Almost Human (1974)

 

Featuring a truly one of a kind villain performance from Tomas Milian, Almost Human is an incredible story about someone who can get what they want at the sake of others. The movie is about a criminal getting more and more comfortable with disregard for other people and the law for their own gain. As the movie goes on it only gets worse. He goes from an unrepentant cop killer, unrepentant rapist to kidnapping, shooting people while tying them up, and killing children. Yet because of the over the top nature of it and the progression you almost feel along for the ride and are just waiting to see what crazy thing he does next. Yet in the scenes with Henry Silva as the cop the narrative flips and you see an honest cop, hard-nosed, but certainly not corrupt or dirty pushed to his breaking point. The movie forces you to feel curiosity and excitement by showing what the criminal does, but also sympathy from the view of the authority figure trying to get him. In the end you almost feel resigned to the idea that the system protects criminals and not the people they victimize. All of Lenzi's crime films are about that idea explored through different ways, but none are as exciting or visceral as this one. 

Right away Giulio's short-fuse is shown when he is the getaway driver for a robbery. He kills a cop who comes up to him and asks him to move his car. A run of the mill chase scene follows. Far from one the best in Eurocrime movies but certainly not the worst. The next scene is something that resonates throughout the entire film. Giulio (Tomas Milian) is beaten up by the gang who asked him to commit the robbery and is threatened with castration. The powerlessness and the wimpy nature of Giulio in these scenes almost makes him overcompensate later when he has power in the form of a gun or followers with him. Eventually he gets the idea of kidnapping the daughter, Mary Lou (Laura Belli) of his girlfriend, Ione's (Anita Strinderg), boss, Porrino (Guido Alberti). Giulio makes friends with Carmine (Ray Lovelock) and Vittorio (Gino Santercole) to help with the kidnapping. 

Tomas Milian as Giulio

Anita Strindberg, and her amazing jawline as Ione

Regular Eurocrime player, Ray Lovelock on the left as Carmine, Milian on the right

Regular Italian character actor, Guido Alberti as Parrino

While the film starts with Milian killing a cop at the robbery, he also kills a cop later when he is caught by a night guard trying to raid a cigarette dispenser. This gets the attention of Inspector Walter Grandi (Henry Silva) who makes mention of how the guard was killed for a small amount of money. There is an element of classism this film starts to explore. Ione tries to talk Giulio into getting a job and he talks about "spitting out your soul 8 hours a day," only to blow all your money at the hospital at some point. Now I don't know how health insurance worked in Italy then or now, or if that is just part of the english dubbing translation but that line really resonated with me as something many people now think about in America. It is true that a lot of money you earn with too much time working can be used for medical expenses. Giulio is a character so full of life regardless of the decisions he makes. You can understand why he has this mentality. The idea for the kidnapping was not only to make money to get himself in a better place where he will no longer be the guy who is belittled by all the other gangsters. He seeks money and power so that he no longer has that feeling of being emasculated or being on the bottom. That is why he starts to overcompensate when given power, but he also acts on impulse. 

Henry Silva as Inspector Walter Grandi

When Giulio kills the cop near the bank his lips are trembling because he is anxious. Later in the home invasion sequence we see him shoot at a door just because a noise was made without any context for why or who made the sound. There are other elements of classicism and being stuck in a system that you can't get out of. Johnny is Mary Lou's boyfriend and they frequently sneak off on trysts because they cannot be together because Johnny is from a lower-class background. It is a quick scene but his death at the hands of Carmine while trying to protect Mary Lou is impactful. Between Inspector Grandi, Giulio and Johnny there is a sense of being stuck and wanting to do something to improve their situation. Grandi starts feeling stuck and powerless in the system of the law because he can't do anything to prove Giulio killed anyone, Giulio wants more power and money to get out of his situation and Johnny can't have the girlfriend he wants because he is lower class. The home invasion scene is a great sequence for this because it shows these rich socialites in a big house trying to buy their way out of being killed and because Giulio has all ready kidnapped Mary Lou and knows he can get money from her ransom he doesn't care about killing any of these people. Yet, that is all they have to offer to get out of the situation and he despises them for that. 

