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⬅️ Previous capture (2023-07-10)
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I had some friends over and got drunk and laughed until I cried at these two fuckin things.
Beyond Dream's Door is a late-80s horror film with a student-film vibe; that is, wildly inventive and completely undisciplined. The acting, the cinematography, and frankly the script all conspire to make you think you're watching the leadup to a porno. It feels like it's already uploaded to Everything is Terrible.
The plot kicks off when we meet a todd-howard-looking college boy named Greg and a psychology professor who points a real gun at his own eyeball in front of his TAs as a research activity. Greg has some disturbing dreams and decides to type them up and give them to his psych professor, worried that they may be symptoms of some budding psychosis. Professors love it when you do this, naturally, so much so that our prof calls Greg at 10 PM to invite him over /to his home/ to discuss his dreams. Students love it when professors do this, so he heads over right away and learns that ever since the professor has heard about the dream, he's been seeing the same things that Greg has!! Woah!! Then he gets killed by a nightmare bear with no skin, who is also a sexy woman? And it's up to Greg to figure out how to banish his deadly dreams to save the lives of others and himself! I think!
It's constantly trying to explain its premise to the viewer, and it never makes any more sense. You forget your dreams because of demons, I think? Or maybe the demons are pissed because you forgot about them? But also they want to be forgotten? I honestly wish that the film hadn't even tried to make itself comprehensible and had just leaned into its zaniness, but even then, Mulholland Drive this would not be.
It's so much fun though.
During Greg's so-declared last session of therapy, his therapist asks him to describe the earliest dream he can remember, asks no questions about it, then says "take this drug and fall asleep, here's some electrodes for your face." Classic therapist move.
I think there's a line where Greg suggests that he's immune to the oedipus complex because he's an orphan.
There's a whole sequence where a character Greg enlists to help vanquish his nightmares decides he's had enough and it was extremely funny to see a character in a horror movie say "none of this has anything to do with me" and just ignore the insane shit happening around him like it's an annoyance.
It might not always follow a clear progression, but this movie is practically a setpiece machine. There's Coffin Basements, Sewer Chases, Booby traps for capturing dreams, teeth that bleed, houses that disappear, abandoned houses where the Nightmare Afflicted gather to wander glassy-eyed together for some reason, and various college campus hijinks. Strongly recommend.
Me and my friend have a game called "OVA Roulette." We find a long youtube playlist of old anime OVAs and just find something that looks promisingly weird to put on. She'd just heard about this OVA called "Cipher" and suggested we put it on as a follow-up to Dream Hell Movie. This was a good choice.
The OVA is the only animated adaptation of a shoujo manga about beautiful identical twin boys who star in movies and kiss each other a lot. Watching the OVA with no background, you really just have to piece this together, since it's mostly a lot of melancholy and longing shots of one of them walking around New York City and some on-set interviews for a football film he's in called WINNING TOUGH. The dialogue is all in English, mostly being read phonetically by Japanese voice actors. They run out of money halfway through making the thing, and it shows; shots repeat, and the last ten minutes or more are taken up by a "making of" with PLENTY of NYC location-scouting B-roll.
But guys. Here's the thing. Here's what you need to know about Cipher: The Animation.
Throughout the entire film, both the animated and live action portions, the camera is OBSESSED with the twin towers. They seem to be visible from every single point in Manhattan, at the end of every street. We were actually confused watching it if some cuts were supposed to imply that they *lived* in the twin towers.And it dawned on me halfway through this thing. The twin towers are a visual motif that represents our main couple.
My friends thought I was joking until we got to the "making of". One of the boys' voice actors says, in character, "we wanted to get the Twin Towers from all angles. I'm the one with the antenna!"
We lost our entire shit, dear reader. A shoujo author looked at the twin towers and decided that it was the perfect symbol for her twincestuous bishounen yearnfest.
How do you think *this specific person* experienced 9/11? Someone who spent so much time exploring their personal erotic attachment to the twin towers? Something which, dare I say, many people had but dared not name? Can we even say we understand 9/11 at all without hearing from such a privileged point of view?
Is "the one with the antenna" supposed to be the top? Did Cipher superfans see gay relationships and wonder which one was the north tower and which one was the south tower?
So, overall, two wacky movies that are tangentially about Freud, one great night, file this bitch away under "movies rule" and "support your local weirdo artists".