Blood Link (1983)

Blood Link begins in the midst of a surreal and fantastic waltz. Members of a high-society social club are seen stiffly dancing in an ornate ballroom. The camera, frozen in place amidst a crystal and gold chandelier during the title sequence, comes unlocked and begins to zoom into the floor. The dancers' movements appear regimented and passionless. This disorienting opening is glued together by Ennio Morricone’s fantastic theme: a somewhat traditional waltz made ominous by occasional, dark, ethereal passages. The camera eventually zooms in to focus on one particular couple—an unnamed woman and man. The music ends, and the dancers clear the floor save for this mysterious couple. One club member exclaims to another “They don’t even seem to notice the music has stopped.” The woman, considerably older than the man, in a close shot, says, with awkward reservation “Do you… know how happy you make me?” The music resumes—this time a more traditional waltz with more frequent and more sinister sour passages. The man sashays the woman into a dark corner of the room, and—with a wide smile—produces a blade and stabs the woman in the back. He calmly and slowly eases the body against the floor, and exits the frame. A ringing phone interrupts the pace and style of the scene, and the man from the previous scene rolls over in bed and answers the phone.

The film’s opening is seemingly a nightmare, and the dreamer appears to be Physician Dr. Craig Manning (played by the inimitable Michael Moriarty). While initially the connection between these two scenes in unclear, we conclude that the opening is a dream only after the mundane rhythms of Mannings’ life are established. Manning chats on the phone with his sweet, average-looking girlfriend Dr. Julie Warren (Penelope Milford), makes small talk with his elderly neighbors, and sits through tedious meetings with his physician colleagues. These few scenes are carefully crafted to establish the dual reality of Mannings’ experience: his personal life and his fantasy life of disturbing dreams and visions. In one Argentoesque sequence, Manning follows a nude woman up into a bell tower and murders her, only to snap to, alone in the tower. However, this second fantasy is achieved through more traditionally “B” movie devices—particularly, Vaseline smeared on the lens. This criticism aside, the dynamic of the film is swiftly and adeptly established within the first act of the film, allowing the final two thirds of the film to unravel in interesting ways.

The potential cause of Mannings dreams and waking visions is his self-testing of his own radical new psychological treatment, which involves acupuncture and electric shocks. Its not clear what exactly this cure will achieve nor for whom it is intended—yet it makes for an interesting device, much the way pseudo-science and pseudo-psychology play a role in many horror and science fiction films, particularly Brainstorm, Altered States, Prince of Darkness and the mid-period films of David Cronenberg. While this would make for a sufficient thriller alone, the curveball of the film comes at the start of the film’s second act, when Craig Manning learns of his long-lost Siamese-twin brother, Keith, whom he only vaguely could recall until now (I hope it is not a sick joke that his brother has relocated to Cleveland). Craig learns of Keith when he visits an aging foster parent, who calls him Keith, and seems to warn of impending danger. This all comes as a surprise, and the introduction of this element could have been handled more carefully, as its bizarre randomness betrays the mundane tone established by the "real life" scenes of the film. However, as we learn that Craig’s visions may not be his fantasies at all, one could rationalize that Craig represents the mundane aspects of life, while Keith represents the mysterious and forbidden. The two begin to bleed together once Craig realizes that the ballroom he dreamt is a real place, “The Crystal Ballroom”, as he stands in the center of the dance floor, all glamour stripped from the location, as a janitor sweeps up in the background. Craig discovers soon after that the two women he’s seen murdered, were, in fact, killed exactly as he dreamt it. We soon learn that Keith is able to “see” through Craig’s eyes as well, and that Keith knows Craig is close.

Moriarty is often credited as a reliable character actor, but rarely is he acknowledge as being a talented actor, generally. Moriarty, although always recognizable, is able to adapt to the particular tone of whatever film he’s cast in. His performance here is entirely different than the fairly uniform performances in Larry Cohen’s films for which Moriarty is best known. Moriarty’s evolution as an actor only points to his progressive talent and adaptability. For instance, in the first season of Showtime’s Masters of Horror series, his terrifying portrayal of a murdering trucker remains the highlight of not only the episode in question (also directed by Cohen), but of the entire—albeit, rather lackluster—series. His performance in this Masters of Horror episode is as different from his role here in Blood Link as this film is from Q: The Winged Serpent or The Stuff.

