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May 28th, 2007
01:58 am - Hausu '77
 Thanks to Five Minutes To Live and ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) atomicgypsy, I had the opportunity to watch Hausu. This is basically a Japanese haunted house flick released in 1977. It was directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi. Obayashi had made one short film, back in '66, prior to this. Eleven years, by imdb's count! This is a feature-length debut from a forty-year old man, and by God, does it show! Does it even matter that he was born in Hiroshima?
There's an interesting shot of the h-cloud over Hiroshima, in Hausu. It's in the middle of a flashback. Dig this: You see footage pretending to be an old silent movie, black and white really sharp. . . it's a young woman and a young man. . . they're courting, falling in love, about to get married. You're basically watching a film within a film. Suddenly, the reel changes. . . dyed yellow, now. . . the country in mobilizing for war, the young man is caught up in the moment, he needs to leave. . . patriotic asshole. . . he goes. . . change reel, dyed blue, small squad of Japanese soldiers marching past a village, close up of the young man in uniform, zoom back out to the villagers standing by the side of the road. World War II is just beyond the outskirts of this village. The villagers wave their Japanese flags. A younger lady, better dressed than her fellow villagers, dashes to the young man's side when it begins to rain. . . in the background, the old young lady turns away. . . Change reel, red dye, total war. Planes everywhere, cut in close to a fighter, fuselage is blown, sparks and smoke, debris and bullets, the pilot is riddled with enemy fire, pull in closer to the cockpit, the young man sits like Buddha as the copilot. Exterior shot, plane flashes by and continues downward, the dead pilot and serene copilot plunge in the rocks. . . Change reel, black and white, panning up over rocks, to a cliff, to a headstone, to a woman in black. . . the young lady became the woman in black, holding a red rose, clenching it, bleeding. . . Change reel, h-cloud, cut.
That's a five minute flashback, right there. . . It was introduced by the cast's Brainy One reciting a passage from an old book to her awestruck, bedipshitted gaggle. The Brainy One is smart. She wears glasses, and reads. When she reads, a crucial piece of the plot is revealed, so everyone shuts up. When she finishes reading, The Musical One, The Buff One, The Pampered One, The Nondescript One, The One Who Always Eats, and the Deep One all go back to ignoring her. That's okay, because she never has anything good to say anyway. That's because she's a badly rendered archetype. She's only interesting to me because she's an archetype I'm only loosely familiar with, that is, a Japanese one.
Anyway, these schoolgirls mewl and cackle throughout the flashback. Real nice.
I can only guess that initial Japanese audiences found this movie insufferable, by and large. But I'm just as sure there was an 8%, back there. . . and as the end credits began to wind down, amongst themselves they muttered between the drags off their roaches "When is this playing again? Let's just not go home. . ."
( Just keep reading. )
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January 22nd, 2007
11:14 pm - Shinjuku Mad
 *Shinjuku Mad* was one of
Koji Wakamatsu's six films from 1970. Grim and gritty, stark and steady, burdened with anti-moralizing, generously padded with sex, and totally redeemed by a soundtrack that needs to be released NOW. I knew nothing about this film, loading it up on to my laptop, and every last one of this film's sixty-sixty minutes kept me riveted.
Bear with me. The film opens with the band cycling through a jazzy rave-up, the black and images depict dead Japanese throughout a modern city. From the alleyways of the slums, to center of the park, you catch glimpses of bodies everywhere. This introduction is capped off by a lingering shot of a blood-soaked naked woman, face down. By this point, the band has reached a sort of peak. There's a cut, the band changes the direction of the song a bit, and then we're treated to a series of exterior shots from downtown, the lunch hour, maybe. You see a lot of storefronts and stairwells, people moving about. All of the people in these splices are done in negative image.
( Current favorite as an introduction, that. )
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November 27th, 2006
09:47 pm - Just Say Magh-Bagh-Gagh-Bagh!
 Just the other week, I watched Altered States. I must have had come across some truly primo shit, back in the day, because I remembered next to nothing about this film. I had the image of a naked scientist, in my head, floating in a sensory deprivation tank. I also had some vague, trippy, residual visuals from the film. But when I slid the disc into my laptop, I was pretty sure I'd be watching a film that, in one way or another, had some kind of statement to make.
