Will Your Heart Beat Faster? (Mike De Leon, 1980)

Johnny Delgado in Will Your Heart Beat Faster?

Cast: Christopher De Leon, Charo Santos, Jay Ilagan, Sandy Andolong, Boboy Garrovillo, Johnny Delgado, Armida Siguion-Reyna, Leo Martinez, Moody Diaz, Joe Jardi, Danny Javier. Screenplay: Cloduado Del Mundo Jr., Raquel Villavicencio, Mike De Leon. Cinematography: Rody Lacap. Production design: Raquel Villavicencio. Film editing: Ike Jariego Jr. Music: Lorrie Ilustre. 

Comedy often doesn't translate well, and for most of us non-Filipino viewers, a great deal of Mike De Leon's romantic, satiric musical comedy Will Your Heart Beat Faster? gets lost in translation. There's a lot of business involving the attempt of a particularly inept member of the Japanese yakuza to smuggle drugs into the Philippines, involving a quartet of attractive young people who become his unwitting vehicle when he slips a cassette tape into the pocket of the hero, a pop star named Johnny (Christopher De Leon). Lots of mistaken identities and slapstick action ensue, especially when the Chinese decide to muscle in on the territory. But when everything comes together toward the end, the movie blossoms into a goofy, entertaining extravaganza involving nuns, priests, smugglers, cops, mysterious passageways, and who knows what else. It's definitely not politically correct -- I'm assuming that the "Japs" and "Chinks" of the subtitles are translations of equivalent slurs in the original Filipino language. Under the original title, Kakabakaba Ka Ba?, it was a big hit in its homeland, which has been no stranger to exploitation by its more powerful neighbors. 

Godzilla Raids Again (Motoyoshi Oda, 1955)

Cast: Hiroshi Koizumi, Setsuko Wakayama, Minoru Chiaki, Takashi Shimura, Masao Shimizu, Seijiro Onda, Sonosuke Sawamura, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Mayuri Mokusho, Minosuke Yamada, Haruo Nakajima. Katsumi Tezuka. Screenplay: Takeo Murata, Shigeaki Hidaka, based on a novel by Shigeru Kayama. Cinematography: Seiichi Endo. Production design: Teruaki Abe, Takeo Kita. Film editing: Kazuji Taira. Music: Masura Sato. 

The inevitable sequel to Ishiro Honda's 1954 hit, Godzilla Raids Again introduces what would become the mainstay of the franchise: monster vs. monster. Godzilla encounters his first kaiju antagonist, an ankylosaurus called Anguirus, who looks like a cross between a hedgehog and a nubbly scrub brush. Anguirus's inflexible carapace somewhat limits his mobility in his conflict with Godzilla, but the two manage to do quite a bit of damage to Osaka before the latter prevails. Unfortunately, the rest of the film feels anticlimactic after the scenes of destruction, as it deals with the plan to bury Godzilla under a mass of rock and ice on an island near Hokkaido. This results in a rather perfunctory subplot, turning the film into a kind of buddy movie featuring two pilots, Tsukioka (Hiroshi Koizumi) and Kobayashi (Minoru Chiaku), who are the first to encounter the two monsters and are determined to see it through to the end. If you somehow missed the first movie, there are some clips from it, and Takashi Shimura returns in a cameo as the paleontologist Dr. Yamane, who shares his expertise on the creatures. 

Kisapmata (Mike De Leon, 1981)

Vic Silayan in Kisapmata

Cast: Vic Silayan, Charito Solis, Charo Santos, Jay Ilagan, Ruben Rustia, Aida Carmona. Screenplay: Clodualdo Del Mundo Jr., Raquel Villavicencio, Mike De Leon, based on an article by Nick Joaquin. Cinematography: Rody Lacap. Production design: Cesar Hernando. Film editing: Jess Navarro. Music: Lorrie Ilustre. 

