{"id":111,"date":"2022-08-27T22:04:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-28T02:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thebechdelscream.net\/?p=111"},"modified":"2022-09-12T22:26:11","modified_gmt":"2022-09-13T02:26:11","slug":"quick-takes-august-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebechdelscream.net\/?p=111","title":{"rendered":"Quick Takes: August 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Muscle <\/strong>(1989)
Director:<\/strong> Hisayasu Sat\u00f4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\nObsession, paranoia, guilt, and longing. This 1989 queer Japanese horror film manages to pack quite a punch in its scant 58-minute runtime.

\n\nIn the 80s, Japan\u2019s DTV market seemed to thrive on extremely gory splatter horror and pinku films (considered somewhat analogous to softcore in the west). Muscle finds itself somewhere on the border between the two, and yet the resulting film feels far more stylish, philosophical, and arthouse than that description would imply. There\u2019s a fascinating relationship at its core, one that seems to have no \u201cgood\u201d character to root for. And it\u2019s a pretty bold move on any film\u2019s part to have its ending echo the ending to Salo, another notoriously provocative film, and have that reference create a feeling of tragic irony.

\n\nThis film is intentionally provocative and thus is not going to be for everyone; however if you\u2019re interested in queer cinema from Japan, especially as it intersects with horror, this is a must-watch.

\n\nRating: 4.5 out of 5. Honestly, I was thoroughly intrigued and entertained throughout.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Guinea Pig 6: Mermaid in the Manhole<\/strong> (1988)
Director:<\/strong> Hideshi Hino<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\nAnother watch from the direct-to-video market, and actually my first experience with the Guinea Pig franchise. I chose this one precisely because it seemed to be considered by far the best of the bunch.

\n\nThis movie is absolutely disgusting \u2013 as in, it actually made me queasy a few times and there was one particular moment where I needed to look away briefly. But it\u2019s also the most artfully made vile and disgusting gore-fest I\u2019ve seen in a long time. As contradictory as it sounds, a lot of these shots are beautiful to look at in a strange way.

\n\nLike most of the films in this franchise, it focuses more on the blood and guts than on character or plot, but considering how much of its scan runtime is spent on viscera, there\u2019s actually quite an interesting story at the center. It works in the film\u2019s favor for this to play out as a bit of a dark fairytale, and we get just enough information about the characters for the ending to have its intended impact.

\n\nRating: Never thought I\u2019d be giving two DTV shock fests the highest scores of the week, but here we are. 4\/5, recommended; even if you don\u2019t think this is your thing, it\u2019s absolutely worth a watch.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Hitokowa <\/strong>(2012)
Director:<\/strong> Kazuto Kodama<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\nNice and short little anthology film, all of the pieces were bite-sized and rarely ran more than 10 minutes a piece. Since there was only one director for all of the shorts, it was a lot more of a consistent tone than many other anthology films tend to be.

\n\nAlmost all of the entries are solid, and some were quite good. As for my favorite segment – I\u2019m always willing to give a recommendation to something that genuinely creeps me out, and the \u201cRaised by Wolves\u201d segment absolutely fit the bill. It was too short to truly get any answers, and absolutely unnerving.

\n\nRating: 3.5 out of 5. Light and quick, packed with nice little spooky moments. Even when it\u2019s treading familiar territory, it feels like a comfort food watch rather than dull.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Unholy Women<\/strong> (2006)
Director:<\/strong> Keisuke Toyoshima, Keita Amemiya, Takuji Suzuki<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\nThis is an anthology film that seems to center on the concept of female monsters. That idea drew me in right away, but the result was kind of a mixed bag overall.

\n\nRunning at 30 minutes apiece, all three of these shorts have less material to cover than they do time to fill, and all start to overstay their welcome by the end. Unfortunately, the pieces in this are also so tonally different that it\u2019s hard to really get into the right mindset for the one you\u2019re watching until it\u2019s nearly half over.

\n\nThe first entry was my favorite, with its perfectly unnerving and ghoulish central figure (the very same one that is featured on the poster image for the film). Even though it ran a little long, there were also no shortage of plot twists to keep things interesting just as it was losing stream, and the feeling of constant pursuit kept the momentum going.

\n\nThe other two entries don\u2019t quite live up to the enjoyment I got out of the first piece, the second one was enjoyably surreal and strange at the beginning, but the runtime dragged its pacing to a crawl long before it was over. The third was a fairly standard feeling ghost\/possession type of story, and it felt out of place with the more high-concept stories that preceded it.

\n\nRating: 3 out of 5. Not a bad watch, but I felt a little let down after the high of that first segment.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recommendations on what I’ve watched: J-horror edition, because I was in the mood to binge some strange Japanese horror. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,10],"tags":[49,7,50,47,48,53,52,51,45],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lists","category-reviews","tag-j-horror","tag-japan","tag-queer-horror","tag-quick-takes","tag-recs-list","tag-year-1988","tag-year-1989","tag-year-2006","tag-year-2012"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebechdelscream.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebechdelscream.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebechdelscream.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebechdelscream.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebechdelscream.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thebechdelscream.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117,"href":"https:\/\/thebechdelscream.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebechdelscream.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebechdelscream.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebechdelscream.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}