General J-Horror Thread

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cloverfan98
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General J-Horror Thread

Post by cloverfan98 »

I tried doing a search for this and I couldn't find any preexisting thread but if there is one feel free to move/delete this one. I wanted to make a general thread for all things J-Horror be it movies, fiction, or manga as well other Asian horror. Recently I've been trying to build up my J-Horror cred and catch up on many series that I've missed before. I recently read all the Tomie manga and watched all the Tomie films. Now I've finished reading the original Ring novel and plan to finish all of those books before moving on to the Ring film series. I also just recent;y watched House and I still don't think I've recovered from the sheer insanity of that hallucinatory fever dream.

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Re: General J-Horror Thread

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I loaned my copy of the Ring novel to a friend years ago, and he lost it. :( I've been meaning to re-read it for awhile (it's probably been 15 years); I just need to bite the bullet and buy a new copy. I liked it, and found it very unnerving. I appreciated the more sci-fi aspects, though I can also fully understand why they were dropped from the movie.

House is definitely a favorite of mine. The first time I saw it was at a packed midnight theatrical screening, and I'd had a really strong edible. Late in the movie, I started freaking out a little, and the movie's multiple endings made it feel like it was never going to stop, and I'd remain trapped in the midst of that crowd in perpetuity. Needed to walk around for about 45 minutes after the movie ended before I was good to drive home. Fortunately (in a sense), the friend I'd gone with was in the exact same state, and was perfectly content to wander around West Hollywood at 2:00 AM with me.
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Re: General J-Horror Thread

Post by kingkevzilla88 »

I have never like the term "J horror'. Just something about it doesn't sit right with me. I think is because I feel that its just a catch all term for Japanese horror films. Ring, Audition and Uzumaki came out at roughly the same time, but are completely different from each other despite being horror films.

I mean call Italian horror films "L horror, or Mexican horror films "M horror".

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Re: General J-Horror Thread

Post by Godzilla2000Zero »

Pulse(Kairo) legitimately is one of the few films that depresses me my personal. One Missed Call is one the the few trilogies that got better with each film. Not a fan of Ju-on I like the Ring much better.
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Re: General J-Horror Thread

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If anyone’s interested, here’s an underrated gem in the genre imo.
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Re: General J-Horror Thread

Post by Jeff-Goldblum2 »

Do Noboru Iguchi films like The Machine Girl count as J-Horror or are they more just schlock?

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Re: General J-Horror Thread

Post by eabaker »

Anybody ever watch anything by the director who calls himself Gaira (after the kaiju)?

Entrails of a Virgin and Entrails of a Beauty are not what I would call "good" movies by any means, but they are... memorable.
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Re: General J-Horror Thread

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Jeff-Goldblum2 wrote:Do Noboru Iguchi films like The Machine Girl count as J-Horror or are they more just schlock?
I guess they can count as horror although they aren't what I think of when I think of J-Horror. Didn't the same director do a Frankenstein Girl Vs Vampire Girl? Pulse is also on my list to watch as is the first One Missed Call which I do own on DVD. I saw Audition and to be completely honest i despised it. The idea and plot of it is good in a Hitchcock like manner, but I hate movies that think grossing out the audience is the same as frightening them and that's what Audition seemed to be going for.

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Re: General J-Horror Thread

Post by Godzilla2000Zero »

cloverfan98 wrote:
Jeff-Goldblum2 wrote:Do Noboru Iguchi films like The Machine Girl count as J-Horror or are they more just schlock?
I guess they can count as horror although they aren't what I think of when I think of J-Horror. Didn't the same director do a Frankenstein Girl Vs Vampire Girl? Pulse is also on my list to watch as is the first One Missed Call which I do own on DVD. I saw Audition and to be completely honest i despised it. The idea and plot of it is good in a Hitchcock like manner, but I hate movies that think grossing out the audience is the same as frightening them and that's what Audition seemed to be going for.
If u haven't seen Pulse u gotta c it it's so unsettling and despressing but not so much scare though.
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Re: General J-Horror Thread

Post by tbeasley »

You guys might find this great article from way back in 2005 of interest...

