Memories of Murder(2003)Joon-Ho Bong

Based on the story of Korea's first serial killer, memories of murder follows the police investigation of a series of brutal rape-murders in rural Korea. Joon-Ho Bong quietly paints a rich picture of the horror of murder, rural life, and the political atmosphere of Korea in 1986. The police's actions, and their frustrations, are as much a part of the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty as the actions of the criminal. This multi-dimensional take on the crime film genre is refreshing and engaging, coherent, cohesive, and skillfully orchestrated. The meticulous cinematography, clinical attention to detail, and quiet editing style bring the creeping terror of the story to the forefront, and contrast strikingly with the mental states of the cops, whose story this really is.

I liked it.

available for rental through netflix, and for sale on amazon

Lovedolls superstar (1986)

This slightly-less-low-budget sequel to the low budget "Desperate Teenage Lovedolls" is a prime example of cult awesomeness, shot on super-8 and featuring the likes of Jello Biafra(as the president), Kim Pilkington, and Victoria Peterson of the Bangles. Killer soundtrack featuring Redd Kross, Sonic Youth, Meat Puppets, and the Dead Kennedys. The movie satirizes everything from the music industry to Charles Manson, Patricia Hearst, the Jonestown massacre, hippies, and Bruce Springsteen (and the De Palma 'dancing in the dark' video). What it lacks in sophistication (read: technical competence) it makes up for in inventiveness and energy. So, if you're looking for a good time, and a sledge-hammer to the face of 80's pop culture, check it out.

p.s.- How ironic that Jello Biafra turned out to be a filthy, stinking hippy after all that. Dharma punks my ass.

Little muffin!

Very distracted.

New kitten

Sorry for the lack of film reviews, I've been distracted.

Spider Baby , Jack Hill, 1968

I love this movie for a million reasons, and they are damned good reasons. It is an early directing attempt of Jack Hill (Switchblade Sisters, The Big Birdcage, Foxy Brown, Coffy!!!) featuring Lon Cheney Jr. and Sid Haig among a cast of relative nobodies. It's shot in beautiful black and white, and with a great premise and perfect horror setting. Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.) has vowed to look after the progeny of his deceased master, and to keep their terrible family secret, which is that years of inbreeding have resulted in a unique mental handicap passed from generation to generation. Bruno has resolved to care for the last three members of the family in the isolated family mansion, and it seems that these four will live out their days in peace until greedy distant relatives show up to try to lay claim to the property.
With this film Jack Hill displays a deep understanding of genre cinema, and references his roots by casting an aging Lon Chaney Jr., whose performance is inspired, and has him discuss his appreciation for the wolfman and the mummy in a dinner scene with the whole, less than wholesome family. His treatment of women is, as always, very interesting. In fact, although Bruno and the Uncle Peter character play large roles in the narrative, the source of dramatic tension in this movie comes from three female characters, the two sisters protected by Bruno, and evil Aunt Emily, who is trying to get her hands on the property and the supposed family fortune. All three of these characters are menacing, powerful, and genuinely feminine. It is very rare in any horror movie, much less a horror movie from '68, to create a world with this kind of gender dynamic. Sid Haig's portrayal of a mentally handicapped youth is amazing, and his interactions with Aunt Emily make the film for me. Strong characters, skeletons in the closet, a creepy old mansion, dead-on performances from the whole cast, some good old fashioned genre-cinema fun, and real, multi-dimensional female characters make this a very strong early film. Overall, a solid, kick-ass horror flick that can't be missed.

available from netflix and for sale on amazon, although you could probably find it cheaper somewhere else.

Film still #2

Day of 1,000 posts

But seriously, this has to be said.

I called my bank today to ask if there had been any checking activity on my account, because I ordered checks several weeks ago and never received them. I had a nightmare last night in which the missing checks had been stolen, and decided to quiet my paranoid fantasies by checking with my bank. Turns out 3 checks, for a total of $1,200, had been cashed into the bank of America account of one Antoine Hopewell. I changed my account number, cancelled the checks, and called the police, handed over my copies of the forged checks, complete with the criminal mastermind's name and account number, and that's that. So I will have my money back in 20 days, and this genius will be a convicted felon in hopefully not many more. So here's to intelligence, larceny, and 3 counts of fraud.

misinformation

Misinformation:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6278907.stm

Clarification:
http://helios.hampshire.edu/~jwcCS/PrisonersDilemma.pdf
see page 23: Evolutionary Theories

In Brief: Things I advocate

1) Rebel Night at Otto's Shrunken Head. They have a myspace page, check it out.

2) Man Man

3)The film Naked Blood (more later)

4) The World Famous Bob

5) John Waters, for serious.

6) Lost Girls, by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie

Porn or not porn, that is the question

Some people are confused and alarmed by movies that contain a lot of sex but also have a plot. I'm not talking about something like Original Sin (2001) which we all just watched to get a glimpse of Angelina Jolie's and (if you're into that kind of thing) Antonio Banderas' bare asses. That, we are comfortable with. We're even comfortable with Russ Meyer, because it's supposed to be about sex, and it's playful. I'm talking specifically about Masaru Konuma's flick, 'Beautiful Hunter,' which I will use as a prototypical example of the kind of movie I'm talking about. There is a plot,albeit a relatively simple one (professional assasin falls for her mark, is torn between duty and love, gets hunted down by the mob, you know the drill) And it's a relatively long movie, with a running time of 85 minutes. Some of the shots are even pretty beautiful, and I really felt for the protagonist when she cried beside the pool of her lover's blood. But it's a softcore. And some of the sex was pretty hot. So how do we react to this? Most folks I know (and some I don't, who posted on IMDB) would deem it mindless drivel. But if it was only softcore, or only a b-movie about a hot female assassin, these same viewers might have seen the same things I did: a decent B-flick with some action, some romance, some skin, and competent editing and cinematography. So what is it about this ambiguous space, somewhere between narrative and softcore, that freaks us out? Are we uncomfortable when a narrative film is too sexy, or when the characters in a softcore are too developed, too close to us? Are we just ashamed of enjoying porn, and want to keep that experience separate and solitary, distinct from our experience of enjoying cinema? I don't have the answers to these questions, but it's food for thought.

p.s-In a real review of this movie there are a few criticisms that I would bring up, but I'm just using it as an example here.

