Living Hell

Subversive Cinema is a new DVD distribution company that really caters to the fan's increasing appetite for substantial bonus material and first-rate transfers. The first couple films they've released may not be the cat's pajamas but the DVDs certainly are. The company's debut release, Living Hell, is a fairly decent Japanese horror film that tries really hard to go all Texas Chainsaw Massacre on us. It also tries to do a million other things, which ends up being its biggest flaw. Sure, it's got the gory goods but, for some reason, I found it to be more comical than scary.

The film begins with a very intriguing, murderous sequence: a bug eating through someone's eyeball. The film then goes into the whole Ju-On/Ringu thing with a pair ghostly women coming to stay with some broken family and doing a bunch of un-scary shit. We then have some very elaborate, oftentimes comical, torture sequences with a handicapped boy that include throwing worms at him, pushing him in front of a car, giving him a dead bird, and electrocuting his nuts. I guess that was pretty scary but it's not butcher knife scary.

The torture gets gradually worse: they play darts on the boy's chest, pull a tooth out (awww, just one?), and then break his hand with a mallet (off-screen, boooo!). I've got to say the most bizarre fatality had to be a death by hair dryer (yes, you read that correctly). It's pretty much off-screen but we do get to see the underwhelming after-effect. I guess we'll have to wait for another, more skillfully accomplished death by hair drier sequence.

After some investigative hogwash, we finally get to the climax that tries desperately to take us into Texas Chainsaw Massacre territory. However, it ultimately fails because it's out of the blue, and there's just too much back-story that takes us out of the horror. Still, the film does have its individual moments that can be skillfully composed and nearly frightening.

On a positive note, Subversive Cinema has done an amazing job for a film that I'm not quite sure deserved such exceptional treatment. We get a ton of extras starting with a feature length commentary by director Shugo Fuji. Here he discusses some aspects on the making of the film. He also discusses influences such as his fave director, Alfred Hitchcock (what, no Tobe Hooper shout-outs?). The track is pretty lackluster. For one, Fuji's English is questionable and he doesn't have all that much to say. I'm assuming (for his sake) it's a language barrier thing.

Moving along, we get four of the director's short films. Man, Subversive pretty much released this guy's complete directorial catalogue. To be fair, they're good student shorts, nothing more. The last film, Dead Money, was by far the most accomplished of the four but, then again, it wasn't a student film so it all balances out. Still, extras are extras.

We get a handful of deleted scenes in Japanese without subtitles so there's not much to say about those. There wasn't any action so I'm completely out of the loop. All I got was foreign dialogue and bad picture quality. There are also trailers for the film, as well as some other interesting Subversive previews. Lastly, we get storyboards and a director's bio.

The only downfall of this disc is perhaps the non-anamorphic transfer but who knows if the film was ever even meant to play in theatres. Audio comes in 2.0 Surround in Japanese with English subs. It's definitely serviceable, no complaints here. All and all, a/v is pretty sufficient. -- Neil Karassik