The crystals spied in the opening shot, paid close attention to, come to represent the fractured twin psyches of Craig and Keith, bound together and reflexive. In one contemplative scene, Craig stares at himself in the mirror, imagining Keith, and trying to reconcile the murderer envisioned in his mind with the image before him. Were he to look into a large multi-faceted crystal, he would see a more appropriately disjointed picture of his psychotic brother. Keith’s character, thinly characterized, only makes sense as contrasted with his brother. Unfortunately, his sociopathy remains largely unexplained and unexplored. Advantageous then, that Moriarty is able to fill out the angles of Keith, even if the script is not. There is never a moment where Moriarty is onscreen that we are unsure of which brother we are looking at.

Blood Link looks fantastic: sumptuous during Craig’s visions, raw and washed-out elsewhere. Two experience of each twin is unique—filmicly—in several ways. While Craig lies nude and comfortable with Julie, her exposed breasts seem neither titillating nor particularly erotic, merely naturalistic. Keith’s intimate moments, however, are wholly different. Keith leans in over a nude prostitute, in one scene, dominant and aggressive. The scene feels incredibly elicit and pornographic, as the woman begins to undue Keith’s belt and exposes his pubic hair. As the film progresses and Keith and Craig close in on each other, the two motifs blend together, such as a night-time scene in a shopping center, all bright, high-contrast colors and shadows. The lighting and décor augment each brother so much that even scenes where the two are present seem carefully constructed to suit each half of the “link.”

Blood Link’s major misstep is its conclusion. Craig’s character is imprisoned for one of Keith’s murders, and Julie’s character is called to carry the remainder of the film. This is problematic, as her role in the film at times appears merely functionary. For instance, she does not mind when Craig sleeps with another woman, seemingly only because this would create an obstacle for the story’s progression. Julie’s character is also degraded for reasons unknown, as she is constantly disrobing (or having her clothes ripped off), and uses her body to get close to Keith at the film’s climax. No apparent point about the characters or the external psycho-sexual relationships between men and women appears to be made here. The weakness of Julie’s character is compounded by the amateurish acting of Milford, whose degradation is almost palpable, beyond that of her character. Also, here we see yet another film suffer from a pointlessly ambiguous ending. It is a shame that Blood Link loses steam in the final reel, as it is, in many ways, an interesting film, especially in the technical sense.

This international picture (an American/Italian production, filmed in Germany and Canada), benefits hugely from the studied restraint of cinematographer Romano Albani (who has worked with Argento), and from Morricone, who demonstrates similar restraint, working primarily with several simple themes. Morricone’s touch is so slight that the final half of the film is nearly devoid of soundtrack. These elements, coupled with an interesting (yet still somewhat flawed in execution, and certainly not particularly original) set of themes, and Moriarty’s fine performance, elevate Blood Link, despite a few stumbles, above other “B” psycho-thrillers and Argento knock-offs.

The Incredible Ride (1994)

My mother is a dental hygienist, and when I was a kid, every now and then she would bring home weird cartoons about good dental health from the office where she worked. These tapes were mini-movies, where some kid usually learns about why he should brush his teeth three times a day, while gross toothpaste monsters with red sunglasses jam on tooth-brush guitars and fly around. I specifically remember four of these tapes, but alas, only this one survives.

The Incredible Ride begins with a live action segment filmed at a carnival. Various rides-in-motion are cut intro shots of our kids: Dana (Black), Steve (Asian), Tony (Latino) David (WASP) and our clumsy narrator, Sylvia, a nerdy girl with huge glasses. Each kid finds a way to awkwardly smile wide enough so that we can notice their perfect teeth (this is the part where the Dentist pauses the tape and tells the kid, “This is what healthy teeth look like.”). As soon as our characters are established, the story kicks in, as Sylvia notices a giant animated rabbit dentist (“Dr. Rabbit”) sneaking around. The kids aren’t a bit surprised, and run after the rabbit into a weird circus tent. As they enter, each kid turns into a cartoon character, and falls into some weird alternate dental universe, where Dr. Rabbit hangs out. The kids ride for a few seconds on a weird trolley (the “incredible” ride?) The Doc immediately sings a song about himself, and lets the kids chime in when they feel like it. David—in a ridiculous falsetto—contributes this: “I brush once a weeeeeek, is that okaaaaaaay?” About four seconds later, David gets kidnapped by plaque monsters, who appear out of the very fabric of space to nab him behind Dr. Rabbit’s back. No one seems to mind too much, however, and Doc Rabbit breaks out into a wonderful song called “Brush, Brush, Brush” (the chorus is “brush, brush, brush”). They then sing the song a second time.