Film still #1

Terrifying Girls School

Terrifying Girl's school: Lynch law classroom (1973) Norifumi Suzuki

To begin with, can I just say that Miki Sugimoto (Noriko in the film) is such a piece of ass. Oh right... the plot... The premise of the film is that three juvenile delinquents are sent to a girls reform school, and have to battle it out with the corrupt teachers and the horrifying student 'discipline committee'. The three newbies, led by Noriko, or 'the boss with the cross' band together with some other unhappy students and wreak havoc with the corrupt system; with plenty of torture, girlfights, and blackmail along the way. Towards the end Reiko Ike appears as Maki, Noriko's rival hellbent on revenge. Any movie that has both Miki Sugimoto and Reiko Ike in it is OK by me, but this film is particularly delicious. The innovative methods of torture, both physical and mental, are a testament to director Norifumi Suzuki's (perhaps very personal) understanding of sado-masochistic erotica. Rich color, tight framing, slick costumes, and close-up shots of the terrified eyes of the victims characterize the torture scenes. The clear sense of fashion and bad girl posturing by characters such as Noriko are charming, and invite the viewer into the fantasy space of the film. Suzuki also shows us that he is aware of this tone in the film by introducing the character Emi Jô, a James Dean wanna-be, who despite his dark glasses and too cool for school attitude, doesn't quite measure up to his image. My favorite scene with this character is one in which he calmly lights a cigarette from the flames of his burning car, then turns around to walk away, cool as can be, only to slip and fall flat on his ass.

This movie came to my attention because it is featured heavily in a situationist film (by Guy Debord) in which the scenes are placed in a context that accuses them of being anti-feminist. I couldn't sit through the whole thing, because it was inane and poorly made, but I believe the main issue that concerned them was that of sexualizing women. I include this information in this post because I think that it is interesting that this little gem of a B-movie was considered, by this group of academics, to be the most representatative of all the sexploitation films that they were protesting against. It is also interesting to consider that time itself has changed what this film means, maybe in the 70's the Debord film was important, or at least not ridiculous.

At any rate, if you want to see Miki Sugimoto jump over a bunch of oil drums on a motorcycle, and believe me, you do, then I suggest you watch this movie.

available to rent through netflix, as part of the pinky violence collection, or for sale at amazon.com

Jesus.

So, I just watched 'The Bad Lieutenant' because I thought it was one of those movies that I should probably watch. All I have to say is: Nuns are totally hot.

Belladonna of Sadness (1973)

Eiichi Yamamoto's Belladonna of Sadness (1973) from Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Pro studio.

Super rare and breathtaking animation loosely based on the story of Joan of Arc. Junno, a young woman, sells her soul to the devil, is violently and repeatedly raped by the king and satan, obtains the power to save her village from the black death, whips the villagers into an orgy, and is finally burned at the stake. The animation displays all of the trademarks of anime, many of which were developed by Tezuka (still images over which the camera pans, floating figures, and stylized, fluid, motion animation) however, it remains completely unique and revolutionary. The illustration style is somewhere between Klimt, the Triplettes of Belleville, and Junko Mizuno, and is at times devastating. Due to the limited availability of the film, the subtitling is sub-par, but it is the illustration and animation of this film that leave a real visceral impact on the viewer. Films that this film has clearly influenced include Disney's Sleeping Beauty, the Triplettes of Belleville, and Mind Game by Masaaki Yuasa. A powerful, beautiful, psychedelic art-house sexploitation masterpiece. Required viewing. Note: At the beginning of the file is a preview for the feature which is not subtitled, do not despair, the film is subtitled, just wait for it.

Available to download at http://www.secret-cinema.com/library.php

More Forbidden Zone

I just re-watched the forbidden zone and was reminded of my true life goal: to have a human chandeliere hanging over my excessively long dining table, balancing candles from his hands and toes. I also watched the documentary that was one of the features on the DVD, which features a haggard and possibly drunk Susan Tyrell explaining that when she first saw Herve Villechaize, "I knew I wanted to fuck a midget." For more about Herve and his status as a sex god, see

http://www.pimpadelicwonderland.com/herve's.html

Hmmm

Every once in a while, when you're on your hands and knees chasing your kitten around your apartment, with the theme from Cannibal Holocaust blaring from your stereo , you just have to wonder at what point you became batshit insane.

The Forbidden Zone

Forbidden Zone (1980) Directed by Richard Elfman and starring Herve Villechaize and The Knights of Oingo Boingo

The forbidden zone is a riotous musical that takes us into the lawless Sixth Dimension by way of a large intestine. The movie follows the adventures of the Hercules family as they become embroiled in kidnapping, playing hooky, adultery, and a battle for the kingdom with satan himself (played by Danny Elfman). The sets looks like a hybrid of the german expressionist style (as in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and the set design of Pee wee's playhouse. Whimsical costumes, curious creatures, and outrageous musical numbers populate this film from start to finish. This is one of the happiest, zaniest cult classics around, whenever I need cheering up I always reach for either 'The Forbidden Zone' or John Waters' 'Cry Baby'.

Posted this because I just got a new kitty, and named him Squeezit after my favorite Forbidden Zone character. If you haven't seen this movie I strongly advise you to do so at your earliest convenience.

available for rental through netflix, and for sale at http://www.forbiddenzonethemovie.com/shop.htm

The history of anime

This is another long, long, long post. A full article, even. At any rate, if you are a new reader maybe start with something like Have Some Shame!, that seems to be a crowd pleaser. But if you're interested, this is a really interesting topic and the theories and concepts in it are really neat, I mean, I think so. So if you're up for it, here it is:

A history of the animated image and fantasy space in Japan:

Most art historians place the origins of anime at around 1916, during the Taisho period in Japan. But the history of the projected and even the animated image in Japan can be traced back to the late Edo-period, when in about 1800 utushi-e became popular. This was a form of entertainment that involved manipulating images projected through painted glass slides, the movement being produced by an actual movement of the lamp behind the paintings. Film and animation as we know them, however, were introduced by the west. In 1909 the first animated films were imported. Among these first films shown were animations by French filmmaker Emile Cohl. These animations were serial in nature and all of them were called Kid Deko’s new picture book. These short animations were often based on bizarre stream of consciousness type transformations, not very sophisticated in technique. At this time there was a huge movement to develop a Japanese cinema, called the pure film movement. This was a movement away from film versions of traditional Japanese theater, a movement to reject styles associated with Japanese drama and adopt Hollywood and European narrative styles. Central to the movement was a differentiation of the cinematic from the uncinematic, which became a distinction between the Japanese and the Unjapanese.