Now that I have talked about some of the thematic elements I enjoyed, I wanted to talk about some of the entertainment value. Giulio's descent down a roller coaster to hell where he tries to bring all the people with him that he can is really exciting. The first two cop killings are surprising enough but once he starts to kill people that are outside of authority and those closest to him is when things get interesting. He goes to a black market dealer he knows named Papa to get guns but doesn't actually have the money to get them. Papa says that he will keep any deposit they make if the guns are traced back to a crime. Giulio then proceeds to gun down Papa and his wife. This establishes a pattern where anyone who seems to threaten Giulio in any way will get killed. What I do like is some of Milian's lines, the ones delivered by Frank Von Kuegelen in the english dub are memorable. There are some funny lines by Giulio's character. "She doesn't know if she is holding a tennis racket or one of those other things," talking about Mary Lou when she is around "balls." "Little girl I have been sent here by the angel Gabriel to safeguard your virginity," when he and his friends interrupt the tryst of Johnny and Mary Lou. 

The home invasion, chandelier-roulette sequence is the showstopper here. Again Giulio turned the tables by threatening to make one of the men kneel and give him a blowjob to emasculate him. Eventually Giulio and his friends string all of the men and women up on a chandelier and take all the women's clothes off and take bets on which one they will land on to violate. Eventually the noise comes from upstairs and Giulio kills the daughter of one of the women and, shocked at what he has done, proceeds to gun down all of the people tied up. The second half of the movie features more of Giulio's antics.

Spoiler Section

Giulio eventually kills his girlfriend by locking her in the car to drown when he leaves the car to go over a cliff. This was after she indirectly threatened him by saying she would go to the cops after he asked what she would do if she found out she killed someone. This is preceded by a fun scene where he says "all I did was kill three women, two men and a kid." She thinks he is kidding until she reads a newspaper article about it. Grandi's investigation is actually more interesting upon rewatch as you see him put the pieces together when he questions Parrino about who Ione was and who she was seeing. He eventually remembers seeing Giulio who had heckled him way back when the guard near the cigarette dispenser was killed. Giulio had made a remark about where they were going to buy cigarettes after that. Before he remembers that Giulio actually goes to the police station to report his missing girlfriend and puts up a facade about how sad he is. A facade Grandi sees through. The unfortunate thing is Grandi can't prove anything. Giulio goes to the mob boss, Malone and threatens to turn him in if he doesn't give him an alibi. In a similar scene to the Scorpio killer in Dirty Harry they beat him up a bit saying he was there the night the people at the home were killed. Grandi is never able to prove anything. Giulio meanwhile continues his rampage killing Mary Lou, Carmine, and Vittorio to keep the ransom money for himself and even shoots Grandi in the knee to make his escape back to Malone's pool hall where they all lie saying he had been there for a while. This is where the movie is clever in that by the end Grandi tracks down Giulio saying he is no longer a cop and shoots him before Giulio can pull out his own gun. 

What I love about this movie besides the intersecting journey of both the detective story and the criminal's rampage are the performances. Plenty of Henry Silva being the stoic, tough detective. His performance shines through in the scene where he interrogates Giulio, not believing his sentimental sorrow one bit. In the scenes where the judge and others rule Giulio with no charges Silva gets to go into yelling angry mode which I always enjoy. As for Milian he is always sweating, always looking like he is up to something and never seems like he isn't enjoying himself. This is my favorite performance from him and Silva isn't far behind. Adding to the great technical aspects is Ennio Morricone's amazing piano heavy score utilizing low notes and a high pitched woodwind instrument to add a sinister feel to the movie. 

Rating: 10/10

Trivia: Richard Conte was originally offered the role of Inspector Grandi. He died before the movie could be produced. Marc Porel was offered the role of Giulio but Lenzi found him to be unprofessional and threatened to resign from the film if Porel got the part. 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foboOyezkGY

English Voice Dubbing Cast

• Frank Von Kuegelen dubs Tomas Milian as Giulio
• Michael Forest dubs Gino Santercole as Vittorio
• Carolyn De Fonseca dubs Laura Belli as Mary Lou

Helldriver

 

As splattering as Tokyo Gore Police, and as ADHD as something like Godzilla: Final Wars, Helldriver is an all you can eat buffet of quantity, with some quality, in a zombie movie. The practical effects when they are there are great. Yoshihiro Nishimura does a decent job grounding this movie in a Land of the Dead type of reality where a world is built enough for you to invest in the story. That being said, the first 10 minutes or so features zombies piling themselves together to create one giant zombie, a truck comes and hits them. Then the main character of the movie shows with a chainsaw sword attached to her heart. At a certain point in the movie severed heads of the zombies are launched like artillery. If that is the type of Looney Tunes slapstick humor you want with gore this movie is for you. 

