KONTROLL (2003) - offbeat Hungarian subway thriller

KONTROLL
(2003, Hungary)

After first seeing the Russian ‘vampire’ blockbuster Night Watch, I was hungry for more modern movies from Eastern Europe. Kontroll was shot in Hungary and if it'd been directed by someone like Guy Ritchie, would have been a huge hit. But it wasn’t. Kontroll certainly lead to the director, Nimrod Antal, getting a gig in Hollywood directing the horror thriller Vacancy (2007), and his next film Armored is a crime caper set in the world of armored car deliveries and should be out later this year.

In the meantime, I’m going to give Vacancy a go, but I doubt it’ll be as much fun as Kontroll which has everything – horror, drama, romance, thrills and grubby underground humour. Set entirely in the Metro subway in Hungary’s capital city Budapest, where the ticket inspectors (collectively called Control) travel the train system in teams. One lot in particular is about to cross paths with a hoodied figure who is passing off random murder as passenger suicides…


While most of the inspectors are disliked by the public, much like traffic wardens, within Control, there’s a team who are even disliked by their colleagues. Bulcsu is the leader of the pack, but sleeping on the subway platforms, wandering the system at night, what is his problem?


Director Nimrod Antal’s debut feature is instantly accessible, creating a castful of entertaining and diverse characters… Bulcsu’s team of Kontrollers include an old world-weary skinhead, a narcoleptic bully, a grubby sex pest, and the newest youngest who’s keen to learn and impress.

Besides helping with the serial murders, they have to battle public fare dodgers, a travelling gang of prostitutes, and a young parkour wannabe who loves to outrun the officials. This is all besides their rivalry with other Control teams. Bulcsu has a reputation to defend, the dangerous talent for outrunning Metro trains between stops. And of course, there’s the woman who rides around all day dressed up as a bear.


All the interlinking stories and characters make for a well-rounded film that’s alternately thrilling, chilling, funny, dark and even poetic. The kinetic cinematography regularly calms down to take in darkly beautiful tableaux in the weirdest corners of the underground, where most of the film was shot on location. The film, like Bulcsu’s character, never leaves the Metro system. The atmosphere of the unusual setting is complemented by the driving soundtrack by electro band Neo – a sort of cross between Massive Attack and The Chemical Brothers (see/hear the YouTube clips below).


As long as subtitles aren’t a problem for you, this is a very rewarding and repeatable film. Also, don’t let the introduction put you off, a five minute monologue by a Budapest Metro official pointing out rather patronisingly that the Hungarian transport system portrayed in the film is fictional and isn’t actually staffed by drunks and sex pests. Don’t expect a linear story, but more of an enthralling meandering experience that draws you into a world of eternal artificial night, perfect for viewing in the middle of the night.


Kontroll is out on DVD in the US and UK and all round Europe. I got the CD soundtrack by Neo from Amazon.de.

The official Hungarian movie website is still online here, much of it is translated into English.

I wrote about other subway films here.


Here's a promo video clip from Neo that just uses clips from the movie.

Here's another track from Neo. Both these tracks are from the movie soundtrack.

Meet British horror director Pete Walker

Seventies horror movie director Pete Walker is appearing for a Q & A session at London's BFI SouthBank on March 12th. You'll also get a chance to see one of his best films, Frightmare, which introduced psycho driller-killing years before Abel Ferrara.

Afterwards, there's a rare chance to see his last film, the not-on-DVD House of the Long Shadows, which teamed veteran horror stars Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and John Carradine with Walker's own discovery Sheila Keith.

So why not revisit Pete Walker's House of Whipcord, The Comeback and Schizo, so you've got some keen questions for him...

More details about the event and screenings here on the BFI website.

First Trailer- GI Joe

I just saw the first trailer that will air tomorrow during the superbowl, they really show nothing besides a few characters and snake eyes doing some cool shit. not sure what to make of the effiel tower falling down. so far i am not sure what to make of it, but it could be better and also much worse. here it is..

Superbowl Prediction

Arizona 24
Pittsburgh 21


...why the hell not?

HANSEL & GRETEL (2007) - Korea updates Grimm's fairy tale

HANSEL & GRETEL
(2007, South Korea)

A dark, beautiful mystery...

