THE TREASURE OF THE BITCH ISLANDS
A film by F.J. Ossang
With Mapi Galan
Script, Dialogues and Direction: F.J. Ossang
It's a good day for a visit, Aldellio.
No drugs, no shock treatment, no chemical straitjacket...
I wanted us to talk in the best possible conditions.
You gambled over the odds and lost it all.
Even your wife, Ada,
seems to have abandoned you since the Venice trial.
You know the others.
They'll get the secret out of you.
You'll end up just a tired old lunatic...
Feeling sorry for me?
No, I bring what you beg for from the night.
I've always had great schemes for you. Now, it's double or quits:
I avenge you, your secret remains safe,
I get you out and everything starts up again.
I give you back your unbounded ambition.
And in return?
You leave this world!
Back to our first test site. Recommission the Bitch generator!
Back to the archipelago?
It was hell when we evacuated...
By now, it must be...
Don't worry, you'll have everything you need.
And the poor wretches we left behind?
You'll have the means to cope with disorder.
Risks are pad of the deal, but knowing you,
I am quite confident.
How do I get out of here?
This is a pill of living death...
In 2 days you wake from the coma
and head for the Bitch Islands.
It's all over. We should leave now.
963 degrees.
D. F. 2.
Flaps.
YOU ARE ON THE BITCH ISLANDS. PERPETUAL RED NIGHT.
God damn lousy weather! The blood's freezing in my body,
boring into my brain and spine.
Death always makes itself known by surprise, Facian.
YOU ARE IN THE LAND OF THE DEAD.
The Black One will come soon!
It's the 9th, don't forget... The genesis
of the red night.
The darkness will go on getting thicker.
It's only just beginning.
It's already done for this poor bastard.
THE LAST DAYS OF THE KRYO'CORP EMPIRE.
(ACT 1)
Opak City, the 14th.
A Rover 59 speeds through the suburbs of the Kryo'Corp,
carrying Captain Death's men.
(METROPOLIS OF CHAOS)
Bormane,
veteran of the previous expedition
led by Aldellio and Peter Askalt.
Dabbles in occult science.
Both guide and traitor.
Manipulates the inner darkness.
Doctor Turc,
struck off the register.
Like Bormane, a veteran of the Askalt mission.
Inveterate drug addict.
The medicine man on the new expedition.
Ponthans, former Special Forces man,
absolutely loyal lo both Aldellios right up to the Venice trial.
Since then, Ada Della Cistereia's confidant.
Rubio, young thug driven by his desire to become a killer.
Both cowardly and impudent. Doomed to confusion.
THE KRYO'CORP. CAPTAIN DEATH'S REFUGE.
Water, more than water washing the color out of images
where the mind fixes the body's forgetfulness.
All the water lurking in the loose matter
of those strange rooms of sleep.
It was at my instigation
that Aldellio, Turc and Askalt
mounted the first expedition to the Bitch Islands.
The only place in the world
where pure stelinskalt existed,
in it's natural state, I mean.
A synthesis of stelin and skalt.
Our research progressed rapidly.
The test generator was very soon able to produce oreon energy
without our needing to fix any limit.
The problem was the overproduction of oreon
created such pollution
that the inhabitants of the Bitch Islands
were struck by a new virus.
Turc set about curing the sick.
And here again, the gods favored us.
Not only did the doctor manage to contain the disease,
but he also discovered the contaminated flesh
excreted a substance which just happened to be
the reagent we'd been looking for
to obtain the artificial synthesis of stelin
and skalt.
You can imagine how pleased we were!
Now we had the formula!
It was again I who suggested
that Aldellio industrialized the process.
We introduced the virus into the metropolis.
Turc took care
of treating the disease in his clinics,
then recuperating the reagent
in Kryo'Corp's laboratories.
Generators covered the planet.
Aldellio married you and made fortune,
until the day
when the Z5/5 virus
underwent a new mutation
and managed to escape
our total control.
You know the rest:
The repeated epidemics of the evil death,
Aldellio's madness and remorse,
Kryo'Corp's bankruptcy...
There, you know it all,
or almost.
Aldellio lives on in exile
in the hell of the Bitch Islands.