At this point the tape malfunctioned, and my VCR nearly ate it. So there’s a part about floss and “acid monsters” I missed. When I got the tape working again, Dr. Rabbit had left the kids to their own devices, presumably to check up on some other interesting things, Gandalf-style. Suddenly the kids fall out of cartoon reality and back into the carnival, as an echo-drenched voice-from-nowhere calls out: “Visit a dentist… every yeeeeeeeear!” And David is back, I guess. A teacher shows up, who apparently didn’t worry too much when half her class disappeared for who-knows-how-long. Cue shots of teeth (including the mugs of some kids we haven’t seen before). Sylvia: “And that’s what happened the day we went to the amusement park. Was it real or a dream? Who knows? All I know is that David’s smile has never been so beautiful [ooooh!]. In fact, we all smile a lot more, because our teeth are clean and healthy! Oh, and whatever happened to Dr. Rabbit? We never saw him again [cut to a shot of Doc Rabbit waving goodbye from the weird circus tent], but his words are still very much in our heads [apparently not in their hearts however].” Closing The Incredible Ride is the moving ballad, “Protect Your Teeth.” The chorus: “Protect your teeth, because it’s true.” What? Best line: a kid flatly emoting “Make sure your toothpaste has flouriiiiiiiide.”

Well, I guess this flick was financed by Colgate, but isn’t as much of a commercial as the other tapes I remember, which specifically emphasize the superior quality of Crest’s products and attempt to create brand loyalty with their rockin’ and rollin’ toothpaste mascots. The weirdest tape I remember is about a Giraffe, and features hilariously bad animation, especially when characters have to run or jump. I also remember disgusting shots of hippos with gingivitis. I think the doctor in that one is an Alligator, who might try to eat some of the characters as he educates them about good dental practice. Both this movie and the Crest tapes are relatively long too, running about one half hour, usually with supplemental material (“for parents”). The Incredible Ride clocks in at a trim fifteen minutes, perfect for a waiting room viewing.

It may be unfair to judge the artistic merits of a tape made specifically to encourage kids to brush their teeth, but I’ll try anyway. The animation is actually pretty consistent and interesting, certainly compared to the other tapes I’ve mentioned. The voice-over is terrible, but I guess getting real kids to voice cartoons is always preferable to the kind of overly-emotive voice-acting you hear on Cartoon Network all the time. The songs are pretty lame and inconsequential, but they never last for more than 30 seconds, so they’re pretty painless. Honestly, I have no idea how to rate this. But I’m in a good mood and watching The Incredible Ride made me feel nostalgic. Also, I’m having fun writing this review. Three alternate reality stars.

Visiting Hours (1981)

Visiting Hours opens with simple titles on a neutral blue background, while a piano theme runs on the soundtrack. The melody is simple, but the weight and repetition of the notes recall the sound of an EKG monitor: the neatness of the visuals and the quality of the score appropriately suggest the clinical horror of Visiting Hours, a film which, like Cronenberg or Coma, is concerned with the alienating and intimidating nature of the hospital and of health-care. In fact, the perception of an anti-somatic, body-fearing quality in industrial medicine and treatment (a micro for Capitalism’s macro perhaps) is emphasized repeatedly throughout the film, so often as to risk becoming a theme which feels clumsy and overstated.

Yet Visiting Hours, a horror film first and foremost, does not let the hospital alone be the predator, and that’s where Michael Ironside comes in. Ironside, as I’m sure Samurai Dreams readers know, is a fantastic character actor and a formidable presence in films such as Scanners, Total Recall and The Machinist. Ironside is a gift to this film, exuding heavy menace in every scene. Ironside’s prominence seems to offset the film, for better or worse; the supposed protagonist of the film, TV host Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant), competes with Ironside for dominance throughout.

