More Fun With Eels

 

The Eel -- a movie I just know you'll love!

Now, THIS is the real thing, ladies, the film I was telling you about in an earlier entry. Shohei Imamura, the same director who brought you Black Rain,

created this delightful little movie. I have seen only two of his films, but they both contain critical scenes involving EELS.

This story, as you might guess from the title, has an Eel operative right in the middle of everything. The human recruit is a murderer who came home early from a fishing trip one night and caught his wife with another man. He matter-of-factly stabbed them both and then rode his bike over to the police, turning himself over and placing the dripping butcher knife on the counter. Frankly, I think this is the only part of the film that will interest Human viewers, at least here in the Middle West. Sex, gore, sex, gore and sex, you know?

(I’m sorry to announce, to those of you who still share the Human taste for action films, that there are no car chases or exploding yachts in the entire story.)

They fast-forward from here to his release from prison and his attempts to start a new life. Now, if you are a fish, this is where the story REALLY GETS INTERESTING. The guy is leaving prison with his parole officer, and one of the turnkeys comes running with a big plastic bag, saying “You forgot this!!!” Turns out to be the film’s main character, who has somehow talked the prisoner out of eating her. She evidently went on from there to talking the guards out of MAKING the prisoner eat her. “Pets are forbidden, but we just pretended it was ours,” the guard explains cheerfully to the parole officer. Here, then, is an operative who can talk a whole prison full of inmates and guards into breaking a rule on her behalf. This is EXACTLY the kind of negotiating skill I want EVERY ONE OF YOU to practice.

The parole officer does not object in any way as the prisoner bundles this AGENT OF HIS DOOM into his car for the trip home. You have to love it. Of course, this is a Naked Ape feature film, and the operative has absolutely no lines in the script. Much is made of the fact that the ex-con talks to his Eel and appears to believe that she is answering him. It’s another fine example of how human denial about non-human intelligence allows us to infiltrate EVERYWHERE, invisibly. We can even tell them what to do and they’ll do it, FULLY BELIEVING that their actions were THEIR OWN IDEA. Of course you also run the risk of having a really prime recruit bundled off to the laughing academy for talking to a fish. These people can never explain themselves properly. The ones not in denial about having been recruited have the sense to LIE.

Before long the operative is installed in a nice clean tank in a barbershop, making new contacts daily. From here the story becomes fascinating to US. I won’t spoil it for you; just go see it.