Archive for the '1980s' Category

ANOTHER’S NEST <1982&gt;– directed by Lee Gi-hwan. Starring Kim Mi-sook as Soo-hee , Ha Myeong-joong as Byeong-no and Ahn Seong-ki as Min-wook. Running Time: originally 105 minutes–see below. Originally released on November 20, 1982>

Soo-hee wants a baby more than anything in the world. She is not feeling fulfilled as a housewife and has filled her side of the bedroom with baby dolls..the larger of which she knits clothes and booties for. Her husband, Byeong-ho has filled his side of the room with cacti, a symbol of the fact that he is unable to father a child. This unfortunate condition constantly preys on his mind and he searches desperately for a cure through both ordinary channels and the extreme, like drinking fresh snake’s blood. He clearly loves his wife and sympathizes with her desire for a family. He tries to distract her by providing her with anything she wants..new clothes, a beautiful, modern apartment.. to no avail. Whenever Soo-hee sees children at play, her mind wanders away and she becomes sullen and distant. This distance is growing into an insurmountable gulf with her husband and Soo-hee is soon seeking attention from men outside of the home…and with one man in particular..Min-wook. The two meet with growing frequency and both start to become careless in keeping their relationship a secret from Byeong-no. One especially close call sends Min-wook out of the window on a tiny ledge some 10 or 12 stories above the ground.

This narrow escape does nothing to diminish Min-wook’s desire to be with Soo-hee and he all but confesses to Byeong-no that he has been sleeping with his wife. Soo-hee, for her part, becomes cold and suspicious towards her husband, creating scenarios in her head in which her jealous husband murders both herself and Min-wook. Then one day, Soo-hee’s prayers are answered when a visit to her doctor confirms that she is pregnant, but when she tells her husband it does not have the desired result. First of all, she is no longer in love with Byeong-no and the thought of raising a child with him no longer interests her. Secondly, it makes Byeong-no very suspicious of his wife’s behavior. Despite all the treatements and tonics he has been trying, Byeong-no knows that he will never be able to father a child and he starts paying closer attention to what his wife is up to. Her late night disappearing act from the home is no longer going unnoticed and Byeong-no eventually learns the truth about his best friend and his wife. Rather than confront the pair, he starts playing mindgames with them like frightening his wife with a box of snakes. His torment of Min-wook is a little more serious when he nearly has him crushed under a hydraulic press they are working on.

Although Soo-hee never learns of her lover’s near-death experience, she begins to fear for both of their lives and makes a plan to run away with Min-wook. In spite of some snags along the way, the pair are able to escape and wind up at a seaside villa. There they passionately confirm their love, blissfully unaware that Byeong-no has located them and is on his way for a final confrontation.

It is hard to stay interested in the film when you begin to really hate the main character. Her treatment of Byeong-no was terrible. I am not saying that it was necessary for her to stay with him especially when it is clear that she no longer loves him, but she had no basis for creating scenarios in her head in which Byeong-no is a vicious killer. Also, her motive for cheating was rather shallow. She is bored. She knits baby clothes for a child whom she doesn’t have and stares out the window at the children playing outside her apartment complex. It is also strongly suggested that sex with Byeong-no is not very satisfying as the rather stubby, malformed cactus he is nursing when we are introduced to him not-so-subtly indicates. So she seeks sexual satisfaction outside of the house. Although she is meeting Min-wook from the very beginning of the film, there is no indication that she knows who he is or his connection with her husband. Their secret meetings are done entirely in pitch blackness from the moment she walks in the door of Min-wook’s home. The only way Min-wook learns more about her is by following her out.

Once the two realize that they are connected through Byeong-no, Min-wook seems to take this as a new and exciting challenge. He flirts with danger by strongly dropping hints to Byeong-no about his relationship with his wife. Prior to that, he often filled in his friend and co-worker on his sexual escapades with a mysterious girl. Later, he convinces himself that Soo-hee needs rescuing from her husband whom we have seen up to that point showing nothing but kindness to Soo-hee. In his mind, Soo-hee moves from being a fantasy sexual adventure to a real-life adventure where he must save the damsel in distress. Does he really love her? Despite what he may say to Soo-hee, I think that he does not. Once she becomes available, the adventure will be over. I think it was telling how distant he was during the final, anti-climatic confrontation in which all of Soo-hee assumptions and fears about her husband and what he is capable of prove to be false. By the end, she is free to go with Min-wook and have their child together, but I wonder how long their relationship will last now that it is not forbidden and dangerous anymore. And that is not just because of Min-wook.. even Soo-hee continues with her coy ‘turn off the lights’ game prior to sex, re-creating the atmosphere of forbidden love when it is no longer necessary.

After watching the film, I read what was written about it on the KMDb. To my surprise, there was an extra sentence that implied Byeong-no kills himself, however this does not happen in the movie. I then did some checking and found that a scene had been removed from the original script in which Byeong-no does indeed kill himself after admitting to himself that Soo-hee and Min-wook are in love and that he has lost his wife forever. The version I saw was apparently from the VHS release which was a full 15 minutes shorter than the theatrical release. I, for one, am glad that was left on the cutting room floor when the video version was made. It makes Byeong-no more sympathetic and courageous and less in need of our pity.

Another’s Nest is not available on DVD. I was able to view this film via HanaTV.

A Country Affair <1984>– Directed by Kim Eung-cheon. Starring Jo Yong-won , Choi Yoon-seok and Hwang Joon-wook . Running time: 95 minutes. Originally released May 26, 1984.

