The Blind Dead
04-30-2007, 07:32 AM
The first time I saw Three...Extremes, I was surrounded by slumped bodies, schwag for The Fog remake, and about five empty cans of Red Bull. It was October 2005, three in the morning at a horror filmfest, and we had already watched Black Sabbath, Demons and The Brood. Over half the audience was extremely asleep and dead to the world when the film began. I, however, was so caffeinated I had developed the ability to smell colors. It was the first time that Three...Extremes played in Ohio, and good goddamn I was not about to snore my way through it.
Right out of the gate, the first segment of the trio of short films is jarring as hell. "Dumplings," directed by China's Fruit Chan, follows an aging actress' (Meme Tian) pathetic and horrifying desperation to regain her youth. She can't get work like she used to, her husband is losing interest, and she's pretty much willing to do whatever it takes to turn back the clock. She hears of a woman (Ling Bai) who makes dumplings guaranteed to work magic, and hey, spoiler alert, the secret ingredient is baby meat.
The plot from then on is fairly predictable and would be more shocking if it didn't seem to be trying too hard at times. The message is obvious and heavy-handed ("Don't sacrifice your humanity for the sake of vanity, kids!"), and some of the bits of gross-out just seem gratuitous. Although, I have to admit that the amplified "crunching" sounds were super effective. "Dumplings" is creepy and...[READ MORE HERE] (http://www.joehorror.com/0000794.html)
Right out of the gate, the first segment of the trio of short films is jarring as hell. "Dumplings," directed by China's Fruit Chan, follows an aging actress' (Meme Tian) pathetic and horrifying desperation to regain her youth. She can't get work like she used to, her husband is losing interest, and she's pretty much willing to do whatever it takes to turn back the clock. She hears of a woman (Ling Bai) who makes dumplings guaranteed to work magic, and hey, spoiler alert, the secret ingredient is baby meat.
The plot from then on is fairly predictable and would be more shocking if it didn't seem to be trying too hard at times. The message is obvious and heavy-handed ("Don't sacrifice your humanity for the sake of vanity, kids!"), and some of the bits of gross-out just seem gratuitous. Although, I have to admit that the amplified "crunching" sounds were super effective. "Dumplings" is creepy and...[READ MORE HERE] (http://www.joehorror.com/0000794.html)