about it. While typically a film will give the viewer a good idea of what the main protagonist's motivations are and an idea of what kind of person he is, this film does not. He is intentionally left vague to us, he is almost like a vessel to be used as a focal point for the other things that happen in the film. We know very little about him. On the other hand, we are given a much more clear idea about the history and motivations of Bartel. Often, at least while as long as it is left up to him, Stevens seems to be disinterested in the lives of those around him, and interacts with them only in as much as is required of him.

Another perhaps interesting side note is that we see very few women in the film. Once Marc finishes packing up his van and leaves the retirement home that he performs at in the beginning, the film never shows us another female character. The village seems to not have a female population. It's as if they have all vanished. The only indicator that this is not the case is in a tiny scene Bartel passes a group of identically dressed children in the woods. The viewer is left to come up with their own conclusions about why this is, and what it means.



One of the interesting directorial choices I noticed in this film is that there is almost no music in it. The majority of the sound in the entire film is made up of ambient sounds and times when characters are speaking. This only adds to the sense of isolation, in a way, by not using the music to add tension to the environment. The one time that music is present in the film, it is because a character is playing a piano in what might be the strangest dance sequence I have ever seen. Truly creepy and unsettling. The director also tends not to show very much on screen violence, the majority of it happens off camera. This may be due to budget constraints, or may simply be a directorial decision. It's a fine choice, as the material is strong enough to still feel disturbing and have a sense of dread building without using visual effects to achieve it. There is a lot of violence in the movie, we just tend to see it's effects afterward, similar to the famous ear sequence in Reservoir Dogs.

Also of note, I was excited to see that viewers are once again treated to the excellent camera work of Benoit Debie. Benoit Debie is one of my favorite cinematographers working today. He has impressed me very much with the handful of films he's worked on that I've seen. (Irreversible, Calvaire, and Vinyan.) As much as Vinyan seems to get divided reactions from the few people I've spoken to that have seen it, everyone at least seems to appreciate the camera work in it. I may review it here one day, as I found myself deeply affected by the film and consider myself among it's fans. I am looking forward to seeing his work in Gaspar Noe's Enter The Void.


Fabrice du Welz pays homage to many films and filmmakers with his first effort, and speaks openly about it in the interview portion of the DVD from Palm. The name of the innkeeper, Paul Bartel, is surely a reference to the director of the same name who helmed efforts such as Private Parts and Eating Raoul. There are shots in the film that reminded me of Straw Dogs, particularly during a siege segment of the film that is amazing to behold visually. I found myself also reminded a little of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho, and of course, Deliverance. But the film feels neither regurgitated nor like he's ripping off those films. He's clearly shown a distinct vision and style in Calvaire, he's taken those elements and refashioned them in his own way. If anything, he's showing the audience that he is as much a fan of those earlier works as we are. As he himself puts it in one interview, “With [Calvaire], I feel like a young painter who is surrounded by many great masters. And very simply, he paints his first piece, his first important piece. So, obviously, he references his great masters. But he tries to do it with his own personality. That is what I tried to do.” I, personally, feel like he succeeds.


I recommend this disturbing little film to any of you out there who like dark, unsettling movies about madness and survival in extreme situations. There is a very low body count to it, so those looking to see bodies littered about the screen, this one isn't for you. I think it's a great movie and was one of my favorite films of 2004. In America, it's distributed by Palm Pictures and can be found easily enough to rent on Netflix, or can be bought from Amazon and other retailers. It is in French with English subtitles, and the DVD includes a very nice “Making of...,” theatrical trailer, and previews for other Palm films. As far as I am aware, no dubbed version exists, which suits me fine.


That said, I chose to review this film, because it seems like not a lot of people have seen it here in America. I really enjoy it, and I hope that some people who might stumble onto this blog who haven't seen it will give it a chance. I really look forward to seeing what Fabrice du Welz does next.

As always, comments are welcome! =)

Hiruko The Goblin

Hiruko The Goblin (1991) 88 Minutes. Shinya Tsukamoto, Director.