Alone, condemned
to oversee his own failure,
the people all around him infected by the evil death.
Alone, a fallen god in hell.
Alone,
until his mistress in abomination delivers him.
Ulysses, also known as Captain Death.
The new heir to Kryo'Corp.
Adopted brother and second husband of Ada Della Cistereia.
Bound together to destroy each other.
Like Aldellio, formerly a pilot in Libya.
A weak man, all set to topple.
Particularly since he figures he's in control.
Ulysses, also known as Captain Death.
Welcome to Aldellio's HW, gentlemen.
It is my every hope our expedition to the Great North
begins right here.
And the night began later than normal,
after an exceptionally long twilight
when the light was red.
VICTORY OVER THE SUN!
Stelin and skalt:
Surface stone and stone from the depths.
The male stone and female stone as our ancestors called them.
Only Aldellio's method has stabilized the synthesis
and refined it to produce the most amazing energy: Oreon.
That night,
when all the sacrifices had come to an end,
in the dark duel between red and black,
the volcano united stelin and skalt in it's furnace,
the nuptial fruit of this metallurgical miracle:
Stelinskalt, the androgynous stone.
Let's head for the Bitch Islands!
We'll return from that land with more stelinskalt
than Aldellio ever produced!
We start it all over again, save Kryo'Corp
and set the generators rolling for 50 years!
The Bitch Islands harbor all the filth on this planet.
And the current situation is no doubt considerably worse.
Neither you nor I came over the last banana boat.
The last days of Annam or Katanga
were every bit as unhealthy.
You think it's an accident
no one knows the archipelago exists?
It has been wiped off the map!
The radiation was so strong
the day we left it.
I can't imagine what life is like there now!
I know, cannibals...
That's why we got $50.000 cash in advance.
I didn't join up for money.
If the cannibals were all we had to worry about...
I want to tie up some loose ends.
I've no doubt, Bormane,
you know what I mean.
Snuffing it here or there...
The evil death's pretty bad in the capital.
They'll all go cannibal round here soon.
We've just spent 3 hours sifting through the data we have.
Our mission is purely techno-economic.
We land in a former Kryo'Corp colony
with Bormane as our guide, which guarantees us a beachhead.
Everyone follows their orders, doctor.
It's strictly routine: A plan with risks.
BREAKDOWN OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.
EN ROUTE FOR THE LAND OF THE BIRD THAT DIES AT MIDNIGHT.
(ACT 2)
(GREAT BITCH LAKE)
No, it's the face of the phantom!
Give him a shot! He's hallucinating!
Skazedrine: 9 pads to 1,000.
Leave the cannibals their goddess.
She's the face of the phantom.
DEATH ALWAYS MAKES ITSELF KNOWN BY SURPRISE.
I am the ghost duke of Aldellio.
The duke of the evil death.
I am exiled on an archipelago
where all human functions gravitate in an absurd vacuum.
Welcome to the land of death.
These men are ghosts.
They go on relentlessly dying through the red night.
Working away at their work of death,
they topple info the void.
Going through the suicidal motions of their duty as they line up,
dismember,
pile UP,
trim,
square off...
But the emptiness remains,
molding them in it's cold, drooling fire,
sucking them in and returning them to their own oblivion,
in those strange, so strange,
sleeping rooms.
We come at a time
when the artificial winter gleams with indistinct light.
We may as well
get used to the provisional nature of the climate.
The sun has not completely died yet.
Cellular glimmers still remain.
Try to forget these shades of catastrophe!
We're going to land on the La Cistereia airfield,
then fly to the Lagunas Hondo plant by light plane or helicopter.
The death plant,
as the locals call it.
All around it, pure stelinskalt galore!
Enough to set the entire Kryo'Corp in motion again.
We've got three freighters offshore
and three weeks.
Not a day more.
One the 27th at 9 a.m.: Doriphore of Jupiter.
The magnetic field will reach it's apogee,
making survival on the archipelago impossible.
The Bitches...
The Bitches at last.
The captain has a message.
Captain Death, there's a message for us.
You go, Ponthans.
No planes!
It's incredible!
