We Summon the Darkness

We Summon the Darkness

2019

Director- Marc Meyers

Cast- Alexandra Daddario, Keean Johnson, Maddie Hasson, Amy Forsyth, Logan Miller, Austin Swift, Allison McAtee, Johnny Knoxville

            

     This slasher is set against the back drop of the satanic panic of the 1980s. A satanic cult has been killing people in ritualistic massacres leading to the expected sensationalist reporting. Meanwhile, Pastor John Henry Butler (Johnny Knoxville) is leading a televangelist crusade against the forces of evil.

           

     In the midst of this, three girls go to a heavy metal concert. Alexis (Daddario) is the leader of the group. Valerie (Hasson) is the slightly flakey and adventurous type. Beverly (Forsyth) is the quiet newcomer to the group. At the concert they meet a trio of guys making a farewell trip for their bud Mark (Keean Johnson who you may recognize from Battle Angel Alita) before he moves out to LA in search of fortune and glory.

           

     

     The girls invite the guys to a party at Alexis’ giant house since her parents are away for the weekend. As it turns out the girls aren’t in any danger of being killed by a cult, because they are members of it. They drug the three guys and prepare them for a sacrifice. Don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler. You figure this out pretty early in the film. The boys break free and barricade themselves and that’s when the real drama of the movie begins.

            

     All three of the female leads turn in good performances and I liked the flipping of the traditional slasher theme by having the ladies being the bloodthirsty killers instead of the hapless victims. The story moves along at a good pace and though not a horror-comedy, it has enough humor to show that it’s not taking itself too seriously. I really only had one problem with the film; it wasn’t very 80s.

            

     The film makes a point to let you know that it’s taking place in the 80s. There is even a discussion about Metallica bassist Jason Newstead replacing the dearly departed Cliff Burton.  The discussion even mentions that the first album with Newstead (which would make that Garage Days Re-Revisited) was dropping in a month which means that the movie takes place in 1987. But beyond that super specific Metallica reference, I don’t know that there is anything else in the film that would have clued you in to the fact that it takes place in the 80s. The costumes are the sort of generic outfits you could see at any hard rock concert 40 years ago or today. The girl’s hair dos are certainly not big enough for the 80s.And other than a prominently featured Heaven Is a Place on Earth by Belinda Carlisle, there is no 80s music! A movie set against the heavy metal scene of the 80s and they couldn’t get one Judas Priest song? No Iron Maiden? Surely if ever a movie warranted Mötley Crüe’s Shout at the Devil it’s this one. I mean, I didn’t expect them to shoot the movie on VHS, but I think the makers missed a real chance to give us some homage/ nostalgia. But se la vie my friend.

            

     The movie definitely leaves the door open for a sequel and I’d watch it just to see what happens with the surviving characters, but if there is a next time, maybe a little more work on making the film feel more retro.

  

School of the Holy Beast (Holy Beast Academy)

School of the Holy Beast (Holy Beast Academy)

1974

Director- Norifumi Suzuki

Cast- Yumi Takigawa, Emiko Yamauchi, Yayoi Watanabe, Yōko Mihara, Fumio Watanabe

            

     Maya (Yumi Takigawa) is a young girl who takes her vows and enrolls in a local nunnery. We soon find out that Maya is surreptitiously trying to gather information about her mother, who was also a nun and died there mysteriously. Maya crosses paths with Ishida (Emiko Yamauchi), a rebellious nun who delights in questioning authority and seems intent on getting herself kicked out.

Throughout the convent Maya finds a combination of repressed sexuality and religious abuses.  Along with the cruel nuns, the convent is visited by a sinister priest. Father Kakinuma (Fumio Watanabe who genre fans may recognize from his role as the villainous Yagyu in Lone Wolf and Cub) is a charismatic figure who the older nuns adore. He carries on affairs with the nuns and Maya learns a horrible truth; that she is his daughter. When her mother got pregnant, the Father abandoned  her and she was abused by the jealous nuns (who secretly wanted the Father’s attention) until she committed suicide.

The senior nuns learn Maya’s true identity and warn her to leave but she refuses. Maya is intent on destroying the convent from within and gets help from the rebellious Ishida. To deal with her, an Inquisitor is brought in on the pretext of sniffing out any heretical witches. Another nun is tortured to death and Maya herself is condemned but is able to turn the tables. She seduces Father Kakinuma, and reveals to him (after the sex) that she is his daughter and he has committed the damnable crime of incest.

Most examples of “nunsploitation” have two recurring themes; religious abuse and lesbianism. The best examples of both of these combining artistically in a movie are the Mexican films Satanico Pandimonium and Alucarda. School of the Holy Beast is not as sexually graphic as those films or other examples of 70s lezploitation. This is Japan after all with their taboo against showing genitalia (an odd taboo considering the other things that they are quite OK with; school girl tentacle sex anyone?).  

What the film lacks in graphicness it makes up for in creativity. We see two young nuns make love in a garden, a topless nun flagellate herself, two topless nuns forced to whip each other for stealing food, and the most memorable scene in the film, where Maya is bound with rose vines, the thorns digging into her naked breasts.

As for the religious abuse, this film seems much more relevant than perhaps it did when it was made. The abuse in other similar films is of the more abstract kind; accept our way of thinking, bow down to our authority etc. With the subplot of the Church covering up the Father’s sexual excesses, perhaps this film was rather prescient.

