The Guard From Underground (1992)
Dir. and written by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring Makiko Kuno, Yutaka Matsushige, Hatsunori Hasegawa
THE
GUARD FROM UNDERGROUND (more literally translated, I gather, as The Guard From Hell) is a minor
but crucial entry into the filmography of the other monolithic Japanese
auteur named Kurosawa. It's minor because it is, in itself, not so hot. But it's crucial because of its place as a clear turning point in his early career. After his initial journeyman’s years directing comedies and Pinku eiga films —or,
why try and class this up with fancy foreign lingo? I mean softcore
pornos*--, Kurosawa had just made his first horror film with
1989’s SWEET
HOME. He probably didn’t know it yet, but he was taking his first steps
down a path that would define his career; while he hasn’t worked exclusively in
horror since then, (he’s dallied with crime thrillers, yakuza films, sci-fi,
drama and even romance in his lengthy, now-four-decade-long career!) it is the
horror genre which made him an international icon, and it is within that genre
that he established the distinct aesthetic for which he is most known for today.
But you’d never guess all
that from a casual viewing of his first experiment with the genre. Far from his
trademark glacial, clinical remove, SWEET HOME is a frenetic,
special-effects-driven fun-house ride. If it gives us any glimpses of the
Kurosawa who was to come, they are oblique and far outnumbered by material
which seems distinctly unlike him. In fact, the movie is widely reported to be
at least equally influenced by producer Juzo Itami (THE FUNERAL, TAMPOPO), who
may have (or may not have; details in English are pretty sketchy) exercised an
outsized control on the production and final cut, perhaps akin to the rumors
which have always surrounded Spielberg and POLTERGEIST, minus, presumably, the
mountains of cocaine. Of course, SWEET HOME’s atypical broad tone and zippy
pace might just as easily be the result of a relative neophyte director still
finding his feet and considering what he wants to do with the medium; you never
really know these things. But at any rate, it’s beyond argument that the
director’s first sojourn into the horror genre is scarcely recognizable as the
work of the distinctive artist who would make such a big impression less than a
decade later with CURE.
So
it is meaningful, then, that THE GUARD FROM UNDERGROUND, Kurosawa’s next film**
after SWEET HOME, very much is the work
of that same artist. Even in a somewhat embryonic state, the aesthetic is
unmistakable, which makes this something of a historical landmark: the debut of
Kurosawa the auteur, rather than Kurosawa the journeyman. Even if it had
nothing else going for it at all, that would make it essential viewing for any
true scholar of horror cinema. It’s all here, more or less, right from the
get-go: the camera pulled back to a dispassionate distance, the quietly
alienated performances which barely seem aware of each other, the detached
sense of social isolation, the icy, patient long takes, the blunt
matter-of-factness of the tiny bursts of violence.
What is not here, on the other hand, is a more typical enigmatic
Kiyoshi Kurosawa plot. His movies, by and large, tend to be motivated by
inexplicable supernatural horrors; even when he’s dealing in recognizable
sub-genres (serial killer flick with CURE, ghost story with RETRIBUTION)
the details are often elusive and unexpected. Consequently, much of the horror
stems from the nebulous, ambiguous nature of the danger, which never resolves
into something comfortably comprehensible and hence retains its ability to
haunt.
THE
GUARD FROM UNDERGROUND takes a very different approach. It's almost shockingly straightforward, and, at least on the surface, that makes it one of Kurosawa's most
clearly classifiable genre efforts. In fact, in another director’s hands,
this script might well seem so baseline generic as to need some kind of further
hook. It is, well and truly, a slasher film, and one which mostly seems
to be content to be purely that. And as such, it also seems content to play by standard
slasher rules: we are introduced to a “final girl,” who will end up trapped in
a foreign environment with some disposable body count characters, only to be
menaced by a mysterious, frighteningly effective killer with a yin for colorful
flair in his murders and a relevant backstory.
All this is textbook slasher movie boilerplate, and all of it is
very much present here. And not even in some deconstructed, meta-textual way;
whatever else the movie may be trying to do, it is obviously genuinely
committed to being a meat-and-potatoes slasher. Our final girl will be Akiko
(Makiki Kuno, MUSHISHI), a recent hire at a Department 12, apparently a section
of Akebono Corp, some sort of large and vaguely defined international business.
Her job seems to be to advise the department on the purchase and sale of paintings, which seems like it’s gotta be a metaphor but I’ll be damned if I
can figure out for what. Meanwhile, the same day she starts work, the company
gets another new employee: a hulking, silent security guard named Fujimaru (the
debut role for now-veteran Japanese character actor Yutaka Matsushige, who has
parts in RINGU, RASEN, ONE MISSED CALL, SURIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO, GODZILLA 2000,
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s CHARISMA, two out of there Takashi Kitano OUTRAGE movies,
and a movie called ADRIFT IN TOKYO, definitely not to be confused with TOKYO
DRIFT). Fujimaru, with his silent, spacey near-catatonia, seems a little “off,”
but we wouldn’t have cause for concern except that we heard on the radio that a
disgraced ex-sumo wrestler is on the loose, despite having murdered two people
already. That seems like it might be, --gulp!—relevant information.
