Curse of the Dog God (1977)

I don’t know much about Folk Horror other than that, whenever it’s brought up, most people simply point meaningfully to Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man, and their audience nod their heads in enlightened agreement.  And fair play, because that is the ne plus ultra of the subgenre.  From what I understand, Folk Horror is rooted firmly in European traditions, but, when I look at something like Shunya Ito’s Curse of the Dog God (aka Inugami no Tatari), I have to wonder why films from other cultures can’t be included?  Maybe they are, and I’m simply ignorant of the fact, but a lot of Asian Horror that involves itself with the supernatural tends toward the struggle between modernity and tradition.  Perhaps proper Folk Horror’s ties to religious themes is the key, since they specialize in Christian/Pre-Christian ideologies in conflict, and Christianity isn’t the religion that most think of when they think of Asia.  Even in Ito’s film, the only religion represented is Shinto, but the eponymous Dog God is an ancient, rural force taking revenge on a man who is contemporary and interested in exploiting a small village for its Uranium deposits (that is, something which brings more modernity, both good and bad).  Still, this man, Kano (Shinya Ohwada), quickly embraces the concept of the Dog God and the old methods employed to try exorcising it.  Also, there is no ancient sect at the heart of the plot, just some paranoid, superstitious farmers (who happen to be half-right).  With that in mind, I can’t say that the film is Folk Horror by definition, but it is in spirit, at least to some degree.  But, hey, I could be wrong.

Kano and his co-workers race around the countryside looking for Uranium to refine.  On their way to the village of Kugamura, they pull a trifecta of transgressions.  First, they spy on a pair of maidens skinny-dipping (this is really the most innocent of the three, though the women play a crucial part in the remainder of the story).  Then, they run over a shrine (guess who it’s devoted to).  Then, they run over a young boy’s dog, and then they split.  No amount of business success is going to save these guys at this point.

Outside of the Folk Horror shadings, Curse of the Dog God is a story of supernatural revenge that stems from several sources.  First, it is pure vengeance, as the outsiders take advantage of the villagers and their land.  Granted, the villagers are paid for their property, but the fact that this company rolls in and starts digging in the mountains, despoiling its natural purity is important.  Kano marries Reiko (Jun Izumi), daughter of one of the men whose land Kano wants to lease.  Despite Reiko and Kano’s statements that they are genuinely in love, it still feels exploitive, or maybe it was at first, but true love developed (we’re never shown this progression, so we have to fill in some blanks).  Therefore, on the one hand, the Dog God is attacking to protect its home turf and for the disrespect it has been shown by these outsiders.  On the other hand, there is the angle of human love and jealousy.  The Dog God, apparently, does not invoke itself but rather is invoked through someone else in a Pumpkinhead sort of way.  The person accused of this is Kaori (Emiko Yamauchi), Reiko’s longtime friend and daughter of a farmer who refused to lease his part of the mountain to Kano and his cohorts.  Kaori also loves Kano, and since she didn’t win his favor (because her dad didn’t acquiesce to Kano’s business dealings, most likely), she wants to remove the competition.  

Yet, even this doesn’t completely explain the mechanics of this sinister force.  In fact, it’s never entirely discernible exactly what, who, or why the Dog God is what it is or does what it does.  There is no exposition clearly detailing what the Dog God wants, what will sate its appetites, or why it chooses whom it does to possess.  It is nebulous and fickle, like the natural world from which it springs.  The one thing it definitely desires is the destruction of Kano and anyone in contact with him.  Even when Kano makes a strong connection with the village and becomes genuinely concerned for the welfare of its inhabitants, he is still a target.  Kano becomes the redemptive hero once certain events and facts come to light, but the Dog God truly doesn’t care.  This encompasses a level of innocence corrupted, not only of the land but of its people.  Young Isamu’s (Junya Kato) innocence dies with his dog, Taro.  The boy is bent on making Kano’s life miserable, going so far as to pelt him in the face with a rock at Kano’s wedding.  The villagers themselves become corrupted, physically by the byproduct of the Uranium mining and spiritually by the superstitions to which they cling.  The turmoil of their traditions vying with their more mercenary desire for money and what this allows into the village breaks them down.  They do not accept that their choices caused any catastrophes they experience.  It has to be caused by the Dog God, so the obvious thing to do is attack the only family in the village who didn’t join in selling out, and that would be Kaori and Isamu’s.  Interestingly, their family were outsiders before any of this happened.  When things go tits up, they are only further ostracized and persecuted.  Finally, there is Mako (Masami Hasegawa), Reiko’s younger sister.  She is friends with Isamu, and she alone tries to bridge the gap between the oddball family and the rest of the village.  Nevertheless, there is a secret in her own family that marks her as corruptible as well, and the Dog God is, if nothing else, an equal opportunity defiler.

