International Eye Candy
May 1, 2009

Yes, once again it is Todd from Twitch here and with this installment of International Eye Candy I have opted to mimic the strategy of Sly Stallone and his cast of EXPENDABLES: Get in, get out, and beat the living hell out of as many people as possible on the way. This edition of the IEC is a little shorter than usual but don't be confusing length with quality 'cause we've got the latest from Bong Joon-Ho's MOTHER, a new trailer for Lars Von Trier's ANTICHRIST, TOKYO GORE POLICE director Yoshi Nishimura's VAMPIRE GIRL VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL, more from Johnnie To's VENGEANCE and a collection of male genitalia bouncing to the rhythms of Roy Orbison. Here we go!

We begin in Japan with not one but two new installments in the now-venerable JU-ON franchise. 2009 marks the tenth anniversary of Takashi Shimizu's creation – remade by Shimizu himself on these shores as THE GRUDGE – and to celebrate the producers are cranking out a pair of new installments. Though neither is directed by Shimizu himself – a first for the series – he is on board supervising and obviously feeling the need to shake things up a bit because while both involve the haunted house that occupied the center of the originals there aint no blue painted boy in these nor his stair-sliding mama, neither. And the change has done JU-On good, I think because despite some obvious budget limits there is some truly shocking imagery in there …

Find the trailer for both JU-ONs here

What would happen if Michael Mann or INFERNAL AFFAIRS director Andrew Lau were Spanish? Oh, I have to imagine something a lot like 25 KILATES. Plot details are light so far on this crime thriller, all I really know is that it is an organized crime story set in Barcelona, but who needs plot when you've got a trailer like this? Very slick with just the right amount of menace. Very nice indeed.

Find the 25 KILATES trailer here

Russian anime? Strange but true, kids, and that's exactly what we've got with FIRST SQUAD, an animated feature written by Russian artists loosely based on Soviet-era propaganda comics and animated in Japan by acclaimed production house Studio 4C. Psychic girls, undead crusaders, great big guns, all that good stuff is in there. We ran the teaser for this a little while ago but now a much longer reel – featuring part of the score written by DJ Krush – has also arrived.

Find the FIRST SQUAD trailer here

If this one seems familiar to some of you, well, that's because it is. Ole Bornedal is one of the best things going in Europe these days – Fantastic Festers got a double shot last year with JUST ANOTHER LOVE STORY and THE SUBSTITUTE – and he's back with a dark thriller titled DELIVER US FROM EVIL. The trailer's gorgeous to look at, which we encouraged you to do when it first appeared on the scene a while back, but looking was all you could do unless you understood Danish. But no more! An English subtitled version has just arrived so if you like to understand what you're looking at, now is the time.

Find the DELIVER US FROM EVIL trailer here

The man with the cleaver is not happy. He's not happy, it seems, because his wife believes she is dying and is being – for lack of a better term – kind of bitchy about it. This, my friends, is what serves as the launching point for comedy in the world of Alex Van Warmerdan, one of the more interesting Dutch film makers going for the last decade or so. And while the man with the cleaver may not be happy being in this situation I'm sure as hell happy to watch him in it, this playing like the sort of dark comic gem that pops from the Coen Brothers from time to time.

Visit EMMA BLANK here

Bikini samurai zombie-slaying girl returns! Yeah, I know we just recently had the first teaser for ONECHANBARA VORTEX in this column and, yeah, I know this isn't actually likely to be a 'good' film by any acceptable measure, but hey: hot chick in a bikini killing zombies with a samurai sword. The full trailer has more of it.

Find the ONECHANBARA VORTEX trailer here

Right. Penises. Roy Orbison. I promised them and now here they are. The film is THE MISFORTUNATES and it's about to premiere in Cannes. Where apparently people are rather fond of penises and Roy Orbison.

MISFORTUNATE? Only if you miss the trailer

Also in Cannes but featuring neither penis nor Roy Orbison is MOTHER, the new crime film from THE HOST director Bong Joon-Ho. We've gushed about this in the past – it looks brilliant and, in my mind, will probably beat out Park Chan Wook's vampire flick THIRST for top spot out of Korea – and we're doing it again because a second trailer has arrive and it's even better than the first. Bong does no wrong and inverting the whole crime thing by making his hero a frumpy slightly-past-middle-age woman is a stroke of genius.

Find the new MOTHER trailer here.

Also also in Cannes – Roy Orbison almost certainly no, penis almost certainly yes – is Lars Von Trier's return to horror ANTICHRIST with Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourgh. Trailer the first was pretty damn impressive. Trailer the second is way better. Good golly, Von Trier is back in a big way. Nature is Satan's church, you know?

Find the new ANTICHRIST trailer here

Also also also in Cannes – Roy Orbison about a fifty-fifty chance, penis almost certainly a no though it does include thrusting buttocks – is Johnnie To's Johnny Hallyday starring revenge picture VENGEANCE. The brilliant first trailer was almost entirely action, this new one gives some more character work – including Anthony Wong delivering lines in English – along with plenty of pretty little red clouds of mist that erupt whenever a gun happens to be fired. Which is often. When it comes to stylized violence there's no doubt about it: To is the reigning king.

Find the VENGEANCE trailers here

Very definitely not in Cannes and loaded with god-only-knows what sort of genital oddities – his last film featured a woman who had sprouted twenty or so penises out of her head – here comes TOKYO GORE POLICE director Yoshi Nishimura with VAMPIRE GIRL VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL. Massive blood sprays, bizarre mutations, self mutilation, mind bending prosthetics and a little dose of TOKYO GORE and AUDITION STAR Eihi Shiina – what more could you need?

Find the VAMPIRE GIRL trailer here. But keep her away from your neck.