On DVD: Action Double Feature: THE LAST HARD MEN (1976) and SKY RIDERS (1976)

The venerable Shout! Factory has released the latest in its Fox-licensed Double Feature line.  In this case, it also functions as a James Coburn double feature set with a pair of 1976 releases: THE LAST HARD MEN and SKY RIDERS.


THE LAST HARD MEN
(US - 1976)

An engrossing but flawed western, the brutal THE LAST HARD MEN struggles to find a consistent tone.  It can't decide whether to be an old-fashioned programmer or a meditative, post-WILD BUNCH bloodbath.  It's directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, an old-schooler who helmed several late-period John Wayne vehicles, but was likely forbidden by the Duke to ever let things get as R-rated as they do here.  It's an absolute certainty that Wayne never would've been OK with starring in a brutal revenge flick with gratuitous bloodletting, rape, F-bombs, and people being burned alive.  In 1976, it even had to be strange seeing Charlton Heston in a film this graphically violent.

When vicious half-breed killer Provo (Coburn) engineers an escape with other prisoners while on railroad duty, retired marshal Burgade (Heston) knows he's coming after him.  Burgade was responsible for putting Provo away and probably killed his wife in a chaotic shootout.  When Provo abducts Burgade's daughter Susan (Barbara Hershey), the ex-lawman, accompanied by Susan's would-be suitor Hal (Christopher Mitchum) hunts down Provo and his gang.

Aside from McLaglen's struggle to balance an old-fashioned storyline with Peckinpah splatter (right down to the slo-mo), THE LAST HARD MEN suffers a bit from a draggy middle, but the first and last third are quite entertaining.  That's due in large part to the effortless command of the screen that guys like Heston and Coburn demonstrate.  Both actors were on the cusp of entering their waning days on the A-list by 1976, but they carry this thing on their mighty shoulders.  Heston is pretty much Heston, right down to his usual tendency for melodramatic line readings that border on self-parody (think of his beautifully self-deprecating cameo in WAYNE'S WORLD 2) and his hammy overacting (nobody grunts "You bastard!" like Heston).  Coburn, playing one of the most despicable characters of his career, is just a total bastard throughout.  They just don't make actors like these guys anymore.  The impressive supporting cast includes Jorge Rivero, Michael Parks (doing an early version of his Earl McGraw schtick as the sheriff), Thalmus Rasulala, John Quade, and Larry Wilcox, just before CHiPS, playing the one member of Provo's gang with a conscience.  (R, 97 mins)


SKY RIDERS
(US - 1976)

Coburn is the hero in the second feature, Douglas Hickox's enjoyably ludicrous SKY RIDERS, of which I'd actually never even heard until this set was announced.  In Greece, rich American industrialist Bracken (Robert Culp) is targeted by a group of terrorists who kidnap his wife Ellen (Susannah York) and their two children.  Well, actually their oldest isn't aware that his father is really McCabe (Coburn), Ellen's ex-husband, and ex-con soldier of fortune who decides to take matters into his own hands when the incompetent Greek police, headed by Inspector Nikolidis (Charles Aznavour), botch a rescue attempt.  After discovering Ellen and the children are being held at an abandoned monastery at the top of a mountain, McCabe does what anyone in his position would do:  hires a traveling troupe of professional hang-gliders to fly into the impregnable fortress under the cover of darkness and pull of a daring commando rescue.

That premise sounds awfully similar to the later 1990 Italian trash classic THE LAST MATCH, where a pro football player's daughter is abducted while on vacation and the QB, his coach, and his teammates launch a commando rescue mission...in full game-day garb.  While SKY RIDERS isn't quite that silly, it is fairly ridiculous.  It's a fun flick, though, and once the rescue mission gets underway, it plays a lot like a 1980s Antonio Margheriti actioner.  You could easily sub in David Warbeck for Coburn and there wouldn't be much difference, other than SKY RIDERS having nicer Hollywood production values.  Well, for the most part.  The initial hang-gliding raid is severely compromised by some extremely unconvincing, badly-done day-for-night shots--the aerial cinematography team of MacGillivary-Freeman handled the airborne scenes, and it's far from their best work; for a point of comparison, they also did the aerial shots in the opening credits of THE SHINING just four years later. 

