Beauty with No Neck: Die of Laughter

It's been awhile since I've seen a film involving disfigured ghosts, a cave of hidden gold, and venomous spiders that can only be killed by fire. Thank goodness for Beauty with No Neck, Lee Yong-min's absolutely cuckoo B-movie about the lengths one greedy man (Lee Ye-chun) will go to become "the richest man in Korea." The plot makes no sense until the last 20 minutes at which point everything is explained. And then... it still makes no sense. But in between a dying man tattooing his baby with clues to the gold's whereabouts and a villain trapped on an island surrounded by a river of acid called "aqua regia," there nuttiness never stops. Here in no particular order are some snippets of absurd dialogue:

1. "I made this myself. Liquor brewed with animal blood."
2. "You're both the killer and the witness!"
3. "I thought you wanted to buy a haunted house."
4. "A devil in human form!"
5. "Your skin's so fair even women would fall for you."
6. "There's definitely some kind of secret in that box."

For the record, that box ends up not containing any significant secret. That animal blood liquor might possess a venom serum. Some femme fatales have sapphic longings, only when they're ready to kill. In Beauty with No Neck, when a character says, "I'll never die," he means it. Even if he dies. And he'll be right!

The Happy Day of Maeng Jin-sa: A Sucky Second Marriage

Lee Yong-min's update of Lee Byung-il's The Wedding Day is definitely a dispiriting downgrade so while you may recognize some framed compositions, many plot points, and even a few verbatim lines from the original, you'll also quickly be able to tell that The Happy Day of Maeng Jin-sa is a pale imitation of the original. The central story remains unchanged: A family lucks into the big time when their only daughter receives a marriage proposal from a rich man's son sight unseen. But the good fortune is suddenly marred when they discover this same future son-in-law has a pronounced limp. Extraordinary measures are taken to save the bride-to-be but they end up backfiring on nearly everyone but the groom.

So what's missing? The maidservant (Choi Eun-hie) no longer secretly lusts after her standoffish lady (Lee Bin-hwa). The maidservant's suitor is now a bumbling fool. The giggling grandpa has lost his sense of humor and while equally absent-minded is not as endearing as he once was. The one thing that's truly consistent is that the patriarch (Kim Seung-ho) is an unlikable social climber. Funnily enough, that last role is played by the same actor in The Wedding Day and even he did a better job the first time around.

Because it's a Lee Yong-min film of course it has its one major strangeness too and that may be the movie's redeeming value: the cryptic river mystic who says puzzling things like "Why not try fishing with a straight hook?" and "You have too much, you lose too much!" No one pondering his maxims or taking his advice but please take mine: Skip The Happy Day... if you can.

A Devilish Murder: Cat Drinks Blood, Seeks Revenge

I haven't seen many Lee Yong-min movies but after only two, it already feels safe to say he is one strange director. A Devilish Murder, his mid-'60s, black-and-white ghost story, is a loony mix of spirit possession, sibling rivalry, and Dorian Gray mystery all wrapped up in one delicious package. As you might guess from that last detail, the film does involve a supernatural painting — the Red Portrait [of devoted wife Ae-ja (Do Geum-bong)] done by an artist who assisted in the murder of its subject but then went on to immortalize her in blood. The victim's surviving husband Shi-mak (Lee Ye-chun), who remarried her conniving sister, may be innocent of the crime but he's also criminally passive when it comes to recognizing she'd never commit adultery while his wicked mom would do anything to cover the fact that she herself is sleeping with the family's horny doctor (Nam Kung-won).

Admittedly, A Devilish Murder can get convoluted at times. Does the dead grandma return as a cat or a vampire? Is the maid a force of good or evil? Does midnight happen twice in one night? Furthermore, the one exacting revenge isn't really the spirit of the dead woman so much as it's the shapeshifting cat that drank her blood when she was buried behind a wall. Charmingly dated special effects will remind you of the human-animal bond repeatedly; there's a seduction scene in which the phantom woman has feline paws below the sheets, a fight that finds her injured hand transformed into a claw, and some reveals in a well-placed mirror that shatters defensively. Who the helpful maid remains a mystery but the fun of A Devilish Murder isn't figuring out whodunit so much as keeping up with what the hell is going on.

Holiday in Seoul: An Off Day Off

Ob-gyn doctor Yang Mi-hie (Nam Hui-won) has quite the day planned for herself and her husband, reporter Song Jae-guan (No Neung-kyeol): shopping for a man's tie and a woman's beach umbrella at the Shin Shin Department Store, some time at the beach, a picket boat ride, Chinese food at Asawon, water skiing on the Han River, a visit to Deoksu Royal Palace, a yet-to-be-determined movie, some dinner at the Grill, and then an outdoor concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. He thinks this all sounds like too much. And he's right. Because they're both going to be incredibly busy today — he'll be getting the scoop on a killer after being kidnapped by an old lady with a mentally ill daughter who acts out love scenes and death scenes histrionically; she'll be consulting with women who clearly want abortions before she delivers a baby to an ailing woman who just happens to be the killer's wife.

They're not the only two having jam-packed days. His reporter friends are pulling pranks and scamming drinks; her fellow wives are out to carouse while the men are away; and their next-door neighbors are in an emotional tumult because that devious wife is having an affair and that cuckolded husband is smashing up stuff in the living room, including a framed portrait of James Dean. That doesn't even include the Lothario who runs a shady sidewalk gambling scam or the drunk man across the street who returns from an all-night bender to discover his unmarried daughter is now pregnant. Oh yes, there's a lot of plot in Lee Yong-min's Holiday in Seoul, not to mention a white snake that appears out of nowhere and a strange instrumental use of the song "God Bless America" while the doctor stares patiently at an intravenous drip.