Okura Kihachiro argued that cinema is characteristically an important national enterprise, and requested that Japanese filmmakers dedicate themselves to producing original Japanese films for export, in order to introduce Japanese landscape and culture to the rest of the world. Animation played a very important part in achieving these goals, both a movement away from the traditions of literature and theater and in moving away from these while creating a distinctly Japanese product.

In 1917, Shimokawa Oten made a film based on a popular cartoon, Imoko Keizo or The Doorboy, thought to be Japan’s first animated film. Not surprisingly, he naively arrived at methods much like those of Emile Cohl. The film was made by drawing pictures with chalk on a blackboard, photographing, and erasing them. Eventually he graduated to photographing a background and using white ink to clear spots where characters would stand. Also in 1917 Kitayama Seitaro began to develop cut-paper animation techniques and make short cartoon comedies. In this technique, drawings are cut out and placed on backgrounds and photographed with a camera fixed horizontally above the table. His first film was Saru kani gassen, or The monkey Crab war, which in 1917 opened at Asukasa Denikan Theater, known for showing foreign films. That it opened at this theater implies that it could be considered equivalent with foreign films, one of the main goals of the Pure Film Movement. This film also made the important leap to including intertitles to explicate plot, another explicit objective of the pure film movement. Japanese cinema at the time still utilized benshi, live performers who supplied narration and were thought to disrupt the filmic experience and to discourage film makers from using the medium to tell the story, so the inclusion of intertitles was a significant step towards the goals of the pure film movement.

Another significant step was taken by the animator Ofuji, who made cut-paper animation using traditional patterned Japanese paper. In this way, he utilized foreign cinematic systems but ensured his product was differentiable in an international market. In 1927 his film Whale was internationally well received in the Soviet Union and France, and when he remade it with cellophane in 1953 it went on to win an award at the Cannes film festival. In this way it was the medium of animation that first allowed Japan to develop a national cinema as an object separate from other traditional Japanese entertainment arts.

The next major event in the development of anime was the effect of the events leading up to, during, and following WWII on animation production and content. Beginning in 1917, the government made a major attempt to standardize and centralize state regulation of moving pictures and to increase the power of censors over films. At about this point there occurred an intersection of the concerns of the artists and the concerns of the state. This has been said to have been a response to the negative influences of a French serial animation called Zigomar, which glorified the exploits of a master criminal. Copycat Zigomar style gangs alerted the government to the power of film's influence. Out of this came a sense that cinema had to be understood as separate from other art forms, but still no real differentiation between live action and animation. From this point Japanese cinema was constructed between two sites, one of knowledge production and one of knowledge regulation. The government began to use films for education and propaganda. The Deposit Bureau of the Ministry of Communications began funding educational and propaganda films, such many a mickle makes a muckle, (1917), Afforestation, (1924), The Journey of A Letter, (1924), and The Spread of Syphillis, (1926)
The advent of war in 1931 saw extreme changes for animation. Animation production came under government control and the previously limited financial situation was drastically changed. Beginning in 1939 the censorship policies of Nazi Germany were adopted, and censorship was applied from the script writing process on. However, freed from financial restraints, animators were able to experiment with new techniques and work in larger studios with teams of animators.

Seo Mitsuyo was the first Japanese animator to work with Disney’s invention , the multi-plane camera, on the movie ari-chan(ants) in 1941. Disney’s productions became a reference point for quality, although for financial reasons most Japanese studios took financial shortcuts such as re-using cels. Many films of this period were made to promote an intense nationalism, which set the stage for many modern debates about the role of Japaneseness in Japanese animation. Many of the Shinto myths and characters that had previously been used to make Japanese animation a distinctly Japanese product were utilized to inspire the country to an intense sense of nationalism. There had already been a tendency in animation to use traditional Shinto stories and characters, as the nature of the medium allowed an exploration of the fantastical and this allowed for the construction of a truly Japanese project while avoiding using traditional theatrical and literary techniques. The government also had a history of using Shinto imagery and mythology to inspire strong nationalist tendencies in the Japanese people. One of the most notable instances of this was the re-writing of the legend of the sun goddess Ameraterasu, which resulted in excesses of neo-shintoism in 30’s and 40’s that led to disturbing racist/nationalist reactions. At this same point, Japanese Miko priestesses were outlawed and both Shintoism and the tradition of female spiritual power were more or less appropriated by militarists. Miko were banned on the grounds that they made Japan look silly and old fashioned, meanwhile Shinto myths were heavily used in propaganda put out by same militarists.

In 1943 the animator Seo made the first feature length Japanese animated film, Momotaro no umiwashi (The peach boy's sea eagle) , which was a 37-minute propaganda film advertising the success of pearl harbor. He also made Momotaro:Umi no shinpei(peach boy, divine soldier of the sea) in1944, in which navy paratroopers are depicted attacking British soldiers who are depicted as ogres. This film was heavily edited by censors because it depicted Japanese soldiers dying.

The Wartime government set up a basis for post-war animation, encouraging technical experimentation, training animators, and creating conditions for teams of animators to work. Technical development, military development, and national mobilization were inseparable in a way reflected in present day anime’s explorations of technology in the post war era, particularly technologies of destruction. The Shinto and technological themes persist in anime today. The US occupying troops in 45 were the first in the history of Japan to breach its defenses, and the psychological effect of this defeat has been explored by Japanese artists and animators since.

Attempting to make a product that would sell as well as Disney, in1956 Toei studios released Okawa Hiroshi Hakujen, The legend of the white serpent. This was a

big budget feature length animation, utilizing many of the techniques used by Disney and the Fleischer brothers, most importantly rotoscoping. The style and format were also very similar to Disney, including a human protagonist accompanied by some cute animals who burst into song from time to time. Domestically, the film was as technologically and financially successful as Disney films. However, one animator working on the film thought that animation should be a distinct object from film, one that relied on exaggeration and omission rather than a reproduction of live footage. He thought that the process of making Hakujen, basically that of making two movies instead of one, was not how animation should be executed. This animator was Dr. Osama Tezuka, credited by many people as one of the originators of anime as the distinct style of animation it has developed into today. Cinema and animation could, up to this point, still be treated as one object. Many people argue that the birth of animation as a distinct and separate form in Japan as well as the birth of anime as a distinct and different style of animation both originate with Tezuka.

As an animator he was clearly influenced by the technologies of Disney, as well as a sense of playfulness and his humanist philosophy. He was also greatly influenced by the Fleischer Brothers. His influences also include French New Wave Cinema, and when his animated television series’ came out in the 60’s they utilized panning shots, extreme close up, time lapse, and flashbacks. These influences are present in Tezuka’s cartooning as well as his animation, and it has been said that he brought film to Japanese film.

