(Review of By the Stream; The Colors Within; Detective Chinatown 1900; and The Fuzztones vs the World)
BY THE STREAM.
There aren't many directors whose name on a schedule brings an instant smile and a warm sense of anticipation. Hong Sang-soo is one of the few and The ICA is to be thanked for screening the prolfic South Korean's 32nd feature, By the Stream.
Frustratingly, this was the second film Hong made in 2024 and there appears to be no plan to bring the other, A Traveler's Needs, to UK cinemas after its London Film Festival preview, even though it won a prize at Berlin and reunited Hong with Isabelle Huppert after In Another Country (2012) and Claire's Camera (2017). Nevertheless, any Hong is a cause for celebration and By the Stream will delight his admirers.
Jeonim (Kim Min-hee) teaches art at a women's university in Seoul. She also designs textiles and bases her workon the stream that flows beside the campus. On the bridge, she meets up with her uncle, Sieon (Kwon Hae-hyo), a former actor who has ducked out of the limelight following a minor scandal and now runs a bookshop in a small coastal town. As the director of a skit that her department has entered in a competition was forced to resign after dating three of the seven-strong cast, Jeonim has asked her uncle (whom she has not seen for a long time) to take over at short notice.
Having nothing better to do, Sieon takes up the invitation and meets the four rather diffident young ladies who have just 10 days to rehearse between classes. Jeonim's boss, Jeong (Cho Yun-hee), claims to be a big fan of Sieon and, because she helped his niece secure her teaching post, he is pleased to meet her. She gushes in her office about having seen everything that Sieon has done and she expresses her dismay that he lost his career because he fought back against those who had been criticising him.
Over a boozy dinner at an eel restaurant, Sieon admits that he's been through the mill. But he's glad he's come to Seoul and is grateful to Jeong for her kindness and for her faith in Jeonim, who she claims has the talent to secure tenure. In return, Jeonim praises Jeong for being almost like a mother to her students, as she buys them food and keeps an eye out for them. However, Jeonim is also fond of her drama group and she reassures them that everything will be alright when they find her working outdoors by lamplight, even though autumn is closing in.
One afternoon, Junwon (Ha Seong-guk), the sacked director, comes to the campus to ask Jeonim why he has been hung out to dry when he did nothing worse than go on a couple of dates. She is cross that he still has his security pass and makes him promise to hand it in. But Jeonim is adamant that he has acted inappropriately and should have thought of the time he had invested in the project before he asked the girls out. She informs him that he has been replaced by someone better qualified and threatens to call security when he keeps trying to argue his case.
Over wine and snacks that night, Jeong reveals that she has saved around $1 million because she has nothing to spend her money on. She enjoys travelling, but always feels lonely and starts drinking. Sieon asks his niece if she has a boyfriend, but she insists she is too busy making art to feel alone. Jeong gets her to tell her uncle about the mystical experience she had when her eyes bled for three straight days. The doctors were baffled. But, after the third day, Jeonim saw a beautiful blue sky through her bandages and this has inspired her ever since and she thanks Jeong for helping her through the crisis and supporting her in her choices.
The next night, Jeong insists on cooking at her rented duplex. Sieon compliments her on the dish and wanders upstairs to check out the mountain view from the verandah. Feeling superfluous, Jeonim calls up to them and makes her excuses to leave. Jeong promises she will put her uncle in a taxi when he's sobered up and urges Jeonim not to work too hard if she goes back to the campus - which she does and notices that no one is on duty at the security point.
As the play needs a floor table, they take one to the theatre and try it on the stage. However, they can only have limited access and Jeonim arranges for them to use a rooftop over her favourite bookshop and Sieon is delighted by the space and pleased when Jeong comes to watch them. After the session, Sieon goes to Jeonim's studio to look at the tapestries she is weaving and they are discussing her process when a couple of students tell her that Jimso (a classmate and one of the actors) has gone off with Junwon and Sieon offers to help Jeonim look for them.
They find the chatting under a tree in the darkness. Sieon takes Junwon to one side to have a word with him, while Jeonim asks Jimso what they have been talking about. She reveals that Junwon has asked her to marry him and join him in the United States and she admits to liking him and needing a couple of days before giving her answer. Appalled that a student she likes should have been seduced by a wastrel, Jeonim ticks her off. But Jimso protests that the heart doesn't always behave logically.