Coburn's engaging screen presence gives SKY RIDERS a lot of extra kick, and he gets decent support from an eclectic cast that's often underutilized (especially Culp, who disappears for large chunks of screen time), including John Beck, Harry Andrews, Steven Keats, and, as the lead terrorist, Eurocult fixture Werner Pochath, who I presume is only here because Klaus Kinski said no. (PG, 91 mins)

Both transfers look very nice and are 2.35, despite packaging that indicates 1.78, an error that was also on the packaging for the last Action Double Feature of THE NICKEL RIDE and 99 & 44/100% DEAD.  Neither THE LAST HARD MEN nor SKY RIDERS are lost classics, but they're a great deal for the price, especially for Coburn fans.

If This Wasn't Streaming On Netflix, Would Anyone Remember It Existed? Vol 4: THE MEN'S CLUB (1986)

THE MEN'S CLUB
(US - 1986)

Directed by Peter Medak.  Written by Leonard Michaels.  Cast: David Dukes, Richard Jordan, Harvey Keitel, Frank Langella, Roy Scheider, Craig Wasson, Treat Williams, Stockard Channing, Cindy Pickett,  Ann Dusenberry, Marilyn Jones, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ann Wedgeworth, Helen Shaver. (R, 101 mins)


It has to be difficult to take an ensemble cast of seven good-to-great actors under the direction of the guy who made THE RULING CLASS (1972) and THE CHANGELING (1980) and have it turn into a total grease fire, but that's exactly what happened with the atrocious 1986 bomb THE MEN'S CLUB.  Leonard Michaels wrote the screenplay, and it's based on his own novel, so you can't say the filmmakers disregarded the source.  I haven't read the book, but judging from what plays out over the course of the film, it's clearly a case of "what worked on the page doesn't translate to the screen."  There's lots of long-winded, meandering speeches that probably read fine, even in the script, but just come off as mannered and "acting class"-y in the film.  It starts off bad and gets worse, and at some points you can almost see the looks of resigned defeat on the faces of the cast.  Looks that say, "Look, we're here, we're in this, let's just get it done and move on."  And when actors as good as the guys here are put in situations like this, it often brings out the worst in them.  That's exactly what happens throughout THE MEN'S CLUB.

Therapist Kramer (Richard Jordan) is hosting a guys' discussion group, ostensibly to talk "man to man" about women, careers, etc. but it quickly devolves into an excuse for puerile, adolescent shenanigans, which is the whole point of Michaels' novel.  But on the screen, none of this behavior comes off as plausible at all.  It starts with Kramer himself.  As played by Jordan, he's eccentric at best, and deranged at worst.  I don't know if Jordan came up with these tics on his own or if Michaels or director Peter Medak told him to act this way, but the guy's a completely creepy weirdo.  The rest of the guys range from shallow to mostly repugnant:  there's sex-addict ex-baseball star Cavanaugh (Roy Scheider), college prof Phillip (David Dukes), milquetoast lawyer Harold (Frank Langella), stressed-out businessman Solly (Harvey Keitel), doctor Terry (Treat Williams), and auto parts store manager Paul (Craig Wasson).  Williams and particularly Wasson seem to be relegated to the background early on and neither actor embarrasses himself.  Nor does Dukes, who gives the best performance of the bunch.  But man, are Scheider, Keitel, Langella, and Jordan awful!  It's not entirely their fault.  These characters and these scenarios are unplayable for any actor.  The characters are loathsome to begin with, which is fine.  I don't subscribe to the belief that characters have to be likable.  But in films like this, they have to be plausible.  They're not playing "real" people.  When they take a break in the conversation to destroy the inside of Kramer's house, you have to wonder what planet any of them are living on.  And that's before they gather in a circle and howl like dogs.  That particular scene is actually embarrassing to watch, but it at least leads to a really good, show-stealing, one-scene performance by Stockard Channing as Kramer's wife, who walks in on the wreckage and lets Kramer have it.  Channing is terrific in her five minutes of screen time, which seems to come from another, much better film.  But after that brief high point, things immediately get even worse than before.