Ito brings a nice sense of style to the proceedings, just as he did to no less than three of the famous Female Prisoner Scorpion films, including the arguable best of the bunch: Jailhouse 41.  There are Dutch Angles galore, and Ito does some truly haunting things with lighting throughout the film.  My main problems are twofold.  First and foremost is the point that none of the characters are interesting, with the exception of Mako.  Confoundingly, she also gets the least development and/or attention paid to her until the very end, but by that point, anything that happens to her feels like it’s brought about simply because she’s one of the last characters in the film.  Kano is a slab, and both Reiko and Kaori’s fawning over him is inexplicable, even moreso since we have seen none of how their relationships grew to start off.  There’s no real reason for the audience to care about them.  Additionally, is the fact that the Dog God appears to play by a set of rules we are not only not privy to but that change at a moment’s notice just because.  While this part of the whole setup, it makes for some chaotic viewing.  Thus, Curse of the Dog God is mildly intriguing for how different it is, but this is also the same reason it just doesn’t succeed like it should.

MVT:  Ito’s professionalism and devotion to his craft shines through.

Make or Break:  The big finale plays it as straight as the film ever will, and this part, at least, works like gangbusters.

Score:  6.5/10           

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972)

Way down in the lower depths of Jailhouse 41 (it’s not actually called that in the movie), the eponymous Scorpion (aka Matsu, played by Meiko Kaji) lies chained, subject to the sadistic whims of the cycloptic warden Gorda (Fumio Watanabe).  After enduring humiliations from both guards and fellow inmates alike, Matsu and six other prisoners make good their escape.  But their flight to freedom will prove more harrowing than their stay in the penitentiary.

Meiko Kaji is one of those cultural icons revered more for their looks (i.e. the act of looking, not their physical traits, though she is also a striking beauty) than any thespian skills.  This isn’t to say she can’t act, but from what I’ve see, she’s rarely called upon to do more than clench her jaw and glare.  And she does both spectacularly well.  Here in Shunya Ito’s Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (the second entry in this influential series), the entirety of her performance is physical.  She doesn’t speak at all until near the film’s end, and then it’s only two lines of dialogue.  Nonetheless, we know exactly what’s going on in her head at all times (it helps a bit that this generally boils down to three emotions: hatred, suspicion, and pity).  This is Matsu’s strength.  She doesn’t mince words because there’s nothing left to be said.  The ultimate pragmatist, Matsu sees the world for what it is – a merciless, misogynistic shit hole – and deals with it in the same way that it has dealt with her.  All of this is reflected in her eyes.

