Decoder (1984) – Legendärer Thriller mit W.S. Burroughs und den jungen Neubauten
Pop performer F.M. Einheit (Einsturzende Neubaüten) discovers that different sonic frequencies
induce different patterns of behaviour in listeners, first in his own studio, and later in the local
'H-Burger' restaurant, where the passive muzak appears to be wiping people's emotions...
The government headquarters responsible for this are represented by a huge 'fascist' building
full of winding spools. Meanwhile, Bill Rice, the government official who works there,
goes on a journey of sexual discovery in the local red-light district...
Einheit, after several arguments with his girlfriend, played by former child prostitute
Christianne F. and dream sequences
featuring William S. Burroughs, finds himself amongst underground rebels
led by Genesis P. Orridge (Psychic TV / Throbbing Gristle), who explains to FM how
the government have been 'controlling' the public through muzak.
Soundtrack by Psychic TV, Dave Ball (Soft Cell/PTV), FM Einheit, The The,
William S. Burroughs, and Einsturzende Neubauten.
23h
Death Powder
Shigeru Izumiya's underground classic Desu Pawuda aka Death Powder
(Japan, 1986) is definitely among the weirdest, most bizarre films ever made. It reminds of David Lynch's Eraserhead, Shinya Tsukamoto's
Tetsuo and some other extremely memorable and unique exercises in
cinematic magic and limits beyond imagination. Death Powder has very
little to do with plot or story, and what's there is extremely hard to
follow and seems not to make any sense. One character says at one point
to another: "Try to pretend that you're understanding what it's all
about. Like life itself, this makes no sense." That line really tells
something what to expect from this low budget gem from Japan, the land
of many great film makers.
There are three mercenaries/soldiers who go to some mysterious
storehouse in which even more mysterious figure is lying on a bed
without any mattress. Suddenly, the figure blows some dust/powder on one
of the soldiers and then the nightmare begins. It soon turns out, that
one of the soldiers (played by the director Izumiya himself) has already
been "infected" by this powder and now the question is what will happen
to these two hapless victims, the other being a female by the way. The
newly "infected" mercenary starts to have severe hallucinations into
some netherworld, a universe unknown to us and a place never depicted on
film before, and soon it is revealed that the powder has still many
more victims to "dust".
This masterpiece is highly recommended for all those interested in art,
underground and hyper bizarre cinema experiences and it would be great
if this had some official VHS/DVD release with English subs at some
point which it never had.
Because of technical problems we will use a small beamer.
That's why we will have
SPECIAL SMALL MOVIES NIGHT!!!
Doors open at 20h. After "Death Powder" we show a bunch of extreme Triphead Films. BEWARE!!!
20h30: Japan 1986, 1h, japanese with english fansubs:
The ultimate cinematic acid trip to the limits!!!
Shigeru Izumiya's underground classic Desu Pawuda aka Death Powder
(Japan, 1986) is definitely among the weirdest, most bizarre films I've
ever seen. It reminds me of David Lynch's Eraserhead, Shinya Tsukamoto's
Tetsuo and some other extremely memorable and unique exercises in
cinematic magic and limits beyond imagination. Death Powder has very
little to do with plot or story, and what's there is extremely hard to
follow and seems not to make any sense. One character says at one point
to another: "Try to pretend that you're understanding what it's all
about. Like life itself, this makes no sense." That line really tells
something what to expect from this low budget gem from Japan, the land
of many great film makers.
There are three mercenaries/soldiers who go to some mysterious
storehouse in which even more mysterious figure is lying on a bed
without any mattress. Suddenly, the figure blows some dust/powder on one
of the soldiers and then the nightmare begins. It soon turns out, that
one of the soldiers (played by the director Izumiya himself) has already
been "infected" by this powder and now the question is what will happen
to these two hapless victims, the other being a female by the way. The
newly "infected" mercenary starts to have severe hallucinations into
some netherworld, a universe unknown to us and a place never depicted on
film before, and soon it is revealed that the powder has still many
more victims to "dust".
At this point I want to say that the plot is extremely hard to follow
and I had to watch the film twice in order to be able to write about it.
The story and plot are not the things this film has to offer and thus
the audience for this kind of film becomes even smaller. The film is
also extremely slow moving and has many "dead" moments (the film runs
mere 62 minutes, though) so don't watch this when you're tired since
this film requires your full attention. These are not necessarily bad
things if one can enjoy and appreciate this kind of different and very
personal and independent cinema. If you thought Tetsuo was way too
irritating and hard to understand in its madness, then forget Death
Powder right now because this is perhaps even more bizarre experience.