Tezuka also took some cues from the traditional theaters of Japan; Noh, Kabuki, Bunraku, and Takarazuka theater. Although originally the aim of Japanese films and animations was to divorce themselves from these theatrical traditions, Tezuka found a way to utilize some of the elements of traditional Japanese theater in a way which utilized the nature of the medium of animation; which contributed to the emergence of a kind of animation unique to Japan. Tezuka made the best use of the limited animation style, using the filmic techniques borrowed from French New Wave cinema and elements taken from Japanese theater, such as sound effects, stylized poses held for an extended period of time, and tableau effects to maximize the impact of moving images without drawing movement. Instead, he moves the drawings, he moves the camera, he moves the spectator to a different point of view, and he moves the spectator’s eye through the image instead of breaking down movement into a series of images, drawn or painted sequentially. In this approach, the animator must act like a movie camera in representing movement.

Recently, artist Takashi Murakami has discussed the aesthetics of anime in terms of a long history of Japanese graphic arts. In his essay “superflat” he identifies a lineage of 2-dimensional spaces in the history of Japanese art, and also discusses the success of many of these images to draw the eye in certain ways, in a manner similar to the way moving drawings in anime move the spectator and change the viewer’s point of view while the scene remains still. In this way, animators took limited animation and a rich art history of movement in two-dimensional spaces, creating a new and unique style out of the necessity to take some financial shortcuts. This style places emphasis on shape shifting, metamorphoses, timing and movement, and typically uses techniques such as holding poses over a number of frames, floating figures, and emphasis on emotionally or visually charged frames and a suppression of intermediate movements which results in jerky movement or sudden, explosive transitions. Camera movements become more pronounced, and it is very common to see panning across the image, tracking up or back, and framing in or out.

Tezuka’s famous series Astro Boy premiered New Years Eve of 1963 and ran until 1966. Astro was neither machine nor human, and began a long tradition of technological futuristic science fiction in Japanese animation. Astro is intrinsically linked to the atom bomb because he is atomically powered, so in short he is an exploration of humans living responsibly next to the destructive technologies that we can create. Many more recent animes that address this theme are less optimistic. The constant battle for robots to be met on equal footing by humans in the series also mirrored the social rights movement in the US that was occurring when the show aired in America, a bold move no US animator would dare to make. Taken out of the context of the civil rights movement, this theme begins the tradition in anime of exploring the line between robot and machine and pushing definitions of what makes us human. The robot as introduced to Japanese culture in Astro Boy is a friend, and by Asimov’s law of robotics cannot do anything to harm humans. Destruction caused in the series is always a result of misused technologies or the human inability to understand the nature of what they have created. More recent films in this genre view technology as a double-edged sword; they depict a snowball effect that humanity has started and must now understand and control. This attitude is reflected in Japanese culture as well. The Japanse are recognized worldwide to be at forefront of robotics, but largely stay away from trends present elsewhere. There is a larger emphasis on application of robotics to social issues such as security and the aging as opposed to the western emphasis on military technologies.

Tezuka also understood very early on the concept of cuteness now rampant in Japanese entertainment culture. Astro Boy was child like in style even when dealing with very adult subject matter, as were all of Tezuka’s works including works such as his graphic novel Adolf, which deals with very dark subject matter. With his trademark style, Tezuka latched onto something that has become an enormous factor in Japanese pop culture today, the issue of kawaii or cuteness. Many argue that this emphasis on the cute has roots in the disillusionment of post war society with many of post-war Japan’s goals. Unlike the west, Japan never developed a conception of animation as being limited to child audiences. Instead, the cute and childlike style developed by Tezuka was meant to create an environment where animators could explore important themes through fantasy and play. The huge role of fantasy, play and escapism in anime has been developed and discussed much since Tezuka’s original contribution.

Current day anime is largely concerned with both the issue of escapism and of pacifism, both of which are seen as results of Japan’s reaction to WWII and the atom bomb. The stresses and pressures of an increasingly competitive society which places more and more emphasis on material values at the expense of an overall sense of community is described by many theorists. All these things and more contribute to the popularity of escapist, fantasy and play sub-cultures, including the rising popularity of manga, cosplay, anime and even cults like Aum Shinrikyo. The phenomenon of kawaii, or cuteness culture, is attributed to a perceived inadequacy of Japan’s post-war economic goals, which led to increasing disenchantment with these values and goals.

Science fiction and robot themes in anime are also a result of a culture of fantasy, play and escapism in post-war Japan. The context of an animated fantasy world provides a space to discuss war and violence safe for those affected by the devastating effects of WWII. This space has been an integral part of Japanese culture for a very long time, and is referred to as Matsuri, or festival. Festival space allows for a controlled chaos, concerned with a temporary leveling of the social order. Matsuri celebrates sex, death, worship, fear, purity and pollution. An example of a more traditional implementation of Matsuri space would be a typical kyoka poetry gathering in Edo period Japan. Kyoka was traditionally the poetry of the lower class, based on wild humor and word play as opposed to the more intellectual and higher-class form, haikai. At these gatherings people would gather and create kyoka together, including people of many classes and women. Anime themes of wild humor, exaggeration, escape, stateless space, and strong images of sex and violence reflect this spirit of a space free from social boundaries. Specifically, the tradition of Matsuri being a leveling of social order is often manifested in the overturning of traditional female submissiveness. Animated space is capable of being context free, and well suited to developing and exploring a stateless, transnational culture. This stateless animated space is a safe setting for much of anime’s exploration of themes of war and destruction.

An issue often discussed but rarely understood in anime is its place in a concept of a Japanese cultural identity. The appeal of anime to the Western audience is often it’s distinct difference from our concept of animation or cinema. However, the ethnically ambiguous character designs and stateless fantasy spaces have historically allowed themselves to be adapted to fit foreign audiences. The success of Japanese animated series in the 60’s was heavily contributed to by the ease with which they could be dubbed, characters names changed and story lines re-written. Many fans find fault with how “Western” anime characters appear, and it is often commented that anime characters are depicted with blond or light brown hair. However, no one seems to notice the equally high frequency with which characters with green or pink hair appear. I would argue that the very same ‘different ness’ that is appealing to westerners is appealing to the Japanese themselves, and that this anime style and space is something other to both cultures.