Kisapmata begins as a straightforward domestic drama about an overbearing father, played with sinister roughness by Vic Silayan. Dadong, a retired police sergeant, is upset when his daughter, Mila (Charo Santos) announces that she's pregnant and wants to marry her co-worker, Noel (Jay Ilagan), but he seems to swallow his objections after Noel's widowed father, Peping (Ruben Rustia, agrees to a generous dowry and an elaborate wedding. But the nervousness of the bride and her mother, Dely (Charito Solis), signal to the audience that all is not well. Then, during the reception, after everyone dances together in a show of unity, Dely is suddenly taken ill. The honeymoon is off when Dely is rushed home and Dadong says that Mila must come help her mother recover. Mike De Leon deftly handles the transition from the original sense that Dadong has accepted and adjusted to the marriage to a growing awareness that dark secrets threaten his accommodation, not to mention the lives of the people under his control. Kisapmata means "in the wink of an eye," and the film's denouement, after Mila and Noel struggle to escape from Dadong's control, comes in exactly that manner. Based on a reporter's account of an actual incident, De Leon's movie gives us the experience of a conventional thriller, but leaves us pondering the deeper forces that drive the desire to exert control over other people. It has sometimes been interpreted as a veiled portrait of the authoritarian state represented by the Marcos regime in the Philippines. 

An Actor's Revenge (Kon Ichikawa, 1963)

Kazuo Hasegawa in An Actor's Revenge

Cast: Kazuo Hasegawa, Fujiko Yanamoto, Ayako Wakao, Raizo Ichikawa, Shintaro Katsu, Eiji Funakoshi, Chusha Ichikawa, Narutoshi Hayashi, Nakamura Ganjior II, Saburo Date, Eijiro Yanaki, Jun Hamamura. Screenplay: Notto Wada, Daisuke Ito, Teinosuke Kinugasa, based on a novel by Otokichi Mikami. Cinematography: Setsuo Kobayashi. Production design: Yoshinobu Nishioka. Film editing: Shigeo Nishida. Music: Yasushi Akutagawa, Masao Yagi. 

Kon Ichikawa's An Actor's Revenge was made in part to celebrate a milestone in the career of actor Kazuo Hasegawa: his 300th film performance. It does so by providing him two roles: the actor Yukinojo Nakamura and the thief Yamitaro. The actor is an onnagata, a male who plays female roles and retains the dress and manner of a woman offstage. The thief provides a running commentary, as he observes the action, which centers on Yukinojo's manipulation of the lovely Namiji (Ayako Wakao), the daughter of one of the men who caused the death of his parents 20 years earlier. He uses his acting skills to lure the men into a trap, trusting that their perception of his effeminate manner will make them unaware of his cunning and his prowess with a sword. Hasegawa's remarkable double performance gives the film its great distinction, but it's also beautifully filmed and staged, with a score that uses a variety of modes, including a surprising switch to jazz in one scene.  

Batch '81 (Mike De Leon, 1982)

Ricky Sandico in Batch '81

Cast: Mark Gil, Sandy Andolong, Ward Luarca, Noel Trinidad, Ricky Sandico, Jimmy Javier, Rod Leido, Bing Pimentel, Dang Cecilio, Mike Arvisu, Vic Lima, Dodo Cabasal, Edwin Reyes. Screenplay: Clodualdo Del Mundo Jr., Raquel Villavicencio, Mike De Leon. Cinematography: Rody Lacap. Production design: Cesar Hernando. Film editing: Jess Navarro. Music: Lorrie Ilustre. 

Mike De Leon's Batch '81 is a scathing account of what some people will do to gain acceptance that goes well beyond the particular setting, a university in the Philippines during the Marcos era. Sid (Mark Gil), a pre-med student, decides to join the fraternity Alpha Kappa Omega, along with 14 other applicants who are put through a series of uncomfortable, embarrassing, and increasingly hazardous tests of their loyalty to the group. As the unpleasantness of the hazing increases, more and more of the young men drop out until half a dozen are left. Sid is the toughest and most determined of the lot, and even the deaths that occur along the way -- ignored by the authorities -- only strengthen his resolve and resistance. De Leon tells the story ironically, with music cues like a triumphant chorus set to the turn of Gaudeamus Igitur helping to turn it into a tale of heroic persistence. At one point, the fraternity brothers perform in a scene from the musical Cabaret against a backdrop of swastikas. At the end, a closeup of Sid's face, drained of humanity, suggests the toll that the experience of being forced into this sinister brotherhood has taken on him. That Batch '81 is designed as a satire on the authoritarian Marcos regime is evident, especially in the torture scene in which one of the candidates is strapped to a chair attached to electrodes and asked whether martial law was good for the Philippines -- a question cut from the film in its original release. With college fraternity misbehavior lately in the headlines, and an administration in this country that often behaves like a collection of fratboys, the movie feels more relevant than ever. 