Bookended by the sound of roaring aircraft engines, the skit is performed and shows four female members of a family eating ramen while worrying about the father and son. Sieon takes the cast to celebrate and they are wondering why there had been booing at the end when Jeomin gets a text from Jeong to say that she has been summoned by the university president to explain the meaning of the sketch and Sieon's participation. She assures them that everything will be fine. But Jeonim is also called to the office to explain how her uncle became involved in the piece and the mood around the table becomes sombre.
While they wait, Sieon tells them that he agreed to do the skit because he had staged a similar production at the college 40 years earlier. He had met his first love, but laments the fact he lost her by not treating her well. The girls console him and he asks them to improvise a poem about the kind of person they want to be. The first says she would like to be someone other than herself, while the second claims not to know where she is going in life, but hopes to have the determination to keep searching for the right path. Jimso says she would like to enjoy a day of perfect love with the right person, while the last declares herself to be a freak who would be content to light a small lamp in the corner and ensure it never goes out. They each get tearful and Sieon thanks them for being so honest.
Walking back to the campus, Jeonim finds a large leaf under a tree and wafts it in a gentle dance to the accompaniment of some scratchily tinny non-diegetic music. She seems wistful, but she strides out in the moonlight with Jeong to suggest that all is well. She wakes having slept on the bookshop roof and is surprised to get a call from Jeong asking if she would drive her and Sieon back to his place by the sea. They have been drinking at the eel restaurant and can't drive.
Stopping off for lunch before meeting up, Jeonim tucks into the dishes at the restaurant and needs some beer to slake her thirst. Sieon asks after her mother and learns she is drinking heavily. He tells his niece that he stopped speaking to his sister when she accused him of being a Communist and Jeonim tries to defend her. But she becomes distracted by the fact that Sieon and Jeong have become lovers
When Jeong returns from the bathroom, Jeonim says they look like an old married couple and Sieon claims they feel comfortable together. He also asks Jeonim to stay in touch, as he has always liked her and has enjoyed his stay. Jeong wonders whether his niece should be drinking if she's going to drive, so Jeonim suggests they take a walk beside the stream to clear her head. She cadges a cigarette and wanders off alone. They call after her and she teeters along the rocky bank and the frame freezes, as she declares she has nothing to report from her stroll.
No one can accuse Hong of not being an auteur. In addition to writing and directing this engrossing Rohmeresque saga, he also produced, photographed, edited, and scored it. Partner Kim Min-hee (who won the Best Actress prize at the Locarno Film Festival) also doubles up as production manager and it's tempting to see a thinly veiled reference in the picture to the way the press treated the news that they had become an item back in 2015.
Feeling busier than the usual Hong drama, this still has time to pause for meditations on inspiration, creativity, reputation, the status of women, family dynamics, and thwarted dreams. He also leaves us with some unanswered questions relating to Sieon's disgrace, the reasons for Jeonim and Jeong being carpeted and whether they faced any sanction, and whether Jimso accepts her marriage proposal.
The sequence in which the four students confide their hopes and insecurities is deeply moving, as is the simple shot of Kim dancing under the tree in russety sunshine with the out-sized leaf. But no word, gesture, or movement is ever wasted in a Hong film. Indeed, stillness is so central to his method that even intra-frame movement is noticeable. But, when he makes sudden lurches forward with the camera (as he does a couple of times here), one is left to wonder whether he is inviting us to eavesdrop or reminding us of the filmicness of his deceptively functional technique.
While Kim took the acting laurels, Cho Yun-hee and Kwon Hae-hyo are equally good, particularly in the scenes in Jeong's office and the eel restaurant, where her simpering starstruckness is as hilariously gauche as his undisguised pleasure at still having a fan after all this time. The dialogue in these scenes is very witty, but there's a poignancy to the speeches delivered by the students at the after-show party (who we shall have to presume are Kang So-yi, Park Han-bit-na-ra, O Yoon-soo, and Park Mi-so, as the roles are not credited) that makes this one of Hong's more emotional works. Let's hope there's plenty more to come.
THE COLORS WITHIN.
