Mr. Monster

Some Koreans nicknamed him Mr. Monster, an affectionate tribute to an eccentric moviemaker and to his equally eccentric and dark films. His real name was Kim Ki-young, and his creations could be the most deliriously and deliciously bizarre films you've ever heard of, much less ever seen. A director who worked within the Korean film industry from the 50s until the 80s, Kim eschewed the sentimental and treacly trappings of the popular and traditional Shinpa dramas (which were actually Japanese in origin) and started his career making films that were influenced by the Italian neo-realists. As his career progressed, Kim began to shed the neo-realism, and his movies started to take a decidedly darker and more gothic turn.

One of Kim's signature films is The Housemaid, a lurid melodrama of lust and domestic chaos. Here's a brief synopsis, courtesy of Chuck Stephens:

The husband, a feckless music teacher, gives piano lessons to the young, rural-born women who staff a local factory; his wife, in addition to raising their bratty son and crippled daughter, takes in sewing to supplement the family income. When hubby asks one of his students to recommend a suitable domestic from among the factory girls, the trouble begins. The student, it seems, has developed a powerful crush on the teacher, and when her advances are spurned, she spitefully recommends a chain-smoking farm girl, Myong-ja, to the family's employ. A panic-eyed succubus, Myong-ja makes her first appearance emerging from the student's closet -- as if directly from the rejected woman's vengeful unconscious -- and immediately begins to sow the seeds of the family's destruction.

Nice! The Housemaid and other important Kim films such as The Insect Woman, Woman on Fire, Killer Butterfly, and his last film Carnivore (great titles!) are not available on video through normal means here in the states, although I suppose they may be available in stores that cater to Asian immigrants. Kim has had some recognition in the west with retrospectives in San Francisco and in Berlin in 1998. Unfortunately, 1998 was also the year he died. As Kim and his wife were preparing for a trip to Berlin to personally attend the retrospective, the house the Kims had recently bought and moved into and which was apparently haunted and ill-omened (doubt appealing to Kim's whimsical sense of the macabre) caught fire due to an electrical short circuit. Kim and his wife both died in the blaze.

With the recent ascension of Korean films in the west, culminating with Park Chan-wook's Old Boy winning the Grand Prix at Cannes, perhaps some enterprising company will attempt to release a Region 0 DVD of Kim's work to an unsuspecting Western audience. Hell, maybe even seeing Park's films at the local video store wouldn't be beyond the pale.

For a ton of info on Kim Ki-Young, point your browser to this site run by a Cinema Studies class at the Korean National University of Arts. The site's in English, and it has bios, filmographies, interviews, reviews, and academic papers galore. Simple, but very well done.