METTA META GAKIDO KOZA (1971) - that's Japanese for "a sex comedy from the mind of a raving lunatic"

Puberty can be tough time for a boy. Our young hero desperately wants to shag some little sweetie pie, but is completely ill-equipped to do so. And by ill-equipped, I do mean "ill-equipped". His little fun buddy is so tiny he needs a magnifying glass to spot it (quite literally), and when he goes off to pee in a field, a bunch of Japanese schoolgirls notice his non-existent package, and they all point and laugh. When sexual frustration collides with penile inadequacy, there is only one solution…suicide.


Sort of like a junior high version of Lane Meyer from Better Off Dead, our little hero tries to kill himself but frankly blows ass at suicide. He lies down on some train tracks, but the train actually passes on the adjacent tracks. He then tries to lynch himself on a ferris wheel, but unfortunately some kind of bird man superhero saves him. Asshole. Well, blessed with a second chance at living, the boy goes on a date with a girl at the park. Inexperienced as he is, he only lightly kisses her forehead, unsure of where to target his smooches. This adorable little date is interrupted by a cop that strips down to his underwear and tries to molest the little girl (being that this is a Japanese movie, it is required to have at least one funny scene featuring a child molester). Well, our hero becomes frustrated by his failures with the opposite sex (and having to play second fiddle to a child molester), so he finally grows some stones and stabs the "cop" in the head with a butcher knife. As Alice Cooper so eloquently put it…"No More Mr. Nice Guy".

Courtesy of minusone66

Stabbing a police officer in the head with a knife seems like a big move from someone so seemingly timid, but let's take a look at the boy’s family life. An earlier scene shows the boy smacking his baby brother around because he tried to feel up his foldout centerfold. Under an umbrella of sexual frustration, the older brother snaps. Once the "turn" is complete, our hero becomes rebellious, whether talking back to authority figures, picking on nerdy students, getting into vicious fights with teachers, cutting open his parents skulls and replacing their brains with mystery goop, or killing and roasting the bird man like a pig on a spit, the "superhero" that saved his life. That'll teach him to stay out of other people's business, especially crazy people that are trying to kill themselves. So, we end up with one less nutbar on the planet. Big deal.

In Japan, if you start a fight with a teacher, both of you get put on super mop duty. Another reason why Japan is virtually spotless.

It is pretty clear where he gets these violent impulses from, as his parents seem to only be able to communicate through violent means. Mommy pummels the shit out of the baby when he acts up (even knocking his eyeballs out), and daddy goes ballistic when he sees his wife with her new blow-up doll that turns into a real man (Japan has always been a step ahead of us in terms of technology). I believe it was the great Japanese philosopher Banzai Hachimachi that said "violence is a vicious cycle, and when anyone tries to ride this cycle, they fall off and skin their knees of humanity". Boy, that zen stuff is deep.

Dad is a volcano of sexual frustration, so naturally his son follows suit. Look no further than the scene where the boy goes to a go-go dance club presumably to hit on women. Lo and behold, his dad is there, and he ends up challenging his son to a beer drinking contest. The little dude is victorious (and he gets to suck on some titty as a reward, which appears to be his favorite thing in the world to do), and dad can’t handle this kind of humiliation, so he drags his son outside and flattens him with a steamroller. This hardly fazes the youngster, maybe because he just chugged like 30 beers. Either way, flattening your son till he’s approximately the thickness of poster board is no way to positively channel your sexual frustrations. Also, it automatically disqualifies you from any “world’s greatest dad” awards or what have you. Later, they do bond and make up (even if for just a moment) by judging a topless beauty contest together. It would be easy to dismiss this family as fucked up beyond belief, but I wish my dad and I would've spent this kind of exciting quality time together.

