The Scissors Massacre (2008)

The Scissors Massacre (2008) Japanese Title: Kuchisake-Onna 2 Translation: Slit-Mouth Woman 2

Starring: Rin Asuka, Yukie Kawamura, Akihiro Mayama, Yôsuke Saitô, Mayuko Iwasa, Masashi Taniguchi, Kôta Kusano, Haruka Nishimoto, Miki Hayashi, Erina

Director: Kôtarô Terauchi

The Scissors Massacre is a sequel-in-name-only to Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman, made the year before. It is, in fact, an alternate take on the origins of the urban legend, basing itself on an unsolved serial killer case from the late 1970s in Japan. Although the film takes a sharp supernatural turn in the final reel, the movie is not so much a horror film as it is a tragic family drama and an indictment of Japanese society on the whole.

The film has three acts, each of which feel like a completely different type of movie. The focus is on the Sawada family, a well-to-do family in the smaller city of Gifu in the Gifu Prefecture. The patriarch (Yosuke Saito, of Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla and Crazy Samurai Musashi) runs a successful chicken farm that supplies eggs and chicken meat (presumably) to the local markets. He has three daughters. Yukie (Mayuko Iwasa, of 009-1: The End of the Beginning), the eldest, is about to get married. The middle child, Sachiko (Yukie Kawamura, of Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl), has moved to the city (which I assume is Nagoya) to work as a beautician. The youngest of the three, Mayumi (Rin Asuka, of the Kamen Rider W incarnations), is a high school student in her junior year. She’s a promising athlete and might have a future with her long-time crush, Seiji (Akihiro Mayama, of Liar Paradox).

So everything seems to be all peachy keen for the Sawada family, until tragedy strikes. You see, before Yukie got engaged to her current beau, she dated a fellow named Suzuki (Masashi Taniguchi, of the Kamen Rider Amazon incarnation). Suzuki never quite got over the break up and watching his ex-girlfriend getting hitched is just enough to set the little bastard off. A few days after the wedding, Suzuki breaks into the Sawada household and sneaks into Yukie’s old bedroom…the one she had handed over to Mayumi after the wedding. Thinking that Mayumi is his former flame, he dumps a vial of sulfuric acid all over her face. He proceeds to stab Mrs. Sawada to death, but ultimately get his head blown off by Mr. Sawada.

This is where things start going downhill for the entire family. Although Mr. Sawada acted in self defense, the locals are nothing but a no-good bunch of talebearers and rumor-mongerers. So it isn’t long before people start attributing all sorts of sordid motivations to Sawada’s actions. And although Mayumi survives her burns, her face is permanently disfigured, making her a pariah at school. Even Yukie is forced to move back home, since all the local gossip will be directed at her new hubby and his family if she sticks around. I mean, what the hell, people?

The first casualty of the Sawada’s family situation is the patriarch. His clients no longer want to be associated with a company whose owner committed murder, or even is the subject to a monumental tragedy. As the debts pile up, he ultimately decides to commit suicide and let the life insurance policy tie up his financial loose ends. Then there’s Mayumi, who is abandoned by everybody she has ever called a friend, including her BFFs Junko (Miki Hayashi) and Kaoru (Deadball’s Erina). And then she starts having visions of a mysterious woman in a red coat. As Mayumi’s life spirals further and further down the crapper, it won’t be long before the poor young girl finally snaps…

The Scissors Massacre is based on some incident in Gifu around 1978 in which a serial killer took the lives of some 13 people and injured more than 50…presumably with a pair of scissors. Nobody ever found out who the killer was, although a knife was found in the residence of the family represented by the Sawadas with the DNA of one sister on the handle and the blood of another on the blade. The sister whose blood was on the blade was never found. So, this movie suggests that said sister became the basis for the Kuchisake-Onna urban legend.

The first act of the film plays like a heartwarming teen/family drama, with a little bit of small town “slice of life” mixed in. Everybody gets along and each member of the Sawada family (sans the mom, who doesn’t really have a character) has a promising future ahead. The second act becomes this dark family tragedy and an attack on Japanese culture. Japan has a closed, homogenous culture that is prone to gossip and (unfounded) rumors for anyone unfortunate enough to shake the box. This movie brings that out into the open and man, what the actual F***, guys? It’s not enough that your neighbors have gone through a tragedy, but do you have to make up your own interpretations of “what” and “why” and pass it off as truth, too? “I heard it from a friend” my ass. It is that sort of attitude that pushes the entire Sawada family off the precipice in the second act.

Besides the social commentary, another thing I liked is the directing technique of ending each act with a spectacular outburst of violence. Although the film on the whole is a family drama (and a murder mystery in the last half hour), each separate section of the film is punctuated with a strong moment of intense gore. Suzuki’s attack on the Sawada family is extremely brutal, culminating in his losing part of his skull (and the goo within) from a shotgun blast. At the end of the second act, in which the film morphs into a murder mystery with supernatural overtones, we see one supporting character get brutally stabbed to death. And the film ends with several characters meeting their bloody ends, too.