I now suspect I might've been guzzling psilocybin tea while first watching it, so many years ago. Or perhaps I sustained a closed head injury immediately after the first time through.
At bottom, it's a mad scientist won over by love story. In this case, the mad scientist is convinced he can locate and apprehend the basis of human consciousness through self-exploration. He spends hours at a time in a tank, hallucinating. This much I remember. The visuals are. . . okay, at this point, in the film. Religious in nature. You get to see a guy with a ram's head crucified. The ram's head has thirteen eyes. Lots of flaming crosses scaling into the lens, too.
Then the mad scientist goes down to South America and falls in with some mountain tribe. They give him some sacramental potion they'd spent a week concocting and BLAMMO! he's tripping balls. Let's just say the representation of Hell, at this point, is top of the line. You should watch this film just to see the director's take on Hell.
So, the mad scientist goes back to Harvard with his mountain tribe, vision quest stash. He starts doing up massive doses in his tank. However well-intentioned the film may have been up to this point, whatever semblance of verisimilitude it might have had, it suddenly takes a very wrong-headed and unintentionally comic turn.
See, the mad scientist's psyche gets so close to the bane of our existence his physical form actually devolves into that of a protohuman. Nancy Reagan couldn't have penned a better metaphor.
Best line of the movie, from the coming-down mad scientist to his wife, totally straight-faced: "I suppose getting a call at 2:30 in the morning from the police to the effect your husband has been found sleeping naked in the city zoo might've caused you some concern."
This, after we watch a naked protohuman hunt down, kill, and eat a ram.
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November 22nd, 2006
02:58 am - May Altman Sleep Hushedly
 Robert Altman died, yesterday. U=I haven't read anything about the circumstance surrounding his death. I know he was old. I was never a huge fan of his films, although I don't dislike any of the ones I've seen. I was either born too early or too late to truly appreciate his genius. That's because his work was so influential that by the time I had developed the faculty to evaluate a movie on its own merits, much of what distinguished his work had made its impact, exerted its influence, and then progressed on to something else. Maybe some of the new movies we watch today are as fast as their are because his were so slow.
I liked Nashville, Kansas City, M.A.S.H., Short Cuts, and Cookie's Fortune. Maybe those are the only films of his I've seen.
M.A.S.H., the television series, wasn't even Altman's idea (although the film wasn't either, for that matter), and yet when I read the news, it was the theme song to M.A.S.H. that I immediately heard. It's called Suicide is Painless.
As a kid, I heard that music often enough. My grandfather loved that show. When I spent the night at his place, I'd go to bed listening to it. Funny that I should associate that song with warmth and security. As I grew older, I began appreciate the show more and more. Seeing it not only as an allegory for the Vietnam conflict, but for life in general. The show turned into a sort of existential sitcom for me. I admit that's still how I watch it. Something about it resonates with how I look at the world around me. If I had my choice, I'd rather watch a good, Alan Alda-directed episode of M.A.S.H. than any Altman film.
Oddly, I watched Saw the night before learning of Altman's death. Saw was distributed by Lion's Gate Films, which was founded by Altman. Saw, unfortunately, was one of the crappier recent horror films I've had to sit through. (I'll spoil a surprise, here, no one is sawed to death.)
Without Altman's work on the film, M.A.S.H., the show never would have made the airwaves. So much American television is just shit. I hope M.A.S.H. never goes out of syndication. I hope kids are falling asleep to that song long after I'm dead.
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June 26th, 2006
09:13 pm - At Long Last
 About five years ago, I made a (very) short movie. It was based on an utterly spontaneous and sprawling conversation I had while visiting some friends in August of 1998. In a sense, I never returned from the visit. This movie was built on an engine called 16-Color, served by 16-Color.com. (The website does an excellent job, telling it's own story in a remarkably short amount of time.)
I never had the chance to see what that guy did with the DVD. Visually, I am certain that the movie's framerate is much better and--as a result--the animation looks smoother. Musically, I'm sure it's not to my liking.