Based on two stories from the Demon Hunter manga series by Japanese author Daijiro Moroboshi, Hiroku tells the story of a goblin let loose through one of the Gates of Hell. As it begins terrorizing a school one summer, a small group of students and an archeology professor struggle to find a way to stop it.

The film starts with the disappearance of a high school teacher, Mr. Yabe, and one of his female students while exploring a cavern. The teacher's son, Masao, and his friends go looking for the missing girl, Reiko, who he is secretly in love with. He is later joined at the school by Hiedo, an archaeologist who is trying to prove that demons exist and is being spurned by his colleagues for his beliefs. Masao is clearly more important to the events going on than he realizes, because every time someone dies from an attack by one of the demons, an image of their face is burned into his back.

From the opening moments of this film, I was immediately struck by the realization that Hiruko the Goblin was not like the other Tsukamoto films I had seen. I've seen a handful of his films, and they have been universally dark and atmospheric. From the cyber-punk body horror of Tetsuo:The Iron Man, his first film, to the pent up grief and surrealism of Vital, I had come to expect certain things from a Shinya Tsukamoto movie. I was certain within the first six minutes of the film that I was not going to be getting that experience from this one. Instead of the dark, dramatic story that I usually get from his films, I found myself watching a light horror comedy with more than a few nods to other films contained in it.

Tsutsushi Umegaki's synthesizer score during the opening credits, which seems to be clearly inspired by low budget horror films of the 80's, gave me my first real clue as to what kind of film I was in for. Using that as a jumping off point, there were references to Evil Dead, Little Shop Of Horrors (1960), Alien, The Abyss, and The Thing among others. Tom Mes' excellent book "Iron Man:The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto" even shows a side by side comparison of shots from the ending scenes of Hiruko the Goblin and Metropolis! These things never feel like they are rip-offs, but more like nods toward those films. They aren't used as scenes being repeated from those film as much as they are ideas about effects and creature design being adapted for use in different ways. I'm sure that there are probably other references that I didn't catch on first viewing.

Japan's love of arterial spray is on full display here, from the windows being showered in blood during an off camera decapitation to the on camera attachment of a demon's body to a person's head. The empty school setting is used well, providing lots of long hallways to run (or bicycle a couple of times) down, kitchens to search and fight in, and stairways to stumble around. The heroes use a variety of weapons from shotguns to bug spray in their efforts to thwart the Hiruko demons.


The DVD that I have of this film is put out by Media Blasters apparently in association with Fangoria International. The film is shot on widescreen. It's got a few cool extras on it, including an interview with Shinya Tsukamoto, an interview with the special effects designer, a small feature on the goblin creation and design, a photo gallery, and a few trailers for other films from Shriek Show.


I can honestly say that while I don't think that this is my favorite Tsukamoto film, an honor that falls to either Snake of June or Vital (depending on my mood that day), I do think that this is the most fun I've had watching one of his films and I highly recommend it to my readers. It's certainly one that I will be watching again, and one that I think would be fun to watch with a group of people as well.

I decided to do a bit of research about this film after seeing it, and thought I'd share my findings. First of all, the name Hiruko comes from Japanese mythology. It was the name of the misshapen child of the brother and sister deities who gave birth to the islands that make up Japan. The story is recorded as far back as 712 A.D. The name translates as “leech child.”

Hiruko was Tsukamoto's second film, the first being Tetsuo:The Iron Man. When he was approached to do the project he wasn't interested in doing a manga adaptation, but was a fan of Moroboshi's work and accepted. While Tsukamoto wrote the screenplay and directed the film, he allowed others to handle the cinematography and editing of the film. This is an unusual move for him, but at the time, he was intimidated by working on a film for a studio, instead of doing his own independent work. To this day, he has only directed material that wasn't completely his creation twice, Hiruko the Goblin and Gemini.

