The COVID-19 lockdown in Dublin (for the good of all of us!) is forcing me reluctantly back into the kitchen. Here are the pan-fried chicken breast fillets with delicious roast baby potatoes cooked with garlic and rosemary which comprised yesterday’s dinner. We’re not fancy; we each grabbed a fork and tucked in…!
FREEZER, aka FREEZE ME. (2000) DIRECTED BY TAKASHI ISHII. STARRING HARUMI INOUE AND KAZUKI KITAMURA.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
Asian horror cinema during this period in the early years of the millenium was just unbeatable. This erotic horror-thriller hails from that exact golden era, and is a sort of Japanese ‘I Spit on your Grave,’ in which a woman gets revenge on her rapists. Here’s the deal, anyway.
An attractive young woman called Chirhiro is raped one day by three men, one of whom she knows from school. The brutal gang-rape takes place in her own home, while her single mum is out at work. The traumatised girl moves to Tokyo and starts a new life, with a new cropped hair-do instead of her long glossy locks, in order to forget the awful things that have happened to her.
Now she has a good job in a bank, a lovely apartment and even a new fiancé called Nogami, who is one of her co-workers at the bank. Everything is going swimmingly for Chirhiro in her new life, until one day, five years later, to her absolute horror, she encounters one of her rapists in her apartment building. It’s no coincidence. He’s come looking for her specially…
The rapist, a cocky young wanna-be Yakuza-type called Hirokawa, has the gall and arrogance to move in with a terrified Chirhiro, availing freely of all the facilities her apartment offers. He takes baths and showers, leaving his clothes and things around the place for her to clean up. He rudely demands food and sex, and falls sweetly asleep in Chirhiro’s bed after raping and battering her again and re-awakening all the horrors of five years earlier.
Hirokawa tells her that the other two men who raped her are en route to the apartment also. One of them, a dangerous thug, has just been released from prison for assault. The three of them are planning, if you can believe the mind-boggling cockiness of it all, to celebrate his release by forcing their way into the life- and body- of the woman they gang-raped together five years ago.
Hirokawa even threatens the petrified Chirhiro with photos and videos of the rape. The scene where he flip-flops stark naked down the hall and sticks the photos in Chirhiro’s neighbours’ letter-boxes is so absurd as to be funny, even though poor Chirhiro’s terror is real enough.
Chirhiro did nothing about the rape five years ago, as in, she didn’t report it to the police or tell friends or family about it, and she does nothing now. The rapists are relying totally on their victim’s sense of shame and embarrassment and even guilt about the rape to keep her mouth firmly welded shut.
They feel confident enough to push her around, even in front of her co-workers, and they’re right to feel so. Chirhiro is too crippled with shame to tell anyone about what’s going on in her apartment. But, when it looks like Hirokawa has cost her her relationship with her fiancé, Nogami, she awakens from her trance and snaps suddenly into revenge mode…
The revenge is a little impractical and the results hard to sustain, but Chirhiro’s mind has cracked under the strain of both the initial gang-rape and, now, of seeing her despised rapists again. And, oh my God, they really are three dreadful examples of male humanity; bullies and cowards rank with the twin stenches of self-loathing and self- pity. Boo-hoo-hoo, everything bad happens to me…!
The ending will break your heart. Your mind will be full of The Things Chirhiro Should Have Done To Help Herself Instead Of The Things She Actually Does, but it’ll be too late by then. The die will already have been very much cast.
PS, I forgot to say that there’s way more sex and nudity in this film than I ever remember seeing in any other Asian horror movie before, so that might encourage some of you naughty boys (and girls!) to stick Freezer on the old to-watch list…!
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry
https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
2. Writing takes more time than you’d expect.
via 12 Reasons Writing Isn’t As Easy As You Thought It Would Be — Novelty Revisions
BLACK SUNDAY, aka THE MASK OF SATAN. (1960) DIRECTED BY MARIO BAVA. LOOSELY BASED ON THE SHORT STORY ‘VIY’ BY NIKOLAI GOGOL.
STARRING BARBARA STEELE.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
This Italian horror movie is the most magnificently gothic film you could ever watch. The scenery and settings are as eerily, dustily gothic as you could possibly wish for, and scream queen Barbara Steele is infinitely watchable as the two lead characters. (She plays a dual role here.) It made stars out of both Steele and Mario Bava, the Italian director.
Steele’s face and figure are exquisite, her hands beautiful, slender and expressive, but that face! The camera is right to focus on it for much of the movie. Close-up, she really is the most striking creature to ever draw breath. Surely no actress has ever played a gothic princess quite so perfectly.
Here, she does a brilliant job of portraying the poor doomed Princess Asa, sister of the ruler of Moldavia, a European kingdom in the seventeenth century, about 1630, to be exact. Her horrible brother, Prince Vajda, has condemned her and her manservant Javutich to death for supposedly being witches, vampires and cohorts of Satan (I accidentally typed ‘cohorts of Stan’ there by accident, which is much less menacing…!)