Ironside is here a loner who decides to murder Ballin, after her commentary affects the outcome of a high-profile murder case in which a woman has killed her abusive husband in self defense. Initially, the audience is provided no details about Ironside’s character, or his motives. Ironside emerges into the film both figuratively and literally from parts unknown, attacking Ballin from behind her shower curtain with a knife, nude and wearing her jewelry. This nightmare image establishes Ironside’s thus-far-unnamed character as an almost supernatural presence, completely relentless and single-minded. Ironside’s assailant is able to critically wound Ballin, but she survives the attack. The remainder of the film concerns his attempts to silence Ballin for good, as he stalks her in her hospital bed.

Yet, an interesting thing happens (and this is why I maintain Ironside competes with Grant for the film’s focus): the film begins to follow Ironside’s character from the hospital back to his apartment; he is allowed to exist outside of the hospital, outside the context of typical slasher anonymity. As the audience follows Ironside’s character’s life “outside,” more is revealed about his life (including, eventually, his name: Colt Hawker), and an interesting dichotomy develops: the anti-somatism Ballin observes in the hospital (macro), and the anti-somatism of the character of Colt (micro). The complexity of Colt’s psyche is slowly revealed, subtly: Ironside understands the importance here of understatement.

Among Colt’s hobbies: writing angry white-supremacist editorials, visiting his ill father in a rest home, and picking up underage girls at greasy spoons to bring back to his apartment. Colt doesn’t rape his victims—he batters and photographs them. Colt’s anti-somatism is so great that his attraction to female flesh must be mediated; he even wears his camera on a belt at crotch level. Colt’s ownership of and mastery over women is achieved not through sex, but through violence and its preservation via his camera. In Colt we find a man of intense hatred, hatred for both himself and others (on this point the feeling of the filmmakers are made explicit: when a young woman Colt has battered asks a nurse if she works at the Free Clinic to “see how the other half lives,” the nurse responds: “There is no Other half.”). Colt’s reasons for hating Ballin are essentially ideological; his obsession with Ballin comes from emotions which run much deeper. Colt’s anti-somatism is so intense as to ensure he values death over life. While this assumption is usually explicit in the mind of most film killers, not often is the assumption given any thematic weight. The micro of Colt, one person struggling to live up to gender stereotypes within a sexist culture, and the macro of a hospital’s beauracratic, mechanized anti-somatism, merge in the film’s final reel, as Colt, wearing scrubs and a lab coat, wields a jack-knife like a syringe over Ballin’s helpless drugged body in her hospital bed.

Despite what Visiting Hours does right, the film is in many ways flawed. Specifically, the film suffers from uneven pacing and underdeveloped supporting characters, including Ballin’s nurse Sheila Munroe (Linda Purl), whom Colt is also obsessed with, and William Shatner (in an atypical even-handed performance) as Ballin’s boss Baylor. Yet while the structure of the film suffers in some ways from the demands of the complex relationship developed between Colt and Ballin, this central element is substance enough to warrant a raw, intelligent, interesting and overlooked film.

While often films of the “body-horror” genre reach the same conclusion about the nature of western cultural assumptions, rarely does the body-horror film provide a counterpoint. In Visiting Hours, the counterpoint is clear: Colt’s ideology of misogyny, hatred and death (engendered, the audience comes to learn, by his own idealized vision of his abusive father)—as apposed to Ballin’s progressive, holistic ideology—is poison. While Visiting Hours is imperfect, its message of acceptance of the flesh triumphing over the fear of the flesh—the dichotomy embodied by Ballin and Colt—is loud and clear.

The Final Terror (1984)

The drive-in horror film usually comes in one of four variants: bizarre experimentations in vague government buildings; ghosts, demons or a slasher in a haunted house or cabin in the woods; a slasher on a college campus; a slasher in the woods. The Final Terror is a woodland slasher, one with a premise so simple and so commonplace that exposition is barely required. Our gang may be campers, or they may be camp counselors killing time before the kids arrive; this is unclear, and this is unimportant. The ripped-off music cues from Friday the 13th should be enough to let any genre fan know exactly what they’re getting into here.