Schooled in series anime, Naoko Yamada has become one of Japanimation's leading woman directors. She now follows K-On! The Movie (2011), Tamako Love Story (2014), A Silent Voice (2016) and Liz and the Blue Bird () with The Colors Within, which straddles the shōjo and josei sub-genres aimed at teenage girls and young women.
Possessed since childhood with a form of synaesthesia, high-schooler Totsuko Higurashi (Sayu Suzukawa) has the ability to see people's auras in the form of bright colours. She is particularly taken by the vibrant blue emitted by her classmate, Kimi Sakunaga (Akari Takaishi). They attend a Catholic boarding school, where Totsuko regularly says `The Serenity Prayer' in the chapel. On one occasion, she is overheard by Sister Hiyoshiko (Yui Aragaki), a kindly teacher who has a yellow glow, who tells her that `the serenity to accept the things I cannot change' is a great gift to have.
During a PE lesson, Totsuko gets hit in the face during a game of dodgeball and Kimi is mortified at having hurt her. However, she suddenly drops out of school, although she doesn't tell her grandmother, Shino (Keiko Toda), and takes the tram to the tiny bookshop where she works in her grey uniform. Upset at not seeing Kimi, Totsuko searches every bookshop downtown after hearing a whispered rumour. Eventually, she tracks Kimi down to White Cat Hall and overhears her strumming a guitar at the cash desk. She also plays, but fibs she is a pianist in order to justify buying a book.
As they chat, they are joined by Rui Kagehira (Taisei Kido), a bespectacled teenager who collects musical instruments. He asks the girls if they're in a band and Totsuko invites him to join because he's hazed in a pleasing green. He lives on an island and Totsuko gets seasick on the ferry and has to lie with her head on Kimi's lap. Rui maintains an old church and this becomes their rehearsal space and Totsuko is moved when he starts playing the theremin and Kimi plugs in her guitar to jam along.
Deciding to call themselves `Super Ice Cream', the trio agree to write their own songs and Totsuko is inspired by a lesson on the Solar System to try and pen something to reflect the beauty of Kimi's aura. She records the first few notes on her phone and sends it to her bandmates, who are suitably impressed and they are soon playing well in their hideaway.
Totsuko tells Sister Hiyoshiko she's writing songs and is assured that happy or sad music counts as a hymn to God. When she visits the shop, Totsuko is fussed over by the white cat. But she senses Kimi is unhappy and learns she has not told her grandmother about leaving school. So, when she needs somewhere to sleep when the class is away on a field trip, Totsuko feigns a stomach ache to stay behind and smuggles Kimi into her room. They have a nice time chatting and eating snacks, but nearly get caught when one of the nuns comes to check on her patient. However, when they need to get up in the night, the pair are spotted by the nun on duty and both get into trouble with the principal.
While Totsuko goes home to see her mother at her dance studio, Kimi hides away in the shop because she is so distressed at having deceived her grandmother. But Sister Hiyoshiko comes to see her and reassures Kimi that some sins are committed for the best of reasons and suggests that the band plays at the forthcoming St Valentine's Festival. She is excited by the prospect and Totsuko is glad that her mother isn't cross with her because she has finally made a friend worth covering for.
Meanwhile, Rui has been practicing away in the church on his own and he is thrilled when the girls finish their community service punishments and return to the island. Christmas is coming and they get snowed in at the church and Tostuko has to call Sister Hiyoshiko, who says she will cover for her by saying she's on a training course. As Rui has brought stuff from home, it's quite cosy by candlelight. He reveals that he will be going to college to train as a doctor, as he's from a long line of medics. Neither of the girls knows what they want to do. But, when Rui turns on the radio for the weather forecast, Totsuko hears a snatch of Giselle and remembers dancing to it as a girl. Her friends accompany her on theremin and guitar, as she recalls the steps her mother had taught her years ago.
Now billed as `The White Cat Hall Band', the trio wait backstage at the school. Kimi has come clean to her grandmother and Rui has told his mother that he would rather be a musician than a physician. They are nervous, but Sister Hiyoshiko informs them that she was once in a band called `God Almighty' and Totsuko realises she is in her teacher's old bed in dormitory, as the name is carved on the wooden bed post. As they wait for the curtain to go up, Kimi asks Totsuko what colour she is and she admits she doesn't know.