Due to her mother’s battle with cancer and the need to be near a specialist in that disease, young Shin-ae is uprooted from Seoul and sent far down the peninsula to the island of Eulpo off the coast of Yeosu.  If this move distresses her, one would never know because Shin-ae always shows herself publically to be a bright, positive and confident young lady who seems not to have a care in the world.  Money is certainly not an issue for her or her mother and Shin-ae is always dressed in the best clothes and even has her own autobike that she plans to ride around the island and to her new school. However, she does not start out by making the best impression on her new neighbors, classmates or school adminstrators.  For example, on the boat to Eulpo, she is approached by a man in his thirties who appears to flirt with her. She lies and claims to be a college student and able to smoke or drink if she wishes, only to discover that man is Mr. Han, one of her high school teachers. Another teacher, Ms Kang, takes what seems like a personal dislike of this priviledged young woman. Ms Kang is in charge of morality and life ethics of the students and she finds Shin-ae’s expensive clothes and long hair offensive as well as her frank way of speaking.  And then there is Hoon, the son of Dr. Kim whom Shin-ae and her mother are boarding with for the foreseeable future.  He is about the same age as Shin-ae but finds her casual way of speaking to him offensive and he resents how Shin-ae and her mother get along so well with his father, appearing like a ready-made family while he still misses his deceased mother. 

The problem with Hoon is rather easily solved as he soon finds himself falling in love with Shin-ae.  His father points out that he barely knows the girl and recommends he cool his heels for a while, but the two naturally begin to grow closer and spend some time together.  Shin-ae’s initial lie to Mr. Han is also easily forgiven although her second lie to him is a little more difficult to let slide.  In order to get out of cutting her hair, Shin-ae lies to Ms Kang saying that Mr. Han had allowed her a month’s grace period and that she could get away with having long hair for the time being.  Mr. Han covers for Shin-ae, preventing her lie from being exposed, but that causes resentment to build up in the crowded classroom.  The other girls are regularly inspected by Ms Kang for make-up, hair length, clothes styles and even perfume. The fact that Shin-ae appears to be getting preferentional treatment does not go over well with most of the other students but she does manage to make one close friend.

Shin-ae complicates the issue by growing a little too close to Mr Han.  To apologize for lying, Shin-ae goes to Mr. Han’s room and spends several hours cleaning it while he is out. She brings him flowers, invites him for ice cream and takes long walks on the beach with him.  Inadvertantly, she develops a full-blown crush on her teacher and his responses to her seem to give her hope that her feelings are reciprocated. She believes the only thing keeping them separated is the fact that he is the teacher and she is a student, but that is something that will not be an issue forever.

Meanwhile, the girls in Shin-ae’s class have had quite enough of this teacher’s pet and decide to teach her a lesson. While on a field trip in the hills, one clique of girls attack and overpower Shin-ae who had wandered off on her own after submiting her essay. Armed with a pair of scissors, the bitter girls make short work of Shin-ae’s luxurious locks.  When the teacher finally arrives on the scene, Shin-ae is sobbing alone, her hair butchered and much of it scattered around the forest floor. This is made even more poignant as Shin-ae’s essay is read over the images where she explains there was a reason she was insisting on long hair.. and it was here that I was pleasantly surprised. The movie does give a valid reason–which I will reveal shortly because, let’s face it, this movie will never be released on DVD with English subtitles– and it is one I should have seen coming but never considered. Like her jealous classmates, I had assumed that Shin-ae was hanging on to her long hair out of a combination of vanity and a sense of superiority. I believed that she thought that since she was from Seoul, a far more progressive city than the town of Eulpo, and she was trying to teach the country-folk the new, better ways of living.  Boy, was I wrong about her. The reason that she wanted long hair– and wanted to grow it out for just one more month– is that her mother will be starting chemotherapy soon and she wanted to make a wig for her mother in case she lost her hair in the treatments! 

I was very impressed by that revelation. In short order, her classmates apologize, Mr. Han and Ms Kang convinced not to resign because of this incident and the end of the school term comes. I thought the movie was ending here but was surprised to see that I was only a third of the way through. The script then made it clear that they were going to spend the rest of the movie dealing with the very uncomfortable-to-watch relationship between Shin-ae and Mr. Han.  In reality, it is not so bad. We the viewers know that Mr. Han is in a relationship with Miss Kwon, another teacher at the school, but this fact is unknown to the students. However, what we are shown are Shin-ae’s fantasies about her and Mr. Han. While I know that it may not be uncommon for a young student to have a crush on a teacher, it seems completely wrong to be privilege to these intensely personal feelings for a man that is completely inappropriate for her. And these daydreams are made worse because the older man takes on the role of pursuer of the teenager. 

When Shin-ae finally realizes that Mr. Han has no real interest in her and wil soon marry Miss Kwon, she has an emotional breakdown and collapses unconsious in the wet sand on the shore. How long she lay there is unknown, but we next see her, still unconscious, hooked up to an IV in the hospital fighting for her life against a high fever, with the all-but-forgotton Hoon loyally and hopefully remaining by her bedside, his love for her still strong despite her attraction to someone else. Will she recover? Will Hoon’s unrequited love be rewarded?  Or will she sink from coma into death and leave everyone to mourn the loss of her bright presence?  After the events of the horrible haircut, this whole situation seems tacked on as an afterthought and, in fact, is very anti-climatic. The last thirty minutes of this film manages to lower the overall quality of the script which was relatively well-paced and well thought out in its first hour. Because of that, the movie moves, in my estimation, from being good and easy to watch to rather forgettable and a little dull in its finale.

The Goblin’s Club– directed by Park Seung-cheol, Voiced by Ki Eung-do.  Running Time:  60 minutes.  Date of Release: July 20, 1986.