Rachel Ward and Daryl Hannah get their names on the marquee, but there aren’t any main protagonists to speak of here, only about ten underdeveloped campers in their early 20’s, all equally worthy of stepping into a trip-wire rigged to slice necks with a string of tin-can lids. The point is not to know these characters (or even their names), because certain signifiers alert one instantly to whatever one-dimensional stereotype each actor has been instructed by director Andrew Davis to embody (Black, British, yokel, hippie-chick). The only character with a back-story is Eggar (played by a scrawny Joe Pantoliano), our high-strung hillbilly tour guide, who doesn’t tolerate it when the male campers stay up too late reading Playboy and Conan comics, and warns our gang not to go into the “bad” part of the woods (which of course only makes them venture further). Eggar’s been in a psychiatric hospital; and he likes to wear women’s clothing. This appears to be all the evidence the campers, and the audience, need to rightfully identify Eggar as suspect number one once the killing starts.

No doubt due to a limited effects budget, almost nothing happens in the first forty minutes of The Final Terror. That’s a long time to spend watching badly-lit stereotypes smoke weed and tell ghost stories. This is the interesting thing about most drive-in flicks: they aren’t exciting. But, I suppose the culture of the drive-in requires a certain disposability; if the movies were too good, how could audiences slug brews and make fun of the dialogue? How could couples find time to fool around without long boring stretches? It’s almost more rewarding to find yourself disoriented at the drive-in, staring at a mason jar with a severed hand floating in blood, with no frame of reference. The story and characters in drive-in movies are entirely rote; it’s the strange and grisly images genre fans dig.

Yet, when a horror film is nearly two-thirds over and the audience still hasn’t seen the killer, or any interesting kills, even the most ardent genre fans are likely to become impatient. Luckily, at about the one hour mark, things get interesting. Fleeing blindly, the campers push an old raft down the river, about half of them in the raft, and half in the water. The natural lighting in The Final Terror is often frustrating; here it’s perfect. In a film with a tight schedule, you need to save each day’s “golden hour” for exactly the right moments; while this film is plain-lazy in many respects, Davis at least understands this. The desperation of the actors may in fact be real: the water must have been cold, and the ancient raft must have been cumbersome to maneuver. The tension is perfect by the time the unseen slasher hoists a dead body off a cliff and into the boat. After the body is thrown, the audience knows conclusively that Eggar is, in fact, either the “Final Terror” or the man responsible for inspiring it. This scene serves as a reminder that even sleaze can be art (one is reminded of the strange beauty found in the forest-chase scene from I Spit on Your Grave, or the burial in the final scene of Thriller: A Cruel Picture).

Unfortunately, after this strong sequence, the sun goes down, and much of the rest of the film takes place in impenetrable darkness; no atmosphere is created, you just can’t see anything. And I’m pretty sure that it isn’t just the deteriorated print transfer on my VHS (or wear on the tape itself); somebody made an executive decision that lighting simply wasn’t important. Now, the shots described earlier—and one incredibly beautiful washed-out scene later in the film—benefit from this naturalistic approach, this works for The Hills Have Eyes, certainly, but if you want to rip-off Friday the 13th, a more formalistic method is recommended.

The other scene in which natural light benefits The Final Terror (the washed-out scene I mentioned earlier) is the final scene, which was most likely a definite crowd-pleaser for the drive-in audience. Before the final showdown between the remaining campers and Eggar, the hillbilly tracker character “Zorch” climbs up away from the group and starts babbling about the beauty of the forest, and the horrors of Vietnam, in the same breath. When the campers ask what’s up, Zorch’s pal Hines says: “We found some magic mushrooms in the shack… he’s stoned out of his mind.” No doubt some of the kids in darkened drive-in lots across the Midwest could relate.