The first five minutes of the film show Asa’s agonising death. The scene is so controversial that the film was banned in England till 1968. It shocked the living daylights out of me when I saw it first, especially the bit with the enormous executioner-type guy wielding the heavy mallet…! Repeat viewings showed me clearly that the scene has lost none of its power to shock, just because sixty years have elapsed.
I won’t describe the death here; it’s just too gruesome. My sympathies are entirely with the poor persecuted Asa, who curses her brother and all his descendants, not just for three months (a joke from The Simpsons), but for all eternity.
Then the action moves to two hundred years later, in the same God-forsaken kingdom of Moldavia. Two doctors are on their way to a medical conference when their carriage breaks down outside the tomb of Princess Asa, the witch.
They are fascinated to see her face, still covered by the mask of Satan, and the older doctor, Choma Kruvajan, makes the mistake of allowing the blood from a cut on his hand to drip onto the witch’s face, an action which we just know will bring the vengeful witch back to life. Well, if it was good enough for Hammer’s Dracula…!
The handsome younger doctor, Andrej Gorobec, falls head-over-heels in love with Princess Katia of the House of Vajda, the descendant of Asa who also happens to be a dead ringer for the deceased witch.
Katia’s haunting beauty and the air of sadness that envelops her like a cloud of Chanel No.5 draw Andrej to her like a fly to an open jam pot. But is now a good time to be wooing a princess of the doomed House of Vajda, especially given that Asa and her servant Javutich are back and baying for blood…? On his own head be it, then…
The crypt and castle here are the best and most atmospheric I’ve ever seen in a gothic movie. The monochromatic black-and-white is eminently suitable to the fearful tone of the film. Dread and terror are in the air, and no-one is exempt, not Katia, not her brother Constantine and not her father Vajda or her new lover, Andrej. Beware the mask of Stan. There, you see? I’ve done it again. Beware the mask of Satan, I meant to say. It’s like the mask of Stan, only deadlier…
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry
https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
When writer Louise Tondeur and I arranged to swap blog posts a couple of months ago we had no idea of the way the world was changing. Louise has added a preamble to the top tips she originally sent me and a caveat to one of her ‘don’ts’, to take account of the times in […]
via Guest post: Louise Tondeur with top tips and thoughts on writing in crazy times — Cath Barton
Having an end goal can help you make writing more of a priority.
via Treat Your Writing Like ‘Real’ Work If You Want to Succeed — Novelty Revisions
Besides co-writing most of The Grateful Dead songs, John Barlow wrote these 25 Principles of Adult Behavior when he turned 30. Be patient. No matter what. Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, not blame. Say nothing of another you wouldn’t say to him. Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are […]
CORONAVIRUS: COPING WITH THE BIG LOCKDOWN…!
BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
I must admit, yesterday, the first full day of the big lockdown here in Ireland (I’m in Dublin), was a rough day for me. I had a touch of cabin fever (well, more than a touch, I had the whole cabin, log fire, moose head over the fireplace, the log-pile outside the back door, the zombies in the forest getting closer and closer, the works!), having been in the house voluntarily self-isolating since Monday.
Two days is a long time for me to be in, okay? I’d normally be buzzing around the place like a busy bee, taking the son and heir to and from school, doing my bits and pieces of shopping, chewing the fat with shop assistants and neighbours and other local characters, then trying to get some writing done before the school day ends and I have to spend the rest of the day feeding a teenage boy with hollow legs, lol.
Now, of course, the schools are closed, so feeding the Boy has become a full-time job. I’m not kidding, he slinks back into the kitchen after meals, going, are there any snacks? Any snacks? I’ve just fed you a meal so enormous that even Henry the Eighth himself would have difficulty finishing it and you’re looking for snacks? Ye Gods . . . !
My daughter’s work is closed for the duration now as well, thanks to COVID-19, because apparently a bookshop is not an essential service (I thoroughly disagree, by the way!), and the government has ordered all non-essential shops and businesses to close. She’s helping out with the Boy’s ‘distance learning,’ which takes about forty-five minutes a day or as long as his ADHD will allow for.
The pubs, of course, have all been closed for nearly a fortnight now (not that I ever get near them anyway, sadly), and will presumably remain shut until at least mid-to-late April, 2020, which is the absolute earliest the schools will re-open.
All our favourite cafés and restaurants have either closed (McDonalds’ is shut, and they never shut!) for the moment or can only run a takeaway/delivery service. This means that, in the whole of Dublin, or, more correctly, the whole of Ireland, there’s currently nowhere you can go, outside of your own home, to sit with a cup of coffee and a sandwich and watch the world go by for half an hour. This is pretty much an unprecedented situation in a country as sociable as Ireland, and an upsetting one.
