The trailer for Oh Young
Doo's difficult second feature, INVASION OF ALIEN BIKINI has already been
something of a hit on these pages after we posted it up in March. Back then the film was bathing in its success at the Yubari Fantastic Film Festival, where it
became the first non-Japanese film ever to win the festival's Grand Prix. While
it can be argued the film delivers exactly what the trailer promises in terms
of mild titillation, low budget sci-fi hi-jinks and yes - a mustachioed
protagonist the likes of which we've not seen since THE CANNONBALL RUN - there
are nevertheless a few surprises in store. Oh is certainly not beyond lulling
his audience into a false sense of security before throwing them the occasional
curve ball and yielding surprisingly visceral results.
Young Gun is a lone wolf,
sworn to uphold the law and protect a society that has long since turned its
back on him. He wanders the streets of Seoul in disguise, defending the
innocent and confronting evil wherever it rears its head. Most of the time, sadly, Young Gun's
crusade of justice consists of little more than walking around in the dark
picking up litter, until the night he stumbles upon a group of thuggish
ne'er-do-wells harassing a young woman. After a lengthy and brutal battle that
sees Young Gun get the better of three staff-wielding aggressors and their
sleazy gang boss, he rescues the girl and whisks her off to the safety of his
humble lodgings to recover.
As our hero slowly reveals
himself to be a physically-impressive, health-conscious and vehemently chaste
specimen of the human race, his female houseguest, Miss Ha Monica, becomes
increasingly forward, inquisitive and flirtatious, until over a seemingly
harmless game of Jenga, she puts the moves on Young Gun and demands his sperm!
However, Monica's seduction fails and she is forced to take increasingly
violent and aggressive steps if she is to get what she wants. Time, it would
appear, is a factor and those chasing her are closing in, anxious to track her
down before the night is out.
The films of Noburu Iguchi or
Yoshihiro Nishimura are probably useful touchstones at this point, although Oh
steers well clear of the fountains of blood or more graphic realizations of
body horror for which those films are famous. Thematically the film is perhaps
closer to Jang Joon Hwan's wonderful SAVE THE GREEN PLANET! as both films
concern mentally troubled and socially isolated heros involved in rather
grueling torture sessions where the fate of the Earth itself may well be at
stake, however on a far more modest production scale. Reports place the budget
of Oh's film at somewhere in the region of US$4000, and taken on these terms
INVASION OF ALIEN BIKINI is a monumental success. It's fast-paced and visually
interesting throughout, while sensibly containing the action to Young Gun's
apartment and a few quiet back alleys and features little in the way of special
effects. The one other-worldly sequence is wisely realized through childishly
scribbled cartoon drawings, all of which only adds to the film's charm.
Hong Young Geun is rather
wonderful in the lead role, ensuring we sympathise with Young Gun even as we
become irritated by his incessant blathering about health foods and his own
unflappable abstinence. We pity his situation and the earnestness with which he
dons his raincoat and fake moustache each night to rid the city of crime and
scrap paper, but when things turn ugly later on we believe all too readily the
darkness he had buried deep within him. Ha Eun Jung is easy enough on the eye
to convince as an extraterrestrial seductress and does a good job of turning
the tables on her strong yet cripplingly well-mannered host. While a far cry
from Miike's AUDITION, the film explores the same home invasion role reversal,
albeit one that leads to a very different conclusion. It should also be noted
that while Monica does spend a healthy percentage of her screen time in various
states of undress, at no point does she don a bikini, although Oh was probably
right in not attempting to call the film INVASION OF ALIEN UNDERWEAR as that
doesn't sound nearly as sexy or alluring.
All told, INVASION OF ALIEN
BIKINI is lots of fun, and with the news that Yubari's Grand Prix came with a
cash prize of US$25,000 we can only rub our thighs together in hungry
anticipation at what Oh will conjure up with that kind of budget. By no means
as polished as the films from, say, the Sushi Typhoon stables, Oh Young Doo
should nevertheless be heralded as the new poster boy of micro-budget genre
cinema, because INVASION OF ALIEN BIKINI is wonderful.