In the dead of night, sinister ghost-like figures dance in the darkness on the outskirts of a sleepy village. One by one, the residents of the town extinguish their lights to retire for the night and, as the last light goes out, the waiting spirits make their move. Flowing like water, merging together and dividing again, the spectoral visitors attack each house, frightening the peasants from their slumber. In some cases, the spirits take on a solid form revealing themselves to be purple-skinned monstrosities with horns like a devil and armed to the teeth. In the morning, the villagers find some of the men of the village have gone missing, taken away to wherever these mysterious beings dwell. Night after night this scene plays outself out, leaving the remaining villagers helpless and terrified for their lives.

Cha-dol knows nothing of this. He is far more at home in the woods than in any village. He and his best friend, a talking bear, live free to spar when they want and go where they please. They know nothing of the terrors faced each night by the villagers until a chance encounter with Ibbeun. After rescuing her from some roving bandits, Cha-dol and Bear learn that her father was among the men who disappeared in the middle of the night. Also hearing that the stories of the nocturnal visitations are being attributed to goblins is the Goblin King. He is furious knowing that his subjects would never violate the peace that exists between humankind and his underground race. He sends a party out with a magic, golden club to seek revenge on those perpetrating the reign of terror. Leading the small band of goblins is the Goblin Prince, little more than a boy himself. His inexperience proves to be his undoing as he gets into a fight with Bear. The massive and clumsy animal crushes the Prince who loses the club. While the other goblins are dealing with bear who escapes back to Cha-dol, a watching peasant makes off with the prince’s club.

The peasant makes his way home and is attacked by the purple-skinned goblins upon his arrival. Even without knowing how to control the goblin’s weapon, it is powerful enough to send them running. In their efforts to escape, one of the attackers drops something which had come loose in the fight. It turns out to be a mask and their is a human face underneath. The peasant is not clever enough to make the connection, but Cha-dol and his band have been joined by an emissary from the King and the goblin prince. They confront the peasant and he returns the goblin’s property and explains what happens. As he does this, the entire party is attacked once again. The phoney goblins have returned, this time with a powerful witch who is able to transform them into the spirits we saw at the beginning of the film as well as hurl powerful blasts from her hands.  In the ensuing chaos, she steals the magic club, but not before the prince is able to deactivate it so it cannot be used.  She returns it to her master who is kidnapping the villagers to work in an enormous underground cavern containing veins of gold.  The small band of heroes make their way to the hideout and prepare for a life-and-death showdown between the fake goblins, their master, the witch and her equally powerful brother. 

Korean goblins are an interesting lot that have not received very good treatment on the big or small screen. Few movies deal with them and those that do are often very childish. They are often seen in tv shows designed for very young children, often taking the roles of genies and granting wishes for kids while teaching reading or counting. I would like to see a more serious movie about them, especially if it were in the vein of the horror genre. They certainly could fit the bill of a horror movie monster based on appearence with the horns, warts and animal skin clothes. They often carried a large, spiked club which was the source of their power and I believe had the ability to transform themselves into brooms so they would not be detected by humans. While not technically evil, they would take revenge for perceived wrongs and would enact punishment on the wicked. I could definitely see them being used in a horror film set in modern times. Someone needs to get to work on a screenplay right away.

I first learned about Korean goblins through a folk tale. In it, an old man with a hideous goiter was walking through the woods singing when he encountered a goblin. The goblin demanded that the old man give him the secret of such an excellent singing voice. Knowing that goblins are powerful, but not very bright, the old man quickly claimed that the goiter was the source of his vocal prowess.  In an instant, the goblin removed the goiter from the old man and magically attached it to his own neck. The creature then ran away, cackling madly as it thought he had tricked the old man into giving up his prized possession. The old man returned home where his neighbor saw he had been cured. The neighbor also possessed a goiter of large size and wanted to know what had happened. After hearing the story, the second old man ran off into the woods and found the goblins lair. He hid there until the goblins had gathered and then made himself known. He claimed he had another goiter for them that would make them sing beautifully but before any of the goblins could move, the first goblin cried out that they were being deceived as his goiter ‘no longer worked.’ The irrate goblin pulled it from his neck and attached it to the old man. The man was forced to return home, with two goiters instead of one. 

The goblins in The Goblin’s Club are not frightening. The atmospheric beginning is quickly made less frightening when the glowing spirit forms begin dancing and marching like something out of a Betty Boop cartoon. Despite some violence, the movie quickly establishes itself to be for younger viewers. Most Korean animation up to this point in time were made with the target audience of children in mind, so it is not surprising, but the watchability depends on a high degree of tolerance for repetitive scenes and actions and the ability to turn a blind eye to obvious plot holes. By repetitive actions, I do not mean that animation is reused for different scenes– most animations were guilty of that– I am talking about the actions as when Cha-dol gets his hands on a cap of invisiblity made from tiger whiskers and proceeds to stab people in the but with an icepick.  The first time it happens, it is fine albeit a dangerous idea to put in the heads of kids.  However, by the fifth or sixth time it happens.. or the tenth and eleventh.. I was pretty annoyed and wished he would do something a little more creative while invisible.

I was actually surprised to see Cha-dol and Ibbeun.  The two seem to be the same characters as had appeared in Hopi and Chadol Bawi (1967), one of the two sequels to Korea’s first animation Hong Gil-dong.  At least, the names, ages, personalities and time period are the same. However, no other connection to Hong Gil-dong is present in terms of credit to past creators so it could be coincidental. More likely, the writers and artists of Goblin’s Club were using the names with knowledge of the implied connection. Cha-dol and Ibbeun were popular characters in comics and in early animation and both Hong Gil-dong and Hopi and Chadol Bawi film received re-releases during winter and summer vacations throughout the 70s, so audiences would still have been familiar with the characters despite two decades having passed since the height of their popularity.

