Japanese Horror Top 5

[Daniel Freire]

Here are a few suggestions for three different forms of horror, depending on your taste:
   Tetsuo: Iron Man has some grotesque and disturbing images... you might be interested in that. It's rather avant-garde, but most of the supernatural parttern seem to follow unorthodox methods of story telling.
    Shiryo no wana (Evil Dead Trap)...  it's not like the American Evil Dead as the name suggests, but it is a slasher movie... I guess I am suggesting it because you may find a lot of similarities from other films included here. Also, it's Ikeda's last 'gory' movie.
    Ugetsu ... Along with most Japanese drama, if you don't think it's horror, then you're a hardened individual  ;)


-dan freire
 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Brown" <the8thsamurai at hotmail.com>
To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2001 9:11 AM
Subject: Japanese Horror Top 5


> >With the recent discussion about best 10 samurai movies, I started
> >thinking... I'd be hard-pressed to come up with 10 Japanese scary 
> >movies I
> >really enjoy.  Anyone willing to stick their neck out and suggest a
> >horror/thriller top 10?
> 
> Well, seeing that in New Zealand, access to Japanese film stretches only 
> about as far as Akira Kurosawa, I never had the chance to rent "Toire no 
> Hanako-chan" from the video store back home, but I've been trying my best 
> to catch up since I came to Japan.  A top 10 is out of the question, but 
> using a fairly wide criteria, here's at least a top five of Japanese horror 
> films I thoroughly enjoyed (and some which, even as a hardened horror movie 
> watcher, managed to give me the willies):
> 
> Cure 
> Charisma 
> Audition 
> Angel Dust
> Ring 0: Birthday 
> 
> Regarding Ring 0, which Tony Rayns recently panned, I found it to be a 
> somewhat original and off-kilter addition to the series, easily topping the 
> first two.  I get the feeling I'm alone on this one though.  After being 
> decidely unimpressed by the first two I was pleasantly surprised by the 
> direction that this one took, transforming the central demon Sadako into a 
> tragic and sympathetic figure, in contrast to her relentless Jason-like 
> boogeyman (boogey-person?) of Ring 1 and 2.  Perhaps it had something to do 
> with the fact that it did away with the whole confusing 
> phonecall-death-sentence and video-curse gimmick (how did a psychic trapped 
> down a well for thirty years manage to commission a video of her own 
> murder?  Kind of a Candid Cadaver type deal?).  What I was most impressed 
> by was the manner in which it managed to successfully expand Sadako's 
> previously one-dimensional character, turning her through 180 degrees and 
> back again, yet still maintaining the link with the previous movies in the 
> series.  I can't think of a horror series that has managed to pull off this 
> feat, let alone attempt it in the first place.  Unless you count Godzilla.
> Don Brown
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