Also of interest to me is a difference between a western conception of art or the art object comparative to Japan’s. The distinction between the art object and a commercial commodity was more or less introduced by the West, and still does not exist in the same way in Japanese culture. As a response to the discourse on the role of fantasy and play in Japanese culture, Takashi Murakami has encouraged artists to move into the realm of popular culture and entertainment and explore the idea of play as a survival mechanism in modern society. He encourages a conception of the creative process as a communal enterprise reflecting society, and creates commercial objects that utilize the same aesthetic and conceptual issues dealt with in anime, manga, and many other entertainment cultures that can be discussed and theorized in similar ways.

For all of these reasons and more, anime has become hugely popular in Japan and overseas in recent years. In 1988 roughly 40% of studio releases in Japan were animated and by 1999 at least 50% were animated. Although many contemporary anime fans criticize Tezuka’s work for being too cutesy, most modern anime and manga styles could be described as elaborations or evolutions of his original conceptualization of the cute, the childlike and the innocent. Studio Ghibli, originally Tezuka’s production company, has recently released several new films in his style, often based on his manga. As well as being an animator, Tezuka completed over 150,000 pages of cartooning in his career, and his work has been highly influential in many different aspects of the Japanese entertainment cultures which include manga, anime, video games, cosplay and countless other subcultures based around fantasy and play.

It would be impossible to address all of the facets of anime, but I will mention two more major landmarks in the history of anime. In 1974 a TV series re-named for American audiences "Star Blazers" was released, and following the show’s wild popularity a magazine called Animage came out in Japan. Animage discussed in detail every aspect of anime production, allowing fans to learn the techniques of this style of animation from individuals in the industry, and fans began to make amateur 8mm animations, parodies of popular anime, and started hundreds of fanzines to discuss and critique the work. This began an explosion of anime production. The next huge contribution to the sheer volume of anime produced was the introduction of video in the 80’s, and the availability of a straight to video option changed the limits on the kinds of content available and increased the global market because foreigners were no longer limited to the watered down for TV versions of popular Japanese cartoons. I will finish by saying that animation is an important medium for the Japanese to explore issues of national and cultural identity and it’s effectiveness for these purposes is apparent in it’s prevalence as a form of communication and striking given a closer look and deeper consideration.

Bibliography

Drazen, Patrick. Anime Explosion, (2003) Stone Bridge Press Berkley CA

Fleming, Jeff, Lubowsky-Talbott, Susan, Murakami, Takashi Lamarre, Thomas- From animation to anime, drawing movements and moving drawings

Lent, John, Animation in Asia and the Pacific (2001) John Libbey Publishing Indiana University Press Bloomington

Levi, Antonia, Samurai From Outer Space, Understanding Japanese Animation, (1996) Carus Publishing Co. Peru, Illinois

Mathews, James-Anime and the Acceptance of Robotics in Japan: A Symbotic Relationship 2003/2004

Miyao, Daisuke- Before anime- animation and the Pure Film Movement in Pre-War Japan

Napier, Susan. Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke (2000) Palgrave NY NY

notes on my 'self' article

I realize that for a blog post my article on the self in cognitive science is a bit long and dense; if you are a new reader please start with something shorter, perhaps my review of cannibal holocaust or the 'have some shame' post. I stand by this monstrous post because it is a serious subject that is about you, about all of us, and I have tried to be as absolutely thorough and genuine in my treatment of the subject. I hope some people try it on for size, even if it's a bit dense and particularly difficult to absorb in this format. I will try to make future posts of this nature more concise.

The self construct in cognitive science

The concept of the self remains one of the more enigmatic problems in cognitive science. Many theories of the self and the construction of identity have been explored by psychologists and philosophers throughout history, but a cognitive model of mechanisms that give rise to conceptions of the self has never emerged. It may seem like a daunting task, but recent research has begun to investigate the cognitive construct of the self and things look promising. Interesting data from developmental, pathological, functional imaging, and neuropsychological research has provided some insight regarding the development and disorders of elements that comprise the self. Research in areas such as autobiographical memory, narrative, inference of causality, and mental state representation are intrinsically linked to the study of self in a number of ways. What follows is an overview of historical and recent ideas of note in the investigation of a cognitive scientific model of mechanisms that give rise to different aspects of self; an overview of the developmental course of self; and some exploration of how autobiographical memory, narrative, causal inference, and representations of mental states are significant in pursuing such an investigation.

The self is a complex concept that has been approached from many perspectives throughout history. Many models of 'self' include a variety of sub-selves with separate functions and mechanisms, and variable relationships with mental life and cognition. In 1998, Neisser proposed a model that included five distinct kinds of self knowledge. In this model, a self termed the 'ecological self' was described as the immediate sense of self based on a physical perspective of the environment and self awareness. The 'interpersonal self' mediated behavior when relating and communicating with others. The 'extended self' went beyond the scale of the ecological self to be able to remember the past and intend future actions, and the 'private self' consisted of our ability to engage in a private mental life inaccessible to others. The 'conceptual self' was described as the mental representation of the self, the self that we evaluate, defend, and seek to improve. These multiple and functionally diverse proposed selves are already representative of the obscure nature of the question of self in cognitive science.

Recent philosophical discourses on the self have identified two aspects that must be accounted for in a contemporary discussion of the subject: the immediate sense of the self as an agent, and the self that endures through changes in mental states and over time. The immediate sense of self-awareness and agency roughly approximates Neisser's ecological self, while the coherent and continuous self must contain attributes of Neisser's interpersonal, extended, private, and conceptual self. Many different views have emerged, but this general framework is a useful place to begin when considering this issue.

The self as outlined above can be considered to be composed of the sensations of self-ownership and agency, body centered spatial perspectivity, and perception of a long term unity of beliefs and attitudes(Gallagher 2002). There is some evidence that both of these selves arise from processes in the same neurobiological system, a system loosely distributed in the frontal-lobe and implicated in a wide variety of cognitive tasks. The neuroanatomical data supports a view of the self as a complex phenomenon arising from the interactions of related but distinct cognitive systems.

Philosophy has been instrumental in thinking about the nature of the self, and in cognitive science self is still largely a philosophical issue. Heidegger's work in phenomenology gave rise to a very useful way of thinking about the self that is consistent with some cognitive models. The phenomenologists held that humans perceive a pragmatically structured world of human opportunities and liabilities, in which the self is implicit. This philosophical model is still relevant today, and is basically consistent with many cognitive processes proposed and empirically tried since its conception. This description of the organization of perceptual information as a function of the self is still central to many contemporary accounts of the self. Cognitive scientists have recently postulated models of some of the central mechanisms that give rise to both the immediate and the temporally extended self, as well as their interactions with other concepts and conceptual frameworks.

