Baksmälla (1973)

Baksmälla literary mean ”hangover”, and that starts this chamber play with Jörn Donner and Diana Kjær as a couple of the verge of break-up and break-down. They are Leif and Lena, who after some years together finally got married yesterday and now wakes up to the bitter reality of marriage.

Things do not get better with the naked woman walking around in the house, someone who woke up in bed together with Leif… Then the day starts, first with a stubborn insurance salesman trying to sell them a new house insurance, which just reveals more about their relationship then he can handle. A series of flashbacks tells us their story, both together and in their own adventures. At the same time they’re trying to refurnish the house, drink a lot of alcohol and blame the airplanes above them for making the house a hell to live in…

Once again Klubb Super 8 delivers a fantastic package. Baksmälla is actually a quite serious movie, a smart relationship-drama with some nice black comedy, some nudity and a lot of truth. Jörn Donner, the Swedish-Finnish actor, director, producer was controversial from the beginning of his career, and still continues to stir up controversy when he feels for it. What people tend to forget is that he’s a good actor and an even better director (among the movies he directed is the 1978 feminist drama, Manrape. Great flick!). Diana Kjær is even better as Lena, the bored wife who looks back at her adventures in Spain. The acting is very naturalistic, and much of the dialogue has a feeling of ad-libbing.

This is hardly a glamorous movie, but an excellent example of the Scandinavian drama-sensibility that has been lost over the years and now only is over-worked, contrived orgies in self-indulgence.

The print used by Klubb Super 8 has some minor damage, but it’s still a beautiful and stunning print. It shows the Swedish (and Finnish) greyness in a great way. For those who want more exploitation, the UK version from 1978 is included to. I just fast-forwarded a bit, and it seems quite different with a lot added nudie-footage and much of the relationship-drama cut. That print is taken from VHS, but still looks acceptable.

I need to mention the awesome score by Claes Af Geijerstam too. I wish this was released somewhere. Some tracks is ironically over-the-top, but mixed with low-key piano-based songs which fits wonderful to dirty snow of Sweden.

Another fine release from KS8, and of course I would recommend everyone to buy it, watch it and realize that there are other relationship-dramas from Sweden than dear old Bergman.

Draugasaga (1987)

I’ve been a movie collector for quite a lot of years right now, and there’s always been three titles that someone seen on television and want to see again: Sekmisja, Månguden and Det Spökar i TV-huset. All three was shown on Swedish television and forever imprinted in the minds of Swedish kids. The first one is of course a famous Polish sci-fi comedy, the second one was long gone, but released on DVD in Sweden in 2010. The last one, Draugasaga, a TV-movie from Iceland by Viðar Víkingsson has been a holy grail for some people, including me. I saw it as a kid, and maybe 15 years ago I saw a shoddy bootleg-VHS at a friends place and then it was gone again. Until now.

Everything is set in the TV-house, the public service television of Iceland. A new kid is hired to be a night watchman. The old watchman is going to quit, and is very afraid of the ghost that haunts the place, a red-haired woman who is very dangerous, especially if she have a big sledgehammer in her hands… Our hero is getting more and more obsessed by the ghost-legend, and his relationship with his girlfriend – who works at the TV-house – is getting more strained. At the same time, a red-haired ghost is getting more active with her sledge hammer…




Most of them who saw the movie when it first aired on Swedish television probably only remember the more visual part, the woman with the hair in front of her face, the sledge hammer outside the elevator, the attack outside on the street. Strong visuals, eerie atmosphere and something that was new to most of us. Draugasaga is much more than so, a weird relation-drama, maybe a form of satire over television, a dream-like story about the past meeting the future. I appreciate all of this, but especially when it mixed with some excellent and creepy horror images.

It clearly has a TV-feeling, that special quality that you will recognize from BBC or Scandinavian TV from the same time. This seems to be shot on film though, and has some very nice cinematography and slow but effective editing. The pace is slow, but there is not one boring second in the movie. One bizarre thing leads to something other weird, and goes to horror and then some kitchen-sink drama. A very unique approach to a ghost-movie I would say.

