Three/Three…Extremes

            Out on Blu-ray from Arrow Releasing is a delightfully deranged 2-disc set of two separate trilogies of terror, with short films by well-known Asian directors. Like most omnibus horror-themed collections the entries are hit and miss. But in the second selection they really are transgressive and demented.

            Three (2002) is the first set. The introductory film is: 

            Memories, by South Korean Kim Jee-woon (A Tale of Two Sisters/I Saw the Devil). A man, whose wife is missing, has no memory of how or when she left. Meanwhile A woman wakes lying in the street with only a broken phone and a dry-cleaning slip, with little, to no, memory. Both stories collide in this eerie slow-burn tale.

            The Wheel is by Thai director Nonzee Nimibutr (who made the ghost tale Nang Nak). It’s about a poor street performers who gets their hands on a trunk of cursed puppets (that houses the soul of Master Tao, who tried to drown the puppets before he died). Terrible things befall members of the troupe. Attempts to destroy the dolls only make matters worse.

            Going Home is by Hong Kong director Peter Ho-Sun Chan (Dragon). This tale is about a widowed cop and his young son who move into a run-down apartment complex. They meet a man across the hall caring for a paralyzed wife and young daughter. The daughter creeps the boy out and she should. There’s something definitely not right in that apartment. The wife is actually dead and the husband is trying to revive her with baths of Chinese herbs.

            Now these three movies were high on atmosphere and dread but the second omnibus set of films- Three…Extremes (2005) really took it to a higher level of cinematic insanity.

            Prolific Japanese madman Takashi Miike’s (Audition) offering is Box. It’s about Kyoko and Shoko- two young sisters who are circus dancers and contortionists and can fold their bodies into tiny boxes on stage. Their handler pits one against the other with material rewards. An accidental act of jealous anger results in a fiery tragedy. It haunts one of the sisters throughout her life and she repeatedly dreams of being buried alive, trapped in a box. This is a strange one, but Miike says in an extra on the Blu-ray, “horror that makes sense isn’t very interesting anyway. It’s the stuff you don’t understand that’s scary. The fun of horror are the things that feel uncomfortable or creepy.”

            South Korean director Park Chan-wook’s (Oldboy) section is Cut, about a film director (shooting a cool-looking vampire movie), who returns home to find a madman has tied up his wife, super-glued her fingers to the keys of the piano, and threatens to remove them one digit at a time (with a small axe) if the director doesn’t agree to his bloodthirsty demands. The crazed intruder was also an extra in five of the director’s films. And what he demands of the director is really beyond the pale. There are some real grisly surprises in this one.

            But the best selection is Hong Kong director Fruit Chan’s Dumplings, which he also expanded into a feature-length film. The endings differ in both versions, but both are equally sick and fabulous.

            Based on a novella by Lilian Lee (Farewell My Concubine), Dumplings is about a middle-aged, former TV star (Miriam Yeung), married to a wealthy businessman (Tony Leung Ka-fai) who has lost interest in her. She goes to a seedy tenement to get the help of Aunt Mei (Bai Ling), a sexy cook who whips up exotic dumplings that have special rejuvenating power to make people look younger. The catch is that the dumplings are made from baby fetuses, which Auntie smuggles into the country in a tin lunch pail with a hidden compartment.

            Bai Ling is sensual, offbeat and just terrific in the movie- dressed in tight Capri pants and flowered tops, constantly chewing sunflower seeds and spitting the shells on the floor, or rubbing her flour-coated hands over her curvaceous body while she cooks. Not since the movie Julie & Julia has the preparation of food been filmed with such erotic appreciation. Aunt Mei is supposedly 60-years-old but looks great because she partakes of her own dumplings. As macabre as it sounds, it plays out like a straightforward melodrama. The cinematography is extraordinary, not surprising since it’s by director Wong Kar-Wai’s frequent collaborator- Christopher Doyle.

            The wife gets side effects from her unusual “beauty’ treatment- she starts to smell “fishy” to her girlfriends while lunching with them. The reason: the wife demands quicker results and Auntie uses a fully-formed fetus explaining: “The 5^th month ones are perfect- kitten-like. So cute and nutritious.” But because the fetus was from an incest victim there are some unexpected consequences.

             In the shorter version- the wife is abandoned by her husband and there’s some nasty business with her in a tub at the end where she licks her lips with a supernaturally long tongue darting from her mouth. In the feature film- she extracts revenge on her husband by purchasing the unborn baby sired by his mistress. She raises a cleaver to it at the end with a victorious and malicious smile.

            There are plenty of extras including Cross-Pollination Horror Part 1 & 2 with producer Peter Ho-Sun Chan about the projects. Plus, individual film extras, interviews with the directors and other juicy tidbits about the making of these terror treats.