I didn’t even know what genre this movie was going to be in when I started to watch it. I like knowing nothing about the story and was intrigued by which way this tale was going to twist. Of course, I won’t spoil it for you, but must at least describe to you what kind of film to expect. The filmmakers call Hansel and Gretel a dark fantasy, a new movie genre for South Korea.


A young man, Eun Soo (Jeong-myeong Cheon), is driving through a forest when he’s in a car crash. By the time he regains consciousness, night has fallen. A young girl finds him and leads him back to her house deep in the woods. There he meets her family, who look like they’re celebrating the most perfect Christmas ever. Colourful toys, fairy lights and cakes are everywhere. But after staying the night, he has trouble finding the way back to civilisation, or even contacting it… Why can’t he escape the forest?

I was bracing myself in case this mystery turned into an extreme horror, and as I was trying to work out what was going on. The result was simpler than I’d expected, but many minor questions raised along the way were left unanswered.


As usual, with the best of Korean cinema, it’s beautifully designed, with highly accomplished filmmaking and faultless acting, especially from the three children, one of whom is very young.

Before the answers come, it’s a wonderful mystery. The closing act could have been far shorter, a lot of momentum is lost towards the climax, but is eventually satisfying. Without giving too much away, this may be a new genre for Korea, but it appears to have drawn from a certain episode of The Twilight Zone and a little from Village of the Damned… Though thankfully this isn’t another horror about how evil children are - let's kill them!


It borders on being a horror film, but not one that will totally satisfy modern horror fans. Yet there are a few moments that are too tough for children to watch, so 'dark fantasy' will have to do. It's also quite Christmassy!

The film is playing in a couple of small London cinemas at the moment, so hopefully it will get a UK DVD release. If not, there’s a region 3 DVD from Malaysia which even has the extras subbed in English, though many of the features look quite low resolution. They start with director Phil-sung Yim (who previously made the chilly ghost story Antarctic Journal) explaining how he approached the story. The film itself looks good, with well translated subtitles and an anamorphic widescreen picture.

BASKET CASE (1982) - Frank Henenlotter’s world of wicker

BASKET CASE
(1982, USA)

This is a film that I was told I absolutely had to see when it came out. It was right up my alley and while it's not as essential now, it's still a hamper full of gory fun.

Duane Bradley carries his hideously deformed, psychotic brother around in a wicker basket, on a mission to track down and avenge the surgical team who separated them as Siamese twins…

Rental VHS cover art in the UK

Set in Manhattan's Times Square when it was more red light district than tourist trap, this low budget horror looks definitively grindhouse. At the time, it became a huge success on video, even though most of the gore had been censored out. Basket Case looked as grainy and low-budget as The Evil Dead, but was more like Evil Dead II with it’s mix of blood-letting and black humour.

Basket Case continues in the vein of sexual comedy horror that peaked in the 1970s with Andy Warhol’s Blood For Dracula and Flesh For Frankenstein (1973), and predates Stuart Gordon’s slicker Re-animator (1985). The extreme blood-letting was tempered by the over-the-top tongue-in-cheek approach, yet adult enough to include sexuality and nudity, which many American horrors shied away from.

The film features a wide mixture of good and bad acting talent, though Kevin Van Hentenryck as the amiable Duane holds the whole film together. The special effects are hit and miss, but take on a surreal charm - the evil twin Belial certainly has character and, for a lump of rubber, even delivers pathos. The wealth of ideas and humour in the script make it very watchable today. As do the women's bizarrely thick hairstyles, though they're no match for the sheer size of Duane's naturally curly perm.

Basket Case aimed to out-gore anything else around at the time. The murders are sometimes cheated off camera, but are amusingly inventive and usually ludicrous. Belial's revenge involved separating his victims, when though they're not Siamese twins...

The scalpels in the face scene is my favourite for delirious horror movie acting - revelling in excess, echoing the screaming women of old movie posters, rather than anything distressingly realistic. Gore can be fun! Diana Browne, as Dr Kutter, would have got my vote for ‘best performance in a death scene’ that year, if there was such a thing.

As Belial gets jealous of his relatively normal brother having a relationship, sex rears its ugly head. But Henenlotter keeps the sexual interests of his audiences fairly well balanced, featuring male and female nudity, and even male full frontal shots, rare in any film.