While Kramer stays behind, Harold takes the others to the House of Affections, a high-class brothel run by a madame (Ann Wedgeworth) with a creepy ventriloquist doll, which leads to a bunch of bad smooth jazz and horrible acting.  The guys get turns with ladies of their choosing, and Solly immediately falls for Allison (Marilyn Jones), which leads to a mock "wedding" officiated by Harold, who's decked out in what can best be described as Joker makeup.  Don't ask.

In Marshall Fine's 1998 biography Harvey Keitel: The Art of Darkness, the late Dukes, who died in 2000, is interviewed and explains that the actors got together for two weeks prior to the start of filming and talked, improvised, worked out scenes, and generally got a feel for one another and how they would work that into the film.  Dukes goes on to say that shortly into filming, it became apparent that what they were doing wasn't working.  I'm sure there's more to the story (Fine also writes about how Keitel and Langella disliked one another, and how the shot where Langella cuts eyes and a mouth into a paper plate and puts it over his face, was improvised by a frustrated Langella as a response to Keitel needing endless takes for a monologue about how all he wants is a woman to stick her tongue in his mouth), and it's entirely possible that the bad acting by such reliable pros was just a defense mechanism or maybe just a valiant effort to salvage something.  Whatever the reason, Scheider, Langella, and Keitel have rarely been worse, and I suppose it worked for Jordan that his character exits halfway through the film.

Other films have explored men's issues and male bonding and the whole "boys being boys" thing with the unabashed raunchiness on display here and have worked (the films of Neil LaBute come to mind, though they're markedly more misanthropic).  But THE MEN'S CLUB just doesn't, and it's almost tragic because of the talent involved.  How do you get these guys together and have it derail so badly?  It's been said that no one sets out to make a bad movie, but sometimes they just turn out that way.  I believe everyone approached THE MEN'S CLUB with noble intentions, but it just got away.  From everyone.  Maybe Williams and Wasson stayed in the background by choice.  During the wedding scene, I swear you can see Williams trying to get out of some shots.

THE MEN'S CLUB was given a small release in the fall of 1986, and to the surprise of no one, tanked at the box office.  It was in regular rotation on cable for a while, which is where I saw it as a teenager, and probably gave it a pass because there were a lot of naked women in the second half.   It's not on DVD, has just one external review and seven user reviews on IMDb, but it's streaming on Netflix (in a 1.78 widescreen print) if you're so inclined.  If anyone is even aware of this film today, it's because of a YouTube clip that made the rounds a while back, which is hilarious when taken out of context.  Plus, in retrospect, it provides a look at things to come for future nudity enthusiast Keitel.

Cult Movie Trash: THE RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS (1983)

THE RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS
aka THE ATLANTIS INTERCEPTORS, ATLANTIS INFERNO
(Italy - 1983)  Directed by Roger Franklin (Ruggero Deodato).  Written by Vincent Mannino (Vincenzo Mannino) and Robert Gold (Tito Carpi).  Cast: Christopher Connelly, Marie Fields (Gioia Scola), George Hilton, Tony King, Ivan Rassimov, Mike Miller, Bruce Baron, John Blade (Giancarlo Prati), Mike Monty, Michele Soavi.  90 mins.  Unrated


