爱情丑闻 / 若林美穗 [GRED-01051]

　　《科学怪人的诅咒》（The Curse of Frankenstein），又译作《神秘怪尸》，是1957年英国的一部恐怖片，由咸马公司出品。本片基于玛丽·雪莱的同名小说《科学怪人》。本片也是咸马公司的首部彩色电影，影片出品后得到成功并制作了多部续篇，并建立了有哥特意味的品牌形象。

本片以1978年开始发售就一直受到喜爱的点心“愉快动物饼干”为基础制作，讲述了以狮子为首，大象、河马、猴子、小兔、小猫、长颈鹿、鳄鱼、小鸡，以及新角色天马行空又哭又笑的故事，描写了只有“可爱”这一优点的他们，为了拯救世界灭亡的危机而奋斗的模样。

一场惨绝人寰的连环惨案，让雷杰米一直被恶灵缠身困扰。但只有他知道真正的凶手是一种“看不见、摸不着”的在阴影中潜伏的恶灵：无声逼近、瞬间夺命，只留破碎尸体与无法解释的诡异痕迹。 雷杰米与女医生卢娜联合调查时发现，一切源于他童年母亲死亡有关的研究秘密释放的远古恶灵，它正以扭曲低语和血迹标记猎物，吞噬猎物的恐惧，将他们逐个拖入绝望死亡。证人离奇发狂、无人医院深处传来湿滑爬行声……而每当人心恐惧到极点， 恶灵便会在黑暗中悄悄靠近…… 身边人接连惨死，雷杰米必须直面纠缠他一生的“恶灵”，才能拯救他所爱之人。当他们以为噩梦终结时，恶灵却失控逃逸扩散，更大的恐惧才刚刚苏醒……

　　Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.　　Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?　　n any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.　　What first striked me about the movie is the design of the bunker and the depiction of the survivors. The survivors are gaunt, filthy and terrible-looking penitents, dressed in rags and aimlessly wandering the neon-lit halls of the bunker like automatons. The bunker is a rundown, seedy place, with bright neon lights peering from all sides like the eyes of malignant beasts.　　On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.　　One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.　　Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there. See it if you can find it.