A Public Cemetery of Wol-Ha: House of Horrors

Is Kwon Cheol-hwi the Roger Corman of Busan? Perhaps. I mean, I definitely felt a kinship between the deliciously shlocky A Public Cemetery of Wol-ha and those signature fright flicks of American International Pictures (which was cranking out flimflam films around the same time). Throughout Public Cemetery, you'll find the signature marks of that period's best B-moviemaking: overacting, lurid lighting, convoluted storytelling, a sadistic torture scene, and mustache-twirling villainry. For that last part, director Kwon has brought on Do Kum-Bong as a drug-dealing, murderous wife and the constantly cast Heo Chang-Kang as a slimy doctor who prescribes poisons as readily as cures.

These two amoralists conspire to off the courtesan-turned-mother (Kang Mi-Ae) and later, her infant son. That (late) woman's brother (Hwang Hae) — an old prisonmate of her husband (Park Nou-sik) — senses something is wrong in that household but he makes some wrong assumptions. Who wouldn't? No guest would guess it's a household of killers! Theremin music, skull silhouettes, a reluctantly complicit granny (Jeong Ae-ran), and a ghost who glides... if camp K-horror is your cup of tea then this movie is good to the last drop... of blood. In every which way, it's a scream!

Warning: The actual way they handle the real-life baby on-screen is the scariest part of this movie.

Five Marines: Age-Old Warriors

With only a decade between them, marquee headliners Kim Seung-ho and Shin Yeong-gyun would seem best suited to co-star as brothers for a war pic but in Kim Ki-duk's Five Marines, they play a military father-son duo with a history as potentially woundful as the DMZ. They're not the only family following a wacky Hollywood logic when it comes to ages. Performers Hwang Hae and Hwang Jeong-sun take on the roles of a soldier-son and his seamstress-mother despite a mere five years separating the two. (Crazily, he's older than she is.) I mention these odd details because in some ways, Kim's patriotic paean to the South's infantrymen feels like the cinematic equivalent of asummer stock production, as if the director had assembled a group of actors first, and the material second. Except, it's hard to imagine him picking this script. More like it was assigned.

Given the constraints, he's cast as best as he can. So what if everyone's around the same age. Maybe age is irrelevant when we're wearing standarc fatigues and camouflage helmets. The first half of the film is spent meeting the battallion — which aside from the aforemention army G.I.s — also includes a city smart aleck (comedian Flyboy), a new recruit (Nam Jang-il), a heartbreaker (Choi Mu-ryong), and a chaplain. Eventually, this crew paddles behind enemy lines in order to accomplish a dangerous mission. (Less dialogue and clownery; more action with whispers!) And — in true war movie fashion — only one of these guys is going to survive! Consider that a spoiler? If so, you haven't been watching many war pics. Five Marines is nothing if not standard issue frontline heroics.

The Coachman: No Simple Retread of The Bicycle Thief

The opening sequence of The Coachman reveals a young man speeding away on a stolen bicycle while the rightful owner runs after him shouting "Thief! Thief!" Sound familiar? Well, the deja vu is intentional for director Kang Dae-jin's Silver Bear winner of 1961 owes a lot to Vittorio De Sica's neorealist landmark . This Korean variation similarly explores a struggling working class family's existence, specifically a widowed deliveryman (Kim Seung-ho), his eldest son (who keeps failing the governmental exam), his deaf-mute daughter (who's trapped in an abusive marriage), his other daughter (who's dabbling in escort services) and his youngest boy (who we met in that thrilling first scene).

To dub the overall situation grim would be accurate but such a description would also shortchange much of the kindness with which the story is infused. You sense a real mix of respectful privacy and shared concern among the family members who are blessed with truly caring, self-sacrificing friends, including a truck driver (Hwang Hae) who comes to their aid multiple times, and a housemaid (Hwang Jung-seun) who takes extreme action to save a man in whom she sees inherent goodness. Nothing's idealized here, mind you — especially the rich who exhibit a narcissism that's never gone out of date. But The Coachman lifts the spirits with a happy ending that defies the odds and feels plausible.