The Goblin’s Club is available on unsubtitled DVD.  If one is interested in the history of Korean animation, then I recommend it as an alternative to the plethora of giant robots and sci-fi based stories that had taken over the animated scene since the late ’60s.

Daughter of Fire <1983>– Director: Im Kwon-taek. Starring Park Geun-hyeong <as Hae-joon>, Bang Hee <Yong-nyeo>, and Kim Hee-ra <as Hwa-ryong>.  Running Time: 108 minutes. Release Date: November 5, 1983>

Hae-joon’s life seems to be crumbling around him. The pressures he feels from day-to-day life are compounded because his daughter is seriously ill and in some sort of unresponsive trance. His wife and mother-in-law are extremely religious and are attempting to heal the girl via prayer and they resent that Hae-joon is not joining in on their efforts. And then there are the nightmares. Hae-joon is unable to sleep as he is haunted by images of his mother and the sounds he associates most with her– the sound of the drums and chanting that goes along with traditional exorcisms. It seems Hae-joon’s mother was a shaman and was happiest when performing the rites used to appease spirits. Talking about this situation with a psychologist, Hae-joon is barely able to discuss his mother without his stomach churning and nearly vomiting. This leads to the him to understand that he has to return to his roots in South Jeolla Province to find the source of these feelings. He begins his search with Hwa-ryong, the one-eyed woodcutter who, despite his abuses to the young Hae-joon and Yong-nyeo, was the closest thing the young man had to a father. The old man begins his story from the point he knew it and tells of how he became infuriated when Yong-nyeo was performing a ceremony to put at rest those souls lost at sea. Despite being raped by him, Yong-nyeo appears to forgive Hwa-ryong and stays with him however, she had apparently lost part of her sanity and kept a violent rage bottled up inside. Eventually she had killed herself by walking into a fire. Hwa-ryong, and several other men that Hae-joon interviews, including one that is most likely his father, justify there horrendous treatment of Yong-nyeo as the only method they could think of to save her from herself. She needed saving because in the ’60s, shamanism had been made illegal by the government. To practice it was to risk arrest.

Watching a shamanistic ceremony heralding the annual parting of the sea at Jindo, Hae-joon has an insight regarding his nightmares when he views a group of Christians competing for attention and praising God for the miracle of the tides. Hae-joon realizes that he has always been happiest when watching the ancient Muist practices and feeling the freedom of their dance. He realizes he has been lost since abandoning his own belief system in favor of what was foisted upon him. Returning home, he snatches his daughter away from a particularly intense ‘healing’ prayer service that involved the laying of hands -much to his wife’s embarrassment and dismay. When he confesses to his prim wife that his mother had been a practicing shaman, his candor is met with a slap across the face. Leaving his home, Hae-joon finds his way to a local shrine where a woman calling him ‘my son’ welcomes him with open arms back into the fold.

Shamanism, or Muism, is the earliest form of religion in Korea. It continued when Buddhism and Confusionsim were introduced into the country.  Christian missionaries succeeded in surpressing it, but were never able to do away with it completely and many  Christian families continue to perform rites to their ancestors upon the anniversary of their deaths or by their tombs at major holidays. In the late 1890’s, the mayor of Seoul, a confirmed Progressive, made shamanism illegal and began having the police round up the practioners, arrest them and destroy their shrines and the images of the gods and spirits. The shamans fought back by hanging pictures of old kings with their gods and, as it was illegal to desecrate the image of a king, policemen also found themselves facing arrest for following orders. The Muists were not so successful in fighting back when Christianity gained a much stronger foothold in the ’60s and certain ceremonies were made illegal. The government wanted to hide many traditional ’superstitions’ from the eyes of foreigners and there were many movies made at this time where the village shaman is depicted as an vestige of the past preventing development and growth such as Kim Ki-young’s excellent film Goryeojang in 1963.  By the ’70s however, shamanistic practices made a comeback and today there are several hundred recognized shrines in Seoul.  Here in the country there are even more..I live within a stone’s throw of two or three mudang’s homes–recognizable by red flags held high on bamboo posts.  There is a television show on cable TV called The Exorcist where a mudang visits people to rid them of evil spirits in their home.. <I do not watch that show after a couple of viewings.. just like shows I’ve seen in the USA like Ghost Labs or Ghost Hunters, they are clearly faked>

However, Hae-joon is not the son of a mudang — a shaman who is possessed by a god to perform healings, exorcisms or make predictions. Instead, his mother was a Seseummu, and given the region and the music with the ceremonies, probably a dangol.  When characteristic of a seseummu is that it is an inherited position. Seseummu were not generally possessed by gods and ghosts in the ceremonies. Instead they summoned the gods through song and dance and their assistant would become possessed so the spirit could communicate with the masses.  We see this difference in the first ceremony we witness in the movie– the first woman is a mudang trying to make the spirit possess her. Yong-nyeo then steps in to assist by performing her dance for the spirit. However, this is not just trivia. It explains Hae-joon’s disturbing visions which is a symptom of the illness that often precedes becoming a full-fledged shaman. Normally, shamans are women but men can also become shamans.  It also explains clearly Hae-joon’s daughter illness.  She is undergoing ‘Shinbyeong’ in which her body is prepared by the gods or spirits.  It is a condition that can last a decade or more. From the premise and stance of the movie, we can guess that all the laying of hands and faith healers Hae-joon’s wife can summon will have absolutely no effect on the afflicted child until she can embrace her destiny.