Fujimaru,
of course, takes a shine to Akiko when he finds one of her lost earrings, but
Akiko doesn’t realize she has a secret admirer until she discovers a makeshift
shrine with her face on it in the, um, weird creepy basement (?) of this huge
multinational corporation (she actually goes back to work that very day! Damn,
these Department 12 employees need a union). But this is not just a sign of an
unusually friendly office culture. Before long, Fujimaru has locked her and a
handful of co-workers inside the building (which seems to be an uninsurable
firetrap, where every door locks from the outside and the lighting is a sickly
green that makes the Matrix look cozy) and is methodically embarking on a
murderous rampage. So it’s pretty much DIE HARD if Bruce Willis was a crazed
ex-sumo-wrestler-slasher.
That
probably sounds like more fun than it actually is, unfortunately. Despite plenty of
precedent, I’m afraid this Fujimaru character’s sumo background doesn’t
much inform his side hustle as a murderous security guard. For starters, he
doesn’t exactly fit the physical body type you’re probably imagining when I use
the phrase “ex-sumo-wrestler-slasher.” He’s definitely physically imposing – at
6’ 2’’, Matsushige absolutely towers over the rest of the cast—but lanky rather
than bulky, even with his blocky security guard uniform accentuating his
shoulders and torso and giving him a distinctly regimented look, somewhere between
a military officer and a bellhop. And I’m absolutely devastated to have to
inform you that he doesn’t seem to devote his wrestling skills to the task of
murdering a bunch of nerdy office workers; he’s not, like, superplexing people
to death, or whatever the sumo equivalent of that would be. And he never struts
down a walkway to the ring flanked by a posse of belligerent hangers-on while
shitty rock music plays, which popular culture has led me to believe is the
single most important aspect of wrestling other than barely-suppressed
homoeroticism and hating Vince McMahon.
Fortunately it’s not a total loss; while he never wears one of
those asscrack-hugging sumo-wrestling thongs,* his great strength affords him a wide
range of options in the field of murder, and he nearly always settles on the
most brutal one available. Like I said, this is a Kurosawa who seems perfectly
comfortable --if never exactly desperate— to provide some cheap thrills.
This makes it an interesting
experiment for Kurosawa, who accommodatingly plays by standard slasher rules,
and yet doesn’t ever quite do what you’d expect, either. He knows how to stage
a satisfying setpiece death scene, as when Fujmaru elects to bash a victim into
every single dangerously fragile steam vent in a narrow hallway, or when
somebody gets tossed into a locker which Fujumaru then crushes like an empty
soda can. But he’s just as likely to indulge in his characteristically simple,
matter-of-fact framing of shocking events, which make the sudden bursts of
brutal violence seem shocking and unexpected.
It’s an interesting effect,
and it works like gangbusters in some of his subsequent films, most notably
CURE. But I’m mixed as to how well it works in this context; slashers tend to
work best in a purely visceral flight-or-fight mode, and Kurosawa’s general
refusal to play the game of amping this shit up may not be the best approach to
the material. His unblinking straightforwardness in the face of bizarre horror
is aces at pumping up dread, but maybe not the best approach at generating excitement in
something so literal. Not that it’s boring, exactly; it’s positively zippy by
his usual standards. But while a static, medium shot of the killer smashing someone
to pieces with no music or editing packs a sickening sort of punch, it doesn’t
exactly pump up your adrenaline.
Still, it does make for an
interesting approach to the killer; there’s no doubt even from the start who he
is --there's no whodunit angle here-- but Kurosawa’s purposefully restrained approach extends to the way he
frames him. Slashers, of course, are really about the
slasher. Sure, there are characters who will become his victims, but come on,
we know Freddy is the star of the show, not Heather Langenkamp. And the camera
tells us as much; even when the typical slasher is kept visually obscured, he still
dominates the film, relentlessly taunting us to search the shadows for a
glimpse of him. And when he finally appears, we can be certain to get a
thundering money shot of an introduction, the camera lovingly framing the
villain as the subject of our awed terror, and consequently the dominating
force of a horror film.
Kurosawa does something
distinctly different. He doesn’t exactly avoid showing
Fujimaru, he just steadfastly avoids making him the center of attention. He’s
usually going to be found in the middle distance of a shot, perfectly visible,
not in any way concealed,
but with no apparent awareness on the camera’s part that he’s important.