The message is the same as in Tetsuo: The fear of technology and to what
extents it will grow. The camera angles at the beginning where we are
in the city among other people are very weird and twisted and they
depict the same fears and menaces as Tetsuo does. "Only you can save the
world from itself" says one voice during the nightmarish hallucination
segments to one character. Besides these themes, Death Powder is one
incredible exercise in low budget film making and ultra menacing and
mind altering imagery to haunt the viewer days to come, and nights, in
my case!
Death Powder is highly recommended for all those interested in
underground and hyper bizarre cinema experiences and it would be great
if this had some official VHS/DVD release with English subs at some
point.
20h15, Poland 1978, 1h56, polish with english fansubs
The action of "Wsród nocnej ciszy" takes place before Second World
War.A series of cold and brutal killings of small boys shocks the
citizens of Polish town.The children are murdered with a gun and a
black clad killer always leaves one trace on crime scene:a small toy
with the picture of a cat on it.Police officer Teofil Herman begins to
track an elusive killer..."Quiet Is the Night" is based on Ladislav
Fuks novel "Sledztwo prowadzi radca Heumann" from 1971.The acting is
excellent and the characters are well-developed.The relationship
between father and son is truly believable and tragic.The climax is
strikingly powerful and intense.If you are a fan of Italian gialli or
Fritz Lang's "M" you can't miss this forgotten Polish classic.
" Very powerful Polish giallo"
" This film is one of the greatest I have ever seen. Unfortunately, it has
never been released in this country. I saw it at the Montreal film
festival in 1979 and again in Montreal on a visit in the mid-eighties.
(Please let's get the many great Eastern European films of the sixties and
seventies made available to film lovers.)...The two lead actors are both excellent, and this is a story that is intense,
interesting, thought provoking and accessible - Who can't relate to a
family's communication problems."
"strongly recommended"
22h30, France 1985, 90min, french with english fansubs
A serial killer signs his crimes Billy-Ze-Kick
(« Ze » being « the » as pronounced by someone with a French accent).
The only trouble is that Billy-Ze-Kick is a character invented by a
police inspector when he tells stories to his 12 years old daughter.
Does she somehow direct the killer ?
Billy-Ze-Kick, from a novel by Jean Vautrin,
is a one-of-a-kind movie, set in a slightly warped world and including
seriously deranged characters. Even the sanest among them have enough
idiosyncrasies not to belong is any standard crime movie. Thanks to a
well-written script and great performances by the likes of Zabou, Francis Perrin or Michael Lonsdale,
this is original, intriguing, provocative, clever, funny and, most of
all, downright crazy. I put it under « hidden gem » because althought it
has comedy elements, it’s not really a comedy, nor is it really a
thriller, nor does it belong to any real genre that I can think of.
A surrealist comedy musical with gore, nudity, a serial killer, a
transsexual, a schizophrenic, a comic book hero, terrorism, a wedding, a
lisping heroine and an old lady caught nicking a tin of sardines in a
supermarket. In short: this is very very unusual. Do not miss the
questioning of witnesses after the assassination! Very entertaining, but
not to everyone's tastes.
Montag, 3. September 2012
take 12: 5.9.12
What genre? All of them!
Doors open 19h30.
19h30-20h15 Short movies
20h15, South Korea 2003, 116min., english subtitles
A traumatized young man abducts Korean leaders, believing they're toxic
reptilian aliens - a fifth column launching a takeover of beloved Earth.
Stumped law enforcement geniuses half-seriously hire a disgraced,
disheveled private detective with a long-ago history of super-crime
solving. The alienated South Korean youngster Lee Byeong-gu builds an
isolated basement command post/torture chamber/film studio to force the
awful truth out of the slimy, uncooperative politicians and
businesspeople, then alert the public. Byeong-gu is helped by his
devoted girlfriend, who buys his theories, but wonders if his horrible
childhood has colored his thinking.
Parts of Save the Green Planet are darkly comedic, but
even these moments are laced with a grim, gritty, malevolent cruelty.
The majority of the film is a thriller, as pitiful, insane Byeong-gu Lee
(Ha-kyun Shin, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) kidnaps a rich
executive named Man-shik Kang, believing him to be an alien from
Andromeda. Kang faces cruel torture at the hands of his captor, who
genuinely believes he is saving the planet. Meanwhile, several police
detectives are searching desperately for the missing man.