Because of the soundtrack, which is by Mr. Shockabilly, himself, Link Wray (1929-2005), and in spite of the poor video quality, I consider the following edition to be definitive.
La Balayeuse!
Current Music: Link Wray
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June 5th, 2006
09:23 pm - Blood Alley: John Wayne's Inner Struggle
What you see to your left is a picture of John Wayne slapping a Chinawoman's ass. He'd just got done mocking her lack of proficiency in English and barking out an order. The slap to the ass may very well have been a display of big brotherliness. Or maybe he was just telling her to hurry up. Or maybe, him being locked up for two years had something to do with it.
Yeah, let's explore that one a minute. Here's the prologue: John Wayne is the captain. His tugboat is nabbed by the Chinese Communists and (presumably) impounded. He's put into solitary. . . in a poorly-guarded, dilapidated manor for two years. During that time, John Wayne is contacted from the outside by a local underground of counter-revolutionaries. An escape is discretely organized, and one day John Wayne is busted out.
During his confinement, he constructed an imaginary friend to get him through it, as they say. He named her “Baby.” She was his co-conspirator, his benefactor, his “grip.” woquinoncoin expressed some surprise at the suggestion that Wayne deliver all his “Baby” lines to his right hand. Admittedly, the thought of John Wayne masturbating is amusing. ( But it also raises two important points. )
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May 23rd, 2006
01:23 am - The Guy Says "Hmm! Baby! Fat and juicy!"
 American Horror is getting good and visceral, again. . . It's almost starting to approach Hong Kong standards in terms of remorseless, bloodsoaked nihilism. Thank God, I hate being second best. Dawn of the Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist. . . They all feature a heavy dose of present-day editing technology and, admittedly, present-day editing technology cliches. They all feature more headshots, gut-munching, open wounds, and vomiting than their originals. Sure Hollywood's cashing in. . . and they sometimes get it right.
( The Hills Have Eyes is a case in point. )
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August 24th, 2005
12:31 am - Half Man, Half Beast—All Japanese: Take A Ride In My Terraplane
Beat Takeshi. Actually, his real name is Kitano Takeshi but you can check the yellow pages and find a few Kitano Takeshis. I mean it. But you don't find many Beat Takeshis. In fact, there's really only one. Now, maybe some other guys call themselves Beat Takeshi. But the one thing all those guys have in common is that they'll all tell you a little story about the time they were pumping gas or bringing in the trash cans and the real Beat Takeshi stormed out of nowhere and brought a claw hammer down on a clavicle or a shin.
Beat Takeshi. The guy has his name on books. I'd like to think they weren't ghost-written. If they were ghost-written, that would be a bad thing. It would make Beat Takeshi a pussy.
( Like Tom Clancy. )
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August 21st, 2005
08:45 pm - And My Baby Is My Common Sense
There should be more movies like *Coffee and Cigarettes.* The umbrella-premise is pretty much stated there in the title. You sit down on the couch, you watch people drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. It's a celebration of things that are bad for you.
( And things that aren't so bad for you. )
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August 6th, 2005
01:34 pm - Art and Beauty and The Sheer Pointlessness Of It All
 In the summer of 1998 I had a job at Bob Evens. I was bussing tables for minimum wage. I wanted to go home every summer, back then. I didn't want to stay in Ann Arbor. Picking up a summer job was tough, back then. No one really wanted to hire you. Not if you were up front about the fact that you just wanted to work there two weeks. Occasionally, some kind-hearted soul--such as my boss at Bob Evens--would offer me job and I'd take it. Short-term employment.
I wanted to go home where my friends were, that and the lake at my parents house. I wanted that, too. I was still paying rent on the place back in Ann Arbor, for Christ's sake. Part of the reason I even had a job (at all) was because I had to pay for a room in a crackhouse I wasn't even staying at.
( Jesus. It was a haunted crackhouse, too. )
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July 11th, 2005
10:22 pm - Thailand's Horror is L7.