The band play three numbers, with the muted audience response to the first contrasting with polite applause for the second and enthusiastic whooping for the third. Even the older nuns tap their toes, while Sister Hiyoshiko twirls along the corridor with pleasure, as if her own girlhood dream has been fulfilled. As the noise dies down, we see Totsuko dancing Giselle in her uniform in a garden full of flowers. Just for a second, she sees a halo of pink around her hand and knows her colour.
At the start of the autumn term, Rui takes the ferry to begin his medical studies. Kimi is sad to see him go and Totsuko has finally twigged that her bandmates like each other. As the boat passes the long jetty, the girls run to the end and shout out to Rui to stay strong so they can all be together again soon. It's a sweet way to end a charming film that captures the hopes, fears, desires, and tentativities of youth with visual flair and emotional finesse.
The characterisation isn't deep and the storyline is somewhat lightweight. Moreover,
Yamada glosses over the band's rapid progression from neophytes to accomplished crowd-pleasers. But the mini-concert sequence is beautifully judged, with the numbers being pleasingly catchy and the melding of the trio's dreams and personalities being particularly poignant. But what makes the film so endearing are its insights into adolescent insecurity and the expectations that are piled on young people before they've become properly orientated. The attitude to religion is also refreshing, as there are none of the usual anti-Catholic clichés on view, as Sister Hiyoshiko compassionately remembers her own aspirations and feelings in dealing with the pious Totsuko and the limbo-abiding Kimi. However, it's the scenes in the school chapel and the secluded bookshop that leave the most lingering impression, as they encapsulate the serenity mentioned in the opening prayer that so many of us seek each day.
DETECTIVE CHINATOWN 1900.
The crime capers in Chen Sicheng's Detective Chinatown (2015-21) trilogy took ace sleuth Tang Ren (Wang Baoqiang) and `nephew' Qin Feng (Liu Haoran) to Bangkok, New York, and Tokyo. For the prequel, Detective Chinatown 1900, Chen and co-director Dai Mo take us to San Francisco for a convoluted tale whose asides on racial prejudice have a timely relevance given the attitudes of a new regime in the White House that seems intent on flexing its muscles against both immigrants and the Chinese.
In 1900, as the United States joins the Western powers looting Qing Dynasty China,
the Empress Dowager Cixi (Xi Meijuan) sends investigator Fei Yanggu (Yue Yunpeng) to San Francisco to track down revolutionary, Zhang Shiliang (Ke Bai, aka White-K). After
Sherlock Holmes (Andrew Charles Stokes) refuses to become involved in the case because he dislikes politics, he urges medical student and would-be apprentice Fu Qin (Liu Haoran) to take up his mantle and use his methods of deduction to become a great detective. Arriving by train in San Francisco, Fu walks into an anti-Chinese demonstration and he is informed by a member of the Hip Sing Tong that there are rumours that Jack the Ripper has surfaced in Chinatown because Alice (Anastasia Shestakova), the daughter of right-wing mayoral candidate Grant (John Cusack), was eviscerated on the same night that a fur-trading Navajo chief named Six-Hands was murdered in the same alley.
According to rumour, Bai Zhenbang (Steven Zhang), the son of Tong leader Bai Xuanling (Chow Yun-Fat), was seen in the vicinity and has become the chief suspect, despite having a cast-iron alibi. Xuanling had been at a nearby theatre watching magician Ching Ling Fu (Wei Xiang) when Zengbang had slipped away to meet Alice, who was his secret lover. But there are those who believe that the crime is all part of a conspiracy to help the passage of a Chinese Exclusion bill that the Sinophobic Grant is hoping to push through the city trade council with an eye to bulldozing Chinatown and re-appropriating the land.
Meanwhile, Ah Gui (Wang Baoqiang), who was taken in by Six-Hands and named `Ghost' when his parents perished while building the railroad, vows vengeance and heads to Chinatown to find the man in the deerstalker who will help him attain justice. As luck would have it, Fu Qin is sporting such a titfer, although he and Ghost form an unlikely partnership after Fu falls on top of Ghost while trying to flee the Tong compound because he's too scared to take on the case. As they roll around in Ghost's sackcloth cape following the tumble (while `Only You' plays on the soundtrack), Ghost recognises a kindred spirit. Fu is initially resistant, but he throws in his lot when he sees Ghost use a mix of magical power and brute force to duff up the Tong heavies trying to drag the sleuth back to Hip Sing HQ.