Considering all the Eurotrash cult movies I discovered while combing the video stores in the 1980s all the way through to the present day, it still surprises me that I never got around to seeing Ruggero Deodato's delirious, insane 1983 action extravaganza THE RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS until now.  That Prism Entertainment VHS tape (this went straight to video in the US in 1986) was in every video store in the US back in the 1980s and 1990s, but for whatever reason, I never saw it.  When the Eurocult explosion hit DVD about a decade or so ago, RAIDERS was--and is--one of the few big ones that never turned up on the digital format in Region 1/North America (well, it is on a crappy public domain "Grindhouse Collection" set, but it's the VHS transfer).  Now that someone was kind enough to put a subpar VHS transfer up on YouTube, under the alternate title ATLANTIS INFERNO, though the title on the print is yet another alternate title, THE ATLANTIS INTERCEPTORS (and it was the cut 90-minute version that's missing the gorier bits), I was finally able to see what's long been called a classic of Italian B-movie trash.  And it didn't disappoint.

In a futuristic, 1994 Miami, mercenaries Mike (Christopher Connelly) and Washington (Tony King), team up with Professor Sanders (George Hilton) and his assistant Cathy (Gioia Scola, billed as "Marie Fields") when radiation from a Russian sub carrying nuclear warheads causes a domed Atlantis to rise to the surface of the coast of south Florida.  This also brings out The Interceptors, a renegade band of post-nuke-looking bad guys on motorcycles, led by the evil Crystal Skull (Bruce Baron).  The Interceptors pursue the heroes and eventually kidnap Cathy, and tons of gunplay, explosions, decapitations, explosions, awkward one-liners, explosions, and general incoherence ensue.  Also, explosions.

The script, by Vincenzo Mannino and Tito Carpi (like most of the crew, hiding under pseudonyms to make the film seem American; Deodato is credited as "Roger Franklin"), rips off tons of popular American films from the era.  The middle section of the film, where the heroes barricade themselves in a church while the Interceptors try to get in, is total classic John Carpenter, which means it's RIO BRAVO.  The Interceptors are clearly just leftover bikes, costumes, and props from any number of Italian postnukes.  Deodato, best known for the controversial CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, does a very good job in staging some terrific ROAD WARRIOR-inspired action sequences that are often jaw-droppingly daring.  Connelly does most of his own stunts, whether he's scaling the outside of a two-story house, standing under a dangerously low chopper and hanging on to the landing skids, or, most impressively, climbing out of a window of a speeding bus and onto the roof during a chase scene.  These shots are staged to show that Connelly is doing much of his own stunt work.  Connelly, a busy TV actor in the '60s and '70s, found himself a very in-demand presence in Italian B-movies throughout most of the 1980s in such beloved cult classics as Enzo G. Castellari's 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS and Bruno Mattei's STRIKE COMMANDO, but THE RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS might be his best role from this period of his career. He's having a blast, kicking ass, and he gets to be the hero, which didn't happen to him very often.  Unfortunately, this was the latter period of his career, as he died of cancer in 1988 at just 47 years of age.

And the dialogue in THE RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS is often pricelessly nonsensical, whether King is telling someone "Your damn thoughts don't go north of your neck anyway!" or Connelly talks about taking Scola out for a spinach dinner. Or, King's instantly immortal "Can't move!  We're immobilized!" This is a colossally stupid, bizarre film that seems made up as it goes along, but it's so fast-paced and action-packed that you don't even care.  And the score by "Oliver Onions," specifically the title song "Black Inferno," is just awesome.  Definitely one of the crown jewels of 1980s Italian trash cinema, and long overdue for DVD/Blu-ray representation in the US.

If This Wasn't Streaming On Netflix, Would Anyone Remember It Existed? Vol 3: GETTING EVEN (1988)

This review was published in a slightly different form at the Mobius Home Video Forum in February 2011.