I took the bait. I saw a small collection of Thai horror films growing on the shelf at Jah-Jah Records. It looked like the tip of an iceberg. It looked quite possible, from what I saw on the shelf, that Thai horror was going to be the next big wave in Asian cinema. . . and I would be there to catch it, full force, with my purchase of "Die-covery."
It looked promising, the sub-genre is zombie-ghost, and the cover is just nasty.
First off the camerawork is solid. The director, Kulachat Jitkhachorn-wanich, borrows heavily from Evil Dead. In fact, the hero and heroine are on vacation in an old resort and. . .
Anyhow, the whole thing was filmed on something that was halfway between a high-end digital camera and the gear they use to record television shows. The effect of seeing this image quality with the deft editing is very arresting at times.
The characters themselves aren't made to suffer enough on screen. The acting is on par with something you'd see on Thai prime time. That's a guess, anyway. Anyhow, the cast's lack of talent coupled with much of pointless dialog takes the whole production into the absurd.
The bulk of the hero's lines is his wife's name. "Mook. . . Mook. . . Mook. . ." He sounds like one of the monsters from Sesame Street. One of the monsters that crawled up from out of a landfill, severely brain damaged, after having his tongue chewed out by rats.
And there it sits, for the Thai audience. Poorly written and poorly performed by anyone's standard.
And yet, for those of us noncoversant in Thai, the movie is pushed over into the surreal by the hack-job subtitling and the second-rate culture shock.
You wouldn't think so, walking through Pat Pang's "Gash Alley," but the Thai government obviously goes to great lengths to protect it's movie-going audience from the more puerile elements popular in present-day cinema.
The beach hugging scene, for istance, has our herorine in a halter top and white shorts. You can't really tell she's wearing a bra until she gets into the sack with her husband. At which point, he strips her down to her bra and shorts and she leaves him naked to the waist in his jeans. The heavy petting and necking get pretty intense, all under a thirty-pound blanket, until the heroine mistakes a golden cobra for her husband's cock.
No, her lips do not swell up to the size of guavas, but the aforementioned mishap nicely sums up the requisite Asian low-brow humor that takes up so much screen time.
The subtitling, the whole way through, was by far more funny than anything the director pur on the screen. Nothing but "Mook. . . Mook. . . Mook. . ." comes to mind, though.
What really won me over was the Buddhist moralizing. Great stuff. The whole enterprise had the reek of an afterschool special to it.
All in all, bad, but not bad enough.
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July 5th, 2005
11:56 pm - Taiwanese Black Films: A Documentary by Hou Chi-Jan
In Taiwan, black is associated with the underworld, the mob. “Black Films,” in this case, refers to Taiwanese films lensed in the seventies and eighties and financed by mobsters.
Hou Chi-Jan gave us a glimpse of that dangerously-close-to-extinction era of film making last night, at The President, in She-Min Ding. And I couldn't stop shaking his hand. And he wouldn't let us have a copy of his documentary. Lawyers probably have something to do with it, too.
Hou Chi-Jan wisely kept out of the picture. He made not one peep. There was not so much as a frame devoted to him looking “concerned.” The story was told by two directors, an editor, an academic, and scenes from those dying movies.
The footage Hou Chi-Jan unearthed. . . nay, got on his knees and begged for is stunning. Reels and reels of movies, rotting in the vaults. Some film companies refused to touch it because it was so filthy with age that it would damage their cleaning machines.
And that is just a perfect metaphor for the footage saved from the landfill. Dirty, dirty, dirty. Dirty as in: “All Girl Dirty Camp,” “Female Revenge.” “Queen Bee,” “The Shanghai Society Documents,” “Crazed Woman,” and “All Girl Concentration Camp.”
( Please click here to read more. )
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June 13th, 2005
12:12 am - Fuck Taiwanese Cinema
Ever hear of Wayward Cloud? Nope? Don't worry. It isn't likely that you will. It ends with the filming of a rape. Actually, it ends with the filmed rapist ejaculating in the mouth of his girlfriend, who is moaning for the sake of the microphone, because the rape victim is either dead or comatose. Yeah. That's where it really ends.
That's the end of the last reel to Ming Liang Tsai's critically acclaimed masterpiece.