Viðar Víkingsson has crafted a pearl of a movie, something that will grow on the viewer. For some of us it created nightmares for years after, it became a legend – and well deserved so. But does it still hold up? Yes, it does. Very well indeed, and if you are used to TV-productions from the seventies and eighties this is the movie for you – if you can find it of course...

Captain America (1990)

First of all I want to state that I’ve always been very uninterested in superhero comics. Not my cup of tea. But some superhero-movies has become quite close to me, for example Superman 2, Ang Lee’s The Hulk, all the three incarnations of The Punisher (though I wouldn’t call him a superhero), the original Batman-series from the sixties and so on. I even like the ill-fated Roger Corman-production of The Fantastic Four, but loath the new movies. So it was with a lot of expectations I finally got the brand new DVD of Albert Pyun’s Captain America from Thailand. Most of the stuff I read about it is crap, but some people have a tendency not to like Pyun’s style. Well, I do…

I won’t go into the story, except both Red Skull (the bad guy of course) and Captain America is the creation of WW2-experiments. Our dear captain crash-lands with a rocket in Alaska and is frozen for fifty years, and wakes up to a world where the US president just is kidnapped by Red Skull!

Yeah, that was the story in five seconds. Of course he’s related to the president, it’s either his son or something else (the president that is), he wants to find his old girlfriend, find some new love, meet friends and so on. The usual business after coming back too life after fifty years frozen in snow.

Seriously, this isn’t a bad movie. What it lacks is that big fat budget that would have helped to include some even bigger and fatter action scenes, but if you can ignore that, this is a damn fine entertaining piece of cheese. The first twenty or so minutes is fantastic, and the WW2-setting is just plain awesome. The underground lair of Red Skull is mega-cool, Captain America is blowing stuff apart and everyone’s happy. Even Carla Cassola from such eurocult-movies as The Sect and Demonia shows up and shows us how to play a mad, but loving, scientist who loves to experiment on humans in the quest for peace. The middle of the movie turns it down a notch, but Matt Salinger is good as Captain America and keeps up the charm and energy with some goofy dialogue and good charisma. The last half hour is more in the vein of the first, but is a bit of an anti-climax because of the obvious lack of budget.

But as we all know, no one can frame a scene like Albert Pyun. This is still an ugly fullscreen-version (with second-hand VHS-quality), but it’s hard to deny the stylish camera compositions, the rapid and tight editing in the fight scenes, the ultra-slick sets… just pure talent on a very low budget. It also has a fun cast in smaller parts, like Ronny Cox, Ned Beatty, Darren McGavin and a great Scott Paulin as Red Skull.

I would have loved more action, more stunts and explosions. It would have made this movie the best forgotten superhero-movie ever made. Now it’s still a fun and cool movie (and colourful! Everything resembles scenes directly taken from a comic album). Matt Salinger is way better than some people claims, and it just deserves a much better (widescreen) restored DVD or Blu-Ray release. One day I hope…

P (2005)

In 2005 me, Markus Widegren and Anders Östlund was at FFF (Fantastic Film Festival) in Lund to show our latest masterpiece, Kraftverk 3714. Another guest there was Terry Gilliam, and we had the pleasure to talk with him and shake his hand to many times. Anyway, it was a nice festival with some nice movies and nice people. One of the movies I wanted to see was “P”, a Thai horror movie about prostitution and ghosts. But one thing led to another and suddenly we was sitting in a friends living room watching a terribly bad Swedish slasher-movie instead. We got a good laugh, but I missed the movie I REALLY wanted to see.

Six years later and I finally found a release good enough for me, a juicy special edition Blu-Ray with tons of extras and perfect picture quality…

Suangporn Jaturaphut is Dau, a Khmer girl who lives with her grandma out in the jungle. Both of them have knowledge in magic, but Dau is of course a novice in the subject. Her grandma is getting sicker and sicker and one day Dau accepts a job in Bangkok. When she arrives she understands it’s like a bargirl, a dancer and even a prostitute in a bar only for farangs (non-thai, men of course). She quickly becomes more tough, and decides to take revenge on a man who forced her to sex. A snake bites his penis, and he’s never seen again. Of course this is the work of Dau’s black magic, but the magic is bad for her and soon she’s possessed by a liver-eating ghost who hunts during the night and take revenge on the people Dau does not like…