New Review

From Zine World:

Samurai Dreams: Fringe Film Reviews & VHS Culture #3
A crack team of movie reviewers has scoured the cheapest cut-rate bins, garage sales, and thrift stores around to bring you this collection of cult and classic (and classic cult) videos. Each review gives a brief synopsis and the highlights of the movie. Some of the choices are dubious: interspersed among the lesser-known finds are major-studio releases (Batman, Harry and the Hendersons) and wide-release indies (Dancer in the Dark, Lost Highway). Makes for great browsing, but don’t expect to find many of these at your local Blockbuster. SDZ, 60 Fairgrounds Rd, Cummington MA 01026, samuraidreamszine@yahoo.com [small “donations,” or trade for rare movie dubs 58S :35]—Andrew

Crest Acquired

Today I got into my parents' old car (which only I drive) and noticed a scrap of paper on the floor of the driver's seat. I assume it fell out of a folder after doing cut-ups or collages at IG's. I lifted the tiny bit of text out of the dry leaves and shiny dirt (from my sneakers) and held it to the light of the cd player. It read, "deep and newly surfaced minerals allowed to live."

Bad Situation

Last night I dreamt of a shadow version of my apartment. My room in the dream was only faintly illuminated, and I slept on a ratty mattress on the floor. There were two shelves in my room of bizarre dolls and toys, whose eyes followed me as I walked across the room. The hallways was long and dark, with dozens of very old computers the only light source, while mysterious kids played ancient floppy-disk dungeon crawlers and Wolfenstein 3D-type FPS games.

8-bit Noir

too bad the game itself sucks.

Farewell

Astro Video is going out of business. I urge anyone in the Western Mass area to visit before they close their doors for good (in December most likely). The store is located just into Holyoke by way of Northampton. The prices on are reduced: all VHS tapes are two dollars, all DVDs are discounted according to original price. I'm going to write a proper obituary for the next issue of Samurai Dreams, this is just a notification. I've already been two times since the sale began. I bought the critereon of ...And God Created Women for very cheap, as well as a lot of VHS tapes that were originally priced as high as forty dollars, files like Neon Maniacs, The Point, Steppenwolf, Deadly Impulse and Infra-Man. If you want to check out some slashers, spaghetti westerns, weird 70's thrillers, kung fu flicks, italian post-apoalypse films, Euro-fantasy, old school porn or weird animation, now's yer chance. Also, the rental half of the store, which I had never really looked at, has a lot of great DVDs and tapes, all marked way down. The owner did not want to close to store, but he can't pay the lease any longer. The business will go on, but only as an eBay seller. There's a real melancholy among employees and customers; it's almost like a funeral. There aren't many places like Astro left. The customers I've talked to and overheard all express the same disappointment about the store's demise. I've seen more than a dozen video stores go under in my short life time, and it's always a shame. Astro Video isn't run by cineasts, but the sheer diversity of selection is amazing. I've never seen a place like it. Half the inventory has already been sold, but there are still many gems in VHS and DVD(even if Kevin did clear out most of the Critereons). Go and empty your wallet. Twenty or thirty bux and you'll have months worth of movies to watch.

Vietnam, Ratspit, Silver Guys, Nintendo

Andy's buddy Gunther wrote a nice review of Samurai Dreams for his zine. I should have a link to its website soon. Here's the review:

SAMURAI DREAMS ISSUE THREE ZINE
"To highbrow intellectual film snobs, this movie is the antichrist, but to seekers of lost celluloid garbage, this movie is the lost Holy Grail floating flamboyantly in an ocean of raw sewage." The quotation accurately sums up Samurai Dreams' general purpose of spotlighting fringe films on the tossed-off VHS format. Five college buds from Massachusetts wax cinematic about their finds from thrift stores, trash cans, and public libraries. Forrest Gump decoding Da Vinci? Off the shrimp boat with that shit. These best actors include real-life enlistees getting ready for Vietnam, a demon named Ratspit, and silver guys who hide in Nintendo cartridges. Selected stills accompany the well-written blurbs. Most bizarre is the shot of Nukie -- an E.T.-like creature with a mucous moustache resembling elephant tusks. Reviews are brush-stroked with stars, but don't miss out on comments like "Killing Machine is a really shitty movie. Seriously. Willie Aames is in it." However, if Buddy and Charles are in charge of you, don't hesitate on giving any of these films a private screening. Despite the "No Stars" rating (or maybe because of it), I'd step on GAS-S-S-S for the sole reason of FF-ing to "an onstage cameo by Country Joe and the Fish where the singer is interrupted by God and told that he left his car lights on."
-Gunther 8544

