Category: Magic

School In The Crosshairs (1981)

I remember seeing Hausu a long time ago (presented by Kenta McGrath at the UWA Film Society) and my memory of it has always been an all-encompassing, wild, super-visual horror dream. Keen to see further films from Hausu’s director Nobuhiko Obayashi, particularly since a few of them are available in HD on the Rarefilmm website. With the plot description involving “psychic battles” and “high school warfare”, School In The Crosshairs (1981; aka The Aimed School) couldn’t help but grab my attention.

From the opening sequence, there’s such memorable, hyperreal imagery. Teenager Yuka (Hiroko Yakushimaru) is introduced getting ready for school, and her bedroom is rendered in desaturated cool-blue and white, while outside picture-book exteriors radiate with colour; it feels like a MTV music video from this period and shows off Obayashi’s background in avant garde art and commercial advertising. The film itself is mostly a charming high school story about Yukal helping out her crush, Koji (Ryôichi Takayanagi) with his passion for Kendo training. Like a wholesome episode of a teen high school drama, which eventually becomes a sci-fi supernatural moral story about anti-authoritarianism. Yuka has emerging psychic abilities that manifest while a demonic alien (Tôru Minegishi) from Saturn who dresses like Captain Planet but acts like a PG-rated Freddy Krueger, turning up in both her dreams and waking life, wanting to take over her and also her school. Eventually another student, Amamiya (Kaori Mizushima) arrives with similar psychic powers to battle Yuka – winning over classmates and teachers in the student elections, and starting up a fascistic group of “hallway monitors”.

While not as strong or total in its impact as Hausu, the visual flair in School In The Crosshairs is very dynamic and engaging, with scene dissolves, painted backdrops and animated sparks and rays. Somewhere in the maelstrom of comic-books, animated cartoons and pop art, this movie exists, a bright confection underwritten with a fantasy parable about education and strict laws, and ultimately adolescent play versus the rise of dictatorships. On the surface, it seems like a wild ride from its description, but is more like an upbeat daydream in effect! Recommended

Lord Of lllusions (1995)

Occult neo-noir is a sub-sub genre that has few big screen entries and Clive Barker’s Lord Of Illusions (1995) has always intrigued me, even though it has a mixed reputation with some defenders. Much like the loopy people in the Mojave desert, where this film opens, who pledge their sanity to a man named Nix (Daniel Van Bargen) whose belly is peeking out under his dirty shirt, sometimes you give love to things that are not all that perfect. So it was with this film, which I enjoyed despite of and maybe because of its imperfections. The film follows the fall-out when one of Nix’s acolytes, Swann (Kevin J O’Connor) believes this cruddy messiah has gone too far kidnapping a young girl for a sacrifice and a showdown ensues where magic is real, powers are wielded, yet a shotgun and a metal mask ensure that Nix is defeated, buried deep in the desert. We time jump to the 1990s where Swann is a wealthy magician with David Copperfield level fame, billboards promoting his shows on the LA streets and a mansion with a glamorous wife, Dorothea (Famke Janssen). Our actual hero is Scott Bakula as Harry D’Amour, a private detective who has a history with the supernatural and finds himself caught up in strange, dark matters while on an insurance fraud case. D’Amour has a great taste in maroon trousers and brown patterned shirts/jackets, yet also spends a lot of the movie shirtless with Barker’s signature horniness balanced for both his hunky PI and his femme fatale, when Dorothea hires D’Amour to investigate Swann’s past. Bakula has a low-key, likeable charm as he wields a revolver against early CGI special effects that seem like they’re from a CDROM PC game like The Seventh Guest. There’s great chemistry as well between Bakula and Jannsen, which alongside Connor’s trademark nervous energy as a character actor of choice, kept me hooked through all this hokum. Also features: grotesque horror, a psychotic killer in gold spandex pants, a supernatural conspiracy, a visit to The Magic Castle and Vincent Schiavelli with an over the top accent. Even as the climax might ultimately underwhelm or the presence of Nix remains intentionally uncharismatic (and thus doesn’t quite compare to a Pinhead or Candyman), I was into Lord Of Illusions and slightly disappointed that the version on Stan wasn’t the director’s cut (which has a longer sex scene and more character stuff). Recommended.