Synopsis: A mysterious mist blankets the northern half of Japan, transforming those who inhale it into ravenous, flesh-eating zombies. Hope arrives in the form of Kika, a beautiful high-school girl armed with a chainsaw sword powered by an artificial heart.

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Some of the scenes early on set the precedent for things to come. A man uses a chain of some kind to cut the antlers off the zombies' heads. They eventually get ahold of those antlers and drag him down. What follows, and what happens throughout the movie is many different shots of blood and gore specifically spraying blood onto faces and objects, a little similar to some shots in the Hatchet movies. Some shots in Tokyo Gore Police like spraying blood that looks like water droplets in slow motion is also on display throughout. Some of the zombie carnage is followed by a shot of the moon, a truck coming out of nowhere to hit the zombies and Kika (Yumiko Hara) showing up and cutting off the lead zombie's head. This lead zombie by the way looks like something from Braindead or Return of the Living Dead with a degloved face and the eyes all white and sticking out with the spine out. What you find out about the zombies in this movie, in a unique twist, is that they can only be killed if the antlers are removed from their head. So instead of the actual brain stem being the thing that keeps them alive it is the antler. Like some other zombie movies there is fun to be had when a zombie can lose limbs or other parts of its anatomy and still keep going. This puts a new twist on that when you have the Looney Tunes type of moments where zombies severed arms can take control of chainsaws and Kika will have a sword fight with the chainsaws controlled by live hands. 

That opening sequence is just an intro to some of the crazy and original ideas you see in this movie. The movie follows Kika but her opposition is actually her mother, Rikka (Eihi Shiina). Her abusive mother is a cannibalistic serial killer with her uncle Yasushi who then burn her father to death in front of her. Hellraiser anyone?! Rikka is about to rip Kika's heart out when they are both struck by a meteor that envelops both of them in a cocoon, Kika is taken by some government agents who turn her into a character with an artificial heart and chainsaw sword. Following this is some exposition where it is explained that the ashes from the meteor cause the people to become zombies. The southern part of Japan where infection took place is quarantined from the rest. The government has debates over whether or not the zombies should be considered human or not. That leads to some fun scenes later but is also an interesting way to ground this movie in reality. This feels like what could happen in the real world when a virus is isolated and whether or not we treat different things as humans is a debate going back forever. It not only feels like a zombie movie, but also the post-apocalyptic movies of the 1980s. 

Yumiko Hara as Kika

Around a year after the meteor hits Kika is let out near one of the walls dividing the parts of Japan. She teams up with Taku (Yurei Yanagi) and his mute sidekick No-Name. They go out collecting antlers to bring to black market dealers as the substance from the antlers is a kind of drug. See, even more world building. Around the same time, Rikka is freed from her cocoon and becomes Queen of the zombies. The prime minister goes live declaring that the zombies are indeed human...until he is attacked by one and his soldiers can't shoot until he says they aren't human. The new prime minister and agents capture Kika and her friends and task her with killing Queen Rikka. 

Eihi Shiina as Rikka

An example of the type of blood spray on display in this movie.