GETTING EVEN
(Italy - 1988)  Written and directed by Leandro Lucchetti.  Cast: Richard Roundtree, Michael J. Aronin, Harrison Muller, George Ardisson, Kate Chesher, Deborah Keith.  93 mins.  R


Not to be confused with the 1986 Edward Albert vehicle directed by Dwight H. Little (a pic from that film accompanies this film's Netflix Instant listing), this GETTING EVEN is a low-grade Italian actioner from director Leandro Lucchetti and notoriously cheap producer Ettore Spagnuolo and his L'Immagine s.r.l./Filman International, the company that spent the bulk of the 1980s trying to turn spectacularly uncharismatic Eddie Rabbitt-lookalike Harrison Muller into an action star. 

Here, Muller is Roy Evans, a homeless Vietnam vet in NYC (as evidenced by constant stock footage shots of the Twin Towers in the opening credits) who gets shot by some thugs while trying to help a rape victim.  While recovering, he's visited by his old commander Dundee (Richard Roundtree, in one of his few forays into Italian exploitation), who's working with the FBI in a hunt for a crazed psycho who's slicing up prostitutes with a kris knife.  Dundee is sure the culprit is nutjob Slisko (Michael J. Aronin), who was in their unit back in 'Nam and tried to use the knife on a prostitute while they were on leave.  Since Slisko left Evans for dead during a covert mission, which led to him being a POW for five years, Evans goes along with Dundee on the hunt for Slisko. Because hey, the FBI always brings in homeless guys and has them basically supervise investigations.  And Slisko probably does own the only kris knife in the world.  It's an open and shut case.

Turns out Slisko is running a weapons operation out of Bangkok, which of course sends Evans to Thailand, thereby enabling Spagnuolo to lift an entire extended action sequence straight out of Fernando Di Leo's THE VIOLENT BREED (1983), which conveniently co-starred Muller and this film's Deborah Keith, intercut with new shots of Roundtree, standing alone throwing grenades and firing a gun in the some of the most awkward editing this side of SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT PART 3. Not content with swiping just one sequence and putting it in another movie, Spagnuolo's most duplicitous act of cost-cutting madness would come in 1989, when he recycled Woody Strode's entire performance in 1984's THE FINAL EXECUTIONER into THE BRONX EXECUTIONER.

GETTING EVEN is pretty bad, but at least it's bad in an entertaining way.  You get gratuitous nudity; hilariously over-the-top dubbed profanities; bad guys appearing out of nowhere; Roundtree plowing into the requisite Stack of Empty Cardboard Boxes in a totally badass white Citation, a vehicle that hardly seems fitting for the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks; Ted Rusoff dubbing both a racist pimp named Nick the Cobra and a Thai maitre d in a Bangkok restaurant; Roundtree's FBI boss (George Ardisson) being dubbed by the guy who voiced Frank Brana in PIECES; Roundtree getting totally cockblocked by an underling (first a Citation, now THIS?!); and, in the film's funniest bit, Roundtree getting shot multiple times in the chest and stomach with softball-sized blasts and splattered blood, then getting up unhurt with a clean shirt.  How is that possible?  Because he's Richard Roundtree, that's how.

One minor plus is that Lanfranco Perini's score is actually pretty decent most of the time. But if you've seen any other Spagnuolo productions, you know what to expect.  Acquired by Menahem Golan's short-lived 21st Century Film Corporation and released straight to video in the US in 1990.  Spagnuolo got Roundtree, Muller, and Aronin back together to recapture the GETTING EVEN magic in 1989 for Alfonso Brescia/"Al Bradley"'s MIAMI COPS, which had location shooting in Detroit passing for Miami.  In other words, vintage Al Bradley.

If This Wasn't Streaming On Netflix, Would Anyone Remember It Existed? Vol. 2: MONSTER DOG (1985)

This review was originally published in a slightly different form at the Mobius Home Video Forum in March 2011


MONSTER DOG
(Spain - 1985)  Written and directed by Clyde Anderson (Claudio Fragasso).  Cast: Alice Cooper, Victoria Vera, Carlos Santurio, Pepita James, Emilio Linder, Ricardo Palacios, Charly Bravo.  84 mins. Unrated.