Living on Tokyo Time

Living on Tokyo Time
(1987) Directed by Steven Okazaki

The box for Living on Tokyo Time (another great NA Library find) tries to sell this film as typical fish-out-of-water-and-into-zany-adventures 80's flick, which, while I wouldnt have minded that, I was pleasantly suprised to find Living on Tokyo Time to be a rich and charming film; truly this is a lost gem. The film is constructed around an arranged marriage between Kyoko (Minako Ohashi), a Japanese immigrant working in a Japanese restaurant and struggling with English (supposedly; Kyoko's vocabulary and pronunciation throughout seem fine to me), and Ken Nakagawa, who actually plays himself, at least in name. "Like Takagura Ken, the actor," Kyoko says to her mother in a letter to Tokyo, a cross-cultural method of identification used frequently; here it's Japanese film, but throughout it's often American music and food from both countries. Ken is a third generation American-born Japanese rocker who wears a different punk shirt every day (The Cramps, Black Flag) and has Johnny Thunders and Velvet Underground posters on his wall. The film begins with lenghty filmic passages devoted to each character, before they actually meet. Kyoto, who speaks through her letters to her mother (which are written in Japanese but spoken in English, which, despite the obvious practical translation for the benefit of the American audience, works as a kind of process of translation, shortening some of the distance between Kyoko and the Western hemisphere) is homesick, working in a Japanese retaurant, but is determined to have an authentic American experience, and earn citizenship. Her drag American co-worker (who insists on wearing a Kimono in the restaurant) has the bright idea of marrying her to one of the restaurant's regular customers (this actress' performance is actually one of the low-points of the film). Enter the consistently bored Ken, who eats donuts, obsesses over music, has unfulfilling relationships with American women, and doesn't do much else. Being passive and complicit in most areas of his life, Ken agrees to wed with little enthusiasm. The plan is that once her green card comes through they split up, meanwhile living in the same house, but sleeping in seperate beds, living as roommates and not lovers.

Ken plays in a band and hangs out with white and asian punk rockers and hippies, which must be a pretty diverse crowd, as the guitarist in the band is wearing a Ramones shirt in one scene, the drummer a Metallica shirt, and the bassist is dressed like a member of Genesis. A woman who owns their practice space is decked out in a Fabians shirt; in fact, everyone in Living on Tokyo Time is either wearing a band shirt or talking about music and dropping group names (Kyoko herself even wears a Cream shirt in one scene). I appreciate that the rock music obsessions of the characters is confined to the film itself. The actual score is composed by five Japanese musicians, along with several obscure bands, who all sound like a peppier Durutti Column. An essential bonding mechanism between the film's newlyweds is Kyoko's introduction to rock music, as Ken teaches Kyoko that Lou Reed wrote more songs than just "Walk on the Wild Side," and listens as she reads him Talking Heads and Red Hot Chili Peppers reviews out of music magazines.

A film like Living on Tokyo Time will probably never be released on DVD, which is a shame. Yet, Living on Tokyo Time is another in the long list of raw, forgotten 80's dramas, which somehow morph into carbon-dated artifacts as they rot on VHS shelves-- unfortunately panned and scanned-- but accumulating a kind of endearing tangible age. The tape is as old as the celluloid itself, essentially. While I find myself lately disinterested in melodramas and narrative storytelling in contemporary film, I can usually find something I like in older, dated films that, above all, tell a story. It may just be the aesthetics of older film that's drawing me in, but I don't think that's it. In the case of Living on Tokyo Time, I think that the director, Okazaki, actually cared about the story he was telling, and it shows. Steven Okazaki is a mystery to me; he's directed several films even more obscure than this one, and operated a camera for Terry Zwigoff in Crumb. His last few credits are TV documentaries.

While this film is an American production, with a primarily Japanese cast and crew, it reminds one of experimental HK cinema of the time, especially early Wong Kar-Wai. Like Wong, Okazaki's script is disjointed, languid, meditative and idiosyncratic. The acting is often amateurish yes, but the naturalistic presence of non-professional actors (both Ken and Minako Ohashi had never acted in a film before, and appently haven't acted since either) somehow works to Okazaki's advantage, as the characters seem as awakward and unsure as real people; especially Ken, who doesn't appear to act at all. Shots are bizaarely juxtaposed, the story take big leaps throughout, leaving gaps which become the audience's responsibility to fill in. The wedding for instance, is completely left out of the film. Okazaki also makes some odd choices as far as where his camera goes; sometimes the camera moves in opposition to the direction of narrative action. For example, when Mimi, Ken's sister, invites Ken to eat dinner at their father's house, there is a scene where Ken and Mimi exit the house for a serious conversation. Instead of immediately cutting to an exterior or following them out the door, the camera stays in the dining room, as Ken and Mimi's father and Mimi's white husband (Carl) sit awkwardly together, before cutting to Ken and Mimi.

