Yet Another Post about KB

Yet another post about Kill Bill --Screencaps from the Japanese Region 2 disc. See the showdown at The House of Blue Leaves in all its colorful and gory glory.

New KB Edit?

Rumors are afloat that Tarantino intends to re-edit and fuse together both volumes of his Kill Bill opus for a year-end release for video and quite possibly for a limited release in theaters. Speculation on the DVD Times Forum is that a total re-edit of the structure is in the works and that one shouldn't expect a simple and expedient tacking on of the second volume to the end of the first.

I see troubles for film scholars ahead, not to mention for the well-being of film fans and collectors. I suppose this sort of reordering and refashioning of an ostensibly completed work began in earnest back in 1977 when Francis Ford Coppola re-edited parts I and II of The Godfather into a sprawling miniseries for NBC. What was notable for that endeavor, entitled The Godfather Saga, or The Godfather 1902-1959: The Complete Epic was not just the inclusion of outtakes of both movies but the chronological reordering of the events of Part II. While this may make some sort of narrative sense and assuage some of the confusion and insecurity some viewers may have felt trying to piece things together, it also undermined the complex thematic poignancy of the juxtaposition of the scenes of Little Italy and those in mid-century Tahoe. It was this juxtaposition that made The Godfather Part II a greater film, I feel, than its predecessor. Aesthetic considerations won out in the end, though, and both films (along with its sickly Fredo-like Part III) are available in a handsome boxed set, along with the outtakes that were included in the TV Saga. Of course, the remanufacturing of our filmic past didn't stop there. Again, Coppola put out Apocalypse Now Redux, which added about an hour's worth of material to his original (I still prefer the original). Thanks to the introduction of the DVD format, there are more director's cuts than you can shake a stick at, which begs the question: which will be the proper and accepted text for future scholarship and archiving, and who will decide this. Will Peter Jackson's take on The Return of the King be studied as it theatrical version or some mega five hour version available on some 3 disc special edition? Did Han Solo shoot first, or did Greedo?

Then again, it's Hollywood isn't it? It's a matter of merchandising, not artistic credibility. If Tarantino edits both volumes of Kill Bill into one big sloppy and lovable mess, will both original volumes still be available? Probably, because it will be something for the fanboys to buy in order to keep their collections complete. Which will be the versions dissected and analyzed in the future, say a hundred years from now? If one assumes there will be an academic pursuit such as Tarantino Studies in the year 2104 (which may sound absurd to some, but people study 19th century Penny Dreadfuls), then one can imagine future scholars sifting through the variety of versions available, editing compendia, comparing exegeses not unlike dusty monks studying the apocrypha in the middle ages.

KB Game

Bored? Here's a time waster, courtesy of Kill Bill's official Czech site. You can be Uma for a day, or at least for a couple of minutes, and slice and dice and de-limb an enslaught of the Crazy 88 as Al Hirt's Green Hornet plays in the background. Mindlessly fun. via Boing Boing

I Saw Kill Bill Vol. 2

I saw Kill Bill Vol. 2 yesterday, and, while I enjoyed it, I felt the movie was neither "the personal reverie that generates a dramatic power of its own" as Variety's Todd McCarthy rhapsodized (the first review a lot of us read on the film, but now only accessible to Variety subscribers, so I apologize for the sketchy link), nor the "shapeless mess" as opined by The New Yorker's David Denby, or evidence of our incipient "cultural retardation" as pointed out by the pugnacious Armond White of The New York Press.

This is Tarantino: the man clearly loves cinema. He lives it and breathes it. This is a good thing. This cannot be more evident than running through the trailers leading up to Kill Bill, where one can practically smell the stink of cynical merchandising and Hollywood manipulation behind the bullshit of Van Helsing and I, Robot. Tarantino makes movies because he loves movies. Unfortunately, I fear that may be the only thing he loves (apart from the pop ephemera of growing up in the 70s). The man is 40 years old. He should be hitting his artistic and intellectual stride. Instead I find in his films, as fun and as visceral as they are, the work of a very smart, very talented, very precocious 16 year old. Which is not to say they are strictly immature, but there is a shallowness of emotion and experience that comes from a life ensconced in dark sticky theaters and in front of TV sets with smouldering bong in hand. I'm perhaps being harsh, but that's only because I think Tarantino has it in him to be a truly great filmmaker. Playing "spot the reference" is great fun for movie lovers, but its nothing more than a parlor game. It may sound trite, and it's been said a thousand times, but it's the universality of the human condition and experience that makes art truly great and transcend whatever perimeters we may place on it. Sometimes movies need to be more than to be about movies.

Shiseido TV Commercials

An interesting collection of Japanese television advertising from 1960 to the present from Shiseido, a cosmetics company that has been around since 1872. I especially like the b&w 1960 doowop guys with the checkered jackets and portable grooming kits.

Mexi-Horror!!

