Volume 135: Bumpkin Soup / The Crazy Family
The Voice of Energy Vol. 135
Hihi. ‘Tis another lovely day spring day here in Portland. I’m currently sitting on my couch listening to the reissue of Orbital’s 1991 debut album and wishing I had a breakfast burrito nearby.
Quick note before we get into the newsletter proper: my humble little record shop is celebrating Record Store Day tomorrow (4/20). We’ll be opening early and giving away free donuts and coffee. We’ll have a handful of the exclusive RSD releases on hand for purchase, and we’ll take 10% off the cost of used vinyl. DJs will also be on hand through the day to spin records for you lucky people. If you’re in the Portland area, do stop by. 2732 NE MLK Blvd.
This week, a quick piece about two Japanese films from the ’80s that are getting rare screenings in New York this weekend and another FTA pick for your streaming pleasure. Dig in.
Bumpkin Soup (1985, dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa) / The Crazy Family (1984, dir. Sōgo Ishii)
Setting aside the many, many issues that big tech companies have wrought on our world, if we can offer them any praise, it’s in achieving one of their unwritten goals: democratizing the means of production and distribution of art.
The way to make the biggest splash in our cultural world is by hooking up with a major marketer and distributor, but simply getting a piece of writing, music, or film into the world for the eyes and ears of the public is easier than ever.
This wonderful reality was much on my mind when watching and reviewing The People’s Joker, Vera Drew’s sharp parody of the superhero genre blended with a heartfelt trans coming-of-age story, but it came up again in looking into the work of Director’s Company.
Founded in 1982 by a former ad exec, the production company was created, in part, to help truly distinctive filmmakers in Japan get their foot in the more mainstream world. Many cut their teeth making so-called “pink films,” erotic fare made in the ’70s and ’80s by Nikkatsu, or were creating work on a shoestring budget completely independently. Before they folded in 1992, Director’s Company helped celebrated filmmakers like Toshiharu Ikeda and Kichitaro Negishi move beyond the schlock of their early days behind the camera.
Tonight and tomorrow, Director’s Company is getting a small spotlight via New York’s Japan Society, which is screening two key features made by the production house: Bumpkin Soup, a 1985 work by future horror icon Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and The Crazy Family, an appropriately unhinged film from 1984 by cult favorite Sōgo Ishii.
The former film actually began as a “pink film,” funded by Nikkatsu, but the production company deemed it too strange even for them. Kurosawa managed to buy the movie for himself, and with the help of Director’s Company, shot new material and reconstructed it to better fit his own vision.
The film’s erotic origins are still very much a factor in the finished product. Naked bodies and odd sex scenes abound, but the effect is more jarring than titillating — reflective of the confusion and alienation felt by Akiko (Yoriko Doguchi), a young woman from rural Japan who travels to a Tokyo university in search of her boyfriend. The campus itself is a caricature with its many bodies lining walkways carrying protest signs and the rampant fucking going on among its student body. Akiko falls in with the folks taking a psychology class led by a professor (Juzo Itami) who key obsession is the concept of shame.
The plot of Bumpkin Soup, though, is truly incidental to what Kurosawa’s various experiments in mood, style, and technique. Interstitial scenes shot on camcorder are plugged in among those made using traditional film stock. And it often feels as though the director is at the mercy of his influences — leading to a mishmash of references to Godard, Barbarella, Yoko Ono, Lindsay Anderson’s If…, and John Waters. The sheer energy and audacity of the film are the only things holding it all together.
Equally audacious but far more successful is The Crazy Family, the fourth feature from musician and filmmaker Ishii. Prior to this, the director was known for his dystopian punk rock biker films, including the underground classic Burst City. Making a movie about a family finally escaping Tokyo for a new home in the suburbs would suggest a fitter, happier Ishii, but it isn’t long before things go haywire for the Kobayashis.
Father Katsuhiko (Katsuya Kobayashi) is immediately obsessed with protecting his new purchase from, among other things, termites. His wife Saeko (Mitsuko Baisho) becomes sex-crazed, to the point of doing a striptease for her father-in-law (Hitoshi Ueki) and his fellow WWII vets in the small living room. Daughter Erika (Youki Kudoh, best known as one of the Japanese tourists in Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train) worries only about her supposed future pop stardom and son Masaki (Yoshiki Arizono) throws himself into studying for his university entrance exams to a terrifying degree.
The situation only devolves from there, a domino run set in motion by the father-in-law moving into their small home. Feeling the pressure to make space, the increasingly manic Katsuhiko decides to dig out a basement and build a room for his dad. You may have an idea of where this all leads, and chances are you won’t be too far off, but the twists and diversions that the movie takes to get there will surely throw you for a loop.
Ishii holds true to his run-and-gun roots throughout this twisted domestic tale, with fast paced editing and a truly dazzling sequence where the camera stays just ahead of Katsuhiko as he furiously rushes through a crowded subway train. Domestic dramas like this, where the suburban dream is peeled back to reveal a seamy, nasty underbelly has been fodder for filmmakers for years before and since The Crazy Family, but few movies have gone as gonzo as this.
Bumpkin Soup screens at the Japan Society on Friday April 19 at 9 pm and Saturday April 20 at 7 pm. The Crazy Family screens on April 19 at 7 pm and April 20 at 9 pm.
FTA Pick of the Week
Our regular feature — a recommendation of a movie to watch that is hiding below the fold on one of the major streaming services. In other words: fuck the algorithm.
The Set-Up (1949, dir. Robert Wise)
As pointed out by some of my fellow cinephiles, Tubi has become one of the finest streaming sources for classic and cult films. If you can put up with a few commercial intrusions, you will find a wealth of movies that only get screened occasionally on TCM and are becoming harder than ever to find on physical media. One film lover I’ve been following on social media for a while, Will McKinley, recently revealed that Warner Bros. slipped a nice grip of library titles into the Tubi stream, including stone cold classics like A Face In The Crowd, Gypsy, The Public Enemy, and Bringing Up Baby. The one title that jumped out at me on this list was The Set-Up, a sweaty, nasty noir from 1949 made for RKO by editor turned director Robert Wise. It stars a never-better Robert Ryan as a has-been boxer who agrees to fight a young up-and-comer in hopes of resurrecting his career and earning enough to start a new life. Unbeknownst to him, his manager is betting on him to lose the match, adding to the many voices rooting for his defeat. The bleakness of this story is given a jolt during the fight sequences, which were shot using three cameras to better capture the brutal energy and beauty of the sweet science.
The Set-Up is, yes, streaming on Tubi.
That’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed what I had to say. I’ll be back again next Friday.
Artwork for this edition is by Silvia Rosi whose photographs will be on display at Collezione Maramotti from April 28 through July 28.
This newsletter was written on the unceded land where once stood the traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River creating communities and summer encampments to harvest and use the plentiful natural resources of the area.