Despite his hulking stature and fierce savagery, he tends to blend into the
background, a passive object rather than a functional protagonist. Like Jason,
he is an inscrutable force of nature, but a more opaque, less comprehensible
one. He doesn’t seem angry, especially, doesn’t seem disturbed, doesn’t seem
like he’s sadistically enjoying this or perversely disgusted by it. He simply
does it. He remains calm and methodical, even as he’s bludgeoning someone to
paste. Even his psychotic fixation on Akiko takes a decidedly remote cast,
avoiding anything resembling carnality. He’s more black hole than raging
inferno, impassively absorbing rather than lashing out. When he must appear as
an object of the camera’s interest, he’s nearly always obscured in shadow
(sometimes in striking silhouette) allowing his giant frame to define the
character, rather than his boyish, unremarkable face. Kurosawa is very
interested in his body, in the deliberate, savage violence of his movements –
but not in the logic that motivates them. As such, he remains an enigma, a
nonentity, defined for much of the movie, in fact, by his boss, a jovial older
fellow who turns out to be surprisingly comfortable with the idea of having a
loyal underling he can direct to murder people he finds inconvenient. In fact,
the first murders that Fujimaru commits (beyond the lovers’ quarrel slayings
which happened before the events of the movie) are done at the behest of his
boss, further calling into question his basic autonomy.
There are, in fact, little
hints here that this is all about something more than a crazed loner with
nothing to lose who turns to violence. Much of the movie, maybe even the entire
first half, in fact, is more about a different kind of horror altogether, the
alienated, powerless dread of office life. Like many of Kurosawa’s movies, the
horror seems to bubble up in some indirect, sublimated way from the rigid,
alienating structure of Japanese society, here summed up within the microcosm
of an office building (virtually the entire film takes place there), a blandly
grim concrete-and-glass tombstone which literalizes both the isolating effects
of the workplace inside (“Department 12,” apparently a new venture, seems to be
connected to the rest of the company by a shared elevator and nothing else) and
its stratification, with eccentric, arrogant HR head Mr. Hyodo (Hatsunori Hasegawa, GAMERA 2: ADVENT OF LEGION, Ultraman 80) sitting atop the
heap and coldly judging his underlings to be pathetically wanting, while he
apparently fools around doing nothing in his spacious, upper-tier office. And
even within this crushingly dehumanizing environment, Akiko is an outsider,
uncertain of her place within the culture and openly objectified by both her
sleazy, sexually aggressive boss Mr. Kurume (Ren Osugi, CURE, AUDITION,
HANA-BI) and another co-worker. In fact, Mr. Kurume’s lecherous advances hardly
seem less appropriate than Fujimaru’s inexplicable fixation on her. Fujimaru, at
least, has reason to see her as a kindred spirit: neither one of them fits in
here.
Now, all that is rather more
interesting to talk about than to actually watch, understand; like I said
before, the film primarily aspires to be a simple slasher, and while loading it up
with a bunch of hazy, gloomy metaphors adds a little psychological kick, it is,
if anything, somewhat detrimental to any hope the movie ever had of evoking the
visceral, fight-or-flight adrenaline rush which is the only thing that really
matters about a good slasher. Which leaves us with a movie which is interesting, but arguably not a very good slasher. Not that it’s a terrible
slasher, either; the overall quality of the slasher genre writ large is so dire
that even moderately competent attempts probably work out to be in the top
percentiles, and this is far more than moderately competent. But that said, is
isn’t exactly gripping stuff, either. It is merely interesting, and more as an
artifact from the career of a notable artist than as an independent object.
‘Which do you think has more value?” Akiko, the former museum curator, is
asked, “Is it a masterpiece by a lesser artist, or a lesser work by a master?”
Akiko thinks the former, because “the value of a painter can change in the
future, but the fact that it’s the masterpiece of the painter never changes.”
By that logic, THE GUARD FROM UNDERGROUND is clearly a lesser work by a master,
and probably of little real value to most casual fans. But of course, she
doesn’t point out there’s another factor involved in value: the interests of
the buyer. As a huge fan of a particular master named Kiyoshi Kurosawa, I find
quite a lot of value even in a lesser work like this, though I’ll acknowledge
that much of that value is more academic than aesthetic.
*On 1983’s KANDAGAWA PERVERT WARS:
“Also I don't want to spoil the whole storyline, but in the end we'll see a
sexual intercourses between Aki's friend Masami and Aki's boyfriend Ryo and Aki
will seduce that boy which had sex with his mother. How this will all happen?
You'll know after you'll watch this movie, but one thing which you can say now
- there is a plenty of erotic scenes in this film.” – IMDB reviewer Zenka_LT,
2009.
**IMDB lists an interim film called
ABUNAI HANASHI MUGEN MONOGATARI which they
claim is from 1989, but it seems pretty likely to me that this is actually
1988’s DANGEROUS STORIES, apparently an omnibus film featuring a segment by
Kurosawa, as well as Banmei Takahashi (TATTOO HARI) and Kazuyuki Izutsu
(BREAKTHROUGH! [2004]). Neither one appears to be available in America, and
neither one has one single review on IMDB (“DANGEROUS STORIES” doesn’t even
have a listed cast) so I think we can currently feel safe skipping that one
until we can say with any confidence what the fuck it actually is, or if was
ever even released, or what.
*** Research indicates that this
garment is known as a Mawashi, and I
was originally going to just write that, but I already went the pretentious
route by calling Japanese softcore flicks by their Japanese name and I don’t
want to give the impression that I’m some kind of basement-dwelling anime creep
who could casually drop the term waifu at any
given moment and feel confident they understand what it means. It ain’t like
that, I swear!