Hustler White (Bruce LaBruce, Rick Castro, 1996)

Tony Ward in Hustler White

Cast: Tony Ward, Bruce LaBruce, Kevin P. Scott, Ivar Johnson, Kevin Kramer, Alex Austin, Ron Athey, Glen Meadmore, Graham David Smith, Miles H. Wildecock II, Bud Cockerham, Michael Glass, Vaginal Davis. Screenplay: Bruce LaBruce, Rick Castro. Cinematography: James Carman. Production design: Rick Castro, Bruce LaBruce. Film editing: Rider Siphron.

Like Dante descending into the Inferno, writer Jürgen Anger (Bruce LaBruce) arrives in LA to gather material for a book on street hustlers. He finds his Virgil in a hunky hustler named Montgomery Ward (hunky model Tony Ward), who helps him tour the circles of fetish and kink along Santa Monica Boulevard. Hustler White is a not-so-divine comedy cooked up by LaBruce and photographer Rick Castro, but never quite assembled into a coherent movie. Anger (no relation to Kenneth) and Ward provide as much of a focus as the film ever achieves, but mostly it's a collection of jumbled-together incidents, some grotesque, some gross, some satiric, some even actually funny, and none of them very erotic unless you're particularly into some of the practices depicted. It's a movie full of allusions to other movies, the chief of which is Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950): As Hustler White begins, Montgomery Ward is lying face-down, apparently dead, in a Jacuzzi, introducing his story in voiceover the way William Holden's Joe Gillis does in Wilder's film. Jürgen is as queeny as Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond, but there the parallels between the two films mostly peters away. Tony Ward performs well in the role, but LaBruce is no actor, and if we didn't have better controlled and more imaginatively conceived films like Otto; or, Up With Dead People (2008) and Gerontophilia (2013) from him, we might suspect that he's not much of a writer-director. 

La Tête d'un Homme (Julien Duvivier, 1933)

Harry Baur and Valéry Inkijinoff in La Tête d'un Homme

Cast: Harry Baur, Valéry Inkijinoff, Gina Manès, Alexandre Rignault, Gaston Jacquet, Henri Échourin, Louis Gauthier, Marcel Bourdel. Screenplay: Louis Delaprée, Pierre Calman, Julien Duvivier, based on a novel by Georges Simenon. Cinematography: Armand Thirard. Art direction: Georges Wakhévitch. Film editing: Marthe Poncin. Music: Jacques Belasco. 

The seamy side of Paris gets a thorough exploration in Julien Duvivier's La Tête d'un Homme, an adaptation of one of Georges Simenon's gritty and intricately plotted Maigret novels. The film begins in a seedy, crowded bar, where a man down to his last sou voices the wish that someone would murder his aunt, whose fortune he will inherit. And he gets his wish, thanks to a man who overhears him. That's the setup for a story that spins out into frameups and blackmail and double crossings that take Inspector Maigret (Harry Baur) a good deal of effort and a few slyly unorthodox tricks of his own to sort out. The main pleasure of the film lies not in the detective work, but in its creation of atmosphere through moody, expressionist camerawork and skilled performances. Baur is superb as Maigret, but he meets his match in Valéry Inkijinoff as Radek, a man who has nothing to lose because he's dying, and spends his last days manipulating others to take the fall for the murder he has committed. La Tête d'un Homme is sometimes a little too slowly paced for a mystery thriller, but its slowness allows for character development not typical of the genre.  

Otto; or, Up With Dead People (Bruce LaBruce, 2008)

Jey Crisfar in Otto; or, Up With Dead People

Cast: Jey Crisfar, Katharina Klewinghaus, Marcel Schlutt, Christophe Chemin, Guido Sommer, Gio Black Peter, Susanne Sachße, Stefan Kuschner. Screenplay: Bruce LaBruce. Cinematography: James Carman. Production design: Stefan Dickfeld. Film editing: Jörn Hartmann, Bruce LaBruce. Music: Mikael Karlsson. 

