Movies Seen Recently: Zaat, The Tale of Zatoichi, The Unfolding

Zaat (1971) – “Hey,” I called to the kids, “wanna see a fishman movie that makes Sting of Death look like Citizen Kane?” Oddly enough, they didn’t.

Let’s start with fully twenty minutes of a guy with voiceovers who then turns himself into a godawful fishman costume (which the camera dwells on proudly).  Why?  Because he wants to take revenge on people who cut his funding to turn himself into a fishman.

Mismatched library score tracks, scientists who look like they’re auditioning for Charlie’s Angels, casual racism, and a fishman’s lust for blondes follow.

Truly has to be seen to be believed, but I don’t think that’s sufficient reward for making yourself see it.

The Tale of Zatoichi (1962) – The first of a  crapload of movies (seriously, they made 25 of them in less than a decade) about an itinerant blind swordsman. In this one, he’s invited to a gangster lord’s house mostly as a novelty, but when his rival gangster recruits a deadly (and dying) samurai, Zatoichi’s host wants him to join in their little private war.

This thing is so spaghetti western, I’m surprised that it didn’t inspire its own gunfighter pseudo-franchise like Sabata and Sartana and Django and… (It’s supposed to be the inspiration for the spaghetti western Blind Man (1971) co-starring Ringo Starr, but that didn’t start either a series or a trend.)

The Unfolding (2016) – This movie’s got some seriously savage reviews on the IMDb, and I’m not sure why, unless those negative reviewers didn’t know going in that it was a found-footage movie, and also had never seen one before.  The first half is characterized by some very good off-the-script acting between a young documentarian of paranormal phenomena and his significant other who came along for the ride; the second half has more standard acting with the addition of a professor and medium.  But it’s good and spooky and pretty subtle.

The most puzzling aspect, though, is the omnipresent subplot about the world’s superpowers getting close to a nuclear war — it’s on every radio and TV set.  How that was supposed to enhance a found-footage haunted house movie in the hinterlands of Dartmoor…

Abandoned movies:

Space Station 76 (2014) – The props and costumes are picture-perfect for a sci-fi tale whose conceit is that the future looks exactly as predicted in mid-’70s TV sci-fi.  But I expected it to be funny and witty on top of that; instead, it was slow and boring.