The middle of this movie has two fun action sequences. I'll get to the quality of them in a minute. One takes place at an abandoned warehouse where the team tries to rescue Maya, No-Name's sister. Before they can there is a zombie rape scene with Maya where the zombies bite her nipples off. Trigger warning for that though it is so over the top it is humorous in its own way. While driving zombies' heads are launched at them like artillery. Before they get to the warehouse a former cop, Kaito (Kazuki Namioka) saves them from the severed zombie heads by blowing them up with a shotgun. At the warehouse each group fights distinct zombies. Kika fights one with swords and guns for body parts and Kaito fights the now resurrected Yashushi with his truck. He also fights one that has a bunch of swords through its body. Taku and No-Name fight one that is a mutant composed of severed body parts.  They are chased by Yashushi in a truck made of zombie parts. There is some real tension as they approach a cliff and Taku sacrifices himself to save everyone. There is some real green and blue screen during the backgrounds of the chase. That is not the only CGI throughout as I think some of the blood in the medium shots is computer generated and some of the zombie effects like the missing body parts could be CGI as well. I have a good eye for it but maybe not the best eye. Like I said quantity with some quality. I did invest in these characters some and the part when Maya dies in No-Name's arms and he struggles to let emotion out is actually quite moving. So there are many things like the world building and the characters to help ground this. 

The finale of this movie is something to behold where rockets are shot at a giant skyscraper of zombies on top of one another made by Rikka. It takes off like a plane to go across the quarantine. The military fights zombies on the ground while Kika tries to climb the "plane" of zombies. It leads to a long fight with her mother to determine the fate of the universe...

Spoiler Section

Kika fights her Uncle and kicks him into one of the missiles that explodes. She fights her mother and tears her heart out. Her severed head goes into space and lands on a planet like the meteor at the beginning of the movie.

I really enjoyed this movie. It has blood and gore, awesome and unique makeup effects, a good story and a developed world for a zombie movie. It is a little long to start and the CGI and editing drag it down a bit but I could never say this wasn't fun or ambitious. Yoshihiro Nishimura is the Tom Savini of Japanese gore effects. I really liked how the zombies had white faces and the contact lenses and the look of Eihi Shiina's eyes was awesome. She basically looks like a heavily made-up version of a Power Rangers villain. I do like some homages to Audition like hearing her say "tickle, tickle tickle," in the exact same way she said, "deeper." 

Rating: 7/10

Trivia: the chain-sword weapon is also prominent in the Warhammer video games. 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPCY5YCE6So

Enter the Void (2009)

 

Gaspar Noe's movies combine style, substance, and themes that make them unique. Enter the Void like Irreversible before it starts you in the middle of a story all centering around one event that brings consequences for everyone involved. Both deal with themes of pregnancy and someone losing a baby, trauma, grief, and bereavement. The second half deals with the consequences of that event and Noe takes you on a 2001-type of journey with overhead camera angles, bright LSD-ridden colors, and psychosexual processes of the creation of life, and the afterlife. While the second half does get a bit exhausting with the style over substance, the first half had me so immersed because of the first-person perspective that I thought I could experience what was in the movie. Compare that to a movie like Mandy where I actually thought I had to be on drugs in order to enjoy it. At its core an interesting story about a brother and sister, though Noe even makes that something a bit more perverse than you would expect. I like the audacity he has to make stylish movies about people who aren't all good or bad. 

Synopsis: This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta). When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.

The first part of the movie follows Oscar in the final hours of his life before is killed by the police. Irreversible starts a little more toward the middle whereas this is closer to the end of the chronology. What I enjoy is how there are hints of things throughout the story, past and future established early on. Oscar talks about Victor not wanting to come there because of what happened with his Mom. Foreshadowing for two different reasons. Oscar and Linda have an aytycical brother-sister relationship. I thought that from the beginning when Alex eventually said Linda was Oscar's sister, I was like sister? That foreshadows things to come as their relationship is a bit more sketchy than at first glance. 

What I enjoyed early on was being in Oscar's thoughts. I get more immersed in the movie because of that. When he does drugs and starts feeling the effects of those drugs, and seeing the things he sees I feel like I am experiencing that. So many trippy movies approach this in a way that is alienating to me where I feel like I have to be doing drugs in order to experience the film in a positive way. I never get detached from this movie, especially when it is told from Oscar's perspective. While I've never done psychedelic or hallucinogenic drugs, the things he sees while on these drugs are things you would see while having an ocular migraine, or just opening your eyes or opening your eyes in the sun. Mixes of colors, different weird images like blinking dots mixed with scientific diagrams of chromosomes. Images like that. Hearing Oscar's thoughts about how the drugs are taking effect is interesting.

Some of the scenes of Oscar and Alex (Cyril Roy) walking through the streets of Tokyo are fun. Again, it makes me feel like I'm really walking through Tokyo. I enjoy seeing cultural things that are different there, than they are here. The different looking vending machines, the colors of some lights and the Japanese and English language displayed on certain signs was cool to see. Oscar's death scene gives me a lot of anxiety because in the first person view I feel like I am him about to die. Hearing his thoughts about what to do and what he will do is interesting. I couldn't think much like he probably couldn't while watching that scene. 

After that scene the camera becomes much more of its own character. Noe has other moments in his movies like this. The opening to Irreversible is one of those where the camera feels like just as much of a character as anyone else. In this movie Noe cheats in a way. The camera is literally Oscar's spirit from the afterlife. The overhead camera angles are interesting. Noe's penchant for the spinning camera and 360 angles are shown in certain scenes. Notably in the scene with Linda dancing at the strip club. Some of the colors are nice to see. Not just in Oscar's drug trips but also the scenes with the different colored strobe lights and pyrotechnics at the club. 

Some of the examples of the color pallet you can find in this movie.

I like where the movie goes after Oscar's death story wise. The issues come in where Noe is doing too much style over substance. At a certain point I got a little exhausted of the Call-of-Duty-spectator-mode camera angles. The camera goes through walls of buildings always overhead and into the nearest element of energy it can find. Some of the scenes toward the end of the spirit just going from room to room in the love hotel just went on too long. At 143 minutes, and 161 minutes for the even longer version I didn't see this feels too long. Climax doesn't have nearly as effective of a story or characters but I do think Noe was able to rein himself in a little more for that movie. What I did like about the second half is seeing how everyone was impacted by Oscar's death.

Spoiler Section

I like any story where long lost relatives or friends are able to see each other after a long time. Seeing the parents car accident and then Oscar and Linda being separated in foster care really tugged at the heartstrings. Seeing them meet again later after Oscar starts dealing drugs to get her a plane ticket was satisfying. They had made a blood pact to always be together as kids and as adults while still together, they are apart. Oscar gets mad one night when Linda returns from the club, a club he was banned from because he was trying to sell drugs to the girls. Yet Oscar doesn't want Linda seeing the owner of the club, Mario. Linda kisses Oscar a lot and talks about how much she misses him and accuses him of being jealous when he gets mad. The sexual tension in their relationship is manifested more in how she acts toward him but he never seems to fight how physical she gets with him. Linda doesn't like Alex that much or so it would seem. Oscar's death actually brings those two closer together. Even a character like Victor (Olly Alexander) is one I feel more sympathy for because by the end of the story he has no one. Sometimes being responsible for a person's death is just as bad as being the killer yourself. He has to live with his own actions and despair. 

In closing, Noe is doing some very 2001 things with this movie. The long sections of a camera following colors. 2001: A Space Odyssey is about life and death through evolution. This is about life and death through sex and nurturing in a way. The many scenes of Oscar breastfeeding from his mother, and then flashing back to that later when he is with Victor's mom is not lost on me. The scenes of him waking up naked next to his sister and all of those scenes with his mother give this movie a very Freudian quality to the psychosexuality. I'm not sure what all of it means. The ending though made me think of something I've heard many times. When someone dies, someone else is born. Or someone is born for however many people that die. Oscar's spirit also seems to get peace, but also reincarnation through Linda and Alex conceiving a child. When Linda gets an abortion the spirit can't move on. Just like so many sci-fi movies though the reality could be quite simpler. Oscar likes DMT. Bruno, the drug dealer eventually talks about the high of DMT only lasting a few minutes and being a near death experience. Alex's Tibetan book of the dead is on Oscar's mind when he does the drug. Could that mean that this whole movie is a trip? I don't know. It is interesting to think about. The fact that the acid colors that he has seen at Alex's apartment are on his mind as well is something to think about. Yes it is cool stylistically to have those colors for the love hotel but it also could mean something in the movie. I was a little detached in the second half without Oscar's inner thoughts but I still liked the style, though it gets exhausting. I really enjoyed the subtext and trying to interpret it. 

Rating: 7.5/10

Trivia: Most of the dialogue was improvised by the cast as Gaspar Noe didn't understand english well. 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tG_b5zaT9Y