When Grant joins rabblerouser Thomas Lewis (AJ Donnelly) to lead a protest outside the gates of Xuanling's factory, he assures him of his son's innocence and asserts his right as an American citizen to prosper in the city. He is backed up by Senator Bruce (Darren Grosvenor), who persuades Grant to call off his thugs.
Down at the docks, Fei Yanggu disembarks with two bodyguards, Ren Wu (Wang Yutian) and Ren Liu (Zhang Aoyue), and is humiliated when the customs officers make them strip naked to be searched. Taking this as an insult against the Dowager Empress, Fei becomes even more determined to do his duty when he's fleeced by a couple of Chinese con men. Ultimately, he finds his way to the Hip Sing compound, where Xuanling treats them as honoured guests. When Zhenbang is released and returns home with Zheng Shiliang, however, a linear multi-weaponed Mexican stand-off develops until Xuanling makes it cleat that he will protect Zheng at all costs.
He also makes this clear to Marston (Sean Kohnke), the leader of an Irish gang from whom Zheng and Zhenbang have stolen some weapons and entrusted them to the magician at the theatre for safe keeping. However, he is cross with his son for pitting the Tong against the Irish and it's only when Zheng and Zhenbang point out that Chinatown is riddled with drugs and degradation and that they are fighting for a new China that would make emigration less necessary that Xuanling sees the nobility of their cause.
Having inspected Alice's body at the morgue and found clues in her hair and fingernails, Fu and Ghost search her room. But Grant ignores their contention that Zhenbang is innocent and he insists he will have a hanging. Discovering that Zhenbang has fled the compound while on bail, Ghost and Fu seek him out at the theatre. Ching denies he's hiding there, but he and Zheng appear backstage during a performance and they are challenged by Fei Yanggu and his oppos. They fight, only for the goons to fall into a vanishing cabinet and emerge on stage instead of the elderly female volunteer from the audience. A baffled Ching takes the applause and does so again when Fu, Ghost, Fei, Zheng, and Zhenbang stagger out of the cabinet. The woman also wanders through a partition and gets a huge cheer when she punches Fei in the eye.
Fu and Ghost quiz Zhenbang about his relationship with Alice and we see their chance meetings in flashback. He admits that they were planning to elope, but she didn't keep their tryst and he is now fighting alongside Zheng because he is tired of the racism he has experienced and wants to make the world respect China. Unfortunately, while backstage, Fei spotted the cache of weapons and he cuts a deal with Marston to entrap Zhenbang. He is also being sought by Lance (Sam Hayden-Smith), the chief of police, because a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner has been murdered and Zhenbang is the prime suspect.
When Ching prepares to leave, Fei and Marston ambush his entourage to find the guns. But Ghost drives the horse cart at breakneck speed through the busy streets and there are several crashes among the pursuing carts. Fu is convinced Ghost has been killed when he's shot in the chest, but the bullet hits a metal medallion and he's saved. Fei opens the crates to find no sign of the guns and the Irish are furious. They torture Zheng, who is sharing a cell with Ghost and Fu. The former calls a pigeon to the barred window and it flies off to fetch help. But they are tossed into a pit and are in the process of being buried by the time the Navajo turn up. Amidst the chaos, Fei's men fight with the Irish and he repeatedly stabs Marston while being shot. As the battle ensues, news comes that China has been invaded during the Boxer Rebellion and Fei pleads with his dying breath for Zheng and Fu to save China.
Grant is still adamant that Zhenbang pays for his crime. But Lance receives a call to go to the silk factory, where he finds a cloaked Zhenbang standing over a disembowelled corpse. He tries to jump into a water pool, but is shot and Lance informs Xuanling that his son is Jack the Ripper. Livid that his scapegoat will evade justice, Grant urges a crowd to attack Chinatown and the Tong are powerless to resist. Xuanling dismisses Fu from the case, but Ghost is determined to discover who killed his father, as he doesn't believe the Young Master would have been capable of such a crime. As he leaves, hundreds of residents stand to pay their respects to Zhenbang and they tell his father of his many good deeds for the poor. This convinces Fu that he has been framed and takes Ghost and Zheng to find the real culprit.
