Alright kiddies we’re rolling the clock back to 1995 for a number of articles I wrote for ‘Asian Trash Cinema’, which later became known as, ‘Asian Cult Cinema’. They aimed for a bit of legitimacy, despite the fact the magazine was just a front to pimp bootlegs that were distributed through the sister company Video Search Of Miami. There’s no way they’d get away with hawking half the shit they did today, but this was still at a time when many genre films were hard to come by, or not even re-distributed legitimately. People took what they could get.
You try not to spend so much time looking back, but there was nothing like getting a unmarked manila package in the mail, or that cardboard box, full of VHS goodness that Canada customs turned a blind eye to.
Review written in 1995
Death Powder –1986
Director: Shigeru Izumiya
With: Shigeru Izumiya, Takichi Inukai, Mari Natsuki
This is my first review I’ve proudly done for ATC, and what a doozy. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Death Powder when I threw it in the VCR. After twenty minutes I felt something kick me in the synapses, and I knew I was in for a hallucinatory treat, via some twisted Asian mind candy. Melted colors and blurred filtered images swam around my picture tube, and I started to think someone had thrown a batch of those special mushrooms into my beer again. The best way to watch the film is to let its dark visuals and twisted film style wash over you like a wave. This is the perfect kind of thing to throw on at a party with the volume turned off. It’s totally overwhelming and fascinating at the same time.
I couldn’t help but feel that director Izumiya was influenced by several twisted filmmakers in his dark surreal take on technology. The influence of films like ‘Videodrome’, ‘Hardware’, and obviously Shinya Tsukamoto’s ‘Tetsuo: The Iron Man’ can be felt all throughout this mind chewed flick. Much of the nightmarish imagery in Death Powder totally reminded me of the art of Hideshi Hino in his manga book, ‘Panorama Of Hell’.
There is so much visually going on in this film that the plot is hard to pick up on at first, but with repeated viewings everything makes sense. Sometime in the near future of Neo-Tokyo, a trio of renegade soldiers-of-fortune heist a stolen bio-cyborg, the Guernica. Little do they know that the android is still active and is capable of infiltrating their minds with its biological weapon—the Death Powder. Director Izumiya play Harima, the first of the trio to be taken over by the Guernica. Harima turns on his young partners Kiozi and Norris, and soon Kiozi is taken over by the Death Powder. As Kiozi succumbs to the bio weapon of the Guernica, he starts to trip badly into his mind and then the film fun begins.
Many will see it’s obvious that Death Power was filmed on a shoestring budget, but Izumiya makes up for this in his filming style. The film jump b&w to film to video with multi-layered imaging. Electronic pulses streak across the screen like spermatozoa and walls of flesh shimmer and glisten, breaking down and reconstructing itself at the same time.
Kiozi’s drug-saturated mind takes him back to the origin of the Guernica and it’s creator Dr Loo. A struggle begins between the new life provided by the Guernica and the world of the dead, inhabited by the nightmarish scar people. Kiozi finds himself being pulled between giving up his flesh to the scar people or living the life of a zombie under the power of the Guernica. In Izumiya’s world there is no happy ending.
The message is clear that in our glorification of technology we may wind up speeding ahead of the natural process of the death and destruction of life.
Shigeru Izumiya has created a film that manages to stretch beyond it’s boundaries, and screw with people’s minds in the process. As with Tetsuo, Death Powder has shown enough proof that you don’t need an outrageous budget to create visionary films of future technological nightmares. It’s really great to have some fresh Asian mind candy to chew on.. and something to scare the hell out of your friends with when they drop by for a visit.
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Yamato Takeru (Aka Orochi the eight-headed Dragon)- 1994
Director: Takao Oogawara.
Fantasy films of the far East have come a long way thanks to Tsui Hark and his ‘Chinese Ghost Story’ series, as well as his more recent films like ‘The Bride with White hair’ parts I&II. These films pulled you in with break-neck acrobatics, dazzling costumes, and legendary tales…all in all a feast for the senses. It seems that with new film these directors are trying to create visions more fantastic and outrageous than ever before. In the case of Yamato Takeru this film shows that less can be just as good as more.
It’s no co-incidence that Yamato Takeru reminded me the classic monster movies of Toho studios of the 70’s, as director Oogawara had just previously helmed the last two Godzilla films in 1992, and 93. Despite the similarities, Yamato Takeru is a beast all of it’s own, no pun intended. The film takes the classic Toho styling, and crosses them with classic stop motion effects that harkens back to the work of Ray Harryhausen in the Sinbad films. This is a great ilm to sit down and watch with kids on a Sunday afternoon. While it may not be as groundbreaking as the Sinbad films, or the Chinese Ghost story series, the film holds it’s own in terms of storytelling and delivering the goods.
Yamato Takeru is a tale about the gods created at the beginning of time, and how they lay dormant for thousands of years waiting to be called upon by man. Two brothers are born in the country of Yamato—Osamumko and Takeru. Both are destined to be king, but the birth of twins is a bad omen to the throne, so Takeru is taken to be executed by the king. The baby is saved by a golden phoenix, and is raised under protection by his aunt. The king’s advisor Tsukinha, plots against Takeru and plans on controlling the power of the dark gods to do his bidding. Takeru grows and gains the power of the gods to become, ‘the soldier of the gods’.
As Tsukinha plots and manipulates the dark powers of the gods, Takeru is blamed for the evil acts that occur. Takeru soon becomes banished from his own land, and must journey to clear his name, and destroy the evil raised by Tsukinha. As Takeru becomes stronger under the power of the gods of light, his evil adversaries also become stronger and more menacing. The journey begins with a group of rag tag heroes and ends with a battle of epic proportions.
The effects of Yamato Takeru are not state of the art, but work within the film’s framework none the less. The battles and monsters in the film kept taking me back to the sci-fi double features that were televised most Sunday afternoons. Sure, some of you might think that the Kumaso war god looks a bit cheesy, and a rip off of Gidrah, the three headed monster, but think again. It’s not the fact that Yamato Takeru is lacking as a film, but rather that most of us have been spoiled by much more extravagant fantasy films.
I like the fact that the film doesn’t try to beat you over the head with it’s content. It tells an epic story within it means, and provides classic characters and monsters. Anyone can get into Yamato Takeru as a light exciting adventure film to spend a couple of hours with. If you want extravagance, look to Tsui Hark, but if you want old fashioned fantasy, look no further.