Of course, The Wayward Cloud, to some, is a joy to talk about. People can seem to go on and on about it. Especially Ming Liang Tsai. He's all too eager to inform you as to what his intentions were. The film demands some kind of explanation. That's what the series of interviews Cindy's listening to right now tell me.
As it's being discussed elsewhere, The Wayward Cloud is pretty conventional in terms of what comes out of Taiwan. It deals with alienation. It deals with the difficulty people have with communicating with one another. It deals with the role pornography plays in all of this. Blah. . . blah. . . blah. . . It deals and it deals and it deals. . . It's the psychologist's wet-dream. . . it's a neurotic who deals and deals and deals and never gets anywhere. . . and shows up on time, every time.
I defy anyone to show me a Taiwanese film that doesn't "deal with" alienation!
Aw, I know I can't tell people what to direct. And what not to direct. And how to direct. And so on and so forth. In fact, I know next to nothing about film-making and--personally--my taste in film sucks.
But I can hold Ming Liang Tsai in contempt for being Taiwanese and making a thoroughly nasty film on such weak, cliched grounds. This horseshit would've been cutting edge twenty five years ago. It ain't now. What Ming Liang Tsai wants us to believe is a subversive move against porn is merely an obnoxious and self-indulgent pandering to European critics. Ming Liang Tsai, why not suck up to folks with deeper pockets you pretentious, little bastard?
The fact is, Ming Liang Tsai could've served Taiwan better by making a film more people could see. He could've at least tried to make a movie people would want to see. I mean, people not interested in Marxist critiques of porn. He's stated that his film has socially redeeming values, I say bullshit. He could've redeemed society just a little bit more by letting the world know about Taiwan.
Taiwanese directors, I believe, are afraid of being popular.
The Taiwanese film-maker that'll bring about a real change in what we're seeing from Taiwan, I predict, will be a documentarist.
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April 10th, 2005
02:58 pm - When you laugh, the world laughs with you. When you weep, you weep alone.
*Old Boy,* directed by South Korean Chan-Wook Park, is a tightly-wrought psychological thriller that successfully balances heavy atmosphere with brisk pacing and reserved performances with claw hammer combat.
So much of the character development and story rest on a revelatory plot that makes discussing either feel a little bit like giving away too many details. To rob this film of the surprises, curiosity and utter repulsion one should experience while watching it seems like a crime, to me.
Having said that, I'll venture on to say that it's easily the most repulsive film I've yet to see from South Korea. I think it falls into the "psychological torture" subgenre that makes its appearance in so many Korean and Japanese horror and suspense film. One character, motivated by a desire for bloodthirsty revenge, fucks with another character until he or she emotionally undone. It's been a pretty common theme in Japanese cinema for decades, and the Koreans have been adopting it, as of late, so it seems.
Now, when I use the word "repulsive," I mean to include extreme injuries to the mouth, absolute and total self-degradation on every conceivable front, and a very deliberate effort to undermine the audience's expectations and sensibilities. Regarding the last point, the director knows very well what you want, and he gives you just a little before snatching it away and then makes you feel shitty about wanting it in the first place.
You feel a little a bewildered after watching it. To say the least. You are not given a damn thing you want, ultimately. You are never really let off the hook, watching this film. You are constantly and thoroughly repulsed, and yet completely satisfied with it, in the end.
Fans of Takeshi Mike will, no doubt, find this to be a wholly enjoyable film, no less riveting than *Audition.*
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March 19th, 2005
January 9th, 2005
03:32 pm - Film Review: New Police Story Part II.
Last night, Cindy and I caught New Police Story Part II. It stars Jackie Chan. It is over-acted, melodramatic, contains thoroughly unconvincing characters, character development and character motivation. It lacks subtlety in every respect. It is to film what AC/DC is to music. I loved it.
I'm not sure if this has been released stateside. The print I saw was in Cantonese with Mandarin overdubs and English subtitles. My guess is, it won't see but a few theatres back home. That's too bad, becuase from what I've seen of Chan's work, this may very well be at the top of the heap.