Having revisited the herbalist's office and found wood shavings similar to the ones found in Alice's hair, Fu and Ghost go to the silk factory with Zheng and deduce that Grant and Lance pulled a fast one by having someone impersonate Zhenbang at the table before letting his already dead body float to the surface while the stand-in hid at the bottom of the pool. They also find a lapel badge that tips them off as to the killer's identity.
As Lance is making a statement to the press, Fu, Ghost, and Zheng interrupt with Zhenbang's body on a bier. They accuse Grant of stage-managing the pool shooting with Lewis, whose badge they had found at the scene. They also use a pig's corpse to reveal that the bullet fired from a distance would have left a smaller wound than the one on Zhenbang's body, which had been refrigerated so that no blood from the gunshot could enter the lungs. Furthermore, they explain that Alice was pregnant and that Grant had tried to prevent her from eloping, only for her to fall over the balustrade to her death.
Appalled by what he had done, he had sought to blame Zhenbang for the Ripper killings to back his Chinese Exclusion bill. He had ordered Lewis to dispose of Alice's body in the alley, but he had run into Six Hands and slaughtered him to remove a witness. Realising the game is up, Grant shoots himself and Fu turns with gratitude to Lance, who had provided them with documents that proved Grant's guilt.
Across town, meanwhile, Xuanling has been called to a hearing by the San Francisco trade board. The three white men on the committee browbeat him into admitting that he uses illegal workers and has an illicit security force. When he tries to explain that the Chinese can't get protection from the police, he is shouted down. But he retains his sang froid, as he reminds everyone in the chamber that they have all benefited from Chinese labour at some point in their lives. He reveals that he worked on the railroad and remembers the day Ghost's parents were killed. Yet, there isn't a single Chinese face in the project's official photograph and he demands to know why a country founded on the principle of equality continues to deny the right to so many outsiders.
In the vote, the committee decides not to appropriate Chinatown. But it does opt to confiscate all Tong property and Xuanling comes to congratulate old friend Senator Bruce (Darren Grosvenor) on getting his candidate elected mayor. However, he also lets him know that he had ordered Lance to leak evidence against Grant because he had been present when Alice had accidentally fallen to her death and had conspired to remain silent. His plan, however, was to give Grant enough rope to hang himself and then claim Tong possessions because he had been told that they sat on top of an oil field. As we see Bruce celebrating the capping of the well, Xuanling shakes his hand because all is fair in the dog-eat-dog world of American capitalism.
As Ghost and Fu agree to become a crime-solving duo, they go down to the docks to wave Zheng goodbye. He is accompanied by Ching, who has acquired a movie camera. They refer to the weapons stashed aboard the ship and Zheng claims that he will use them to transform China and turn it into the greatest nation on earth. Ching smiles and claims that this would the most spectacular magic trick in history.
Concluding with a dash of patriotic bravura after having soundly denounced America's founding values, this convoluted epic has its moments of political bombast. It's also rather gauche in its clichéd depiction of Native American life. But Chen Sicheng's screenplay sprinkles plenty of historical incident into a whodunit that twists its way through a labyrinth of subplots. Some of the minor American characters are poorly played, although nothing descends lower than the atrocious depiction of 221B Baker Street's finest. Behind dark lenses and a silent villain's beard, John Cusack is suitably hissable and few will miss the references to modern American attitudes to migration and birthright citizenship. Yet the allusions to China's ideological journey are more nuanced, as the scenario is filled with potential stumbling blocks. However, the closing plea for Chinese everywhere to quit their diasporas and return to bolster the Motherland will raise eyebrows and hackles alike.
Shifting pronouncedly in tone from the main triptych, the byplay between Liu Haoran and Wang Baoqiang is expectedly droll, with the latter revelling in the role of Tonto to the former's Lone Ranger. He's particularly good in the chase sequence, with the whistle to make sleek city horses rear out of the way of his hurtling cart being splendidly slick. In his white suit, Chow Yun-Fat is also on fine form, with his speech to the commercial council being delivered with a quiet fury that would not be out of place in a weightier picture than this.
On the technical side, the production design and the costumes are first rate (the full-size city sets erected in Shandong Province are outstanding), as are the cinematography and the editing (although actual credits are somewhat hard to pin down). With the odd anachronistic ditty spicing things up, the score is also nicely judged. No one can pretend this is subtle. But it rattles along in the manner of Kim Jee-woon's The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008), without quite hitting the same highs or nailing its satirical targets with such precision
THE FUZZTONES VS THE WORLD.