Now that TROLL 2 and BEST WORST MOVIE have raised Claudio Fragasso's profile in Bad Movie circles, we can go back and see if his films were always as terrible as TROLL 2 and his collaborations with Bruno Mattei. The Spanish-made MONSTER DOG isn't as bad as I thought it would be, which doesn't mean it's good. It's definitely more competent than TROLL 2, which I realize isn't saying much. It's interesting as it provides a rare acting lead for Alice Cooper, who was taking a sabbatical from music at the time after a string of terrible records and successfully seeking treatment for severe alcoholism.  A newly-sober Cooper doesn't look very interested in what Fragasso (using his "Clyde Anderson" pseudonym) has him doing, and he's dubbed by Ted Rusoff (whose voice can be heard in hundreds upon hundreds of English-dubbed European B-movies), which is a little jarring at first. MONSTER DOG was released in the US in 1986, the same year Cooper would return to music with the first of two moderately successful albums, and a year later, would have a small but memorable role in John Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS before his huge 1989 comeback album Trash.

But first, he had to play rock star Vincent Raven, who's going back to his family home in the outskirts of California (actually Madrid) to shoot a music video with his girlfriend (Victoria Vera, dubbed by Rusoff's wife Carolynn De Fonseca). Vincent doesn't talk much about his family, and the locals are leery of his return. Could it be that his father was killed under mysterious circumstances and accused of being a werewolf with a psychic command over a pack of wild dogs? And maybe they think Vincent is just like his old man?

There's nothing much scary about this, but as far as 1985 werewolf movies go, it's maybe slightly better than HOWLING II, even if it lacks anything as awesome as Reb Brown yelling or Sybil Danning ripping her top off 25 times in a row in the closing credits. Fragasso does accomplish a marginally effective atmosphere with all the fog, and MGM's restored, widescreen print of this Trans-World Entertainment release does look surprisingly good. But other than the novelty of seeing a Rusoff-dubbed Cooper slumming in a Spanish horror film by a D-grade Italian hack and somehow not crawling back into a bottle, MONSTER DOG doesn't have much going for it. Fragasso keeps things at a brief 84 minutes, and that's with two Cooper/Raven music videos (the only times we hear Cooper's actual voice) and a montage of highlights and goofs at the end, scored to Vincent Raven's chart-topping (and misspelled in the credits) "Identity Chrises." Also features a likely unlicensed guest appearance by the Alan Parsons Project tune "A Dream Within a Dream."

THE PYX (1973)

THE PYX
(Canada - 1973)  Directed by Harvey Hart.  Written by Robert Schlitt.  Cast: Karen Black, Christopher Plummer, Donald Pilon, Jean-Louis Roux, Yvette Brind'amour, Lee Broker, Terry Haig.  107 mins. R.

There's an unsettling, almost suffocating sense of dread that permeates this strange Montreal-set thriller that's often labeled a "Satanism" horror flick but actually feels more like a Canadian giallo.  I was reminded of two Italian gialli in particular while watching:  Aldo Lado's SHORT NIGHT OF GLASS DOLLS (1971) and Flavio Mogherini's THE PYJAMA GIRL CASE (1977).  The later PYJAMA GIRL CASE shares THE PYX's set-up of an alternating storyline that follows the investigation of a woman's death, juxtaposing it with following the victim in the days leading up to her demise.  While PYJAMA GIRL treated that element as a plot twist, THE PYX sets it up from the start, with a body plummeting from the penthouse of an apartment building onto the street below.  The dead woman is Elizabeth Lucy (Karen Black), a heroin-addicted prostitute.  Leading the investigation is Sgt. Henderson (Christopher Plummer), who doesn't believe Elizabeth's death was accidental and knows he's close to uncovering a disturbing conspiracy when people who knew Elizabeth start turning up dead.