While Tsukamoto doesn't claim to have negative memories of working on the film, the studio staff under him resented being forced to work seven days a week on the project, which was the style that Tsukamoto preferred to use. They also felt that he was too young and inexperienced a director. His biggest problem on the set was in dealing with a supporting actor, Hideo Murota, pictured below. Murota had an alcohol problem and would often show up on the set already drunk and carrying a bottle. Having starred in over a hundred films by that point, dating back to the yakuza films of the '60s and '70's, Murota disagreed about his part in the film and tried to force his opinions. He and Tsukamoto almost came to blows at one point during production and were separated by the cinematographer and one of the assistant directors.

The film also represents what Tsukamoto states is the only time that he has ever made a compromise regarding one of his films. He feels that the ending of the film is not what he would have wanted and that he had to settle for something less because the production ran out of money. The film had a budget of approximately $2 million, and when it ran out of funds near the end of production, the crew continued to work on it without pay to insure its completion.

It turns out that this film was a massive failure upon its release. (I didn't discover it until years later.) The studio, Sedic International, spent a lot of money on TV spots and ads for the film, but Tsukamoto felt that the posters were worthless. He was not involved in any of the promotion of the film, and looks back on it as a mistake. Tsukamoto has had a hand in every aspect of his films from that point on, from preproduction to marketing.




My information on the history of the film comes from interviews with Shinya Tsukamoto and from Tom Mes' superb book “Iron Man: The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto,” which I highly recommend to his fans. It is released by FabPress, and can be found here: http://www.fabpress.com/vsearch.php?CO=FAB064 or at www.amazon.com .


Comments are welcome, of course! =)

Last House On The Left (2009) 114 Minutes, Unrated Cut. Dennis Iliadis, Director.

As I posted on twitter the day before this film released on DVD here in the USA, I had only one wish for this movie. I wished that it not make me angry. I am a big fan of Wes Craven's original film and, when hearing that it was going to be remade, I was not a happy camper. Why not? Well, I'm not a big fan of remakes. I don't mind them, in theory. It comes down to what's done with that material. Some remakes improve on the material (The Thing), some do interesting spins on the material (Dawn of the Dead '04), some are mediocre (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and some are absolute travesties (I Am Legend.) I always worry about having a travesty befall a story that I love. While admittedly not a huge fan of Friday The 13th, on the whole, I was completely incensed with how poorly that “re-boot” was handled. This is also the reason that I didn't go to the theater to see this film, and waited for DVD. The one thing that made me feel a little bit more comfortable about this remake being made was that Craven was directly involved with it and hand picked the director for it. I don't always like Craven's work, but I trusted him to understand how important the original film was to its fans.

It was not without a sense of dread, and I assure you that it wasn't the kind of dread that the filmmakers were hoping I'd have, that I put the DVD in my player. All I wanted was to not hate this film. I would have been totally fine with it being mediocre, just did not want it to suck. Luckily, I got my wish.

For the uninitiated, Last House On The Left is a remake of a semi-notorious 1972 film of the same name. It was the first film written and directed by Wes Craven, which was loosely based on Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring. While it's not without it's flaws, it was a disturbing and deeply affecting film.

Both versions of Last House On The Left tell the story of a teenage girl named Mari and her friend encountering escaped convict Krug and his gang. The gang kidnaps the two girls and assault them in the woods. Then when circumstances leave the gang stranded in the woods, they seek refuge in a nearby home that just happens to belong to the Mari's parents. The parents eventually figure out what happened and seek revenge for their daughter.

Strangely enough, this film is bookended by the two weakest scenes of the entire film. The opening five minutes should have been trimmed off, in my opinion. It's too predictable and unnecessary. There is no information there that we couldn't have figured out for ourselves from a single line or two of dialog that occurs about fifteen minutes later. And the last two and a half minutes of the film require a suspension of belief that is far beyond anything else that occurs in the film. Again unnecessary and honestly, just plain silly.

Those two things aside, this is a surprisingly solid remake. It is appropriately violent, bloody, and disturbing. The key change that most concerned me from the original (that one of the girls survives) is not as troublesome to the story as I'd been worried it would be. Several things are improved upon from the original version. One of the biggest improvements is the character development and the quality of the acting. All of the characters seem to be more fleshed out, more realistic.