The camera spends time studying the posters on Ken's wall, the expressions of his bandmates during practice, food, and random objects: toys, flowers, a lamp, cigarettes. The experience of 's alienation, which Kyoko cannot express in perfect English, is tangible given these scenes; the close up attention to detail of Okazaki's lens is comparable to an emigre 's experience in a big new country, full of strange objects and new people. The details are not only important, but trans-lingual. The dialog in the film is often an exercise in restraint, as Kyoko does not perfectly speak the English language, and Ken barely speaks at all. In a letter to her mother, Kyoto writes (ironically, in Japanese but English in the voice-over), "I cannot speak my feeling in English; He cannot speak his feelings in Japanese." Music and food become substitutes for frank conversation. Ken and Kyoko do profess their real feelings however, as something like affection begins to develop; with Ken's coffe-shop visits and Kyoko's letters to her mother in Tokyo. Initially, Ken thinks he may have strong emotions for Kyoko, but can not act on them, practically, and is not prepared for a relationship that he can not walk away from at any moment (which of course is why he accepted the marriage in the first place). Kyoko reads Ken's confusion, and it worries her, as falling in love is the last thing she wants, especially with an Americanized Japanese punk rocker in a ripped Misfits shirt.

The disconnect between Ken and Kyoko-- an Americanized Japanese man and a Japanese woman in America-- is only the explicit text of the film; the implicit subtext is the simple idea that people can't, or won't, always say what they mean. In Living on Tokyo Time, characters use music, food, pop culture, sex, and magazine articles to fill their conversations; no one says what they feel directly. The film does not seem to lament this fact however, it merely presents it, and seems to have faith in the ultimate good of its characters, even if they are all flawed. Miranda July's recent film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, actually reminds me quite a bit of this film, despite the fact that the mediating agents here are personal, wheras in July's film they are impersonal, electronic. The basic idea of both films is the same.

The catalyzing agent that convinces Ken is one simple scene which is so slight it may not leave it's impression without a careful viewing. In his friend Lane's diner, Ken listens to Lane as he pines for a woman he always "had a crush on," but whom he never asked out. Ken shows Lane a photo of Kyoto, to which he says "Wow.. she is really Japanese. She looks fine though. Don't screw it up." Lane leaves the shot, and Ken takes a bite of his hot dog, and slowly chews as the camera stays with him. His expression doesn't change, but the silence and stillness of the shot explain not only Ken's ambivalence towards Kyoto, but the ambivalence of his entire life.

The following scene is especially shocking, as Kyoko writes a letter to her mother, elaborating a lie that Ken has died in a tragic accident, and that she needs to return home to Tokyo. She hides the letter from Ken, who is sitting on the bed, eating a traditional Japanese meal she's prepared for him. This is not necessary however; she writes the letter in Japanese. This scene may be the most telling of the entire film. In the next shot she packs up and leaves the apartment, trading in Ken's t-shirts for a traditional Japanese dress, leaving behind a new letter (in English), as she leaves. As Ken finds the letter, Kyoko reads the text into the camera. It's a short, polite letter explaining nothing in any detail. When he finishes reading (and Kyoko finishes speaking), Ken absentmindedly strums at the guitar in his hands for a few seconds, and smashes the instrument. The music in the scene is a few sustained notes, subtly adding to the tension of the scene and allowing Ken's uncharacteristic release. The film ends with Kyoko reading her final letter, this time to Ken from Tokyo. The tone is distant but warm, as she invites Ken to one day visit her. While the film can't claim a happy ending in the traditional sense, it has at least allowed its characters self-realization, and has allowed Ken especially to reevaluate his life. The film ends with a text-on-black quote from the patron saint of outsider rock geeks, Captain Beefheart: "You can't escape gravity."