A low-key, very downbeat thriller with horrific elements, THE PYX, directed by longtime TV veteran Harvey Hart, is a thought-provoking, offbeat film unlike any of the "devil movies" that were in vogue during that period.  The film was recently released on DVD by Scorpion Releasing in its proper 2.35:1 aspect ratio, after years of bad transfers on various public domain releases, sometimes luridly retitled THE HOOKER CULT MURDERS.

Scorpion presents the film in a very nice transfer as part of their inane "Katarina's Nightmare Theater" line, with ex-WWE star Katarina Leigh Waters acting as a horror hostess.  Fortunately, you can skip her intro and go right to the film.  There's a commentary track with Black, who also sang three effectively haunting songs heard in the film that only add to the downbeat, chilly atmosphere.  Hampered only by some occasionally choppy editing, THE PYX is a lost-in-the-shuffle gem that cult movie nerds have largely kept to themselves for nearly 40 years.  It doesn't help that it was probably never marketed correctly.

LOVE EXPOSURE (2008; 2011 US release)

LOVE EXPOSURE
(Japan - 2008)  Written and directed by Sion Sono.  Cast: Takahiro Nishijima, Hikari Mitsushima, Sakura Ando, Makiko Watanabe, Atsuro Watabe.  237 mins.  Unrated.

Finally released in the US in 2011, Sion Sono's insanely ambitious, four-hour epic is pretty tough to describe. There's enough plot and tone shifts for at least six movies, but it's a testament to Sono's skills as a filmmaker that it never loses focus, never drags, and never once feels like it's as long as it is.

The complicated plot involves 17-year-old Yu (Takahiro Nishijima), who lost his mother at a young age, after which his distraught, grieving father Tetsu (Atsuro Watabe) joined the priesthood. Their tranquil, peaceful life is disrupted when party girl Kaori (Makiko Watanabe) turns her life around by joining the church...and promptly seduces the lonely Tetsu. Tetsu and Kaori have a secret relationship, but Kaori quickly dumps Tetsu for a younger man, sending the popular priest on a downward spiral. He begins psychologically abusing Yu, demanding that he confess sins he hasn't committed. This takes its toll on Yu, who falls in with the wrong crowd, and starts fighting and shoplifting, but finds his true calling is using ninja-like skills in the art of the under-the-skirt, "peek-a-panty" photography. This inadvertantly leads to Yu encountering Koike (Sakura Ando), an incest survivor who castrated her abusive father, and Yoko (Hikari Mitsushima), a girl with father issues of her own which have led her to hate all men.

It takes an hour for Sono to set up all of this (the title LOVE EXPOSURE doesn't even come up onscreen until about 57 minutes into the film), and over the next three hours, the lives of these five characters will intersect time and again in ways ranging from comedic to horrific to gut-wrenchingly emotional. This is a film of incredible ambition, with long stretches that have the distinct rhythms and kinetic pacing of Scorsese in GOODFELLAS mode. I also noticed a distinct De Palma vibe to some split-screen bits (but no split diopter), and the use of Ravel's "Bolero," which was so vital to De Palma's FEMME FATALE. But then it can quickly turn into a teen street gang picture, a deep meditation on religion, then a mistaken identity/cross-dressing comedy, then there might be some ninja action, then a raunchy teen comedy, then a suspenseful rescue thriller, and so on. But it all feels organic, never forced (well, some of the splatter is typical of extreme Japanese cinema). Each of the five stars are perfect in their roles, a standout being Ando as one of the most diabolical villains in recent memory.

Today's cinema doesn't get much more ambitiously ballsy than LOVE EXPOSURE, and the only way to really understand that is to set aside four hours and just immerse yourself in its universe. It captivates you fairly quickly and no plot recap written by me will do it justice. A masterpiece. The prolific Sono, whose most notable films include SUICIDE CLUB, STRANGE CIRCUS, EXTE: HAIR EXTENSIONS, and the recent COLD FISH, is probably the best thing going in Japanese cinema right now.