The Death of J-Horror?
Japan, 1998: Hideo Nakata's The Ring (Ringu) and Joji Iida's Spiral (Rasen) horror double feature crawled into the cinemas and proceeded to kill the competition. Japanese junior high and high school girls might have been the target audience, but the effect of these films exploded around the world. Little did anyone suspect when this double-bill was created that this was to be ground zero of what is now, seven years later, a highly successful cottage industry.

Ah, yes, "J-Horror;" everyone knows its tropes by now: vengeful ghosts, long stringy black hair, impossible physical gymnastics, meowing little ghost boys, cursed videos (or cell phones or computers), old rotted buildings and corpses, moldy books and newspapers, elliptical storylines (or a total abandonment of logic), creepy sound design, and creepy cinematography. Then there're the bizarrely happy endings and, lest we forget, the saccharine pop songs.

"J-Horror," as it is called, is a clever appellation for what is in reality only a very thin sliver of the Japanese horror genre that has been produced since the mid-90s. No different than the equally patronizing and vaguely pejoratively titled "K-Horror," it needs to be noted that this is a title that neither the Japanese nor the Koreans coined themselves. That whiff of 'orientalism' you smell might not be totally off; "J-Horror" was a cult fan term that was meant as a clarifying short-hand for previously hard to categorize films (in the West) like The Grudge (Juon), The Ring (Ringu), Audition, and Dark Water (Honogurai Mizu no Soko Kara). It should be obvious but I'm going to state this for the record, the history of horror in Japan is long as I will show - as it is throughout Asia and should be in any place with some sort of extended and well-defined cultural history.

Furthermore, I'm going to be upfront about why I've written this feature article: I am totally tired of the 'J-Horror' releases that have come out recently. Last April, after sitting through another onslaught of these new releases I decided that I had had enough and needed to get it off of my chest. It's taken me a while to formulate my thoughts and get them down, but in a sense this piece is me drawing a line in the sand and demanding that the producers allow - or FORCE - their filmmakers to work in a creative manner and put an end to the obsessive sequel-making and regurgitation of the shinrei-mono eiga ('ghost film') that is dragging down Japanese film (and Hollywood horror for that matter). I think you'll see by the time I am done, that there needs to be a change made - and if anyone can do it, it's Takashige Ichise.

If one were to jam a finger into the center of the J-Horror pie they would hit the man without whom there would be no Ring, Grudge, or Dark Water: Takashige Ichise, the genius producer, and occasional writer, of these and many other films (including The Grudge's U.S. remake). A quick look at his slate of future releases shows that Ichise is banking his future on J-Horror: for the 2006 season we see him producing Juon 3 in Japan and The Grudge 2 in the US. Idle hands are the devil's playthings, as they say, and Ichise is trying to keep the momentum going in the short term by cannibalizing the contemporary J-Horror genre he helped to create by assembling a new series of films under the banner J-Horror Theater. And, if all goes as planned, Takashige Ichise will be steeped in J-Horror through the foreseeable future... and that might not be such a good thing. But before I get into this, we need a little history.
And that's just the start, it's quite the comprehensive piece -
http://www.midnighteye.com/features/the ... -j-horror/

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Re: General J-Horror Thread

Post by cloverfan98 »

Finished the original Ring novel and am now moving on to Spiral the sequel to the novel. I have the first four Ring films from Japan on DVD so I'm gonna watch those once I've finished the books.

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Re: General J-Horror Thread

Post by kingkevzilla88 »

I remember watching Pulse years ago on TV, god it's bloody depressing. I don't think it's one I'll watch again, just too damm bleak.

I think that Dark Water is one best films I've seen in recent years, it's a creepy, sad ghost story that made me feel better. You that feeling that someone maybe gone, but you still feel their presence. It give me that feeling, I watched the movie not too long after losing someone. Honestly, I feel a bit weird saying that horror film made me feel better.