The movie works better as a social commentary and true crime tragedy than it does as an origin for an urban legend. This is especially because the supernatural elements feel out of place in an otherwise realistic story—given its basis in true events. Also, the film is never very scary, but I doubt that was the intent. I also think the movie was a bit long, even at 98 minutes. A number of scenes could’ve been shorn by a few seconds and the film would have felt a bit more tight in its execution. Finally, with regards to the American release title, can a “massacre” only involve six people? That’s not a “Scissors Massacre,” let alone a “Scissors Bloodbath” or “Scissors Slaughter.” Six people may not even be a “Scissors Disturbance.” Six dead bodies may simply be a “Scissors Inconvenience.”

The Master Warrior by Scott Blasingame

The Master Warrior by Scott Blasingame

When one holds the final book of any given series in their hands, you know the author has done their job if this little ritual evokes a gamut of emotions. First, there is a certain sense of relief that the author put their entire vision on paper before being whisked away in dark, velvety robes of the Reaper (at which point, Game of Thrones fans' hands grow clammy). There is a certain sadness, mainly stemming from the knowledge that this is a farewell of sorts...to characters you've grown to love, a landscape you've come to admire, and a world you come to identify with.

One also feels anxiety, knowing that the stakes in this climatic offering are higher than ever. If the author has not been squeamish about killing off likable characters, how much more bold and brazen will they become as the protagonists and their opponents gather for the final showdowns, be they of whatever nature the author may choose. Alliances may shift. Values may change. Good may indeed prevail, but rarely does it without high costs.

Conversely, if the author has failed in their job, then one simply greets the bookending novel with a sigh of relief, ready to declare themselves victor of finishing another series, that they may move onto another. Thankfully, the emotions of the former scenario engulfed me as I removed it from the package.

Set five years after the events of The Warrior Lost, we open to rumors of war among the tribes that border the Valley of the Hand. The evil Rame of the Kudzu tribe (along with his neighboring puppet chieftains) is goading the other tribes into armed conflict. Meanwhile, Thorn is trying to live a simple, idyllic existence until tragedy strikes. He is thus propelled into the middle of the intertribal tension that threatens to boil over into all-out war. As he and his fighting companions--the Warrior-Sons of the good tribes and some other familiar faces--try to raise up allies, certain surprises (some good, some not) await him on the final leg of his journey.

The Master Warrior is a suitable finale to an action-packed fantasy series about a lowly man's quest for happiness amidst the political intrigue of the numerous tribes that inhabit his world. It draws upon all of Scott Blasingame's strength's as an author, from his vivid descriptions to his likable characters to the copious amounts of descriptive martial arts duels. The narrative wraps up the main overarching conflict, plus numerous character subplots, in a generally satisfactory manner. There is tragedy, to be sure, but it never seems forced nor gratuitous. There are moments of romance that will tug at the heartstrings, at least they tugged at mine. There was one evening in which I read more than 100 pages just so I could find out how one relationship was going to resolve itself. The book is a good example of an absolute "page-turner."

The last several chapters detail the final battles between the good guys and the bad guys. The final showdowns are just perfect in terms of their length, description and dramatic impact. Before that, there is a chapter that depicts a huge battle between different armies, detailed in such a way that both makes you fear for the "good side" while simultaneously never becoming incoherent. The battle sets the ground to resolve several personal conflicts that were started in books 1 and 2. If I have any gripes, it's that some of those showdowns were quite short, given the build-up in the previous books.

But all the action in the world can't make up for characters that we don't care about, especially in prose. Thus, I'm happy to report that Scott did a great job of writing the characters as they overcome both internal and external conflicts, both for the greater good and their own personal happiness. I found myself re-reading several chapters just so I could bask in the interactions between certain key characters, enjoying their growth and moments of joy and triumph. And that's just great writing there.

Fall of the King Saber by JF Lee

Fall of the King Saber by JF Lee

Author JF Lee continues his adventures of Swordsman Li Ming with Fall of the Dragon Saber, which is my favorite of his books up to this point. Full of entertaining characters, spirited dialog and lots of martial arts mayhem, Lee does justice to predecessors like Gu Long.

The story is set immediately after the events of Fangs of the Black Tiger. Li Ming has taken Shu Yan as his formal student and starts teaching her the Blue Mountain swordsmanship. Of course, they still bicker back and forth like they always have, although Li Ming does see some special potential within her. After some encounters with bounty hunters, the two undertake a dangerous journey back Tu'men, where Shu had worked in a brothel a year or so before. Once in the belly the beast, Shu and Li try to get the bounty removed from her head.

Meanwhile, rebel general Shazha Kui is pushing his rebellion forward and recruiting some of the most powerful names in the Martial World to his cause. And Li Ming will have to find some new techniques to complement his limited knowledge of the deepest secrets of the Blue Mountain in order to stand a chance against the General when their next duel comes around.

Like the other two books, the story is largely episodic, as our heroes move from one locale to anothre and get into all sorts of mischief while Li Ming has to balance out his training Shu Yan with his own preparations for his upcoming duel. There are lots of colorful characters along the way and we do learn a lot more about both Shu's and Li Ming's backstories, which gives them a lot more depth. I especially enjoyed the last third of the book once our characters return to Blue Mountain. Despite the story's episodic nature, the fact that we know it is building to a predetermined climax helps give the different subplots and side quests a unifying theme by casting an ominous shadow over all of their exploits.

The final showdown between Shazha Kui and Li Ming is one for the books. It is very well written and at the end, takes a page from films like Zu: Warriors from Magic Mountain and Strife for Mastery. The book ends on a hopeful note and I'm excited for "Echo of the Blue Mountain."