Chan plays the head of a SWAT-style police force. There's a band of really gay-looking twenty somethings who rob a bank. They rob a bank and make a video game out of it. In the process of doing so, they manage to kill off every member of Chan's squad. Chan is spared. There's a beautiful scene where he's pushing a little trolley piled high with his dead buddies. The building surrounding him is exploding, and he is bawling his eyes out. He cries a lot in this movie. Real tears, too, I bet.
The film gets really good after this, primarily because Chan spends about forty five minutes of screen time getting shitfaced. Yeah! In one scene, he chokes down a pint of whiskey and then doubles over and pukes it all up. Toward the tail end of the puke, a thin rope of vomit sways back and forth from his lower lip to the gutter. Ah. . . the gritty realism of Chan's work. . .
A mysterious special agent comes along and helps him get his life back together. The force needs him again, as surveillance indicates the band of really gay-looking twenty somethings (replete with gaping mouths in every scene, lots of muscle-tees, billions of strands of blow-dried hair, and constant preening) is going to strike again.
The plot of this film is really about fatherhood. In fact, the plot is so heavy, you could even call this film an action-sermon. Cindy said she found this film to be emotionally engaging. Perhaps many Hong Kongers did. Myself, I rather enjoyed the flashback of the police commissioners bloody, handcuffed son in his underpants, sobbing as his father berated him. The intended audience for this preaching here is composed of parents. Fathers in particular. "Fathers," it says "Don't handcuff your son after you beat him and then yell at him."
I fucking hate trash that tries to redeem itself with some kind of heavy-handed, sanctimonious, attempt at curing society's ills. Seems like you can't make a movie in Hong Kong without doing so.
Shitty moralizing aside, the action sequences are pretty damn good. The brawls aren't over-long and the locations are pretty fresh. The prelude to the final battle goes down in Legoland. And, yes, there's a screaming horde of children there and, no, not a single one takes a stray bullet to the throat. (And, for involving a cast of bankrobbers, this film is suspiciously light on the cop-killing.)
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August 14th, 2004
01:03 pm - Ninja Vengence: A KKKatastrophe
Seth's *Ninja Vengeance* Review
The film *Ninja Vengeance* was purchased from the Rao He Night Market located two blocks from the overpass. This marker is only open and night. You'll know you've found when you see the towering sign that reads Rao He Night Market. It's more of a gate, an old school Chinese gate, than it is a sign. It would be a gate if it had doors, but I'm not here to tell you what's what, just what happened. If you go there in the daytime, anytime before six PM most weekdays, you're walking through a half mile ghost town. The street and sidewalks are full of trash and occasionally a stray black dog or a cat locked out of its house will approach you. Three business, three business which will strive to make money in spite everything, apparently, are open during these hours. A Jeweler, a little old man masseur who's blind in one eye and can't see out of the other, and a house of prostitution.
But if you go at night, the place is red. It's a half mile of red and nothing but red. The storefronts are all open, all with their red lanterns and red mosquito lights blazing. In the middle of the street, two rows of vendors on mobile dsiplay units stretch through.
And way in the back, neat the end of the night market by the second gate, by the enormous Temple that plays live music every night at eight thirty, that is literally nothing but red lacquer, gold and bronze, and black marble with smoooth granite, you find a little DVD VCD place. There are three of them in the Rao He Night Market, and what distinguishes this one is it's uncompromising selection of heavily edited, imported porn.
Of course, all of the DVD VCD outlets at the markter have porn. They couldn't stay in business if they didn't. But this place really goes the distance on behalf of the customer. I'm not talking about selection, really. Because all of the porn here is pretty much the same thing and it's really hard to buy more than four pornos and keep track of what they're all about. The selection doesn't matter. Either a place has more Japanese gonzo or it has less. Whether or not you get good heavily-edited Japanese gonzo is pretty much a luck of the draw type thing.
