The Untold Story (1993)

The Untold Story (1993)

Special Time and Location for this week only of October 28th, 8:00PM in Bolton B52
location information please see this link http://www4.uwm.edu/map/vt-cent.cfm Bolton is the building behind Lubar Hall on N. Maryland ave. The room is located in the basement and includes a theater style set up with a DVD projector.

In the late 1980's changes were made to the domestic Hong Kong film ratings system. This opened up the possibility of films dealing with more adult subject matter, under the highest content ratting, Category 3, generally abbreviated as CAT III. Film of this rating including those dealing with controversial subject matter, either sexual or political such as Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together (1997.)

But the majority of CAT III films focused upon either sex or violence, so much so that this began to generate its own subgenre or movement. During the heyday of CAT III films almost half of all Hong Kong productions fit into this type. As a genre, they revolve around two impulses, spectacle and novelty. With each new film attempting to outdo the last, this was a genre of ever increasing range of subject.

The Untold Story is one of the famous of these films, helping to affirm the stardom of Anthony Wong, who plays a sadistic madman. The story is supposedly based upon events in Macao in the late 1960's. It deals with a murderer who flees from Hong Kong and then becomes involved in grisly events in a Macao restaurant. For his role Anthony Wong received the Hong Kong Film Award for best actor, a major accomplishment in the story of CAT III. A wave of copycat films and loose sequels followed.

Hong Kong, Director Herman Yau, Cast Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Danny Lee Sau-Yin, Emily Kwan (Bo Wai), Lau Siu-Ming and Shing Fui-On, 95 minutes, in Cantonese with English subtitles

The Trek (2002)

The Trek (2002)

October 21st, 7:00PM in Garland 104 (2441 E. Hartford)

A group of students and naturalists journey into the dense Thai jungle in an attempt to locate a mythical new species of elephant. But things begin to go badly when they discover that everything in the jungle seems to want them dead in the most painful ways possible.

The Trek has a relatively strait forward pattern of seek and destroy, the students seek and everything else destroys. But it in the spectacle of the attacks ranging from insects, spiders, giant snakes and gunmen. The counterpoint to this is the subplots involving the students and their personal relationships including several westerners that have become mixed up in the expatiation leading to predictably absurd results.

Thailand, Directors Chanchai Pantasi, Cast Danai Smuthkochorn, Paul Visut Carey, Eilidh MacQueen, Manaswee Krittanookul and Supaksorn Chaimongkol, 103 minutes, in Thai with English subtitles

Night on the Galactic Railroad (1985)

Night on the Galactic Railroad (1985)


October 14th, 7:00PM in Garland 104 (2441 E. Hartford)


The range of style and subject matter of Japanese animation is far greater then the fraction of it that has become well known in the United States, and this film is a striking example of that fact. Night on the Galactic Railroad is an examination of ideas of existence, life and death seen through the eyes of a child. The central character is Giovanni, a young boy who lives a quiet life caring for his mother in what seems to be a small Western European town at the turn of the nineteenth century. One night a phantasmal train arrives to take him and his best friend on a metaphorical journey through space and time.

Stylistically, the film is slow moving and surrealistic in tone. These factors are what fuel its champions and detractors. The subject matter is also rather heavy, but it would be unfair to say that it is not a film accessible in tone to a great many children. It also deals with a range of philosophical beliefs including both the Christian and Buddhist conceptions of death, as well as a range of episodes that have a distinctly metaphorical bent.

The film is based upon the 1927 novel Night on the Milky Way Railroad by Miyazawa Kenji. For those that are not familiar with his work, he is a man who is widely considered to be the greatest Japanese poet of the early twentieth century. The film is a faithful adaptation of one of his most popular works. During his short life he lived in rural Japan and had a deep interest in varying philosophical disciplines including Buddhism. The majority of his work including the novel in question was only discovered after his death. But a major chan in the adaption from the novel to the film comes from noted avant-garde playwright Minoru Betsuyaku who pinned the script. He transformed all of the characters into cats. Before seeing the film many tend to find this discouraging, but in reality it actually greatly complements the material by giving the characters an unreal, slightly abstract quality. There is also a nod in the film to Miyazawa Kenji’s love and fervor towards Esperanto, many of the signs in the film are posted in both it and the fictional language of the cats.

This isn’t the only work of animation that was based around Miyazawa Kenji’s life and works, in honor of the centennial anniversary of his birth the 1996 animated film Spring and Chaos was produced. It was a loosely biographical film detailing events in the poets frequently tragic life and depicts the writing of the novel that Night on the Galactic Railroad was based upon. Other works that have an acknowledged debt to this source material include Leiji Matsumoto’s well loved Galaxy Express 999 manga, which spawned a range of feature films and a TV series.

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Japan, Director Gisaburo Sugii, Cast Mayumi Tanaka and Chika Sakamoto, 108 minutes, in Japanese with English subtitles

Lady Terminator (1986)

Lady Terminator (1986)

October 7th, 7:00PM in Garland 104 (2441 E. Hartford)

It is true that you can learn a lot about a culture from its popular forms of entertainment, and without a doubt this applies as much to the absurd as to the series.

While other cinematic forms exist in Indonesia, the only area that has received any kind of world wide exposure are the Exploitation, Super Hero and Horror films produced primarily from the mid 1980's to mid 90's. The aforementioned films are legendary for their otherworldly strangeness, mixing the serious with the camp.

In Lady Terminator a long dead witch possesses the body of a young lady, who it seems is not a lady but an anthropologist. Now she hunts the descendant of the man who originally killed her, now the only person who has the power to stop her return. Instead of taking a few elements from The Terminator, the film brazenly copies entire sequences and frequently one-ups them. This can be said to be the spirit of this kind of remarkably unhinged romp, which for the right audience is a genuine treat.

Indonesia, Director Jalil Jackson, Cast Barbara Anne Constable, Claudia Rademaker and Christopher J. Hart, 82 minutes, in English