Sometimes, you get a lot more than you bargained for in a film. Although
I found Save the Green Planet disturbing and unsettling, I have to
admit that it's a far more impressive film than I expected. It has one
of the most powerful commentaries on human nature I have ever seen,
mostly because it shows how quickly we dispense with humanity as soon as
there is some greater cause. The violence at the end of this film would
be cathartic in most other thrillers, but here it just feels
heartbreaking: yet another unnecessary tragic death.
Save the Green Planet is also a film that shouldn't have
worked. Thanks to a truly incredible cast and some razor-sharp and
intense cinematography, director Jun-hwan Jeong jerks us viciously
through a wide range of emotions. The film is a vicious roller coaster,
eliciting wry laughs, cringes of pain and moments of thoughtful
reflection. Although it's not always an enjoyable film, it had me in its
clutches from the first minute.
Realistically, Save the Green Planet isn't for everyone. In fact, I can
only really recommend it to adventurous viewers with strong stomachs who
also like to think. It makes an interesting companion piece to Oldboy,
though, if only for a similar outlook on human nature. This is a film
that deserves to be watched and talked about, though, despite the lack
of attention it has received.
22h15: France 1987, 87min., english subtitles
Quite an unusual film in French cinema. It deals with an unsuccessful
theatre troop trying to revive the Grand Guignol. It's kind of a comedy
with very desperate characters, adultery, voyeurism, sleazy situations,
weird fantasy sequences and plenty of fun special effects. No
masterpiece but definitely a strange object.
20h15: Poland 1981, 100min. polish with english subs:
"Mis," by Stanislaw Bareja, is one of the best and highest rated Polish
comedies. With its plot tightly set in Polish reality, the film presents
a skewed view on Polish society of the 1980s. The film's main plot is
intertwined with grotesque and absurd situations from everyday life
(exaggerated to fit the film's comedic purpose). The film focuses on
Ryszard Ochodzki (Stanislaw Tym), a chairman of a sports-club, whose
passport has been mysteriously damaged, which makes him unable to leave
the country. He wants to get to London, where he is supposed to withdraw
a large sum of money from his bank account. Unfortunately, he shares
his bank account with his ex-wife, who also wants the cash. The bulk of
the film follows Ochodzki's efforts to outsmart his wife, get a new
passport and get to London as soon as possible. I have no words to
describe the film's brilliance. While some of the jokes might be unfunny
to non-Polish audiences, the film still makes for a fantastically comic
viewing and a brilliant insight into the 1980s' Poland.
Doors open at 19h30. Before and after the main features ANIMATED SHORTS from USA. 20h: USA 2003, 100 min, english (a kind of), no subtitles:
Producer, writer, director and star Tommy Wiseau has created a film that was produced, writting, directed and stared himself, which is shown in many movie theatres regularly and is considered as cult.
IMDB user comment
I have now seen Mr. Tommy Wiseau's cinematic tour-de-force, `The Room'
three times. With each viewing, `The Room' becomes more complexly
entangled in and inseparable from my own life. I no longer know where
The Room ends and I begin.
It is, without question, the worst film ever made. Including movies made
on beta max video cameras in special education high school classes. But
this comment is in no way meant to be discouraging. Because while The
Room is the worst movie ever made it is also the greatest way to spend a
blisteringly fast 100 minutes in the dark. Simply put, `The Room' will
change your life.
It's not just the dreadful acting or the sub-normal screenplay or the
bewildering direction or the musical score so soaked in melodrama that
you will throw up on yourself or the lunatic-making cinematography; no,
there is something so magically wrong with this movie that it can only
be the product of divine intervention. If you took the greatest
filmmakers in history and gave them all the task of purposefully
creating a film as spectacularly horrible as this not one of them, with
all their knowledge and skill, could make anything that could even be
considered as a contender. Not one line or scene would rival any moment
in The Room.
The centerpiece of this filmic holocaust is Mr. Tommy Wiseau himself.