The movie is quite clear in its position of calling for a return, or at least acceptance, of the traditional practices. This is obvious by the detail and care in filming the beauty of the traditional ceremonies and costumes. And the bright colors and joy of those costumes and songs are contrasted sharply the somber clothes, faces and hymns of the Christians. Hae-joon’s wife and inlaws are joyless, narrow-minded and unforgiving. The Christian protestors are drab and dull in comparison to the events around them. And the laying of hands during the faith healing is strongly equated with fakery and showmanship and Hae-joon’s comes to believe it is a false religion, unsuitable for the mental health of Korea. It is no accident that he at first consults a psychologist when he is undergoing his visions.  It was predicted by Christians and intellectual writers in the early ’80s that psychology would come to explain much of the phenomenon formerly attributed to ghosts and spirits.

The movie itself takes work to get through. There is a lot of talking and very little action. Even the discussed self-immolation of Yong-nyeo is not depicted. But it does present an interesting arguement that would have been new at the time this film was made and flew in the face of decades of teaching and conditioning.  Unfortunately, this movie is not available on DVD. I was able to see it on Hana TV. With the interest in Im Kwon-taek, however, it does have a better possibility than many older films of being released on DVD.

College Festival aka Run, Balloon– directed by Kim Eung-cheon. starring Jeon Yeong-rok <as Park Doo-cheol>, Kim Bo-yeon <as Ahn Dal-sook>, Yeo Woon-gye <’Queen Mother’>. Runnning Time:  103 minutes.  Release Date November 8, 1980. 

There is much fanfare at the train station the day that Doo-cheol is seen off by his rural community.  The hard-working young man succeeded in entering the Department of Law at one of Korea’s top universities and most of his village appears to have turned up to see him off.  As the train approaches, his proud mother gives him one last piece of advice, “Be careful of the women in Seoul and concentrate on your studies.”  This is a piece of advice that the nervous Doo-cheol remembers as he finds the person is the seat next to him is a young lady, also on her way to college. Fortunately, she turns out not to be from Seoul, but from the same southern province as Doo-cheol. Her name is Dal-sook  and the pair hit if off instantly but have to separate when they get to Seoul. Doo-cheol turns down numerous rooms because he wants a place where he can concentrate on his studies.  He finds one such place run by the landlady the students know affectionately as the Queen Mother and the other students living there are in the same major as Doo-cheol.  After passing the drinking test his classmates put him through, Doo-cheol is able to dive into his studies. He makes a positive impression on his professors and proves popular at school. When his university’s spring festival starts, Doo-cheol gets in touch with Dal-sook again and invites her as his date to the festival. The pair seem well matched and even perform a comedic scene from Cyrano de Bergerac together with Dal-sook taking the role of Roxanne.  Seeing that she is living in the dorm at a nearby women’s university, Dal-soon has to leave early. The night atmosphere is different from the day and the exciting music leads Doo-cheol to ask someone to dance with him. However, that fact gets back to Dal-sook and this causes the first of bump in their relationship.  It is far from the last.  Between her parents introducing her to eligible young men, money problems, lack of time that they can meet and just plain, old bad luck, it seems unlikely that the young lovers will wind up together. Will this pure love survive all the temptations and problems of life in Seoul?

Jeon Yeong-rok, the man who would eventually become famous as Dolai, plays the role of earnest Doo-cheol.  Still years away from his action-hero, Jeon was already a popular singer and had released three albums by the time this film was released.  Although he is not seen to sing in this film, one of the frequent songs on the OST may be him.  I am not familar enough with Korean songs of this era to say. Judging by the way they are framed onscreen, I am certain that two of the performances we see at university festival were being performed by singers who were well-known at the time. I have liked Jeon in most movies I have seen him in as he brings a strong, instantly likeable, presence to his films..even if not all the movies he was in are particularly good.

College Festival is not one of the better ones.  That is not to say it was bad, but the problem was it was rambling. The film moves along adding lots and lots of padding to fill out its running time but, all-in-all, nothing much really happens.  The story loses its focus about half-way through and the story shifts from away from the budding romance, which is fairly interesting, to a subplot about a classmate who cannot pay his tuition and treating the landlady to a trip to Jeju Island. The subplotsand their characters–particularly anything involving the classmates– are not at all interesting.  My mind wandered away for this part of the film but was brought back when Doo-cheol and Dal-sook’s story continued. The story would have been better served providing less time on subplots and instead could have given an ending.

We do not see how the film ends. Instead we are given a voice-over as the action freezes. The voice of an uncredited narrator, possibly Director Kim, breaks the fourth wall and asks rhetorically whether it is possible for these two lovers to ever meet eye-to-eye.  We are not given a chance to ponder this question as we are provided with a brief answer. And then the movie ends without ever showing us any more of the story unfold onscreen. 

The voice-over spoils  more than jut denying the viewer the ending. It interrupts the song Run, Balloon from which the film takes its Korean title. The words ‘Run Balloon’ have no meaning in side the story, so the meaning must be found within the lyric of the song. Presumably, viewers at the time would have known the song and the title of the film would be obvious to them. I am not so fortunate.  The KMDb lists the English title of this film as Run, Balloon– the direct translation of the Korean title. Daum Movies lists it as College Festival.  I preferred the latter title although I can find no historical evidence for it. The original posters and ads for this film show an English title and while it seems to have been released on VHS in ‘84, I can find no image of the cover to see if an English title was assigned at that time.

Whatever it is called, the movie is interesting not because of the story, but because of how it is able to show multiple live performances of a variety of music styles from various artists of that decade and starred one of the most popular singers of the time.

Wow..  That was completely unexpected. Declaration of Fools, also known as Children of Darkness 2, took my by surprise with its creativity.  I remember Children of Darkness (1981) being very good, but it was nothing like its ’sequel.’  The DVD box lists a long line of film festivals and awards this movie won, and it deserves every one of them. Of course there are faults, it was the 80s after all and not the easiest time to be making films, but Lee Jang-ho crafts a deeply nuanced and entertaining film nonetheless.