So, anyway, getting back to yesterday, I was stressed to the max. Cabin fever, panic about the virus affecting me or my children, panic about getting to the shops and pharmacy for essential supplies, feelings of irritability, loneliness, isolation and even boredom, which was odd considering I have so much to do.
I’m having my trilogy of romantic fiction books published by a traditional publisher starting this summer, but only two of them are written, lol. I still write a film-and-book blog, which means more and more to me as the years go by, and I self-publish my erotic horror fiction and film reviews and erotic poetry with Kindle Direct Publishing, so it’s really not like I’m short of things to do. I guess the virus-worry was getting to me.
We all decided on an early night last night, anyway, so as to bring that awful day to a close, a day in which I’d binged on all the bad news and had grown more agitated and doom-and-gloom-laden with each passing hour. Yes, I snapped at my kids, but don’t worry, the little blighters snapped right back with all the entitlement and confidence of kids born from the ‘Nineties onwards. Don’t forget, they have all the answers, so ask them if you have a question about anything at all . . . !
Today was a much better day in a hundred different ways. The sun continued to shine, as indeed it has all week, and my son and I ventured out this morning to do little jobs while my daughter had a much-needed lie-in, the kind she can’t normally get while the shop where she works is open for business. Every cloud, eh . . .?
The fresh air definitely blew a few coronavirus-encrusted cobwebs away. You simply cannot over-emphasise how much good you can derive from a simple walk in the sunshine. We walked through the park and sat on a bench and watched the daffodils dancing in the breeze. There was life before the coronavirus, I reminded myself, and there will be again.
Everyone we passed was behaving beautifully under the new restrictions and social guidelines. Friends, colleagues and even married couples were all ‘social distancing,’ leaving at least two metres between themselves and everyone else.
It was so heartening to see people actually following and respecting the guidelines laid down by our Health Service Executive, because it’s only by observing these guidelines that we can ever hope to pull ourselves out of this morass in which we’ve found ourselves, through no fault of our own. It depressed me greatly during the week to hear reports of people ignoring the recommendations and flocking in their droves to local beauty spots and other places, but today, at least, everyone we met was playing a blinder.
I felt ridiculously emotional and, yes, grateful as we went into all the shops and businesses we’d normally visit at least once a week, and found all the staff working away cheerfully there as usual, albeit wearing masks and gloves and a further distance away than normal, but still there, still providing us with the goods and services without which we’d be hard put to survive.
I genuinely feel as grateful to these guys (and gals!) as people do to the veterans who fought for their freedom in the two world wars. No exaggeration, but they’re risking their health to bring us a continued service and I want to thank them for it. What I really want is to hug them for it, but in the current climate, that’s maybe not such a great ideal, lol. But I certainly had tears in my eyes, much to my poor son’s bemusement, as we started for home.
“Mammy, are you crying about a writing thing?” he ventured, because that’s apparently the subject I cry about the most.
“No, lovey, I’m just crying because I’m happy today went so well,” I told him, but he still rolled his eyes. Oh, the joys of pandemic parenting!
On the way home, we encountered two community guards of our acquaintance who were patrolling the park, making sure everything was nice and safe for the people using it. Did I feel protected, looked after, as we stopped for a chinwag? You bet I did. And then, before we finally reached home, a neighbour whom I know only slightly did us a stunning and unexpected kindness, which I won’t go into here, but let’s just say it was the icing on the cake of a lovely morning.
Then, when we got home, first my son’s special school and then what I call his ‘Autism service providers,’ the clinical services folks, each got in touch by phone to ask if there was any extra help or support we needed during this stressful time. And then, my lovely editor emailed me a preliminary sketch of the cover for my first traditionally-published book and I loved it! My cup of love and goodwill towards all men literally runneth over right now. I feel blessed.
Yesterday I felt like throwing in the towel. Today I have hope and things look much brighter. That’s the power of fresh air, a little exercise and sunshine and making contact (safely, from a distance of two metres!) with people who care. Tomorrow, I may be back binge-watching the terrifying statistics and biting the heads off loved ones or anyone else who looks crooked at me, but for today, I’m fine. It’s enough.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry
https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
on Self Publishing Review: Amazon has announced via Seller Central that they will be slowing book delivery to prioritize medical and food delivery in the US and EU markets. Amazon says, “We are temporarily prioritizing household staples, medical supplies and other high-demand products coming into our fulfillment centers so that we can more quickly receive, […]
The other day I saw someone on Twitter complain that they’re not getting their stories published because they don’t fit in with publishers’ ideas on how writing should be done. For a second, I empathised. We’ve all been there, right? We’ve all had stories we think are exactly what a magazine or an anthology publisher […]
sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris 