苹果

　　一位悲痛欲绝的年轻女子必须面对她内心深处的恐惧和一种致命的水生生物，努力证明湖底的恐怖是真实存在的。

　　飞叔移民到加拿大与儿子哈哈一起生活。在飞机上认识了一位来自大陆的黄艳秋，并有意撮合艳秋和哈哈，飞叔与艳秋的姨妈是一对欢喜冤家，艳秋和一个富家花花公子一起，哈哈很沮丧，飞叔鼓励儿子向艳秋表白。哈哈买下一块地，想转头赚钱，但买家临时改变主意，令哈哈欠下一笔钱，飞叔、姨妈、哈哈、艳秋开始了四人新世界……

　　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.

　　科学万能の現代、だが未だ地球上には解明できぬ謎が残されている……。東北地方に、婆羅陀魏山神という神をまつる村があった。訪れた調査隊はそこで生ける神・バラダキを目撃する。それは湖に棲息する中生代の恐竜・バランであった。急遽出動した自衛隊の攻撃を逃れ、バランは空へと舞い上がる。やがて姿を現したバランは、浦賀水道から東京上陸を狙う。３６ミリ機関砲さえ跳ね返すバランに対し、自衛隊はダイナマイトの２０倍もの威力を誇る特殊火薬をもって対抗するが……。ミニチュアワークは相変わらず冴えているが、“未知の謎”を主題にしているわりにはストーリーが平板。冒頭からバランの全身を出し、その破壊力の描写に終始している感がある。資料によっては「東洋の怪物」のサブタイトルも見受けられるが、フィルム・クレジット上には存在しない。