Descendants of Cain: Not Scary Red Scare

Maybe we're supposed to sympathize with the Old Guard landowners in Yoo Hyun-mok's Descendants of Cain. But I sure didn't. Well-intentioned Park Hun (Kim Jin-kyu) may have parlayed his roles as sympathetic squire into beneficent school teacher but he's also been stringing along O Jang-nyeo (Moon Hee), his masochistic housekeeper who's been lusting for him all these yearsduring which her absent, wifebeating drunk of a husband (Choi Bong) has been making a dubious name for himself in the party. Park is that latest in a line of kind lords of the manor but are the impoverished villagers really supposed to come to the defense of the "good" slave-owner? Who in their right mind wouldn't rejoice at a land re-distribution plan?

The refusal to cast the protagonists as good guys and the antagonists as villains is what makes Descendants of Cain so effective. The lowest of the low can have his moments of truth-telling; the best educated can also be the most delusional. The new social order may mercilessly judge all members of the upperclass regardless of their moral center but it also finally challenges a system that accords wealth, health, and -- to some degree -- happiness as a birth right guaranteed only to the moneyed minority. Fights break out but I, for one, was surprised by who stabbed who.

Awards: Blue Dragon Award for Best Film (1969); Buil Film Award for Best Film (1969).

The Road to Sampo: Three on a March

Evidently filmmaker Lee Man-hui was an experimentalist to the end. His final work, the improbably joyous The Road to Sampo, turns a grim-on-paper road movie into a repeatedly giddy celebration of life. I found it inexplicably irresistable. So what if it's winter and jobs are scarce and everyone's broke and the world is cruel. I've been there and there's still friendship. No one promised anyone an easy life. And in Sampo, the trio of good-natured, insta-buddy vagabonds somehow find a way to counter a litany of downturns...together. Bulldozer Roh (Baek Il-sob) can't find a job; barmaid Baek-hwa (Mun Suk) can't find love; and elder excon Jeong (Kim Jin-kyu) seems unlikely to find the life he left behind. That doesn't mean they should stop searching. Plus, if they're hungry along the way, they can always crash a funeral for food and drink.

Which isn't to imply that The Road to Sampo is a pilgrimmage with marker events. Huge swaths of the film are devoted to watching these three trudge through the snow. Sometimes, they come upon a house and you think, what's there, but they move on. It may sound boring. In actuality, it's a blast. When Jeong comments about the younger two being like children, he's basically explaining how to get through the day to day. Don't get jaded. Don't get hard. Keep your innocence. Play when you can. Approach the unexpected with open eyes and an open heart. (Best done with a soundtrack inspired by Morricone.)

The Devil's Stairway: Nursed to Death

Did you think it was bad when Shelley Winters drowned in A Place in the Sun? Well, that's nothing compared to what's in store for the unwanted girlfriend in The Devil's Stairway. Lee Man-hui's hospital thriller sets up pretty quickly that the romance between an enterprising doctor (Kim Jin-kyu) and a clingy nurse (Moon Jeong-suk) is going to go sour before the spit on their lips has time to dry. And part of the fun is having Lee tease us with the possible murders that don't play out: a strangling, an overdose, another fall down that deadly staircase, an intentionally botched abortion, a grisly end utilizing various pieces of shiny medical equipment... The options are endless!

We know our hero is also our villain. But are you truly a bad guy if you're haunted by your actions? Oh, of course you are. You're just a bad guy with a conscience. Which is marginally better than a bad guy without one. How do you know he's got second thoughts? The Devil's Staircase has a deliciously insistent soundtrack with heightened foley sounds, well-placed vibraphones, and cacophonous orchestral works that drop out just in time to underscore the madness. Insanity sounds best without background music (and when shot in expert black and white).