But see, this place where I bought Ninja Vengeance, they bend over backward, courtesy wise, for their customers. First, you walk in over a red carpet, past recent Hollywood fare--and whatever happens to be making money on the international circuit. . . all ripped from DVD and mass produced on CD-R's. Sometimes, they'll find current hits still in theatres and find a good handycam rip and sell that, too. You walk down the red carpet--every few feet there's a pedestal ashtray--past the kids stuff. There're about two feet of shelf space devoted to the kid stuff. Next comes new VCD releases. Then comes the dirt. Now, by dirt I mean the likes of Ninja Vengeance. Lot's of late seventies and early eighties b-grade shit. Sometimes you get lucky and there's a copy of Last House on the Left or even maybe Event Horizon, but usually it's the shit they spoof all the time on The Simpsons.
Mixed in with this stuff is the Asian equivilent to Showtime. Not quite softcore, rather lurid, exploitative trash with softcore aspirations. Keep going down the red carpet, though. You come to the DVD's next. About four feet worth of shelf space is devoted to their entire stock of DVDs.
The ball is entirely composed to porn. The red carpet leads you past the back wall and into The Antechamber. The Antechamber is four walls of porn, more or less thematically arranged. One corner's got *Oh! My Pussy Hurts!* and the rest of the Bondage and Abuse titles currently in stock. The next corner's got *Suck Louder for Teacher Extra!* and so on.
There's a wall sans six square feet of display room due to a medium sized entertainment center, complete with DVD and VHS players. In front of the entertainment center is a small couch. You're allowed to preview everything you want to buy. There's an attendant in the Antechamber to help you out. Her name is Remote Control Girl. She was wearing a halter top that said SEXY MOMMA and hot pants that appeared to be stolen or retained from the Taipei Hooters. She would load the selected media and operate the media viewing devices. I later discovered, by way of walking in during a transaction on a subsequent visit, that she'll sit a customer's lap for 50 NT. About $1.50. That price of a package of Marlboro Lights in Taipei.
The red carpet goes through this room and dissappears beneath a closed, plastic, accordian style wall. This is the Inner Sanctum. I've yet you go inside, and doubt that I ever will. But I've since been told, in conspiratorialish, breathy, broken English, that if you spend more than 10,000 NT on your membership account, you can go in for free.
Anyway, when I went into the Antechamber, Remote Control Girl was having her dinner and the television set was off. She was eating a bowl of soup filled with a special kind of tofu (and this is a local favorite) that has been treated somehow to smell like a foot gone unwashed for a week after spending a Saturday afternoon up a sick mule's ass.
I didn't feel comfortable being back there with Remote Control Girl alone. Especially when the pastic, accordian style wall creaked open and a sauced cabbie stepped out, tugging up his fly with one hand and tucking in his shirt tails with the other. I grabbed the first pornographic VCD I could find that didn't feature a confused, middle aged Japanese housewife taking a stiff purple dick to the eye on the front cover and got the hell out of there.
Now, retracing my steps along the red carpet, a stepped out into the front of the store. It just so happened that a small crowd of Taiwanese High School chicks had parked it in front of the register, talking to their friend who was working the Friday evening shift. I couldn't brind myself to approach this crowd with my copy of *What She Is So Very Bitch!* I quickly strolled over to the VCD section and pulled a copy of *Last Man Standing,* starring Bruce Willis and Christopher Walken. The price tag said 3/$99. Next to *Last Man Standing* (did I neglect to mention this place also alphabetized their titles?) was *Ninja Vengeance.* The cover to *Ninja Vengeance* shows the hooded head of a klansman above next to the a gray scale vertical cut of the protagonist, Chris Mason, embracing She of the Boot Tit. On the back there a beautifully rendered oil painting of the Ex-Mairine Sheriff's Son in mid strike, about to land a blow on the bound Bootsie. A burning cross and Grand Dragon hood hang ominously in the background.
So I put *What She is So Very Bitch!* between *Last Man Standing* and my two copies of *Ninja Vengeance* and paid up at the register amidst the giggle of the gaggle of pampered television addicts.
Which is all to say that, in point of fact, less than one U.S. dollar was spent on the purchase of each copy of *Ninja Vengeance.* I would not have spent "five U.S. dollars* on *Ninja Vengeance* as Seth implies. That is a gross exaggeration.
Previous Night Market Entry
Current Music: *California*--Mr. Bungle
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