(Once, long ago, I sent a lot of reviews to the magazine Cult Movies, who said that they would use some and then send me a copy of any issue where a review of mine appeared. A year or so later, I stumbled upon issue 36 and found this review printed in it. Well, despite e-mails back and forth and their promises to send me copies of any magazines in which my texts appear, they never sent me a copy of any issue, number 36 or any other number, in which a review of mine may have appeared. Haven't bought a copy of the magazine since, actually.)
Depending on the source, Leo de Laforgue filmed this documentary sometime between 1935 and 1943, but for a variety of reasons it wasn’t released until after the Second World War in 1950. Opening with the title Sinfonie Einer Weltstadt, which translates roughly to "Symphony of a Metropolis,“ it is clear that Laforgue was trying to link his film historically to Walter Ruttmann’s 1927 silent masterpiece Berlin, die Sinfonie einer Grossstadt (released in the US as The Symphony of a Great City). Actually, while de Laforgue’s film is interesting in its own way, it is nonetheless so extremely inferior to Ruttmann’s film that the pathetic attempt to link the two is nothing less than embarrassing. Ruttmann’s film is a masterpiece of early documentation and presentation that focuses on the pulsating rhythm of the city for one day, from dawn until late in the night. Very much influenced by the attitudes and theories of the Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity" or "New Realism") art movement of Germany during the Weimar Republic (which included such painters as Otto Dix and George Gross), Ruttmann’s visually exciting, brilliantly filmed and edited silent movie was as much of a celebration as it was a jaundiced criticism of Berlin and its inhabitants at the time. Laforgue’s film, on the other hand, lacks the jaded but critical eye of the earlier ode to Berlin, and draws most of its strength from the unintended position it gained after the war: that of being a visual documentation of what the city was like before the machinations of the National Socialists—that’s Nazis to people like you and me—led to its (and the Fatherland’s) destruction.
In fact, when Laforgue was making his film, he did so under the auspices of the government (as was any film made in Germany back then): Laforgue’s film was originally meant to be more or less a celebration of "Berlin, the Reichshauptstadt," extolling the city’s people, its buildings and streets, its cultural and entertainment possibilities, as well as almost every other aspect of the city’s general infrastructure one might think of. Ironically enough, once Laforgue finished the film, it was banned by Paul Josef Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Minister of Culture. Between the creation of the film and its completion, World War Two was already in full swing, and Allied bombs had long begun to rain from the sky, flattening everything Laforgue’s film so venerated, and Goebbels had no desire to remind Berliners what their city had been like before the powers-that-be led their country down the ugly path into war and death.
After The Nation of Beer and Wurst had been pulverized, the controlling powers eventually allowed the film to be released, with the new, more up-to-date title Berlin Wie Es War, which literally translates to "Berlin As It Was." And indeed, that is what the film shows, complete with some of the most obnoxious background music ever made. (Supplied by Prof. Rudolf Katting, the good man tortures the viewer with 3 or 4 or 5 German standards—"Schlagers" as they are called by the natives—rendered in 5 or 6 or 7 different orchestral arrangements that do nothing less than present a damned powerful argument that Lawrence Welk was actually a very talented musician.) Probably in the hope that the experience of this film might function at some educational level, as late as the end of the 1980s Berlin Wie Es War still had an afternoon showing a couple of times a week in a (West) Berlin movie theatre. (It still has regular screenings here in Berlin, though no longer as often.)
The Berlin Wie Es War is interesting, as are all films that document a place and time that is forever gone. That aside, the music sucks and the editing is painful; numerous shots seem to last mere seconds, and while the technique of Montage Shot works well for pop videos and Schwarzennegger films, in this documentary it merely strains the eyes and annoys. (One can’t help but wonder whether the brutal editing was actually part of the original film, for it seem odd that a movie made initially to celebrate the Reichshauptstadt at a time when there wasn’t a single circumcised man left in the city completely lacks even one Nazi uniform, flag, decoration or any other sort of visual reference to the country’s fascist regime.) For all its numerous flaws, Berlin Wie Es War is still one of the few films around that documents one of Germany’s most important cities at a time in which it was still flourishing, and that alone makes it an interesting visual experience.