As is true with any nunsploitation film, School of the Holy Beast is filled with sacrilege. The most shocking is when a nun is forced to drink water with a crucifix between her legs until she urinates on it, which then serves as proof that she must be a witch. This is definitely not a movie for anyone who is offended easily.

Now, from my description, you might be expecting some bit of soft core torture porn along the lines of Ilsa She Wolf of the SS. Despite the themes, however, School of the Holy Beast is not really that prurient. While there are a fair amount of naked breasts, the nudity is only a means of storytelling and not the story itself. The movie reminded me of another Japanese film from the same era, Lady Snowblood. That story also involves a woman seeking revenge for something done to her mother before she was born.

I think maybe the most important thing about the film is that it’s a nunsploitation film NOT told from a Western point of view. In the West, most people are mono-religious, often seeing believers of other religions as (at best) naively ignorant or (at worst) an out-right threat to their own beliefs. But not so in Japan. As the expression goes, “Born Shinto, Married Christian, Buried Buddhist.” School of the Holy Beast gives us an East Asian slant on what has traditionally been a Western sub-genre.

Ninja 3: The Domination

Ninja 3: The Domination

1984

Director- Sam Firstenberg

Cast- Lucinda Dickey, Sho Kosugi, James Hong, Jordan Bennett, David Chung

            Ninja Hanjuro (David Chung) is dispatched on an assassination assignment. He completes the assassination but is pursued and eventually cornered by the police. After a long fight he is eventually gun downed by a squad of policeman.

However, before succumbing to his wounds he escapes. He is found by Christie (Lucinda Dickey) and unbeknownst to her, his spirit passes into her body.  The first thing Christie notices is that she has developed a real talent for kicking ass. She also has visions of the police that gunned Hanjuro down. However, periodically, Hanjuro takes control of Christie’s body and uses her to go out and take revenge. He is systematically hunting down the various policemen that killed him. The top man on his list is Billy (Jordan Bennett) a super annoying cop that has somehow become Christie’s boyfriend.

Christie is aware that something is wrong and visits a spiritualist (veteran genre actor James Hong from Bladerunner, Big Trouble in Little China, Golden Child, and a million other things). Another ninja, Goro (Sho Kosugi) is wise to what has been going on and is trying to stop it. He intercedes and manages to have Hanjuro’s spirit exorcised from Christie’s body so that he can be fought man to man.

This is a Canon film and that should just about tell you everything that you need to know. Canon specialized primarily in lower budget films, particularly action films starring Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson. Whenever they ventured away from this formula into other genres, the results were always interesting if bizarre. Though not a studio known for horror movies, they delivered two of the decades more memorable horror movies; Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Lifeforce.

The great thing about Canon was that there didn’t seem to be anyone in charge of quality control. While this often resulted in them making crap, it sometimes resulted in unexpected creativity because there doesn’t seem to have been anyone saying “You can’t do that”, like in one scene where Christie tries to turn her boyfriend on by pouring tomato juice on herself (???). Ninja 3: The Domination mixes so many different disparate elements together and does so unashamedly.

The character of Christie is an obvious rip off of Alex from Flash Dance, a mega hit that had come out the previous year. Whereas Alex was a steel worker trying to make her way as a dancer, Christie is lineman (linewoman?) who works at night as an aerobics instructor. The movie is filled with 80s cheese including Christie having an arcade machine in her living room, which for the early 80s would have made you one of the coolest people around.

It may be hard to imagine in our modern world where ninjas have thoroughly infiltrated all aspects of popular culture, but there was a time when westerners were just starting to learn about them. The 1980s was the Golden Age of the ninja movie and Canon made a lot of them. Along with the 5 films of the American Ninja franchise, Canon also made 3 films with Sho Kosugi; Enter the Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja, and Ninja 3: The Domination. The number “3” might lead you to believe this is a continuous storyline , but the films have nothing to do with one another, other than the fact that they star Sho Kosugi.

In the pantheon of action stars, Sho Kosugi occupies an unusual space. He never achieved the fame of other 80s American action stars, though Sho was probably the most legitimately skilled martial artists of the bunch. He never had the broad appeal of his Caucasian counterparts, but real martial arts enthusiasts always appreciated Sho.

Ninjas in those 80s movies were often credited with mystical, even superhuman, powers and this film is no different.  This plays just fine with the rest of the film which throws any idea of logic or restraint right out of the window.

Ninja 3 has become a cult favorite both among Canon movie fans and fans of bizarre films, but its real long term significance lies not with itself but in what it set the stage for. The director, Sam Firstenberg (who also directed Revenge of the Ninja) went on to direct American Ninja which was insanely popular during that decade. No video store worth its salt would have been without American Ninja on its shelves. This was Lucinda Dickey’s first starring role and  it is without a doubt what got her the lead role in her next film, Breakin’ (Ninja 3 was shot first but Breakin’ came out first because Canon was in a rush to be the first studio to release a break dancing movie).

If you aren’t a member of Generation X you probably don’t know about Breakin’, but it was an incredibly successful film that capitalized on the craze of 1984, break dancing. Lucinda also starred in the comically named sequel, Breakin’2: Electric Boogaloo (which was also directed by Firstenberg). To make the point of just how popular that film was, Breakin’ made more money in the domestic box office that year than Red Dawn, The Terminator or Nightmare on Elmstreet!

If you want something scary, or even coherent, you should probably skip Ninja 3. If, on the other hand, you want something fun with absolutely no regard for rules, then give this movie a chance.