P almost immediately became a controversial project, and I’m not sure it even got screened in Thailand, at least not in Cinemas. It’s also directed by a British director, Paul Spurrier, which might have offended some people – I have no idea, because this is a very open movie about something that’s taboo in Thailand: the sex industry. I think this could be the only time I’ve seen the life of a bargirl in a Thai movie, and a lot more explicit than I expected it to be. Spurrier goes for atmosphere more than pure horror, and creates Dau as someone that feels real and probably is not that far away from the truth. The scenes in the bar is disturbing and beautiful, but directed with taste and intelligence. It’s hard to make a movie about prostitution without getting too sleazy. Well, Spurrier made it.

Even if the drama might be the dominating part in the movie, horror is there too. It gets more intense the further the movie goes, and some of the first scares feels quite lame, but it’s only a build up to the nasty, green-faced ghost that will show up later and chew her way in the cast. I can’t say it’s a gory movie, but its blood and has well-made effect. The ghost-make up is cool and more fun than the usual white-faced girls with long black hair.

The Blu-Ray is marvellous. I haven’t checked all the bonus material yet, but it’s fat with fun stuff. The weirdest part is a simple shot-on-video tour of Soi Cowboy, which seem to be a bar-street in Bangkok. Author (and I think he also had a small part in the movie has a unlucky farang customer) Dean Barrett shows us his favourite whore-street and talks endlessly about what he sees around him. This is both a deeply disturbing piece of footage, and yet, Mr Barrett is quite charismatic and very open about his fascination about this place. One of the best and most absurd bonuses I had the honour to watch actually.

P is a gorgeous looking hybrid of social realistic drama and gory ghost movie. Well worth watching for you ghost-fans out there.

The One Armed Executioner (1983)

Bobby A. Suarez production of The One Armed Executioner is a surprisingly solid movie, way less trashy than I thought it would be. Not original by any means, but a great revenge-movie with lots of action and a great cast of both heroes and baddies.

Smooth-faced Franco Guerrero plays Ramon Ortega, a successful Interpol-agent who after his latest bust, an explosive attack on an airplane containing a suspected drug dealer, finds himself threatened by a crime organization. They enter his home, murders his wife with a sword and chops his own arm off and leave him to die. After a period of heavy drinking and being a douchebag his martial arts master finds him and teaches him to fight only with one arm! Now he’s gonna find them all, one by one, and introduce their maker to them…

Like I wrote above, this is a very solid movie. It feels more expensive than it probably was and Bobby A. Suarez really shows off his directing-skills here. The widescreen framing looks beautiful and the only thing making it seem more exploitation is the Philippine setting and the typical stuff that happens in those productions, exploding huts for example. And obvious ex-pats slumming as bad guys (great bad guys by the way!). It has a mainstream, almost Hollywood-like style, but never steps away from that wonderful feeling of cheap Asian action that we love.

So it’s a quite serious movie, with some fantastic action scenes. I love the final with a lot of crazy stunts and huge explosions (some stuff looks very dangerous, stuntmen just getting away from explosions within seconds), but the token training-sequence is a blast too. It’s not that gory, but of course there are squibs (Jim Gaines gets shot for example) and a lot of cool ideas. The first scene with the dwarf and the telephone booth is a classic for example.

I’m gonna confess that movies from the Philippines is not my expert area (I try to concentrate on Thailand), but after watching more and more stuff from this country I’m getting more and more impressed with both production values and the talent behind and behind the camera. The best actor in this movie is Franco Guerrero, which is a brilliant actor who I need to find more stuff with. It’s rare to see actors in these kinda low budget movies both handle the drama and the action so well.

This is the second movie on Dark Sky’s newest DVD release (together with They Call Her Cleopatra Wong) and it looks great. This time they had the opportunity to use a very nice widescreen print (the beginning and credits seem to be from another print, and that sequence is not anamorphic – weird) and clear sound and sharp picture. It’s still cut, but the original uncut scenes is since long gone and is only available from VHS – so instead of splicing an inferior VHS print into this beautiful film print, the uncut scenes – which is nothing special really – is included in the extras as extended scenes.

Once again, this double feature is a must-have release. The bonus stuff is cool and funny, and the two movies are two of the most entertaining pieces of action I’ve seen this year. Support the legacy of Bobby A. Suarez – buy it now!