If it isn’t already clear, Metta Meta Gakido Koza IS FUCKING CRAAAAAAAAAZY. Yes, even for Japan. Ever see Hausu? This movie is like watching Hausu jerk off to a cartoon version of Porky’s (I know that doesn’t make sense, but I think it’s fitting regardless). Unfortunately, the copy I have is in Japanese with no subtitles, and I don’t understand Japanese, so the movie might be even crazier than it appears at first glance. For all I know, the dialogue could include lines like “I sure had a CRAZY day at the office! We were busy making Mr. Suzuki some magic underwear out of squid eyeballs when a centaur ran into the office and started pelting us with kumquats. Luckily, the centaur was arrested, and was sentenced to spend 5 billion years inside of a giant peapod that rests inside of Jupiter’s core. Thankfully, we got to keep the kumquats.” No matter what your demented imagination might conjure up, it could never conjure up some of the stuff in this movie. I bet you’re wondering why you’ve never even heard of this movie. Well, not only was it never released in the west, it’s not even on IMDB. Even IMDB was like “no fucking way that movie exists”. I bet if you went through the looking glass and went on IMDB (assuming they have Wifi in there), Metta Meta Gakido Koza and Hausu would be the only two movies listed. Did I mention that there's a scene where someone goes bowling with a baby? I don't mean that someone brings a baby bowling, rents it shoes, buys it a fucking beer, and lets it take a fucking turn. No, THEY BOWL WITH THE BABY. All I can say is...god bless you, Japan.

THE CRAZY NEVER DIE! (1988) - ruminations on the word "gonzo", or an open letter to an imaginative pervert

Here's the first part of easily the most obscure of the Hunter S. Thompson docs. Thanks to whomever uploaded it for saving me the trouble of uploading it.

Now, when your blog has the word "gonzo" in it's title, you're gonna get internet stragglers popping in looking for porn. I thought placing the word "cinema" first would have a certain "artistic" connotation, hopefully conveying to people that the blog is not really about people fucking. After all, that's what really separates art from pornography. Pornography is about watching people have sex, and art is about other stuff (including stories about people who have sex, if you follow the distinction). Granted, "other stuff" occasionally happens in pornography, like a scene of a pizza boy's car breaking down, forcing him to hitch a ride with a van full of cheerleaders on their way to a wet T-shirt contest. However, it's just some dumb filler meant to pass the time between the rumpy pumpy. Actually, on second thought...cheerleaders in a wet T-shirt contest? That's actually pretty damn genius. Maybe the line between art and porn isn't as clear as I'd originally thought. Look at it as more of a fuzzy rule of thumb than a rigid fence.

Glancing at my traffic sources, one particular keyword search caught my eye: "gonzo Dora the Explorer". I can respect the impulsive desire to search the internet for pornographic parodies of Dora the Explorer, assuming it's four in the morning and you're drunk, single, and lacking a certain forward impetus. However, it takes a special kind of interweb maverick to search for this very specific type of Dora porn, that which breaks the fourth wall in order to remove the distance between porker and porkee. Although really, it's just a filmed interview between a pervert who has money and a broke female, with predictable results. However, keep in mind that Dora is an animated character, so I'm a little lost as to how this sort of thing would work. Then again, Dora is no older than twelve. Some forms of "entertainment" are probably best left unexplored, free speech or otherwise.

So, in closing, I find it a bit unfortunate that the word "gonzo" (and, consequently, it's revolutionary implications) has been hijacked by the pornographers, to refer to a most unrevolutionary filmic technique (that of jettisoning story and any pretense of cinema along with it). Of course, it was the great Hunter S. Thompson that gave birth to gonzo journalism, rooted in a subjective narrative both emotional and satirical (and fucking funny to boot). I could write some boring thesis describing gonzo journalism, but it's best experienced than dissected. In other words...go read a book.

A true "gonzo" take (via Hunter Thompson) on Dora the Explorer would indeed be interesting, much more so than whatever it is you were hoping to find. Unfortunately, Hunter is dead, and I can't watch more than 90 seconds of that foolishness, and no one else would bother. Why don't you write your own gonzo take on Dora? Wait a second...doesn't Dora talk directly to the audience at times during the show? Maybe that's the "gonzo" aspect of the show you were trying to find edification on, and the only pornographic context to your google search is within my own dirty mind. Either way, the mere breaking of the fourth wall constitutes a highly reductive definition of the word "gonzo". Well, I think that's my ultimate point, even if my initial interpretation of your Google search might've been completely off base. I would also like to apologize to Dora herself, for further dragging her through the mud of this perverted superhighway of information. She has enough to worry about, what with all that useless shit she has to find. Sorry.