When I first saw this title pop up on websites, the DVD-cover coupled with the flick’s name put this film at the top of my list of obscure films I just had see. I promptly took advantage of the first chance I had to get an affordable copy, despite my recent experience with another Thai horror film, Devil Species. Besides, word had it that Lizard Woman (in Thai: Tuk kae phi) had topped the box office in its home country for three weeks, so it couldn’t be all that bad, could it? I had the chance to check it out quick enough with some buds when we got together for a night of sleaze films; Lizard Woman was the first DVD to get fed to the player. An hour and a half later, after the film had ended, we all had to agree: we couldn’t figure out what the fuck had happened in the film.
Although only the third Thai horror film I have ever seen, Lizard Woman, coming so soon on the heels of Devil Species—with which it shares many common problems—leaves one with the feeling that either a lot gets lost in translation, or the Thai have a substantial inability to tell coherent stories. However, Nang-Nak/Return from the Dead, the Thai horror film that first turned me on to Thai horror, belays the latter concept, for it not only has a coherent narrative, but is really well made. But then, Nang-Nak, unlike Lizard Woman, is a big-budget film for Thailand and definitely has artistic pretentions that transcend its horror roots.
Lizard Woman, however, has no artistic pretensions: it is a horror film, plain and simple. Unluckily, though its basic concept is great and more than one scene or situation is actually rather (if not extremely) effective, the film as a whole is pretty lousy. Worse, it so obviously could have been a much better film that its failure is as highly aggravating as it is disappointing; likewise, as bad as it is, it never sinks to the level of pure incompetence that, in the end, makes Devil Species such an enjoyable fuck-up.
Like Devil Species, Lizard Woman is almost two different stories tied together with the slimmest of strings. At 20-plus minutes, the opening scene is so long that it seems like the rest of the film should continue it, but instead the film moves on to other characters and a different story, only returning to the original site for a showdown that may or may not have happened (that was one of the aspects me and me buds couldn’t agree upon).
The opening scene follows a mixed-sex group of six people spelunking; the Professor drops a wooden box with a wax gecko in it and later the group takes refuge in a deserted house when their car breaks down and the wind blows away their map. (The viewer who does not read the liner notes of the DVD will not know that the box was found in the cave and that by breaking it an evil gecko demon was released.) For what it’s worth, although the six do that normal thing that people only do in horror films—you know, separate for the most inane reasons and walk around alone and, yes, even bathe—the whole intro scene is pretty good: first we get a tastefully shot nude scene of an attractive Asian babe and then a white ghostly figure floating around before the geckos show up, people start dying, and the undead (not vampires but neither ghost nor zombie) increase. Regrettably, once the body count is over, the flick moves into its next segment and the narrative really gets lost.
Lizard Woman now turns to another character that inexplicitly appeared in the first segment once or twice in brief, totally out-of-context intercut scenes. The writer Kwanpilin (Roongrawee Borijindakul) has just finished her latest book and while on tour she buys (is given?) a small wooden box that looks suspiciously like the one the professor dropped. In no time short, gecko shit starts appearing in her apartment, close acquaintances start dying violent deaths and, finally, she gets possessed by a gecko demon and, as the titular lizard woman, is even seen eating flies from atop of a street light. Can her boyfriend Vitool (Pete Thongchua) and the photographer (Chatthapong Pantanaunkul) save her? The Lizard Woman runs off to the house from the beginning of the film—now populated by ghostly gals on swings—and the boyfriend and photographer follow close behind...
The script to Lizard Woman seems to have been written following the William Burroughs cut-up approach, for the narrative flies all over the place... in fact, just when you think the film is over, you suddenly find out it never happened—or did it? Who knows; who cares? Though the film is interspaced with some beautifully horrific scenes and surprises, everything else about the film—the pacing, script, editing and acting—can only be described as catastrophic. Don’t be tricked into getting this DVD by such seductively interesting film images as those included in this review: Lizard Woman is a total waste of time.