Before I begin the review, I would like to point out that the DVD does not contain English subtitles. However, for about 80 percent of the film, that does not matter as the movie is silent sans music and sound effects. There is some narration in the form of a child. The boy reads his lines in a stilted monotone and uses the grammar style that elementary school students write their picture-diaries in (if you have seen many Korean movies or dramas you have probably seen these).  When the characters finally speak for the first time… more than thirty minutes in… it is jolting and actually ruins part of the mood that had been set up. I was happy when, later in the film, the director returns to the concept he began.  The child’s voice introducing the film is utilized along with children’s drawings as the opening credits role. After that, our ears are assaulted with the sounds of the 80s which include video game music, beeps and blips, Western music (most notably the song Gloria by Laura Branigan).. drowning out the sound of a traditional pansori song. Through sound, the theme of the film is introduced although we do not get directly reminded of this until the movie’s final sequences.

The movie starts with a suicide of a stranger and with that we get a better idea of our main character as he lifts the dying man’s watch in front of  a crownd of bystanders and makes off the unfortunate man’s shoes and carefully folded clothes. This is done in a mildly comical way that somehow makes his callous and criminal act seem amiable. However, his progress acts strain the good will and comedic efforts to make us like him as he next begins stalking an attractive young woman and eventually coming up with a plan to kidnap her.  Fortunately, nothing goes exactly as planned and eventually he, the young woman and a taxi driver who lost his cab are headed out into the world to enjoy their new-found freedom and make a life for themselves.

It was early on in the film, I think with the first dream sequence in the cab, that I started realizing how much like a Charlie Chaplin film this was. It was not just because Declaration of Fools is nearly a silent film. It was more to do with the similarity of the main character (Dong-cheol played by Kim Myeong-gon) to Chaplin’s Little Tramp in his expressions and exaggerated walking style. What differentiated Dong-cheol from his predecessor was a complete lack of innocence. I could not imagine Chaplin’s beloved character plotting a kidnap/rape scenario…

This is a movie that is definitely worth seeing. I was impressed with the story, the creative cinematography and music, the acting and the message. I was also deeply impressed with the risks that the director took with this film..not the least of which was adding the Blue House in the background as two of the characters completely reject society. I only wish that the people who released the DVD had added subtitles so it could more easily be understood by a wider audience. With the lack of dialogue, it would have taken about 20 minutes to translate and write the captions.  But don’t be too discouraged by the lack of subtitles. The movie relies heavily on sound and visuals over dialogue ..you don’t need the subs to enjoy this one. THe DVD was just recently released, so if you find it, but it! You won’t regret owning this masterpiece in you collection.

Although today’s entry in the Obscure Monster Countdown to Halloween is from 1984, I have to go back to 1966 to begin.  You see, if you were living in Japan in July 1966, you would have been treated to the very first appearance of Urutora or, as he is known to Western audiences, Ultraman.  Created by Eiji Tsuburaya, the original Ultraman television series ran for 39 episodes. Throughout the following years, Ultraman has returned in various incarnations.  Apparently, these giant warriors fuse their life force with a human who can then turn into the titantic defender when Earth is threatened. Growing up in the USA, we did get the original Ultraman series that was aired on Saturday morning when I was a very young child (when it was known as ‘Cartoon Day’, not Saturday)  However, it came on too early in the morning for me to see.. I would always catch the tail end of the show when he would shoot it with a laser from his arm and the monster he was battling that week would blow up.  I always wanted to see more.  When I was a little older, there was an American cartoon featuring Ultraman–several ultramen I believe– but when I moved to Korea, I saw my first complete series of Ultraman featuring Tiga. I think the most comparable show to Ultraman is the British series Dr. Who.  By this I mean that the main character and cast changes over the years, yet the fans instantly recognize and accept these changes as part of the mythos.

Why am I talking about Ultraman? Well, the producers of Ultraman had to come up with monsters each week for the hero to battle. Some were quite good. Others were ..umm.. not so good. And while costumes could be recycled over the years you are still going to have a lot of unused monster suits after a 50-year history. What to do with them?  If you were director Kim Jeong-yong, you would have had the idea to get your hands on some of them and make a monster movie. Then again, it might not have been his idea. The production company Woojin Films might have bought the leftover suits and designated Kim to make the film. And what a film he made! Not just a single giant monster, his movie had six different creatures tearing up cities and villages in Korea.  He used the suits that appeared in the Ultraman series as Fester, Sea Gorass, Sea Monster, Bemster, Pterotils and Baragon. Baragon deserves special mention. He was from Toho Studios, the company that produced Godzilla. He was frequently loaned to Tsuburaya Productions to battle Ultraman. He originally appeared in Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965) and is blamed for attacking Paris in Destroy All Monsters (1968) although he does not appear in that movie as his suit was on loan.  I have to assume that Tsuburaya Productions eventually bought Baragon, but he ultimately wound up in Korea and appeared in the 1984 film Flying Dragon Attacks.. (the title I am using is what appears on the VHS box shortly after its theatrical release. The KMDB lists this film as Flying Monster)

Baragon can hardly be considered obscure enough for me. Instead, I want to give the spot in the Halloween Countdown to the title creature, the Flying Monster herself, Pterachilraus! Her fearsome visage with her angry red plumage is pictured above.  Her height seems to vary throughout the movie depending what background she is in. I would estimate her to usually be around Godzilla-sized, 2-300 feet tall. However, when shooting interacting with her co-stars (the lower of the two images pictured above) she is more like 60 feet tall. One professor Kim gets  it into his head that Pterachilraus is a threat to humanity and that the only way to eliminate the threat is by attacking her nest and destroying her eggs. However, I am not sure what he hoped to accomplish by that… drive Pterachilraus to commit suicide as Rodan (a Toho monster whom Pterachilraus somewhat resembled) had done?  It didn’t work. Instead the gigantic flying beast goes on a revenge fueled rampage and destroys the cities closest to her home. She is apparently joined by many of her monster friends.. There is a three-minute video collage of the film here (http://tvpot.daum.net/clip/ClipView.do?clipid=4907259) See if you can make any sense out of what is happening…  No?  Well, don’t feel bad. You are not alone.