Otto (Jey Crisfar) may be a zombie. Or, depending on which side of the bifurcated title of Otto; or, Up With Dead People you fall, he may be a schizophrenic young man who gets lured into making a movie about zombies by a pretentious director called Medea Yarn (Katharina Klewinghaus). We first see Otto clawing his way out of his grave, but later we see the same scene under Medea's direction. Bruce LaBruce's movie is a scattershot satire, never salacious enough to be labeled porn, never coherent enough to be taken seriously as a commentary on capitalism, the environment, homophobia, AIDS, commercialism, or any of the other topics it glances at. Sometimes gross, sometimes sexy, sometimes sad, and never one thing long enough for the viewer to make up their mind about, as a collection of remarkable and sometimes disturbing moments it works often enough to credit LaBruce with fertile imagination, undisciplined as it may be. 

A Report on the Party and Guests (Jan Nemec, 1966)

Jan Klusák in A Report on the Party and Guests

Cast: Ivan Vyskocil, Jan Klusák, Jiri Nemec, Pavel Bosek, Karel Mares, Evald Schorm, Jana Pracharová, Zdena Skvorecká, Milon Novotny, Helena Pejsková, Dana Nemcová, Antonin Prazák, Josef Skvorecky. Screenplay: Ester Krumbochová, Jan Nemec. Cinematography: Jaromír Sofr. Production design: Oldrich Bosák. Film editing: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Karel Mares. 

If there's really such a thing as the Zeitgeist, Jan Nemec's A Report on the Party and Guests is a fine example of a film that captured it. Like other films of the 1960s, such as Luis Buñel's The Exterminating Angel (1962) and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964), Nemec's caught the social and political mood of the era, reducing it to an absurdity with the aim of puncturing complacency. Nemec gives us a gaggle of bourgeoises out for a picnic, exchanging platitudes and small talk until they're suddenly set upon by a group of strange men, who intimidate them and imprison them in an imaginary room. But then they're rescued by other men who turn out to be friends of the strangers and taken to an alfresco banquet, a combination wedding and birthday celebration. All goes well until their host discovers that one of the original group has left the festivity and determines that he must be found and returned. This giddy nonsense with dark overtones has some of the flavor of Lewis Carroll, a favorite of directors of the Czech New Wave. A Report on the Party and Guests doesn't transcend the era in which it was made as well as Buñuel and Kubrick's films do, so a contemporary viewer may miss the point of the satire, but the Soviet-imposed Czech government knew its arbitrariness and authoritarianism was being made fun of and quickly banned the film. 

Gerontophilia (Bruce LaBruce, 2013)

Walter Borden and Pier-Gabriel Lajoie in Gerontophilia

Cast: Pier-Gabriel Lajoie, Walter Borden, Katie Boland, Yardly Kavanagh, Marie-Hélène Thibault, Shawn Campbell, Jean-Alexandre Létourneau, Dana Wright, Brian D. Wright. Screenplay: Bruce LaBruce, Daniel Allen Cox. Cinematography: Nicolas Canniccioni. Art direction: Oliver Laberge. Film editing: Glenn Berman. Music: Ramachandra Borcar. 

Bruce LaBruce's Gerontophilia is a solid effort at exploring two topics: sexuality, which is common in movies, and getting old, which unfortunately isn't. Even rarer is combining the two in a story about the sexual attraction of young and old. Eighteen-year-old Lake (Pier-Gabriel Lajoie) has a girlfriend, but he's experiencing some unexpected sensations: Working as a lifeguard, he gets an erection when he performs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on an elderly man. And when he goes to work as an aide in a Montreal nursing home, he finds himself attracted to the old men he bathes and empties bedpans for. He strikes up a friendship with one of the more alert patients, Melvyn Peabody (Walter Borden), a gay man who refers to himself as "an old queen." Lake secretly sketches his patients, including a nude Melvyn, with whom he plays strip poker. He helps Melvyn hide the tranquilizing meds he's supposed to take, and eventually engineers an escape for him. They hit the road, heading for the Pacific, which Melvyn wants to see again. The road movie formula becomes predictable from that point. Even LaBruce, never known for reticence, is aware that for many viewers the relationship between the two men contains a strong "ick factor." There are no explicit sex scenes, although once Lake disposes of a used condom. Borden gives a skilled performance as Melvyn, and newcomer Lajoie is a handsome presence, somewhat resembling the young Keanu Reeves. The problem with Gerontophilia is that, for all its potential to shock, it feels derivative. It has inevitably been called "a reverse Lolita" and "a gay Harold and Maude." Neither characterization is entirely fair to LaBruce, who has taken a touchy subject and handled it with enough imagination to make it both watchable and provocative.