Susanne (1960)

Susanne is a normal story about a well-behaved girl who finds booze and love, falls in love with a boy, gets in a car crash, becomes brain damaged and transforms into a chain-smoking slut who gets pregnant and then finds happiness in family-life. Directed, produced and written by doctor Kit Colfach and his wife Elsa. A morality tale about the dangers exposed to the Swedish youth!

Honestly, even in its primitive state of storytelling, it’s a very entertaining movie – especially the first half when Susanne is exploring her newfound freedom as a cute teenager. It slowly gets darker and more documentary in style. After the car accident, which is graphic for the time, we’re treated to some graphic real surgery footage and Susanne being a real bitch both towards friends and parents. Then she gets pregnant, and of course there’s real footage of a birth (not with the actress of course).

The style is simple, many shots is often out of focus and sometimes the camera seem to be somewhere else than filming the important thing in the scene. But this works for the story and it makes everything feel more realistic. Because of technical trouble, the whole movie is dubbed afterwards by other actors. They hired a deaf lip-reading expert to translate the mouth movements, which works so-so.

The symbolism is strong, it goes from the green Swedish countryside further into the grey concrete houses and in the end, when Susanne has gone thru hell but realized that she really loves her baby and her husband, family is everything. A little bit to right wing for me of course, but this was a different time in Sweden.

Now Klubb Super 8 has released a wonderful DVD of this movie, complete with English subtitles for those outside Sweden that wants to experience a classic piece of warning-movie. The print is very good, if you think about how obscure this movie is. The best thing is the brilliant commentary track with Susanne Ulfsäter, who plays Susanne, and her real-life daughter Lotten Sundgren. Lotten is a film journalist and asks so many good questions to her mother, and brings us a lot of very interesting facts about the movie. It’s a pity it’s only in Swedish.

A moralistic exploitation-movie made by an avid golfer/doctor – what can go wrong with that?

They Call Her Cleopatra Wong (1978)

I’ve never seen so many men dressed as nuns getting killed in one single movie. I guess that’s one of the unique and funny things with the crazy production of They Call Her Cleopatra Wong, starring the hard-hitting and charming Marrie Lee as super-spy Cleopatra Wong (who purrs like a kitten and makes love like a siren). There is a story... something with a big crime organization spreading counterfeit money all over Asia. There’s not much else to do than to call Ms Wong and let her trace the baddies, save the nuns and kill a lot of people, all together with her gang of crazy super-cops.

The baddies has taken a monastery and the nuns in there as hostage, and this means that the private army of evil henchmen must walk around in nun clothes, with big guns hiding under there. The staff of fake-nuns is putting fake money in jars of strawberry jam, which is the way they’re distributing the money. One magnificent master plan indeed.

What makes Cleopatra Wong so darn fun is the non-stop action. Gone is the boring, endless scenes with talking heads that seem to populate mega-cheap movies. Here it goes from one fight, one chase to another one – and ends with a long explosive, cheap, silly, squib-filled attack on the monastery which ends with the cheapest explosion ever (you just see the reaction shots of the actors plus two inserts of shaky interior sets being blown up) and a cool and just plain awesome Marrie Lee showing of on a motorcross!

It just gets better and better for each minute. The fights and chases are a bit smaller from the beginning, but the further the story goes the more action there is, the more wacky characters and absurd dialogues. I’m not sure Marrie Lee is the best fighter I’ve seen, but after a while you get used to her style and it works fine after all.

The soundtrack, which has several pieces of music I recognize from bigger movies, is pure gold. It actually feels very fitting to the movie, and someone had the good taste to choose a lot of funky music with very raw and rough percussion-work.

The new DVD from Dark Sky is a bit rough, it’s fullscreen (but the pre-credits is in widescreen) and probably from a video master. But it’s not bad, and even on my 40 inch Sony Bravia it looks good. This was the best material available, and that’s good enough for me.

They Call Her Cleopatra Wong are one of the funniest, coolest, craziest and most entertaining movies I’ve seen for a long while. It could go on for a few hours more, because the huge amount of fun action and Backyard Asia-feeling of the film made my day. Highly recommended!