I'm not gonna pontificate at length about Hunter, nor exalt his greatness like he's some kind of sports hero. The Crazy Never Die! is already a wonderful portrait, both rambling and piercing, and a sort of companion piece to later docs Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson and Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride. Also, I shouldn't really have to describe it when you could just watch the fucking thing yourself. It's only a half hour long and embedded throughout the review for the sake of convenience. Hunter S. Thompson died for your sins, so it's the very least you could do.

P.S. I also referenced Dora the Explorer in my Human Centipede review, despite never having watched a full episode of the show. Then again, that reference led directly to this one. Sometimes a vicious circle can unfold in a straight line.

TAINTLIGHT (2009) - it still taint happening folks

Here is the trailer for a movie whose existence is solely predicated on the fact that the Twilight franchise has made roughly 87 trillion dollars. You'd think they'd be a little kinder.

While previous generations of young people were concerned with weighty issues like the Vietnam war, women’s rights, and the military industrial complex, the youth of today have ushered in the present with their own set of worries, namely:

1. Is Bella gonna fuck Edward?
2. Is Edward gonna fuck Bella?
3. That wolf dude has great abs. How does this enter into the equation?

Well, who can blame them really. Who wants to worry themselves about wars and politics and genocide? That shit is BORING. They’d much rather chill with Bella and the boys, watching them play baseball while covered in glitter, or whatever it is that fake vampires do in their spare time. Moping about important shit is no way to go through life.

***

Right away, we meet our Bella replacement, Stella Ennui, who explains her situation in voice over. She notes that her mother died of “committing suicide disease”. I laughed at both the Ennui bit of her name (vaguely clever, I would say), and the suicide disease bit. Not because the line is necessarily that funny, but because she uses air quotes to describe the disease, despite her voice over being an interior monologue. It’s a cinematic joke you don’t usually see in movies this stupid, more often reserved for the likes of Frank Tashlin or Mel Brooks.

Immediately, we are supposed to sympathise with the filmmaker’s disdain for Kristen Stewart’s aloof acting style. I admittedly haven’t seen the Twilight films, except for parts of the first one, but am somewhat of a fan of Kristen anyway, having seen some of her other work. She shows an interior intelligence and ephemeral honesty, coupled with an exterior apathy and disdain of craft. I, for one, wish more young actors would take this route. Usually, you get something like: “Hey, look at me! I am full of confidence! I took a bunch of acting classes and workshops and stuff! I CAN EMOTE!”. Hey professional thespian…shut the fuck up. Characters are usually, first and foremost, PEOPLE, and not showcases for how confidently you can utter lines and stomp your feet. I heard people complain that, during the Oscars, Kristen sat slumped in her seat, bored with the empty spectacle in front of her. I applaud it. Caring about shit is overrated, I say. Also, she’s pretty hot, but that also ties into the apathetic moping thing as well. If she had a big perm and wore loads of makeup and had a bubbly confidence about her, I probably wouldn’t be licking the screen everytime Catch That Kid pops up on cable. I’m kidding of course. Really I am.

Normally, a spoof like this only works if it can repeatedly string together funny gags. Airplane isn’t great because The Concorde…Airport ‘79 is retarded (and lordy is it retarded), and the Zuckers have the courage to point this out, and both filmmaker and audience can nod in agreement. Airplane is funny because funny shit happens throughout; no more, no less. Pointing at a film and saying it’s stupid is a waste of everybody’s time. It’s just an inanimate object, after all. As Jean Luc Godard said, “the best way to criticize a film is to make another film”. Saying something sucks fifty different ways is not “real” criticism in the way that creating a better version and having the other pale in comparison is. I didn’t find very much to laugh at here, but keep in mind, I’m no Twilight groupie, so maybe there’s a bunch of obscure references that I missed, all of which I'm sure were brilliant and witty and tubular and shit.

Apart from the opening monologue. I also liked the line where the fake Edward says “I’m not of this mortal coil”, because it’s a clever approximation of what one of these goth emos might actually say, and also doubles as a reference to an awesome band. Speaking of which, the fake Edward mugs horribly throughout the film. It’s another way of pointing and laughing at the real Edward’s performance, which apparently involved a lot of moody furrowing of the brow and what not. It’s the sort of thing that seems funny when a bunch of drunk frat fuckers get together and make fun of something, but sits there dead on the screen when actualized. After all, when a bully points and laughs at some nerd wearing a Legend of Zelda baseball jersey, he may be enjoying himself at that moment, but it’s because he has declared himself superior to something. Anybody standing around watching is not likely to chortle at the situation, except as an accessory to the bully’s meathead insecurity.

I also liked that there’s a guy that seems to be doing an Emo Phillips impersonation, although I’m not sure if that was the intended idea. I think it would’ve been hilarious if they actually got Emo Phillips to play the part, with the characters acting as if he’s just a normal teenager. It would be inexplicable, yes, but funny as balls. After all, inexplicable Emo Phillips is always funny. Other than that, this movie can lick my taint. They should put that on the poster. Oh wait, it’s direct to video. Never mind.

Now, I agree that vampires sparkling and moping around is fucking stupid, but replacing this with pointing out that vampires are sparkling and moping around is not any less stupid, if you follow me. I guess my generation’s equivalent to Twilight would be something like The Lost Boys, I movie I loved as a kid and continue to enjoy. Say what you want about this MTV vampire opus with the Coreys fighting the undead against all odds, but at least shit actually HAPPENS during the film. I don’t quite get how you can write three books about a girl maybe or maybe not fucking a vampire dude that doesn’t even do any cool vampire shit, like sucking out a hooker’s neck before crashing out of the third story window of a cheap motel, flying onto a motorcycle and revving away into the night. Any asshole can play baseball.


***

Here is another movie with the word “taint” in the title (the other being Tainted Image) that is not, as of this writing, listed on IMDB (not including porn, of course). That may be the narrowest film genre in all of moviedom. Unfortunately, both taint movies have left me down, discouraging me from seeking out further taint related cinema. Strangely, whenever I see the word “taint”, I think of the Mr. Show sketch, featuring an up and coming male porn star and a character based on Larry Flynt. However, instead of a giant cock, this guy has an impressive taint (I’m not quite sure what qualities one compares when judging taints, however). I guess the image of Scott Aukerman spread eagle has never quite left my subconscious. I’m no homo, mind you. Really I’m not. Well, I’ll just point out that his meteoric rise inspires the creation of a magazine called “Under Your Balls Quarterly”. Now THAT is some fucking comedy. To try and explain why that’s funny and most of Taintlight isn’t would just ruin everything, so you’ll just have to figure it out for yourself. Such is the enigma of humor. However, this sketch is not without pathos, what with tragedy inevitably striking in the life of this pseudo Larry Flynt. Specifically…CAPTAIN TRAGEDY!!!

TAINTED IMAGE (1991) - it taint happening folks

these visions haunt our heroine Kate, perhaps symbolizing that she is totally batshit crazy or whatever

Here is another uber-obscurity that's not even listed on IMDB (as of this writing), a la A Dozen Ways to Die. It rests in the astonishingly narrow "regional psychological horror" category, along with Disconnected (1983) and maybe The Disturbance (1990) (and possibly nothing else). Unfortunately, where as the other two beat the odds to be somewhat effective little thrillers, Tainted Image fails in the Roman Polanski ripoff sweepstakes (insert joke about the rape of a comatose 13-year-old girl).

Well, Kate's mother just died, and she has since been experiencing "visions", like seeing her mother's tombstone bleed for some reason (I guess it symbolizes that death is super creepy and stuff), and some flashbacks to a troubled childhood (pay attention for some exciting plot info). Her boyfriend with the horrible fro-mullet tries to console her, but as the film is a ripoff of Repulsion, she remains frigid in the face of uncouth groping. Then again, maybe she's just honestly repulsed by this schmoe. On top of his hair and general annoyance factor, he tries to sound smart while reading the newspaper, decrying that "Bush is a Communist!". I don't know what paper you're reading pal. Maybe you meant "Bush is a pussy". Worst of all, her neighbor is the most annoying human being in the hell that is her daily reality, a fat faux-southern whale of bitch who looks like she just got kicked out of an audition for a John Waters movie. She constantly yells at her not to have sex and "live in sin", yet constantly hits on her boyfriend. I say let them have each other and move to California, or at least murder the fat cow for the sake of your own sanity.

Kate works as an art gallery guide, droning on about abstract expressionist form or whatever. She's also taking a painting class, concocting banal sky scapes and what have you. Her pretentious teacher chimes in with some good advice, telling Kate that she should try and channel some of that negative energy into her work (maybe a cool painting of a tombstone covered in blood). He also pontificates on and on about Munch's "Scream" painting, setting up later plot developments (and a somewhat righteous Carrie ripoff). Whenever a movie forces you to sit in on a class, the lesson always relates to future plot points somehow (especially in horror films). It's sorta like the reward the film gives you for suffering through school again.

So, it's clear that Kate is starting to crack. She's becoming paranoid that her boyfriend is cheating on her, she stares outside of the window at a giant Motley Crue sign carved into a basketball court, and the soundtrack of her inner mind combines low rent chanting, tuneless organ noodling, and some other music that sounds like one of those new age tapes played backwards. Her teacher tries to console her by offering to "help" her (i.e. some nookie), and her boyfriend suggests she and him go see the new Woody Allen movie to get her mind off of things (that is, distraction through nebishness). Thankfully for characters in these N.Y. area films (although usually ones that take place in Manhattan), there's always a new Woody Allen movie playing. Boy, the Woodman keeps churning 'em out.

I know I'm supposed to share in Kate's mental dissolution, but it's hard to take her seriously with such a brutal goomba accent. She might work as a bad blind date for Costanza on Seinfeld, but unfortunately, you need to be able to take her seriously within a slow burn psychological horror film. In effect, the movie has to sell the reality of Kate's surrounding, in order to sell the crumbling of her reality. Not only that, but, alone on an island, she has to sell the crumbling of her interior world. Unfortunately, amateurish performances destroy this reality across the board (and slack editing further undercuts the actors). In other words, every actor annoyed my pants off, and I wasn't even wearing pants at the time.

Tainted Image is a great example of a movie that sounds great in theory, but is completely lifeless in execution. It's (mostly) not interested in providing any B-movie thrills, but solely trying to build off of Repulsion and The Tenant, a colossal task for even an experienced crew with an actual budget. A much better example of a similar tale would be the previously mentioned Disconnected, starring C-movie goddess Frances Raines in the Catherine Deneuve role. While still ultra cheap, the lack of a budget somewhat works for it instead of against, creating a drab world that Frances is completely alienated from. She tries to engage in normal human behavior but fails, in scenes acted out in real time. Tainted Image, on the other hand, is more symbolic in nature, which is always dicey territory for any film. Her dreams symbolize her crumbling mental state, instead of providing psychological insight into a real character. In other words, it's better to show someone honestly coping with a lack of marbles, than to just show that they have increasingly less and less marbles. If you follow me. You know what...I need to work on my metaphors. I really do.