Research on ownership and agency in both motor action and in cognition has correlated perception of this basic 'self' with mental activity in the prefrontal cortex, SMA, and cerebellum (Fourneret and Jeanerod 1998). Agency is experienced when a person perceives themself as the author of an action; but even during an uninitiated action a sense or perception of ownership over the body in motion arises. Cognitive scientists gained some insight into the mechanisms of experiencing ownership and agency when it appeared that these sensations were selectively deficient in some schizophrenics.

Certain schizophrenic patients experience delusions that their body is under the control of another person or thing, or experience thoughts that they do not perceive as their own in an experience called 'thought insertion'. It is hypothesized that these symptoms are the result in a deficit in the mechanism(s) that give rise to perception of awareness and agency. The self-monitoring mechanisms that underly sensations of self ownership and agency could be the mechanisms deficient in the schizophrenic patients. The researchers hypothesize that a sense of agency arises from anticipatory pre-movement motor commands relating to relevant efferent nerves. An unconscious mechanism compares an efference copy of motor demands with motor intentions and allows for rapid error correction. This mechanism is thought to anticipate the sensory feedback from the motor action and give rise to a sensation of self-agency. If the efference copy is not properly generated, a sense of ownership will persist but the sensation of agency will not occur (Gallagher 2000). Some evidence supports a deficit in schizophrenics' pre-action monitoring, and indicates that their motor-control and ability to perform intended actions remains intact(Frith and Done 1988). Abnormal pre-movement brain potentials have also been observed(Gallagher 2000). This data suggests that the activity of pre-motor areas is critical in experiencing the sense of agency that is the most immediate component of the perceived self.

This model is thought to extend to the phenomena of thought and inner speech, and describes thinking as an action that must be matched to intention in much the same way as motor actions in order to feel self-generated. This would explain thought insertion experiences in schizophrenics, the experience of perceiving thoughts that do not feel self-generated. This self-monitoring and reporting mechanism roughly describes a way in which perception of the self as an agent relative to the immediate environment might arise.

The involvement of pre-motor areas in a cognitive event that is largely perceptual brings to mind recent popular work on the involvement of motor areas in abstract cognitive events, most notably studies on the activation of motor neurons in Chimpanzees. This research describes patterns of activation in motor-areas arising as a result of observing the intentional actions of others. Significantly, these patterns of activation are the same when the animals execute the same or similar actions themselves (Williams et al 2005). This discovery has been applied to the research of the differences in representation of the 'self' and the 'other' in human subjects. This elemental distinction between experience of self relative to other can be considered a part of the immediate awareness of being a distinct entity. A more complex self is implicated in attribution of mental states to others, and the physical implementation of these two kinds of mental representation is an interesting topic with ties to popular theories about motor-neurons.

It has been observed that people are able to infer meaning, predict future actions, and interpret behavior as a result of attributing mental states to others. Two popular views on the subject have emerged, "theory theory" and "simulation theory". "Theory theory" describes the system that attributes mental states as the result of experiential learning that gives rise to a theory of human behavior. "Simulation theory" proposes that people attribute mental states by simulating the experience of the other in order to experience their corresponding mental state (Tirassa et al 2005). The mirror-neuron findings and subsequent functional imaging studies in humans provide support for the simulation theory. So what does this research on representation of the other have to do with the self? The developmental and functional imaging literature indicates that the self/other distinction is central to the concept of self. Through development and into adult life, evaluations of our selves in relation to similarities and differences of others plays a formative role in the construction of self.

Limited self-awareness appears to be an innate mechanism present from birth that develops primarily through interacting with others. A concept of the nature of self begins as immediate spatial and perceptual awareness and a recognition of sameness between self and human others. Infants less than one hour old can imitate conspecific facial gesture in a manner that rules out reflexivity (Meltzoff and Moore 1984). This behavior demonstrates an ability to match gesture that requires the infant to locate and use body parts proprioceptively and recognize the seen face as being of the same kind as it's own; human babies will not imitate non-human actions and gestures (Legerstee 1991). It has been demonstrated that infants can use information from their own action capabilities to understand the actions of others, and throughout development and on into adult life the self continues to be largely a result of interpersonal interaction and self-evaluation in relation to others(Ochsner et al 2005). Functional imaging studies have shown overlapping but distinct regions of neural activity thought to underly representations of self-originating and simulated mental states, and it has been hypothesized that the perception of agency and ownership of self-generated actions and thoughts is essential for distinguishing perceptions of the two. If the same mental events represent a self-generated action and the experience of observing the action of a separate agent, then the qualitative difference between inferring agency and perceiving it internally might be the most salient thing that separates our perception of our own mental states from perceptions of the mental states of others.

The perception of ourselves as the author and subject of our actions may be very important in monitoring our interactions with the physical and social environments we have to navigate. The conceptually complex extended self may also play a self-monitoring role; that of monitoring goal oriented behaviors over time and despite transitions in mental states. This self is extended in time and mediated by narrative, and is postulated to play a role in constructing a continuity between our past and our future. A vague sense of this cohesive mechanism has been postulated since Hume, in 1739, described "a bundle of momentary impressions strung together by imagination." Narrative is thought to aid in the construction of a coherent self-schema, a useful if not perfectly accurate sense of continuous identity. The explicit role of the extended self as outlined above is to represent a continuous self that extends in time, a combination of Neisser's extended and conceived selves.

One of the most commonly investigated components of the temporally extended self is autobiographical memory(AM). AM is a kind of memory not characterized by its mechanisms but by its content; AM contains memories of personally experienced events and abstract personal knowledge such as knowledge of places one has lived and people one has known. AM is thought to be a very central and intricate part of the self that contains information central to constructing the cohesive self. A model of the physical implementation of AM describes the structure of AM and the constructive nature of the interaction between past selves represented in memory and the present, working-self schema.

Memory is thought to represent past experience on multiple levels of specificity, from lifetime periods (e.g. 'when Rover was alive') to general events (e.g. 'my vacation to Florida') to event specific knowledge, or ESK. Recall of ESK preserves something of the phenomenal nature of an experience, such as the warm sensation of Rover in your lap and the sounds of traffic as you drove to Florida. The experience of ESK results in a perceived sense of yourself in the past (Gardiner, Richardson-Klavehn 2000). The intentional recall of an autobiographical memory is put in motion by the intention to remember a specific event. The knowledge structure of memory causes a pattern of activation across levels of informational specificity channeled through the current self's goal structures, resulting in the reconstruction of personal memories consistent with current self-views and goals. Evidence indicates that consciousness has preferential access to memories relevant to personality traits and long term goals (Bakermans-Kranenberg 1993). AM's are typically episodic and reflect singular and important novel experiences, significant emotional experiences, and generalized shemas of frequently occurring events.

