The Guard From Underground

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!