A good survey of Mexican horror and fantasy cinema from 1933 to 1970. Mexico was establishing it's own horror tradition in the 30s, the same time Universal was doing the same in the states. In Spanish. Here's a translation from Google.

Soledad Miranda Sings!

Cult horror queen Soledad Miranda, while toiling away in westerns and costume dramas in the Spanish film industry in the mid-sixties, also tried her hand as a pop singer. It's pretty pedestrian, really, but you can find cover scans of her records and mp3 samples here.

Italo-Horror Frame Grabs

Very nice frame grab comparison between the recently released DVD of Mill of the Stone Women and several Mario Bava 60s gothics, showing many stylistic similarities. Compliled by Henrik Hemlin, who also helps run the Mario Bava Web Page. From the Mobius Home Video Forum.

Fu Manchu For Mayor

Ah, the days when Occidentals played Asians....Not so long ago actually. Peter Sellers played Fu Manchu in 1980 (The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu, his last film, I think, not including the outtakes that were flung into that lame Pink Panther thing released 2 years after his death), and Spanish horror star Paul Naschy played Fu Manchu in 1990 (La Hija de Fu-Manchu). These are just two tidbits of arcane info found at The Movies of Fu Manchu, a repository of graphics, posters, promo pieces and other neat stuff. Part of a larger Fu Manchu site.

The Bloody Pit of Swank!!

Mp3 Tuesday!-- some minor internet problems and other distractions precluded me from uploading this on Friday. I hope it's just as enjoyable -- the swanky, swinging, and sadean Theme from The Bloody Pit of Horror (Il Boia Scarlatto) (Gino Peguri) 3.6M

At a certain moment of excess, I conjectured that if Michelangelo Antonioni was a third-rate hack who toiled in relative anonymity in the papier-mache depths of Cinecitta, where Monica Vitti wouldn't even give him the time of day as she rushed by him on her way to the set of her comedy with Alberto Sordi, he could have possibly made Il Boia Scarlatto, aka The Bloody Pit of Horror. The notion, on the face of it, is of course quite absurd, ridiculous even. But through sleepy late-night slits for eyes, though the imagination may be cloudier, I thought I saw the stamp of Antonioni.

Syrupy and sinister languor marks each minute like a stain. Like Antonioni's upper-class creations, the artists and models of Il Boia Scarlatto who meander through the long hallways and corridors of Travis Anderson's (Mickey Hargitay) odd castle find little joy or emotion in their lives. Ennui rules their day. So does cynicism. Even the act of love provides little solace or even anything resembling human interaction (indeed a woman's empty stare as her lover busses her neck mirrors the expressions of Monica Vitti and Jeanne Moreau in similar situations in Antonioni's early 60s films).

Ironically, it is only when confronted with physical torture and horrible deaths do our characters exhibit any pathos. Indeed, it often plumbs the depths of utter despair: "Why is this happening?" a woman cries out as boiling oil is poured over her bare back. "I can't stand this anymore!" "Please don't! I don't want to die like this!" the impresario screams as he's roasted alive. "Mercy!"

Then again, the existential distress our characters exhibit may not be intentional on the filmmakers' part (in this case director Massimo Pupillo, and writers Romano Migliorini and Roberto Natale), but merely the byproduct of a weak and silly script and even weaker and sillier actors. The film has garnered a certain reputation as a "cult classic" (a term I tend to dislike, but I'll use anyway), if only because of Mickey Hargitay's maniacal performance. It's also interesting that it refers to Hargitay's own history as a "muscleman in costume films" in the character he plays. In fact, one can see Il Boia Scarlatto as an outgrowth of the peplum genre, or Italian sword and sandal films, or an attempt to hybrid this genre (on its last legs in the mid-60s) with the gothic horror that was popular in Italy at the time. In any case, most people call it camp nowadays, but there's also a fringe following that focuses on the cheesecake and torture chamber aspect, which seems harmless on the surface, but gets pretty ugly when you dig a little deeper.

The music was by Gino Peguri, who has about 16 films to his credit, usually westerns in the 60s and softcore porn in the 70s. His first soundtrack was for a mondo documentary called Italia Proibita in 1963. Il Boia Scarlatto was his second score for a film, and one can hear the mondo influence. Scenes of depravity are set against soft swingy lounge tunes. Peguri's only bow to horror music convention is the skeletal sound of a discordant guitar, which sort of sounds like early 80s NYC downtown no wave. After the main credits, we hear some sweet cocktail music as our characters make their way to the castle where most of them will meet their horrible fates. Nothing like a sense of foreboding.

Psycho Flash Edit Thing

More Psycho stuff. Neat little Flash page where you can re-edit the shower scene yourself. I attempted a minimalist version with just shots of Janet Leigh's gaping mouth. I can delude myself by thinking that it works. It's in the gallery section listed as "minimalist psycho".