Homebound: The Road to Return Has You Coming Back

Lest we forget, military spouses experience their own forms of PTSD. In Lee Man-hui's delectably arty, beautifully shot melodrama Homebound (a.k.a. Coming Back a.k.a. The Way Home a.k.a. A Road to Return), the protagonist isn't the depressed, wheelchair-bound veteran (Kim Jin-gyu) who's writing a serialized roman a clef for a Seoul newspaper. It's his saintly wife (Moon Jeong-suk) who has trauma-triggered hallucinations of her own — although how far they extend is really up to the viewer to decide. What we do know, for sure, is that she's responsible for dropping off her husband's latest chapter to the editor-in-chief who would like to see the story get a little more "human." By which he means, can't she cheat already?

She for her part is unsure of the answer. Will her hubby stop idealizing her sexless sacrifices? Will the oh-so-close almost-kiss she has with a rookie reporter (Kim Jeong-cheol) at a makeout bar ever develop into a duel of the tongues? Will she ever get more physical contact than what she receives from her pet German shepherd Bess? The neurotic way she applies lipstick late in the film sure suggests she needs some kind of help fast. Because if she doesn't get it, she's going to end up in Tennessee Williams country instead of Incheon.

Piagol: In War, Everything Is Justified

YouTube's Korean Classic Film channel is the Korean film fan's beloved online version of Turner Classic Movies, a treasure trove of restored classics, cult curiosities, and other cinematic wonders from the celluloid vault. Piagol, one of the channel's older black-and-white movies, is a gritty 1955 war pic about a dwindling squadron of North Korean soldiers struggling for relevance and survival at the tail end of the Korean War. As portraits of the military go, it's anything but flattering yet the critiques leveled by writer-director Lee Kang-cheon have a despairingly universal quality: Ranking officers rape female officers with little consequence; villages are pillaged for food then violence is justified for dubious political reasons; discipline is extreme and inconsistent and often pointless; the enemy often comes from within. (P.S. Don't expect the Soviet Union to rescue your ass!)

And it's not just one bad red apple in khaki here. The icy-hot Ae-ran (No Kyeong-hie) backstabs her rival female enlistee Soju (Kim Yeong-hui) for no good reason while both the lead officer (Lee Ye-chun) and that snake of a G.I. Man-su (Heo Jang-kang) pull out knives to literally stab others, with even lower motives on their mind. With WWI poet laureate Wilfred Owen likely staring down at him from the heavens, all the duplicity and detonating bombs in the world cannot and will not kill the Byronesque tendencies of Piagol's impossibly romantic Cheol-su (Kim Jin-kyu), the dashing serviceman who gazes wistfully at the clouds as if posing for a paperback cover of Wuthering Heights. So who surrenders and who dies? Well, the one to ultimately survive the nasty infighting amidst periodic enemy gunfire may surprise you. It sure did me.

My Sister Is a Hussy: Actually, She's a Tomboy

Han Hyeong-mo's hilariously named My Sister Is a Hussy is one of those strange films that can't decide whether it's for or against female empowerment. On the pro-woman side, you have two daughters raised by their judo instructor father to be masters of self-defense. And so we get to see martial arts battles that show these young ladies beat up a pair of self-styled studs cruising in the park, an abusive husband who wants a maid for a wife, a young man practicing at the dojo, a small gang of hoods seeking revenge, and a burglar with a gun and a thirst for new clothes. These scenes are unquestionably fun. But on the anti-woman side, we have to witness the more independent older daughter body-slammed into submission by her father, accidentally punched in the face by her husband, and roughed around by that aforementioned gang of hoodlums because she's worn down and devoid of self-worth.

Even the end of the movie feels unclear in its messaging for while the female protagonist (Moon Jeong-suk) is now dressed in traditional Korean garb and playing the submissive wife seeing her husband (Kim Jin-kyu) off to work, we're also aware that the night before when their house had an intruder that her husband would've died — and the criminal would've escaped — had not this fiery young wife awakened from a knock-out punch and jumped back into the brawl. In a way, My Sister Is a Hussy wants to have it both ways: It wants the "weaker sex" to act as such even if we all know that they're stronger, smarter, and sassier. It also thinks that there's nothing more appealing than a woman who knows how to fight back. is the idea to appeal to everyone?

Dongshimcho: Young Mother in Love

Shin Sang-ok's preposterously pulpy Dongshimcho had me reflecting on the difference between melodrama and soap opera, kindred spirits to be sure. Well, in my mind at least, the second genre distinguishes itself with its bounty of complications and coincidences, mostly if not entirely of a romantic nature. Here you can see that impossibly insane intricacy in a minor character like Mr. Kim from Busan (Kim Seung-ho) — who is at once the business associate for Seoul publisher Kim Sang-kyu (Kim Jin-kyu), a rival for the latter Kim's secret love Mrs. Lee (Choi Eun-hie), and a potential buyer of Mrs. Lee's house — as well as in another relatively secondary role like Ok-joo (Do Kum-bong), the main Kim's fiancee who is also a high school acquaintance of Mrs. Lee's daughter Kyung-hee (Eom Aeng-ran) and the daughter herself of Company Chairman Lee (Kim Dong-won) who has funded her beloved's business enterprise which is in jeopardy now because of a loan made to Mrs. Lee so the lonely widow won't lose her house which for various reasons she doesn't want to sell to the earlier mentioned Mr. Kim from out of town (who just happens to be a merry widower).

It's hard to explain but it's not hard to follow though it is hard to believe. Such is life? Well, maybe. I was more interested in period details like phone calls that are received in the local pharmacy, open train windows that frame brokenhearted passengers tearfully looking out in search of the cause of their distress, and various stacks of 8½" x 17" paper which signal accounting and serious work. There's also a surprising amount of screen time spent on watching people get in and out of shoes as they enter various houses. I, for one, wasn't bored. And if the ever-so-friendly realtor looks familiar that may be because you recognize him as the bullying boss in The Hand of Destiny which is more melodrama than soap but similarly so-so.

The Housemaid: Cheating on Your Wife Means Gambling With Your Life

Checking references for a potential domestic hire? If the candidate's name is Myong-ja (Lee Eun-shim), be sure to talk with her former boyfriend as well as her recent employers. This girl's got serious jealousy issues! In Kim Ki-young's kooky melodrama The Housemaid, all hell breaks loose when this saucy servant starts cooking and cleaning... then screwing the master-of-the-house -- a music teacher named Dong Sik (Kim Jin-kyu) who leads a women's choir at the local factory. What's the best way to deal with her irrational behavior? Try to kill her off with the same rat poison she used to kill your bratty son (Ahn Sung-kee) and you'll end up like Dong's wife (Ju Jeung-nyeo ): a slave to her sewing machine and Myong-ja! Try to defuse her when she explodes and you'll end up like Miss Cho (Eom Aeng-ran): at the wrong end of a very long knife! Whatever you do, don't continue to sleep with her!!! In this movie's crazed reality, Dong Sik's last-ditch attempt to get away leads to his loony lover being latched on to his ankle and bumping her head against every stair along his failed escape. As black-and-white middle-class tragedies go, this one is campy, corny and not too credible.

Seong Chun-hyang: Hey Sweetheart! It's Easier to Die for Love

I think you could safely call Seong Chun-hyang a tragedy. For while the title character (played by Choi Eun-hie) does end up with the governor's son (Kim Jin-kyu), she nevertheless suffers through a number of brutal beatings and more than a few days in the stocks before she gets him. Her final reunion with the careerist husband who deserted her doesn't feel romantic. It feels like a marginal improvement over the decapitation she would have undergone if he hadn't come back to town. As happily ever afters go, Shin Sang-ok's paean to purity conforms strictly on superficial grounds. She sacrifices selflessly for him; he comes across as a self-absorbed jerk. This imbalance allows the director to take a sadistic pleasure in documenting the price that comes with living a virtuous life—made especially difficult since her mom's a locally famous whore. It's a theme Shin and screenwriter Lim Hee-jae would visit again (and more effectively) in My Mother and Her Guest. That's not to say Seong Chun-hyang isn't good. It is. Very much so. And with its gorgeous costumes in eye-popping yellows, pinks and greens and lighting effects in even more-lurid shades, Seong Chun-yang is never dull to watch. Someone should turn it into a musical.