A DOZEN WAYS TO DIE (1990) - a biker thriller so obscure not even the interweb knows of it

Here's proof I'm not making this whole thing up


As a child, I remember seeing Hal Ashby’s 8 Million Ways to Die listed in T.V. guide and, as somewhat of a math nerd, my mind boggled. Your average Schwarzenegger film at the time usually topped out at about twenty-five or thirty ways to die. Surely Hal must’ve cooked the books, or maybe had someone watching holocaust footage in the film and thus added six million to the total by proxy. Even then, you would have to count each individual death as a separate category. Then again, maybe every human being is like an individual snowflake, and the snuffing out of a single snowflake could be considered a special form of death.

Either way, the title is actually a play on the phrase “there are 8 million stories in the naked city”. This makes sense in the New York set (the titular naked city) hard boiled detective novel that the film is based on, but the movie itself is set in L.A., so the cynical play on words becomes lost. Regardless, I probably shouldn’t takes things so literally.

So, I had specific numerical reasons to lower my expectations for A Dozen Ways to Die, as well as the fact that I couldn’t find any information on the film searching on the internet. Not even an IMDB listing. Then again, maybe the man is trying to keep it down. That must be it.

Directed by Randal Hill, A Dozen Ways to Die concerns a family going on a camping trip in their RV. The unit consists of a mother, a daughter (wearing a “china tour” t-shirt that lacks any sort of band logo; maybe it’s a shirt they give out to yanks when they land in Beijing), and a creepy French father (creepy not because he’s French, but because he looks like a Greek lumberjack and has an unspeakable mullet/unibrow combo).

Of course, their attempted “oneness” with nature is cut short when they encounter the most unlikely biker gang in movie history; a cowboy, a Che-lite revolutionary, a bandito, a pseudo-ninja wearing fatigues, a hippie stoner, and a fake WWII German soldier. Only Cyclops, the leader, and the token biker chick (whose tits are constantly plopping out) fit the biker bill. Either way, it’s how they work together that counts, and they manage to tie up the father so they are free to beat up and rape the women. They chain up the semi-hot daughter like a dog, and force the mother to wear a monk’s robe while enslaved in a bamboo cage. I get the “treating a girl like a dog” fetish, but am confused by the caged monk deal with the mother. Maybe its one of those Zen thingies.

Well, the biker gang thinks they have it made. A nice afternoon camping, drinking beer, riding their bikes around, and occasionally raping/molesting their new found slave. Unbeknownst to them, however, is the fact that the awkwardly European father has escaped his shackles. More importantly, however, is that he has suddenly become a super soldier cross between John Rambo and MacGyver; packing heat, living off the land, awkwardly spitting out one liners, and able to concoct a weapon on a moment’s notice by just pulling out some random household items out of his backpack (like an egg timer and some speaker wire). My favorite of these being the “molotov slingshot” he invents on the spot. He even finds a sheriff’s badge lying in a stream and pins it to his chest, as if to say “there’s a new sheriff in town…and he’s been pushed to the limit…and he’s too old for this shit”.

I think you know where this is headed but, pleasantly, there is a pretty awesome downbeat ending, followed with a comically rad epilogue that has little to do with what came before. However, the film, technically speaking, is extremely rough, even by the standards of no budget regional filmmaking. Seemingly shot on 16mm, there is nary a shot that matches the exposure of the previous shot, compositions are an afterthought, dialogue recording is all over the place, and the whole thing is padded to hit a running time.

However, within its threadbare, dirt (literally) aesthetic, and the rough treatment of the two female victims (their degradation is the emotional core of the film), it achieves a sort of ragged repulsiveness, married to a goofy, Golan Globus-esque script. At the center is the most awkward action hero in the history of unseen VHS tape. As portrayed by Gilbert Houseaux, he can’t even portray Frenchiness convincingly, let alone inhabit a wily, bad ass killing machine. It is this odd combination of action camp and gutter grit, Hills Have Eyes meets American Ninja 3, that separates this one from your usual regional b-movie effort of the era (presumably late 80’s, early 90’s). If you don’t mind technical incompetence and endless padding, I say check it out whenever it finally comes out on Blu-Ray in a super deluxe “holy shit” edition.

P.S. It is now listed on IMDB, but I'll just go ahead and pretend that it isn't.