Speaking of eyes and reflections, Jailhouse 41 is rife with them, and not only from Kaji.  Gorda’s dead, false eye attempts to consume and violate Matsu’s soul.  His eye, Matsu’s eyes, and Oba’s eyes (the contagonist or secondary antagonist, if you wish, played by Kayoko Shiraishi) all give off the same look throughout the film but with different meanings.  Matsu’s deadpan stare is a retreat into herself, a fortification against the external world, and a coiled trap waiting to be sprung.  Her fellow prisoners misread her limp inactivity as acquiescence and apathy, when, in fact, it is anything but.  Gorda’s eye is a metaphoric monster and the ugliness inside the male psyche, the male id unleashed.  He’s a lecher and a brute, not above using his status and his staff to destroy the women in his charge.  When first we meet him, he’s one year into his attempt to drive Matsu insane (it can be argued that he’s wasting his time, because she already is, in a sense).  The blacked-out lens of his glasses reveals for the audience the cruelty and alienation in the man, as we espy the horrors he subjects others to in it.  His false eye, when it’s finally popped out of his head, presents not just a victory but also a portal to an alternate reality, a looking glass world where the events of the narrative never took place (and if you think about it, this shot is similar to the first shots of the film which focus on Matsu’s eyes, and the entire film can be seen as a pure dream/nightmare sequence from her perspective).  Finally, Oba’s gaze is pure bestial fury (she’s even honest enough to admit this – “I know I’m a beast!”).  She hates everyone and everything, a nihilist preferring the solitude of her rage to what sisterhood she may form with the other escapees.  Everyone is an enemy, because they’re different from her, and she’s paranoid enough to believe that this matters (not without some reason).  This comes through crystal clear in her baleful gaze (often cast from under her eyebrows).  

These three viewpoints form a worldview of how these women (all seven of them, but, by extension, all women) are seen and treated.  In one of several fantasy sequences, the crimes of the escapees are described.  The women kneel, dressed in matching outfits (like their batik prison uniforms, this unifies them) before a field of blackness.  The camera glides past each as a narrator (in, I’m guessing here, Noh Theatre style) sings of their sins.  While they are all guilty of their individual crimes, it is stressed that all of these women were driven to commit them by men.  This tableau is presided over by an old woman.  She was found, alone and deranged and clutching a knife in a death grip, in an abandoned village.  She, too, has been cast off by the world of men, and it has destroyed her.  She is a portent of what will happen to all of the protagonists, but it’s Matsu who refuses to accept this fate.  Later, we see a reenactment of Oba’s crime.  In it, the local villagers surround her, net her, and beat her.  Oba transforms into each of the escapees, tormented by the people who put she and them in this position.  Again, it’s Matsu who stands up defiant, the ideal of feminine individuality in the film.

Jailhouse 41 is as gorgeous and carefully crafted as any film from Japan at this time (it does bear some stylistic clichés of the era, but they fit for the nightmare quality of the picture) while being as enthralling as any exploitation movie made.  For as sleazy as it is, however, the tone is grim.  This isn’t light fare, though it certainly has heightened moments.  Its exploitation elements are more condemnatory than titillating.  The film is designed to provoke some thought, not erections (or at least I found nothing sexy here).  What I did find was excellent filmmaking for any level of budget or genre constraints.

This will likely be the only film from the Arrow bluray box set that I review.  This is not because I don’t like the others in the series (they’re all fantastic in their own ways), but they do tend toward a certain formula (this one being the exception) which would make further reviews redundant.  Then again, who knows?  Maybe I’ll come back and want to dip my toes and pen in these waters somewhere down the road.  Anyway, the set is outstanding, packed with the usual quality supplements in which Arrow excels.  There has been talk about the color timing on these films, and I have to say that the level of blue in this film is noticeable, but I also feel that it adds to the atmosphere of the piece.  I also know that Arrow stated that this coloring is due to the level of restoration they performed on the original materials, so if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

MVT:  Ito displays a deft hand, stylishly and narratively.

Make or Break:  The scene where the prisoners are punished for an attempted riot proves their breaking point, and it may be the viewer’s, as well.

Score:  8/10 

Episode #98: 100 Female Prisoners

In this episode, the Gents cover 100 RIFLES (1969) starring Burt Reynolds, Jim Brown and Raquel Welch and FEMALE PRISONER #701: SCORPION (1972) starring Meiko Kaji.

This is a spirited episode recorded after a long busy day and it also goes into tangents and weird admissions by the Gents. Enjoy!!!