From vampires to Vin Diesel: Bong Joon-ho lists his guilty pleasure movies
Thematically rich, socially conscious, visually dazzling, wildly imaginative, and widely acclaimed movies might be the name of the game for Bong Joon-ho as a filmmaker, but as a viewer he’s hardly above enjoying some of cinema’s trashiest sections.
The notion of a guilty pleasure film in general is something a strange one, because there’s no shame or harm in enjoying a movie that isn’t quite held up as an inarguable bastion of excellence. And yet, that doesn’t make it any less bizarre that a three-time Academy Award winner and director of titles including Parasite, Okja, Snowpiercer, Host, and Memories of Murder has a soft spot for Vin Diesel.
The majority of Joon-ho’s features operate in a semi or fully-heightened reality anyway, so it does make sense that he’d have a soft spot for distinctly B-tier cinema, but one of the recurring themes across the selections he rattled off to Film Comment is that there’s a high volume of erotica among many of them.
For example, French horror comedy Frankenstein 90 is remembered fondly for its “actual love scenes between Frankenstein and a glamorous actress,” while Spanish crime thriller Ricco the Mean Machine – also known as Cauldron of Death – is “very violent and sexual” in its graphic nature.
Meanwhile, Last Tango in Seoul is “a legendary erotic film featuring hundreds of sexual positions,” and Living Dead Girl stands out in Joon-ho’s mind partly thanks to “the sex scene in front of a Korean popcorn machine” where “the snacks keep popping out and piling up onto the floor.”
Casting the wanton titillation to one side, the filmmaker celebrates the catalyst for the 1970s disaster drama craze in Airport, with a cigar-munching George Kennedy appealing to Joon-ho because he “always admired macho characters while he was young.” The sentiment doesn’t strictly apply to The Man Who Stole the Sun, though, but the Japanese thriller about a teacher who builds a nuclear bomb and then struggles to figure out what he plans to do with it is one the director finds “very appealing” nonetheless.
The only conventional horror that makes the cut isn’t even a feature but a miniseries, although the combination of Stephen King and Tobe Hooper is more than enough for Joon-ho to brand the two-part adaptation of Salem’s Lot as “the scariest vampire film I’ve ever seen,” with the Oscar winner recalling “the bone-chilling horror I experienced while watching it alone in a dark room.”
There’s a trio of sci-fi favourites in the mix, too, with the “very dynamic” Capricorn One and John Carpenter’s “shameless, low budget” debut Dark Star winning Joon-ho over for the way the latter “conveys an utterly unique atmosphere of outer space.” Last but not least, the figurehead of the Fast & Furious franchise enters the mix, and Pitch Black earns a backhanded compliment by way of being compared to one of the worst movies ever made.
“You can’t say it’s worthy for inclusion in the sci-fi hall of fame,” he correctly stated. “But it is utterly charming compared to clunky blockbusters like Battlefield Earth.” Diesel may not work with auteurs very often, but one of the best around is a huge fan of his breakthrough performance.
Bong Joon-ho’s favourite guilty pleasure movies:
- Frankenstein 90 (Alain Jessua, 1984)
- Pitch Black (David Twohy, 2000)
- Ricco the Mean Machine (Tulio Demicheli, 1973)
- The Man Who Stole the Sun (Kazuhiko Hasegawa, 1979)
- Dark Star (John Carpenter, 1974)
- Living Dead Girl (Kim Ki-young, 1978)
- Salem’s Lot (Tobe Hooper, 1979)
- Airport (George Seaton, 1970)
- Last Tango in Seoul (Park Yong-joon, 1985)
- Capricorn One (Peter Hyams, 1978)