Autobiographical memory is thought to be central to identity construction. The coherent narrative of significant personal experiences and self-knowledge represented in AM is an accessible source of the distinctive features and events that comprise the complex representation of the self in time. The self is also thought to play an organizational role in memory, and self-relevant information has been demonstrated to result in more vivid and easily accessible memories. It has also been observed that self-relevant information is preferentially allocated attentional resources and singled out for higher-order processing (Grey et al 2004). Similar attentional and higher-order processing effects have been observed for strongly emotional information, which may be primarily self-relevant. It is hypothesized that self-relevant information is charged with affect in order to organize world and life information relative to goals, obligations, and desires of the coherent self.

This view of AM formation is consistent with reports that vivid autobiographical memories predominantly represent episodes from formative or transitional periods of life, such as moving away to college or choosing a career (Oschner et al 2005). Many representations of the self in AM relate to the self's enduring relationship to specific social groups, for example 'male,' 'Catholic' ect.. Studies indicate that this kind of group affiliation information is sufficiently self-relevant to contribute to the content of AM, and in this way personal and social group histories are aligned. An example of this phenomenon is described in a classic study in which White Americans tended to remember where they were when JFK died and not where they were when MLK died, while the opposite held true for African Americans of the same generation. In this way, AM aids in a construction of the self over time relative to the public history of a significant social group.

AM is central to formation and maintenance of perceptions of self that persist over time, but the self and belief structures shaped by past experiences and AM also shape perception of experiences and memory reconstruction. It is thought that self-schema and self-perception cause memories of past events or attitudes to reflect self consistency rather than veridicality. Neisser's classic study of the reconstructive nature of autobiographical memory is still an excellent example of the overwhelming tendency to consider the past self in terms of the present one. During the Watergate scandal, key witness John Dean's memory of his conversations with the President and role in the scandal were demonstrated to be at odds with evidence collected from audio recordings of the conversations Dean testified about. While his recall of specific episodes was inaccurate, he demonstrated excellent recall of the general meaning of repeated conversations and the chronology of the event. His perception of his past self was determined in large part by his self-image at the time of the trial, and his self reported prediction of the coming disaster was not supported by the content of the tapes. This finding has been frequently replicated, and subjects are often surprised when their memory of past beliefs or attitudes is more positively correlated with their current beliefs and attitudes than to the remembered instance.

Perception of consistency over time is dependent on a number of mechanisms and hypothesized to be a result of the organization of structures that mediate between mind and world. Just as perception of qualia like color and speech is constructed by neural mechanisms that organize external phenomena into useful information, construction of self-percept is guided by lower level mechanisms that help us make sense of the world at the level of actions of intentional agents. Dennett has proposed the idea that narrative is the mechanism through which disorganized sensory information is organized by chronology and causality in the stories we tell ourselves (Dennett 1990). Narrative acts as an organizational tool linked to innate theories of human agency and causality, and we understand our world by telling ourselves causal stories about current and past events.

The left hemisphere is thought to be the primary seat of narrative, and has specifically been implicated as the source of an interpreter of inferred causality. The human tendency to perceive and infer causality is consistent and automatic. An understanding of relations between causes and effects is critical to making sense of our constantly changing physical world, and even greater sensitivity to causal relations is required by the demands of our complex social organization.

Research on mirror neurons in primates has demonstrated that the goal of an intentional action can be inferred from incomplete information. The left hemisphere may be involved in elaborating on available information to generate hypotheses about likely causal explanations for events, including self generated actions. Such causal attributions come naturally and automatically to normal adults, even when they do not appear to contribute to performance. A recent study demonstrated that the left hemisphere in split-brain patients generated a causal explanation for the behavior of the dissociated right hemisphere regardless of the utility of doing so or accessibility to right hemisphere causal mental state information. This finding, and further evidence of the automatic generation of causal explanations by the left hemisphere, is evidence of the inferential nature of causal stories about even self-originating action causation. The left hemisphere of split-brain patients also performed poorly on a visual memory task, and tended to falsely recognize novel objects consistent with common scenes presented for encoding (Gazzaniga 2000). This illustrates the role of narrative in detecting common structures and generalizing. These observations support the constructive nature of causality attribution in personal narrative, and provide evidence that this may be a left-lateralized activity.

The tendency to perceive causality appears to be a foundational principle in the organization of event information, and narrative is the mature form of causal-temporal representation of event information. Narrative comprehension and production rely on the same widely distributed frontal lobe areas that support theory-of-mind and mental state processes generally, as well as working memory and areas thought to be necessary to causal-temporal ordering of information. In addition, AM and most human communication assumes the narrative form in order to represent and communicate a coherent and organized self within experience. Memories of events originally encoded as causal narratives are more easily recalled than individual events outside of a causal context, and the underlying narrative structures of repeated events are stored and then elaborated on in reconstructive memory formation. Construction of a solid causal explanation for events can determine our perception of the significance and tone of personal episodes.

In addition to structuring autobiographical memory, the inclination to attribute events to underlying causes provides the framework for a folk-psychological interpretation of behavior. Folk psychology serves to order a stream of behavioral data by identifying causes such as motive, obligation, sentiment, and personality traits. Both external(situational) and internal(agent-originating) causes are recognized, and trends in behavioral data indicate a systematic difference between self and other causal attribution. People tend to explain their own behavior in terms of external causes acting on the self, and the behavior of others in terms of the personality, and mental states of the agent. The constructive nature of causal inference on narrative allows for this kind of flexibility, and for perceived consistency of self-image (Mar 2004).

Data from the developmental and pathological literature provides evidence that the ability to perceive and attribute causal relations is central to engaging in appropriate social interaction. Behavioral explanations and their flexible interpretations can impact the perception of the self by others and the distribution of responsibility and blame. The ability to detect deceptive or manipulative behaviors is dependent on reliability of inferential strategy. An appropriate perception of internally and externally causal factors could have been highly adaptive in an environment of aggressive social competition. In development, children's causal stories tend to be more situational than those told by adults. Though capable and more than willing to report causation of their actions and experiences by the age of 3, causal stories are typically bereft of self-originating causal mental entities such as needs, goals, and wants until the age of 5. This is attributed to the more complex and temporally extended self that emerges in early AM around the same time, along with the theory-of-mind ability to adopt multiple perspectives (and pass the false-belief task) (Atance and Meltzoff 2005). Conversely, paranoid schizophrenics tend to disproportionately perceive the internal mental states of others as causal, and as a result suffer illusions of persecution(Langdon et al 2005). Somewhere in between is the normal adult behavior of generating causal narratives which allow for natural and rapid interpretations of personal events and interpersonal interactions.