The lovely woman staining the soles of Pterachilraus’ foot in the picture above is reporter Kang Ok-hee who went undercover as a maid in Prof. Kim’s house to get the scoop on the ‘rejuvenation formula’ he has been working on. While I do not know for sure, I am willing to bet that it is more than just a anti-aging skin cream he is working on and that it will somehow regrow her legs. I hope so anyway, for her sake.

I have to admit that as a child I loved ‘giant monster movies’ but as an adult I find them extremely difficult to go back and watch. I would not be able to do it at all except for the invention of the ‘mute’ button.. those monster roars are noisy…and much too frequent!  However, I would happily buy this movie if it were ever released on DVD just for the shear insanity of the film. Pterachilraus is the definition of ‘obscure monster’ and earns a place on the Obscure Monster Halloween Countdown.

Many people know of the ghosts, monsters and creatures that have skittered through Korean horror films over the past decade. The ghosts of Phone or A Tale of Two Sisters have left indelible images on the minds of viewers around the world.  Others maybe won’t prove as memorable, like the haunted tree in Acacia, the giant pig from Chaw or the the werewolves of Ssunday Seoul but they are still fairly recent and won’t be dealt with here.

In these posts counting down to Halloween, I will be dealing with the obscure–my favorite topic. Monsters, ghosts, goblins and the like from before the year 2000; creatures from movies never released on DVD that are in danger of being forgotten in Korea and not known at all outside of the country.

First on the list one of my favorites, the Possessed Doll from the movie Suddenly at Midnight (1981) directed by Ko Yeong-nam– an excellent film that deserves a DVD release.  The doll itself is odd, but at first not particularly scary. In fact, I would not have minded keeping it on my mantle if I were to find one– it certainly would be a conversation piece. It stands about a foot tall, is made of wood and depicts a shaman priestess in the midst of a ceremony with her cleaver held aloft. The lucky owner of the doll is Mi-ok, a simple girl raised by her mother deep in the mountains of Korea. Mi-ok might have remained there all her life and followed in her mother’s footsteps as a shaman, talking to spirits, divining futures and performing exorcisms had it not been for a chance meeting with the dignified professor of butterflies, Dr. Kang Yoo-jin and a fire that claims her mother’s life. Benevolent Dr. Kang takes the suddenly orphaned young woman home to his wife to work as a servant in the house. His wife, Seon-hee, feels a little jealous about Mi-ok’s beauty and is naturally very curious about the doll as well, but Mi-ok is very protective of it and won’t let anyone touch it.

When alone with the doll, Mi-ok talks to it and when the doll is alone it wanders around outside..or at least that is what Seon-hee believes as she catches it glaring in at her from outside the window. Later on, it just seems to keep turning up in the most unexpected places–especially after Mi-ok has a little… accident..really.. Seon-hee is completely innocent.  When we next see the doll, it is life-sized– which not even I would want in my living room.  Seon-hee hates it so much now that she winds up in a life or death struggle with the oversized doll… but it would be telling if I said who won. 

Suddenly at Midnight is a great movie that leaves a lot open to interpretation. Is the doll really possessed by the spirit of Mi-ok’s mother as Mi-ok and Seon-hee believe? Does it really move around?  Or is it the imagination of a jealous, insecure woman who is descending into madness?  Whether it is real or not, Possessed Doll earns a place on the Obscure Monster Halloween Countdown.

Ttoli was a character that most Korean children growing up in the late 70s and early 80s would have been familiar with. In  the three 1970s’ films Ddoli was a child who grew up in the wild with his animal friends in the forests of North Korea where he battled against communist plots in no less than three films. However, by the 80s, he was turning up in different time eras such as the Joseon Period in Korean history, the future and one million years in the past in this movie.  Young Ttoli did not begin the film in the past.  He was clearly living in the modern age as his parents are piloting an airplane on the way to visit his grandparents.  They experience a Bermuda Triangle-like situation and are sucked through a vortex to the far past where humans, dinosaurs and pre-human, loincloth-wearing ape-men..oh and advanced aliens, all exist simultaneously. Ttoli’s father survives the crash but is so far from the wreckage of the plane, that he has no idea where his wife and son are. Ttoli’s mother is indeed never seen again, but the infant Ttoli is taken in by a tribe of cavemen. 

The child’s presence causes the already existing friction between the tribe’s chief whose wife want to raise Ttoli and the second strongest hunter who wants to lead the tribe to become worse. When Ttoli kills a baby tyrannosaurus that wandered into his cave, the cavemen all rightly fear reprisal from the adult.  It comes swiftly during the night as the gigantic white dinosaur nicknamed Tyranno attacks the village and kills nearly all the cavepeople including Ttoli’s adopted mother. His father was not present at the time having taken a hunting party out, but when he returns, he takes the surviving cavemen on a mission of revenge from which he does not return.

Orphaned for a second time, Ttoli is taken in by the dimmest of the cavemen who moves away from the village. For several years he raises the child who becomes an adept hunter and inexplicably has bonded with a pterodactyl. He also has made friends with a young cave girl from the village, but when her father recognizes Ttoli, she is ordered to stay away. On that same day, Ttoli is re-introduced to both of his father’s although he does not recognize them at first. His foster father has been wandering around like Captain Ahab hunting the white dinosaur who maimed him. Meanwhile, his real father had been found by a dying race of aliens who bequeathed to him their time-travelling flying saucer which he has been working on while holed up in a cave.