The most obvious example of the improved acting is that of the parents. In the first film, they were easily the weakest link of the first film. (That is assuming that you take out the intentionally bumbling policemen, who were added to lighten the mood of the material. Thankfully, the remake removes that bit of nonsense.) In this version the parents act more like real people and less like soap opera archetypes. The original has a really annoying scene of the parents baking a cake for their daughter's birthday with them reading the recipe book together and so on that is completely ridiculous. For one, I've never had anyone read a recipe book with me, have you? But, I digress. In this version, they seem like more complete people, with the father wanting to get alone time with the mother although never actually saying so, the mother dealing with people from her job that she doesn't care for but has to feign politeness with(something I relate to more than I like to think about), and so on. They have lost a child already in this version, and that adds toward the reasons that they are willing to go to the lengths that they do for their daughter. And when they go to those lengths, it's very satisfying.

While it's an important part of the film, the rape scene is uncomfortable to watch, and if you are deeply affected by that kind of thing in a film, I'd advise you not watch this one. The scene is very graphic, but not in any kind of an arousing way. I feel like the scene is very much about power, punishment, and subjugation and not at all about sex or sexuality. At least that's the impression that I take from it. Surprisingly, unless you count Dillahunt's ass, this a nudity free scene. It's one of the most viscous rape scenes I've seen in recent cinema. Not on the level of Irreversible, mind you, but brutal to watch. It also shines a real spotlight on the sound design in the remake, as there are some very uncomfortable sounds at this point in the film. It certainly adds to the level of realism in the film.

The gang in the remake is still comprised of people who are sadistic killers, but they don't have the level of insanity that I felt from the gang in the original film. I don't mean to say that they do not work in the film or that they are a detriment to it, it's simply that the original casts a shadow over this one for me. In some ways this is one of the things about the remake that would work for me a lot more if I had never seen the original film.

Garret Dillahunt gave a great performance as Krug. I was familiar with him from having seen his work in Deadwood, The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford, and No Country For Old Men. He will also be in the upcoming film, The Road, which I'm very excited to see. His version of Krug is more calculated and measured character than David Hess' out of control psychopath. While there is nothing at all wrong with Dillahunt's performance or casting, for myself at least, David Hess is Krug. He is a lot of what made the original what it was.

I feel I need to mention the performance by Riki Lindhome. At first glance I thought she was cast for the simple reason that she was pretty enough and capable of looking mean. She looks like what I suspect some Hollywood executive would think a bad guy's girlfriend would look like. I have to chalk that up to my own personal cynicism though, because after watching the remake twice now, I have to say that she's my favorite character of the film. Lindhome brings the Sadie character to life far more than in the original film. She is desperate for Krug's approval, and while she is as deeply involved in the gang's deeds as anyone, there are moments where you get the feeling that she doesn't want things to be the way that they are. When her character is cornered later in the film and forced to fight, she is like a caged wild animal, positively feral. At that point in the film, she completely sold me on her performance.

I honestly can't say that I disliked the performances of anyone in this film. My only real complaints with it were the two scenes I mentioned earlier. That being said, I feel like this remake is pretty solid and totally worth watching. I would complain that it didn't really bring anything new to the story, but in the case of a story that I enjoy so much, I think it would have the potential to really upset me if it had. I think that for audiences today who are unwilling to watch older cinema (and shame on you if you are one of those) this is a great film.

For myself, I prefer the grainy look and feel of the original. Something about how it was shot, and certainly David Hess's Krug, make it a more visceral and frightening film to me. This film is more polished and clean looking, even if it is covering some gritty material. Still, it didn't upset me, and I'm very pleased about that part.

As for the DVD itself, it's pretty a pretty bare bones release. A couple of deleted scenes and a three minute long "Inside Look" featurette. I would have really liked a commentary track or two.

Comments are welcome.

Under Construction. Bear with me. More coming soon.