Early development of the self-concept is thought to be strongly related to interpersonal interaction. Infants are extremely sensitive to self/other similarities and differences, and may learn a lot about themselves by understanding their similarity to other human agents. At birth, neonates have an awareness of being relative to physical objects and bodily perception, and an interpersonal self that is shaped through interaction with others, typically adult care-givers. A tendency to imitate and share affect observed on conspecific faces develops quickly and 'social embodiment' information such as postures and facial expression continue to play a central role in social information processing. Within weeks, consciousness of self-originating goals and actions as distinct from the goals and actions of others emerges. At 12 months, there is evidence of a perceived distinction between the emotions of others and the self, and at 18 months infants demonstrate discrimination between their own desires and preferences and those of others, and can ascribe agency. It is very telling that this development is articulated through steps in establishing the self-other boundary.

The developing self is increasingly capable of representing the world relative to personal goals, and interpersonal interaction continues to be a force in self formation and perception. Receptive language skills emerge before language generation, and are related to recall and cohesion. The development of these skills may be a small step in the development of the extended self, and is thought to be related to the development of the ability to interpret the contributions of others in extended discourse, illustrating the natural and automatic capacity for generating cohesive interpretations of incomplete information.

At 4 or 5, children exhibit the ability to represent the self extended in time, and begin to use more qualitative and self-referential language in causal interpretations of events. At the same time the ability to represent mental content develops in complexity to include the possibility of false representations of reality and disparate perspectives of the same event. There is some speculation about the coincident emergence of these two abilities (perception of extended self and mature performance on false belief tasks) being attributable to maturation of the theory-of-mind ability to adopt multiple perspectives. AM emerges around this same time, and a unified sense of self over time and defined by personal narrative begins to develop. Again, the self concept increases in complexity as a function of it's elaborated relationship with the other. The neural pathways that allowed the self to develop through imitating and assimilating to the other now allow an articulated self to simulate internal states and represent their predictive significance relative to the self.

The path to the cognitive scientific self is long and convoluted, and is not made easier by the composite, interactional nature of its component parts. Even the basic distinction of the self from the other turns out to be a vague one. An important step in the functional imaging literature was made by an appropriately indirect and backwards inference about the mechanisms of self-referential thinking. Certain tasks of attribution of intention and mental state reasoning have been correlated with activation patterns closer to baseline than other cognitive tasks. The state of the brain during rest, or the default state of the brain when not faced with a specific task, is used as a baseline in many fMRI and PET studies. The similarity of patterns of activation in mental-state related tasks to patterns of activation in the resting, baseline state caused researchers to speculate as to the content and nature of the resting state and it's relationship to thinking about thinking. It was surmised that some level of self/other/mental state representation or reasoning takes place during the resting state. Further investigation revealed that mental-state reasoning that required more internally directed attention, for example judgments of subjective experience, caused an even lower decrease in activity associated with the resting state. The direction of this correlation indicates that the resting-state is an introspective state, with attention directed towards internal experiences and processes.

Degree of activation appeared to be a function of the relative proportion of internal to externally directed attention to mental-state information, which supports a common neural basis of self/other representation. In fact, self/other relevant cognitive processes generally have been correlated with the same set of neural structures. This set of neural structures has been implicated in face perception, autobiographical memory, self-evaluation, causal-temporal ordering of information, representing the mental states of others, and monitoring, execution and perception of goal oriented actions. Individual observed instances of localized function are as variable as the tasks associated with them, but generally the medio-dorsal frontal cortex, orbito-frontal cortex, and STS bilaterally; the anterior cingulate cortex, temporo parietal junction, pre-motor, and motor cortex of the right hemisphere; and the temporopolar cortex of the left hemisphere are consistently correlated with processing of mental state information. Additionally, the posterior cingulate cortex has been correlated with self-awareness and thinking directed towards the intentions of the self specifically (Harris et al 2005, Decety and Sommerville 2003, Metzinger and Gallese 2003).

Overlapping cognitive architecture, dependent conceptual development, and data from primate research on motor neurons all point to the relationship of motor-pathways and mental state representation as a promising and interesting area for future research. Many intriguing claims have been made about the relationship of motor-pathways to understanding the other, including reports of patients with R hemisphere lesions resulting in denial of hemiplegia that extends to denial of the motor-deficits of other patients(Tirassa 2005 reporting on Ramachandran). The connectedness of the self and the other invites investigators of the self to look to deficits traditionally thought of as social, such as autistic spectrum disorders. Other interesting topics include the assimilation of AM, belief structures, perception and narrative processes into a more comprehensive model of the extended self. Rather than the unwieldy philosophical issue we began with, closer inspection of the nature of the problem of self in cognitive science reveals a difficult but manageable problem in social cognition.

Twitch of the death nerve (Bay of Blood)

Twitch of the Death Nerve or Bay of Blood (1971) directed by Mario Bava.

The film begins with the murder of an elderly heiress, and a web of intrigue surrounding the fate of her coveted waterfront property emerges. What ensues is an all-out murder spree as relatives and friends attempt to get their grubby hands on her fortune, complicated by a group of young backpackers who innocently decide to crash in her abandoned estate.

Mario Bava is one of the most under-appreciated Italian horror directors. He is widely considered to be a master of his craft, but I still think that is an understatement. Bava began his career as a cinematographer and it shows; his films exhibit masterful knowledge of color theory, composition, and texture. And the lighting! Don't even get me started... One of my favorite elements in all his films is his understanding and application of fashion in his sets, props and costumes; reminiscent of Seijun Suzuki's artful fashion sense in films like Tokyo Drifter, in which fashion and mood almost become characters in the film. Bava's work is clearly influenced both by the stylized aesthetics of German expressionism and the raw violence and sexuality of the Hammer films. If you're not immediately engaged by this movie and wonder why I love it so much, just wait for the octopus. It beats the pants off the octopus in Old Boy by a longshot. All that being said, about it being this amazing masterwork and whatnot, let me make it clear that it is still a 70's horror movie, complete with jiggling titties and absurdly stereotyped characters.

Available to download at thepiratebay.org, for rental through netflix.com, and for sale on amazon.com