Meanderings of a Monkey Juggler

Well hasn't this week been spectacular for screened entertainment?  First off was the Freudian madman wittering on about fillums.  Then, last night P and C came round and brought a couple of fillums to watch.  In the end we only got through one of them but my word what a fillum.

It's called "The Happiness of the Katakuris" another of the Japanese fillums of Takashi Miike (director of Visitor Q, Audition, Ichi the Killer and more) so you'd expect a scary fillum. Well it wasn't really.  But it was a tad odd (this is understatement).  The DVD box says it's "a cross between The Dawn of the Dead and The Sound of Music".  It's close-ish but not quite accurate.  I'd link the "Sound of Music" with the family atmos of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre".

The start got things off on the right foot.  It was a plasticine style animation of a little demonic "Morph" like creature biting the uvula out of a young lady who was wanting only to eat some soup. "Aargh! My uvula!" said the subtitles.  The little critter then runs off to enjoy his feast of uvula.  Whilst doing this he gets eaten by a crow.  Somewhere soon an egg gets laid then it cracks and another little demon critter is born from it.  Then it's eaten by another crow and the cycle is expected to start again.

But as the crow is flying away a gardener gets angry at it and hoys a stick (miles) and thwacks the crow which falls to the ground and the show then follows the gardener (now in real life).  He's grandpa Katakuri the eldest of a family who have bought a remote guesthouse.  They have had no guests yet and they feel it's because they are so remote.  There are the usual tensions between them.  Then one night there is a tropical storm and up steps a visitor.  He dies overnight.  What to do with the body?  Tell the police?  No!  This would give us bad publicity. So they bury the guy in the garden near a big lake.

Then a couple arrive a few nights later.  He's a huge sumo wrestler, she's a dot of a young lady.  They get a room and shag noisily (heard from the rooms downstairs).  No sign in the morning so they investigate and there's a dead sumo wrestler.  Moving him (with difficulty) they find a dead dot of a young lady who's been smothered by the wrestler.  So they go to bury these as well.

So the story continues.  People come into their house and die.  They don't kill any of them but things just conspire against them.  I just thought about this.  I wonder if the devil-Morph is giving his revenge.

The most bizarre thing about the fillum was the music.  It's a musical so there are songs about cleaning up death scenes, digging holes as well as a couple of love songs. As I said it's rather odd.

Having said all that the fillum did drag for me.  I spent some time wanting more dramatic impulse forward.  It just felt like it was meandering forwards instead of being impelled headlong.  Still worth a look though.

Have fun.