Deaf Sam-ryong: He Can't Hear You Say Stop Loving Me

People say you can make your own family but I don't know. I think you're pretty much born with whatever it's going to be and that the best of everyone else is just really good friends if you're lucky. You can't make someone a blood relative aside from marriage. From the looks of Deaf Sam-ryong, director Shin Sang-ok agrees with me. His effective weepie about a servant (Kim Jin-kyu) with no hearing and only half a brain shows that you can be the best-behaved son to the man you wish were your father but he'll always choose his own offspring first, and that you can be the most chaste, self-sacrificing idolizer of a well-bred lady (Choi Eun-hie) but she'll always side with her husband even if he beats her and sleeps with the maid. Maybe if this surrogate son/lover wasn't such a simpleton that wouldn't be the case but poor Sam-ryong has only the cards he's been dealt by life and those add up to a losing hand. Although his performance is painfully over-the-top, Kim creates a sympathetic character eventually. I guess you can't be this downtrodden and not merit a handful of hankies. Choi, for her part, must be credited for keeping a straight face during Kim's shameless mugging.

My Mother and Her Guest: The High Road Leads to Heartbreak

On paper, mother (Choi Eun-hee) isn't such a great catch. She's sexually repressed, she beats her daughter, and she's so old-fashioned that she's afraid to get her hair styled in a modern cut. Even with all these shortcomings, however, you secretly hope the 28-year-old widow will somehow climb out of her suffocating shell and forge a romantic relationship with the dashing boarder (Kim Jin-kyu) who's shacking up with her, her daughter (Jeon Yeong-seon), and her mother-in-law (Han Eun-jin). Plenty of opportunities present themselves thanks to the conniving of her child, an adorable tyke who takes great pleasure out of telling little lies that add to the drama of the household. Love letters lead to a single encounter at the family well where you think the roomer and the widow might finally kiss but he's been out on a bender so she can't bring herself to taste his liquored breath. It's a night of hugs! She's a woman of principle! This is not a romantic comedy! In melodrama, the only chance an upstanding woman has at getting married depends on shame. That certainly worked for her maid (Do Geum-bong) and an egg vendor (Kim Hee-gab) who end up getting hitched after he got overly intimate with her eggs one afternoon. Chastity is a source of pride not happiness in this memorable film from director Shin Sang-ok.

Stray Bullet: The Story of an Aimless Life

It's not enough to be burdened with a prostitute sister and a shiftless war vet of a brother (Choi Mu-ryong). No. Stray Bullet's protagonist (Kim Jin-kyu) has to have a crazy mother, two hungry kids, a pregnant wife (Moon Jeong-suk), and a nagging toothache too. Akin to Italy's postwar neorealist films, Yoo Hyun-mok's black-and-white, working class drama illustrates with quiet poignancy that you may follow the precepts of Confucius and be the good son, the good husband, the good father, and the good worker and still end up with a fairly shitty life. When you're poor, taking the high ground of self-sacrifice means being one small step from the gutter. Given its strong social realist message, you'd almost think that Stray Bullet was a product of North Korea. But it's hard to imagine that country's movie industry telling this downer without an uplifting Communist coda. There's no propaganda here. Instead, witness the chilling scene in which the son, a paperboy, is seen running with a stack of today's news, the cover of which is a crime committed by his uncle. The downtrodden must capitalize even the darkest of moments. When life's anything for a buck, your conscience is a cage.