Iki-jigoku
**½/**** Image C- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Hirohito Honda, Yoshiko Shiraishi, Rumi, Kazuo Yashiro
written and directed by Shugo Fujii
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Hype sometimes expects too much of a film, forcing it into boxes where it doesn't belong and dressing it up as something it's not. Thus the keepcase for Living Hell had me worried: it references not only luminaries like Hitchcock and DePalma, but also cult faves Evil Dead 2, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Dead Alive. To be sure, Living Hell lacks the visionary quality that makes the abovementioned figures and movies so memorable to so many people, and yet, taken on its own terms, this debut feature has plenty to offer the attentive viewer, starting with a supremely jaundiced take on the family and a stylistic intelligence that surprises for such a low-budget effort. Miraculous it's not, but given the budget ($100,000) and the length of the shoot (nine days!), it's astonishing how effective Living Hell really is. Despite the occasional borrowing from better movies, its deliciously cruel sense of humour gets to you in the end.
If nothing else, the film offers the cinema's first death-by-scarab beetle: that's how a woman bites the big one in the opening scene, at the behest of a mysterious pasty-faced old lady (Yoshiko Shiraishi) and her mute twentysomething sidekick (Rumi). These two femmes fatale soon find their way to the house of young wheelchair-bound Yasu (Hirohito Honda of Battle Royale fame), where they are taken in as needy family members. Sensing that something is wrong with the new houseguests, Yasu voices his concern only to be dismissed by the patronizing able-bodied members of the household. The boy's fears naturally turn out to be right, and soon Mama and Baby Bear are torturing their new housemate in a heinous and excessive manner. Fortunately, a cub reporter (played by writer-director Shugo Fujii) at a local paper is on their trail, with one of Yasu's brothers (Kazuo Yashiro) in tow–although the latter seems to be trying to derail the investigation. This leads us to wonder: could there be more to the situation than meets the eye?
The centrepiece sequences involving Yasu's suffering are more hilarious than horrific–it's hard not to laugh at Honda's constant deer-in-the-headlights expression or the absurdly methodical ways in which grandma tortures him. But this is part of Fujii's design. He knows that it would be unbearable to watch the protagonist's ordeal with a straight face, so he softens the blow by pushing the tension to ludicrous extremes: the sight of the pair slowly inching across the room towards hapless Yasu is so drawn out that you can't help but snicker at the payoff. This is not to say that the film is a total lark: Living Hell has a loathing for family that smacks you in the face with its potency, as well as enough of a sense of proportion to keep the sorrow that lurks just beneath the surface from overwhelming you.
Alas, the picture is perhaps too derivative for its own good. The as-advertised Hitchcock and DePalma references do indeed show up (Sisters is raided for a major plot point), in addition to scattered swipes from Misery and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? that slug you in the gut with the reminder that you're watching a series of borrowings. This is too bad, because what the director lacks in vision he makes up for with visual smarts; given what he's done with a degenerate-family horror movie, I can't help but imagine what wonders he might work with a real story; Fujii shows in this film that he has the stuff to make a cheese script resonate well beyond what it deserves.
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BLACKHOLE |
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SEESAW GAME |
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GRIEF |
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DEAD MONEY |
THE DVD
Unfortunately, Saiko/Subversive's 1.85:1 non-anamorphic DVD transfer of Living Hell is rather shoddy despite much-touted cooperation from the filmmakers. (The original elements were lost and a digital dupe of the fine cut is all that remains at the disposal of video companies worldwide.) Colours are blotchy and bleached-out, shadow detail is about nil, and deep blacks sometimes break up into enormous pixels. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround Japanese soundmix (with optional English subtitles), though unremarkable, is at least on a higher plain than the image. The frequent "scary" jumps on the soundtrack are sharply rendered.
Extras begin with an English commentary from Shugo Fujii. While it's a little sparse at times, there's a surprising amount of technical information imparted; as a nuts-and-bolts making-of, it's better than most commentaries. Fujii is at once generous with praise for his cast members and humble in detailing what he (wrongly) sees as faults in his low-budget camerawork. He comes across as gentle and egoless, which is more than I can say for most yak-track perpetrators.
The highlight of the bonus material is a selection of Fujii's four shorts, consisting of three student films and a very professional-looking segment from an anthology film. (See sidebar.) Also included are several deleted scenes (all with timecode, none of them translated into English), Living Hell's storyboards (superimposed over a bloody face), a bio for Fujii in which we discover the conditions under which he shot Living Hell (among other things), and trailers for Living Hell, Battlefield Baseball, The Witch Who Came from the Sea, and Gemini.
104 minutes; NR; 1.85:1; Japanese Dolby Surround; English (optional) subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Saiko/Subversive
