Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I write to you from deep in the midst of my Sailor Moon marathon, having completed the show’s first two seasons and first film, and just recently started on Sailor Moon S. The show’s got a pretty steady formula, but it’s a good one – the main cast are charming and bounce off each other well, and both the direction and character acting remain exceptional, which is no surprise given its absurdly distinguished core team. Funnily enough, it’s actually when the show tries to do serious, multi-episode drama that I generally tune out; the fantasy action is repetitive and seasonal arcs kinda weightless, so my interest tends to ebb whenever the stakes start to rise. Fortunately, each new season offers a reset back to sailor guardian infighting and cat episodes, so there’s always something fun just around the corner. I’ve also been munching through some interesting films as of late, so let’s turn our attention to those, as we burn down the latest Week in Review!
First up this week was the film adaptation of Golgo 13, the hit manga about the greatest of all assassins. In this adventure, the assassination of an oil tycoon’s son ends up bringing trouble back to Golgo’s door, as the tycoon enlists all the powers of the United States to wreak vengeance on the killer. But you know Golgo – it’ll take more than one United States to kill him, and he is happy to demonstrate so as he cuts a fresh killing path across the country and beyond.
Honestly, outside of the fun setups for a couple of the assassinations, there’s really nothing worth mentioning in Golgo’s actual narrative. Golgo kills a guy, Golgo has emotionless sex with a woman, Golgo kills some other guys, Golgo has emotionless sex with some other woman, etcetera. The film is pure pulp fluff with a side of sexual violence, so if you’re expecting the dramatic texture of even a James Bond movie, you should probably look elsewhere.
Fortunately, Golgo’s narrative triviality doesn’t really undercut its core strength: its absolutely sumptuous direction, courtesy of the legendary Osamu Dezaki. In his hands, every scene is brimming with gorgeous, imaginative compositions and rich colors, every new kill and chase scene a carnival of visual delights. Dezaki somehow manages to transform this alternating procession of kill and sex scenes into a work of grand gothic melodrama, never missing a chance to elevate some confrontation through his impeccable eye for composition. Golgo’s whole schtick really isn’t my sort of thing, but like Space Adventure COBRA before it, it is hard not to enjoy any Dezaki feature.
I then indulged my love of cheesy ‘80s fantasy with a viewing of The Beastmaster. Mark Singer stars as Dar, our titular master of beasts, who is prophesied from birth to one day defeat the tyrannical high priest Maax (yes, all this film’s names are like that). Alarmed by this prophesy, Maax takes the only sensible countermeasure: commissioning a witch to teleport the unborn baby from its mother’s womb to a bull, from which it is then removed, branded with a sacred mark, and tossed into a fire. Unfortunately, some fucking villager arrives just before the baby tossing, leading Dar to grow up among the commonfolk with no knowledge of his dark destiny.
Then raiders attack the village, Dar learns his purpose, yada yada yada. The film continues from there in its overwrought and idiosyncratic way, as Dar acquires an eagle, two ferrets, a panther, and a lady love as companions. Swords clash, heroes rage, and costumes fail to convince. Also, Rip Torn is there! He plays the evil priest, and hams it up magnificently on his road to oblivion. Plus we’ve got a whole Seven Samurai-style village defense sequence, a horrifying species of bat men who tuck people in their wings to dissolve them… there’s a whole lot of wild ideas here, all furnished in that Conan-style period atmosphere. If you enjoy Conan-likes or sword and sandal features more generally, you’ll probably have a fine time with The Beastmaster.
My next viewing was Bone Tomahawk, a gritty, sparse take on The Searchers starring Kurt Russell as Sheriff Franklin Hunt, who leads a group of men on a rescue operation to save his deputy and a local doctor from a tribe of cannibals. Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, and Richard Jenkins round out Russell’s posse, setting off on a journey that will test their bodies and spirits in equal measure.
Bone Tomahawk is clearly a labor of love for writer-director S. Craig Zahler, as his first directorial feature after years of writing scripts. The film is lean and brutal, emphasizing the unsparing violence of the American wilderness, and pushing the sharp angles of characters like Wilson’s and Fox’s until they’re near to breaking. It’s a quietly harrowing experience, but the convincing lead performances make it hard to look away; Richard Jenkins is obviously a reliable character acting veteran, while our other would-be leading men all seem to relish the opportunity to sink into such thorny, multifaceted messes of men. A nasty and altogether accomplished piece of work.
Last up for the week was The Devils, Ken Russell’s controversial historical drama, which received an X rating at the time of release and was subsequently banned in several countries. A partial adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudon, the film stars Oliver Reed as a 17th century priest with a tremendous ego and a proud anti-authoritarian temperament, who is accused of witchcraft by a psychologically tormented nun (Vanessa Redgrave).
The Devils’ bumpy release history had me expecting something truly shocking and grotesque, leaving me surprised to find the film is actually more farce than horror, a takedown of institutional religion that feels much like something Oscar Wilde might write. There are certainly shocking scenes here and there – lots of nuns get naked and blasphemous, and the “exorcism” of Redgrave is a particularly brutal sequence. But on the whole, The Devils is less concerned with revealing lurid sights than demonstrating the inherent moral grotesquery concealed beneath Christianity’s self-serious institutions, and the devilishness of mankind always eager to breach the surface.
Oliver Reed’s character is self-absorbed, highly intelligent, and inconsistently dedicated to seeking a closer relationship with God, which he mostly pursues through having sex and enjoying the finest in art and poetry. He’s a cad, but a clever and passionate one, a man who is genuinely dedicated to the defense of his walled city. Over time, he comes to actually embrace the love of a single woman, and devote himself fully to the service of his people – in other words, he comes quite near to embodying the essence of a righteous personal faith, having accepted his youthful failures and risen to the status of a willing martyr.
The catholic church doesn’t really have much use for people like that – in fact, they are quite dangerous, prone to bucking tradition or even threatening the church’s relationship with capital and crown. As such, when Redgrave starts wailing about how a man she’s never met has seduced her to the devil’s side, the catholic inquisitors are happy to use her raving as an excuse to bury the man, and thereby shatter the last bulwark defending his city. Though both Redgrave and her fellow nuns are at first unwilling collaborators, they soon commit to their “possession” with gusto, giving the king’s ambitious advisors all the ammunition they need.
The contrast of Reed’s penitent decency and the Catholic institution’s amoral greed makes for a grotesque circus through The Devils’ last act, as the letter of righteous piety is employed to crush its spirit time and again. Reed plays his transformation with charm and finesse, transforming in spite of himself from an irreverent dandy to a true man of god, all while the jeering onlookers crow for greater spectacles. The fires of the film’s climax coat all its players in the same red hues, emphasizing that for all our fear of final judgment, the devils are already here, laughing and clapping with every roar of the crowd. We are not born good, but we can aspire to it – that is, so long as those who claim sovereignty over righteousness don’t kill us first.