It was this column's New Year resolution to expend less verbiage on minor releases and niche documentaries. Admittedly, similar vows have been taken on an annual basis since about 2008. But, with time seeming to be passing more swiftly than ever before, something has to give and Danny Garcia's The Fuzztones vs the World has the distinction of being the first title to be spared the full forensic treatment.
As is the case with so many rockumentaries, Garcia presumes considerable foreknowledge, which can make it hard for newcomers to negotiate the evolution of a band that has been through 17 line-up changes in 45-odd years. Ever-present, however, has been founder and frontman Rudi Protrudi, who takes the narrating duties upon himself through a range of pieces to camera.
Born Glen Dalpis in Pennsylvania in 1952, he was an ordinary kid until The Beatles played The Ed Sullivan Show and he had to have a guitar. He formed his own band, King Arthur's Court, in 1966. But the influence of The Fugs led to him changing tack, as he followed his first song, `Penis Between Us', by joining Rigor Mortis and Springhead Motor Shark in rapid succession.
Having met vocalist Deb O'Nair, Dalpis changed his name to Rudi Protrudi got to play such iconic New York venues CBGB and Max's Kansas City with his new outfit, Tina Peel. Counting The Cramps among their peers, the band had a bubblegum punk hit with `Blow Me (A Kiss)' before Protrudi moved into the garage rock revival following a stint with The Devil Dogs. Keen to see how his new style would play, Protrudi formed The Fuzztones in 1980 and had them open for Tina Peel at a handful of gigs before committing to his new image, with fellow founder members Deb O'Nair on keyboards, Elan Portnoy on guitar, Michael Phillips on drums, and Michael Jay and Randy Pratt sharing bass duties.
During their only US tour, The Fuzztones memorably recorded a live EP with Screamin' Jay Hawkins in 1984. However, Protrudi couldn't resist teaming with performance artist Ann Magnuson to form Vulcan Death Grip, a parodic hair metal band who enjoyed brief notoriety before The Fuzztones released their debut album, Lysergic Emanations (1985).
This proved to be a big hit in Britain, with the band doing a session for John Peel on Radio One before playing to festival crowds across Europe. Success only brought tensions, however, and the band broke up after O'Nair's departure. Protrudi took himself to Los Angeles, where he recruited Jordan Tarlow (lead guitar), John `Speediejohn' Carlucci (bass), Jason Savall (organ), and `Mad' Mike Czekaj (drums) for a second album, In Heat (1989). Unhappy with the sound and irritate by revolts within the band, Protrudi announced the break-up of The Fuzztones on stage and formed Link Protrudi and the Jay Men.
Two years later, Czekaj, Phil Arriagada, and Jake Cavaliere joined the strength for Braindrops (1991) and Monster A-Go-Go (1992) before the inevitable parting of the ways. Protrudi went country with The Midnight Ploughboys, while exploring other optios. Eventually, he reformed The Fuzztones for Salt For Zombies (2003), only for internecine strife to precipitate several more personnel changes before keyboardist Lana Loveland imposed a degree of order, as Protrudi's new partner. With the band now based in Berlin, they released Horny As Hell (2008) and Preaching to the Perverted (2011) and began touring garage punk outposts across Europe. Committed to pegging out on stage, Protrudi has since recorded NYC (2020) and Encore (2022) and keeps feeding off the energy of younger musicians as he marches into his seventies.
Crisply edited by Chip Baker, this documentary might have been called The Fuzztones vs Each Other. While there may not have been a lot of love lost down the decades, however, the majority of the former members interviewed here are on their best behaviour. As a consequence, this always feels like the Protrudi version of events rather than the nitty gritty.
With so many line-up changes to get one's head around, the film can also seem a little bitty and insular. A handful of non-alumni contribute their ten pennyworth, but there's no analysis of the band's musical evolution or a discussion about why they have enjoyed more success in Europe than the United States. Protrudi takes the opportunity to settle a few old scores, but is sufficiently self-deprecating to avoid bigging himself up unduly. Consequently, this makes for engaging viewing, with Fuzztone fans being bound to enjoy a ride that should also send non-converts in search of the various studio and live albums online.
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