There is a lot more with the ape-men capturing Ttoli’s father and wanting to sacrifice him Fay Wray style to the white dinosaur and an active volcano. However, it has to be kept in mind that this is decidedly a children’s movie. I found it very noisy and the there were plot holes you could drive a flying saucer through.  Just who were those aliens?  They had less than 10 seconds of screen time! Literally, if you blink, you will miss them.  Where did Ptera, Ttoli’s pterodactyl friend, come from and why are they friends at all considering that every other pterodactyl wants to kill the humans? I will not, however, question why the cavemen and the modern humans all spoke the same language… I was grateful not having to sit through another Quest For Fire…

I own four or five Ttoli movies on DVD and this is the first one I have watched.  For a Kim Cheong-gi film, the creater of Robot Taekwon V and Ulimae, it was rather poorly animated, but at only 85 minutes, it was tolarable and since Ttoli is a classic character and a major character in Korean animation history, I do not regret watching it and learning more about him. .

A few weeks ago, I ordered a few films by director Kim Shi-hyeon that I had found on a DVD site based in Hong Kong. These films are not available on DVD in Korea and I thought it would be a good chance to learn about a stage of Korean film history that I know woefully little about– The Hong Kong co-productions and especially the action ‘kung-fu’ films. In the mid-late seventies, Hong Kong cinema was king and enjoying popularity around the world. Korea was also taken with the action films coming out of its southern neighbor. Movies like Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon and Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master were very influential and are still remembered fondly–In fact, Drunken Master 2 was on television earlier today (no, I didn’t watch it).  Running into trouble with the government, master director Shin Sang-ok relocated his company, Shin Productions, to Hong Kong and many other directors and actors saw the chance to work in Hong Kong.  Dozens of films were made of varying quality and stars were born like the Bruce Lee look-alike Geo Ryong aka Dragon Bruce Lee aka Moon Geo-ryong. Geo Ryong gained quite a bit of fame and his career is easy to track.  But the fact that these films and the actors in them are listed under so many different names, researching them is quite a chore.

The DVDs I bought are dubbed in English, no sign of the orginial language and, worse, no sign of the original credits. One of the movies I bought called itself Angry Dragon–also starring Geo Ryong and directed by Kim Shi-hyeon. However, a search through the Korean Film Database revealed no such title. Fortunately, there are ways of tracking it down — reviewing stills and posters is invaluable. I learned along the way that Angry Dragon was also called in Hong Kong The Angry Man vs the Five Brothers, Five Brothers and, is listed under the English title Five Disciples in the Korean Film Database.  Oddly, the original poster for this movie does list an English title among the Korean and Chinese characters. It was to be called The Five Brothers. I do not know why the title was not used consistently.

A bigger problem comes when trying to understand the credits to these movies. And, for the most part, it is a hopeless task. Random English names are assigned in the credits.  I did learn a few things.  Popular 80s actor Lee Dae-geun went at some point under the name Master Lee!  Veteran actors Nam Goong-hoon and Shin Il-ryong in some Honk Kong films were listed as James Nam and Shin I-lung respectively.  These were easy to figure out because I have seen enough of the actors to recognize them.  But most I have no clue.  In Fight at Hong Kong Ranch  (KMDB name… the DVD I ordered from Hong Kong calls it Golden Dragon, Silver Snake) the credits include Dragon Lee, Johnnie Chan (!) and Edward Lee.  Who?  I have no idea.  Maybe given time I could eventually sort everything out, but I doubt it.  Johnnie Chan obviously was playing the Jackie Chan clone, but what was his real name. I don’t even know if he was Korean or from Hong Kong. Edward Lee? I have no idea. The actor names are not paired with a character so I do not know who played whom. The KMDB is no help in this matter. It lists five names associated with this movie and three of them have the family name Lee. Tracking down images of the actors would tell me who they played, but it would not help with the English names that comprise the credits.

So how was Fight at Hong Kong Ranch? Well, I have to admit I enjoyed it. Oh–the translation of the original dialogue and the dubbing are absolutely horrible- the English voices in no way match the characters and I had the impression that there was probably a limite number of voice actors available…some people sound remarkably similar. Also, the two main actors are not even attempting to disguise the fact that they are imitations of two much better known martial artists. The Jackie Chan mimic is dressed to look like the main character in Drunken Master and even given his own crazy old man to teach him Kung Fu. Dragon Lee/Geo Ryong bears more than a passing resemblance to Bruce Lee and demonstrates some excellent martial arts skills but the yellow track suit might have been a little too much. The whole film could come across as just a cheesy, unintentional parody of the genre. However, for some reason it works and there are times that both of the main actors look exactly like the people they are imitating and you forget you are not watching the real thing.

The plot was simple…very, very simple. Thugs, running a protection racket, attempt to force a nearby ranch owner to sell and murder a charasmatic young man who attempts to organize the local merchants to resist the gangsters. The dead man’s brother comes to town out for revenge and winds up getting a job at the ranch. Meanwhile, the milkman who also works on the ranch, meets a rickshaw driver who promises to teach him how to fight in order to protect himself and the ranch owners from the criminals. The movie has lots of action–some of it quite bizarre. Eggs, baseballs, cordless drills and cats are used as weapons. There are evil motor cycle gangs, pool-side parties and a damsal in distress. Was there deep meaning? No. But was there fun? Yes.

After watching this film, I understand a little more why the genre was popular and I look forward to seeing the other two I bought… but not just yet. I have the feeling that my opinion might change if I watch too many kung-fu films at one time. They are fun, though…