For a perilously low budget, Henenlotter wrote and directed a great film, making the most of the atmosphere of the down-at-heel locations. He became an essential director for a few years, keeping fans happy with two Basket Case sequels, Frankenhooker, and the marvellous Brain Damage (a title easily confused with Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead and Bad Taste).

It’s a shame he couldn’t keep it up – there’s a huge gap in his directorial career between Basket Case 3 and the recent Bad Biology, which I’ve yet to see, but it's out on DVD in February. Welcome back, Frank!


I watched this again on the Something Weird DVD which is presented 4:3 full-frame, hinting that it was framed as much for home video as cinemas. The extras include a commentary track, some great out-takes and a lively tour round the filming locations with the director. The picture looks far less grainy than I remembered it and the dialogue is clearly audible - it wasn't always easy to hear in cinemas and on VHS.

Go on, have a peek inside...

MILK (2008) - serious seventies flashbacks

MILK
(2008, USA)

Gus Van Sant's new film opens in UK cinemas this week. I don't normally plug new releases, but this one is exciting for me personally because it's a subject close to my heart - the gay rights movement. Some people may identify their teenage years with The Breakfast Club or some other John Hughes' movie. For others it might be Napoleon Dynamite. Back in the 1970s, I wanted to be someone in Quadrophenia (an anti-establishment punk rebel) or National Lampoon's Animal House, (a drunk but popular under-achiever). But in reality, I was far closer to several characters in Milk, being a closeted teenager at the time, and an out-and-proud politically-involved idealist of a few years later. But this was all in rural England rather than San Francisco, where it was all happening.

For a new audience to the story, Milk should prove an encouraging reminder of grass roots political activism. How the energies of an abused minority can even be diverted from the destruction of rioting and channelled into a positive force. In a time of murderous queerbashing and a hostile police force, it was very easy to get angry or keep very, very closeted.

I like Van Sant as a filmmaker, and when he gets weird and experimental with stories based on real-life, it can be fascinating. His takes on the death of Kurt Cobain (Last Days) and the Columbine High School murders (Elephant) were far from straightforward docu-dramas. But a film about Harvey Milk would be wrong to take such a chance with.


Van Sant tried for years to get this project made. The script by Dustin Lance Black (who's also worked on the Bill Paxton TV series Big Love), and the casting of Sean Penn, finally helped the film to get made. The story is of a gay-rights activist who successfully campaigned his way into San Francisco City Hall in the late 1970s against all the odds. Harvey's story was well-known in the gay press, and later in an Oscar-winning documentary (see below), but I can't imagine many people knowing about it now. So I was surprised when the film pre-empted the story's shock ending right at the start. I'd like to have seen an audience taken surprise by Milk's assassination, with the sense of foreboding building up suspense, rather than just being ironically insightful.

The recreation of the 1970s is as I remembered it, and was scrupulously reconstructed with the help of many who were around at the time. Using the actual locations of Harvey's camera shop on Castro Street, which became his campaign office, and the spectacular City Hall, where much of the story took place, make it all look totally convincing.


Sean Penn, as Harvey Milk, is an uncanny performance, not only reminding us totally of the person in the news footage, but also channelling his ideals and personality - a dedicated man fired up to make some positive changes - not in it for the money, and balancing the big issues with the plights of individuals. A charismatic speaker and not without a sense of humour. The sort of person who could give politicians a good name.


Seeing photos of Penn, Emile Hirsch and Josh Brolin in 1970s clothes and hairstyles makes each of them instantly recognisable compared to the original characters they play (whose photos are included in the end credits).

While gay rights were a hard sell in 1970s USA, things were about to get disastrously tougher. We really needed Harvey inside City Hall in California in the AIDS-blighted 1980s, making his death all the more tragic and untimely.

For a while, I thought he'd opened the doors to a more accepting government and society, and that things could only get better. But the long-established gay community of San Francisco still has a vocal anti-gay presence. On our last fleeting visit in 2007, we witnessed an impromptu sidewalk demonstration by vocal Christian moralists on a high-profile street corner in central San Francisco (see photo). Proof that once a battle is won, the fight is far from over.

The film's UK website is here and here's the YouTube trailer.

Timed to coincide with the UK cinema release is the welcome return of the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, newly remastered for DVD on its 20th anniversary. I look forward to seeing it again, a wonderful feature-length documentary with interviews and footage of the real life Harvey Milk and his adversaries. This was the first time the story won an Academy Award but not, I suspect, the last.