THREE...EXTREMES (2004)

The follow up to San Geng (or Three, 2002), a much maligned trilogy of Asian horror shorts of which two were very good indeed, this film comprises three short horror tales from three different nations in Asia, with contributions from China, South Korea and Japan. South Korea offers Cut from the twisted, vengeance obsessed mind of Park Chan-wook, and from Japan, the incredibly prolific, mercurial Takashi Miike presents Box, a tragic tale of a dysfunctional childhood. Yet despite the prescence of the Japanese and Korean heavyweights, it's the Chinese director Fruit Chan who emerges with the most credit on this one, as his contribution, Dumplings or 'Gaudzi', comfortably eclipses the other two, and indeed, is a first rate piece of horror.
Along with fellow writer Lilian Lee, Chan has seemingly drawn inspiration from Hammer horror Countess Dracula (1971), in that the protagonist of the piece, Qing (Maggie Cheung), feeds upon dead foetuses made into dumplings by Mei (Ling Bai) to maintain her youth and beauty. Cheung, femme fatale of many Hong Kong classics from Police Story (1985) to Hero (2002) and beyond, plays her role with imperious ease as the fading, spolied superstar actress seeking to stave off the advances of time by any means necessary. Opposite her, Ling Bai (who many will remember as the psychotic mystic in The Crow, 1994) also plays her role as the former gynecologist-cum-chef superbly, singing pleasent traditional ditties as she slices and dices dead human foetuses into rejuvenating 'Dim Sums'. Of the three shorts featured, Dumplings is undoubtedly superior and if your stomach is challenged by some of the scenes in this one, try watching the feature length version!

Cut, by Park Chan-wook, is also a very good production. It focuses upon a successful director (Lee Byung-hun) who returns home from work late one night, only to find that an obsessed and psychotic extra (Lim Won-hie) has broken into his house and entrapped his wife (Kang Hye-jeong, who also appeared as Mi-do in Park's Oldboy, 2004) at her piano. Locked into an agonising posture as a result of having her fingers glued to its keys and the rest of her body held in place by a network of wires, she is then subjected to sadistic physical torture whilst her immobile filmmaker husband looks on helplessly. The maniacal extra, who soon reveals he is taking revenge on the director for never selecting him for a lead in a movie, finally offers his captive a choice; he can either kill his wife or a young child. Unsurprisingly enough for a Park Chan-wook film, the production values are first rate and there's some very interesting camerawork, where some shots seem to move through solid objects such as walls and ornaments in the affluent household. However, personally the primary complaint with this one is of time; giving Park thirty or fourty minutes to work his magic seems uncharitable and even negligent, as he certainly works best when he can produce a flowing narrative unhindered by the constraints of a short production. It's still a good effort though.
Finally, we come to workaholic Japanese director Takashi Miike's segment, Box. It's cinematically stylish and occasionally beautiful as is much of his work, but, for me at least, flies wide of the mark on this occasion, especially in comparison with Dumplings. The story itself follows Kyoko (Mitsuru Akaboshi), a talented young writer who was formerly a child contortionist in a double act with her twin sister. The pair were raised in early childhood by a demanding and often abusive stepfather (Atsuro Watabe) who evidently favoured Kyoko's sister, with the result being that Kyoko contrives to take a child's revenge on her rival for his affections. However her bid to usurp her sister's place of prominence goes tragically wrong, and the sister burns to death, trapped inside a box. For an average director it wouldn't be a bad effort at all, but from Miike, even discounting his rejection of the old adage 'quality, not quantity' (evident in the incredible amount of work he has put out in recent years), I'd expect something a little less conventional.

Overall Three...Extremes is a very good compilation of horror shorts, and as mentioned, Dumplings is particularly worth checking out. I preferred it to say, the Creepshow or The Twilight Zone compliation features from the '80s, but then again, Three...Extremes arguably suffers from the same issue as those mentioned above; I'd rather watch a feature by any of the directors involved than a collection which limits each to making one short. That said, it is a good collection, and although the Miike contribution is slightly disappointing, I would go so far as to say that the prescence of Dumplings alone makes the DVD a worthy purchase, although serious fans of horror would do better to check out the full length movie instead.