Without him, it would still be the worst movie ever made, but with him
it is the greatest worst movie ever made. Tommy has been described as a
Cajun, a Croatian cyborg, possibly from Belgium, clearly a product of
Denmark, or maybe even not from this world or dimension. All of these
things are true at any one moment. He is a tantalizing mystery stuffed
inside an enigma wrapped in bacon and smothered in cheese. You will fall
in love with this man even as you are repelled by him from the first
moment he steps onto screen with his long Louis the Fourteenth style
black locks and thick triangular shoulders packed into an oddly fitting
suit, and his metallic steroid destroyed skin. Tommy looks out of place,
out of time and out of this world. There has never been anything else
like him. Nor will there ever be.
Just when you think the movie might lapse into an ordinary, pedestrian
sort of badness, Johnny's best friend Mark, a man who's job seems to be
to wear James Brolin's beard from Amityville Horror, shows up and
electrifies the screen with a performance so wooden that it belongs in
the lumber section of Home Depot. Incidentally, Mark is played by Greg
Sestero, who, in addition to being described as a department store
mannequin, was also the line producer on `The Room' and one of Tommy
Wiseau's five (5!!!!!) assistants on the movie. Lisa forces Mark, amid
his paltry, unconvincing protests, to have an affair with her on their
uncomfortable circular stairs. For no apparent reason Lisa decides that
she is made of pure evil and wants to torture her angelic and insanely
devoted fiancé, Johnny.
See this film at all costs. See it twice. Or three times. Or as one kid
that I met from Woodland Hills has, 12 times! See it until you can
recite every precious line of dialogue this movie has to offer. Let The
Room become your new religion and Tommy Wiseau your prophet preaching
the gospel according to Johnny.
My dream is to someday buy a theater and run The Room 24 hours a day, 7
days a week until the print disintegrates. I hope it becomes your dream
as well. IMDB user comment
ca. 22h, USA 1973, 90 min., english no subtitles
Kino Anders presents proudly one of the best horror movies ever made!!!
Unsettling... surreal... otherworldly... those are just a few words one
can use to describe this picture. Engrossing... unforgettable... a few
more. This movie is worth a thousand words only because no one word
will suffice.
Messiah of Evil is the story of a woman who goes looking for her father
after he mysteriously stops correspondence with her. When she arrives
at his seaside home, she finds that the whole town has gone quite
batty. She is joined by a far out new-age couple who were curiously
attracted to the strange town. Together, the trio find out that the
town has become one big, evil, flesh and blood craving, moon worshiping
zombie cult.
DEAD PEOPLE (or MESSIAH OF EVIL) is one of those rare horror films that
comes along only a few instances in one's lifetime.
I was totally knocked-out by this forgotten film. Everything about it
is mesmerizing. The thing I was impressed the most about DEAD PEOPLE is
the mood. I've rarely seen a horror this darkly moody, not since
SUSPIRIA. Horror fans looking for gore or fast paced action or even the
standard way horror films are usually made (high body count, an
unstoppable killer, etc) will be disappointed by DEAD PEOPLE. It's none
of those things.
DEAD PEOPLE is directed like a nightmare and everything about it is
disorienting. There's almost no familiar point of reference in the
movie. Everything about it is deliberately done as to make the viewers
feel like they cannot relate to what's going on, which is probably why
this film looks like a failure to many. But for me, the effect is
fantastic. This "disorientating" technique is very common now, with
celebrated filmmakers, such as David Lynch, who have made entire
careers utilizing this style of film-making.
Messiah of Evil (the most common title) is not the kind of zombie movie that
most people expect. The zombies are small-town residents slowly turned into
the living dead by a supernatural force while remaining functional the whole
time. They are able to speak, move, and act as a living person would; their
main objective is not to eat the living (although they do), but to wait for
the coming of their dark messiah. If this concept turns you off, then you
may want to skip this movie.
With that out of the way, the film is a surreal, expressionistic, and highly
imaginative piece of avant-garde terror. The above-average cast turns in
superb performances, with Michael Greer and Marianna Hill sympathetic as the
offbeat leads. The images are amazing: Joy Bang slowly surrounded by zombies
in the cinema, the marquee reading KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE, Greer roaming the
deserted streets, the bleeding citizens of Point Dune staring out at the
ocean...I could go on and on. The low budget shows, and the faded, grainy
color composition only enhances the phantasmagorical tone. Elisha Cook's
recounting of the town's history is incredibly creepy, as is Hill's
narration (in both hysteria and cool detachment). Raun McKinnon's sad,
plaintive performance of the theme song, "Hold on to Love," is another
haunting aspect. An intelligent, chilling modern horror movie that doesn't
need buckets of on-screen gore to make it's point.