Anyway, getting from the heavy stuff, I really want to get that Ring set from Arrow Video. I've looked in all the stores, I go to regularly and nothing. Hopefully,I can find it next week, that and the Sister Street Fighter set.

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Re: General J-Horror Thread

Post by cloverfan98 »

Bumping this thread up because I recently wrote a review of the new Ringu Boxset from Arrow and it's an absolutely awesome release.

https://www.tohokingdom.com/blu-ray/rin ... lms19.html

They just announced they are doing a boxset of the One Missed Call Trilogy and I'm looking forward to visiting that series fro the first time.

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Re: General J-Horror Thread

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So far, I've watched The Bloodthirsty Trilogy and I liked it! Hope to get Ringu Collection soon.

On the Movies list, I saw another film from Toho that I think is a vampire film. It's called My Soul Is Slashed (1991) (a.k.a. From Dracula with Love). Is it a vampire film and, if so, was it ever released in the U.S.? I say this because there's an article for it in the Movies list that probably needs updating and I was wondering if anything had changed since the article was made.
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Re: General J-Horror Thread

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mikelcho wrote:So far, I've watched The Bloodthirsty Trilogy and I liked it! Hope to get Ringu Collection soon.

On the Movies list, I saw another film from Toho that I think is a vampire film. It's called My Soul Is Slashed (1991) (a.k.a. From Dracula with Love). Is it a vampire film and, if so, was it ever released in the U.S.? I say this because there's an article for it in the Movies list that probably needs updating and I was wondering if anything had changed since the article was made.
My Soul Is Slashed has never been commercially released in the U.S. I've owned both a subtitled bootleg and an unsubbed commercial copy on VHS. It's a really fun, silly vampire movie about a Japanese businessman who becomes infected with Dracula's blood, and it's directed by Shusuke Kaneko. Not up with his best stuff (other than his kaiju movies, the best I've seen of his is easily Summer Vacation: 1999), but definitely worth checking out if you enjoy light horror comedy.
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Re: General J-Horror Thread

Post by Terasawa »

I've got a nigh-unwatchable copy of My Soul Is Slashed from Video Search of Miami. I think I've seen it twice but I can't recall much more than the vague impression that it had some amusing moments. Hideyo Amamoto has a small part. I don't think it's ever been released on DVD, even in Japan.
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Re: General J-Horror Thread

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Terasawa wrote:I've got a nigh-unwatchable copy of My Soul Is Slashed from Video Search of Miami. I think I've seen it twice but I can't recall much more than the vague impression that it had some amusing moments. Hideyo Amamoto has a small part. I don't think it's ever been released on DVD, even in Japan.
Yeah, mine was from VSoM as well. Picture quality was absolutely awful, which was why I was so happy to pick up that commercial copy in Japan. It's not a bad looking movie, and I'd love to see it cleaned up. But, yeah, it seems to have been largely forgotten.
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Re: General J-Horror Thread

Post by mikelcho »

Thanks for the information, you two! I do like comedy/horror films (Young Frankenstein and Dracula: Dead and Loving It are two of my favorites in this category) and what you both say about this one tempts me. Pity it's not officially available on home video yet. Oh well, maybe someday...

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Re: General J-Horror Thread

Post by mikelcho »

I just saw a movie poster for a remake of The Grudge today.

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Re: General J-Horror Thread

Post by edgaguirus »

I saw Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell in October. While it has strong sci fi elements, it is effective as a horror film. The tense situation between the passengers provided more horror than the vampire in my opinion. Those people were so willing and ready to throw their fellow humans to the alien vampire just to save their skins. Films with similar plots and stories show the undeniable truth that man is often more horrifying than any alien or supernatural threat. The end of the film is also quite dark.


On another note, I would ask for some help. In October, I also saw a scene from an old black and white film that I can't remember the title of. It had two ghost women who lured warriors to their death. They offered food and drink, and then the warrior would take the younger woman in bed. She then drank his blood. Does anyone know the title?
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