They'd planned it all beforehand!
They made out the engine of our plane had seized
and that all the helicopters had been commandeered
for the delegates of the empire.
The delegates of what empire?
It'll probably be safer to cross the island overland.
The war has returned the interior to it's primitive state.
Unless we wait for the surveillance report,
but we could lose a week that way.
Keep this madness up!
Why not just charge ahead?
The first expedition never skimped on means.
This hellish atoll will prove that to you!
It might not be a bad idea to avoid screwing up
the native pact by heading for the reserves.
If the palace gives us a guide,
I should be able to get us to our destination.
Otherwise it might prove more difficult.
Let's not overdramatize. Bormane's right.
Unless we re-establish radio contact from the palace...
That'll be difficult. The hotel is high up
and the magnetic field will be even greater than at the airfield.
The 13th, around 9 a.m.
Captain Death's men have landed at the old airfield.
The same rain, same sky, same ruins
as they say we landed here with Aldellio. Red night.
The same smell of gasoline too, I bet.
THE LA CISTEREIA PALACE HOTEL. FISSION -21
WATER FROM A DUBIOUS SOURCE.
No satellite connection.
THE GATES OF HELL
I am the hotel manager, gentlemen.
Forgive the interruption.
Have just discovered grave misunderstanding.
Desk staff gave you rooms
which are reserved, without asking me.
Delegates of the empire, no doubt.
Those devils again, like at the airfield.
No-one can take off from this putrid little island
and everyone breaks their word.
Be reasonable!
Mumbling about some curse of the Eastern slope...
No-one's been near the Bitches since...
Then don't come back.
Be reasonable.
I know.
Be reasonable or you will be forgotten.
I was going to say,
you have room 'til 5 o'clock.
Then, our friend will drive you
to Reject Pass,
where the Duke of Ore will send someone
to pick you up and offer you
his hospitality.
The master simply insists
you sign here at the bottom of the page.
THE KOREAN GIRL. SENDS THE DEAD TO SLEEP.
Black hair on the naked girl's pale face.
THE DEATH PLANT (LAGUNAS HONDO)
There's a native uprising, master.
Several of our men have been crucified.
They refuse to pay their tribute.
What?
They say Your Excellency has kidnapped their queen.
The Korean girl no longer answers their pleas.
So, it has happened.
Ada has come back! Ada the Munificent...
And the Korean girl
has vanished into the brains of the Great Bitch.
- Send the guards to the plant! - All of them?
Yes!
Ulysses, quick! The Memor reads 1002.
Then we've slept for 3 days!
I don't know. It reads 1002.
How do you feel?
We're all sick. Must be the wine...
Bormane is in a dreadful state. Turc had to give him a shot.
I've thrown up a lot too...
Hurry, we're waiting outside.
The big end's gone. The radiator froze!
We can't go any further.
REJECT PASS.
Listen!
What's up with him?
What happened?
He's soft in the head.
Can you bring him 'round, doctor?
Keep calm. It's the Bitch syndrome.
He'll come 'round.
I can't do anything.
You young people are late.
It's almost midnight.
My servants have already turned in.
The night is so long here.
Ada was fascinated by this monstrous substitute
drowned in the murky depths of his soul
the way man plummets into death or drug addiction.
Stay with me, my friends
and taste this essence of stelinskalt.
The castle was deserted.
They were alone in rooms
which echoed like the recollection of a lost soul.
It's time I went.
The others are waiting to press deeper into the night.
Think about what we said.
Only birds that die at midnight are tolerated.
Your being delivered is fine, but Ada must atone.
Remember...
It was for her you indulged in the evil death.
The Korean girl is priceless.
You yourself are merely an accessory of the Great Bitch.
Besides,
your former mistress has already been transformed.
Love demands the loved one's total destruction
once it is threatened by it's own impotence.
Yours is on the way.
Rubio serves as a perfect example.
The trip will make his mean soul
totally enamored with itself.
Ada no longer belongs to you.
The Bitch Islands need the Korean girl too badly.
TRAPPED IN THE DEATH PLANT.
(ACT 3)
What the hell is Bormane up to?
We've been up for 3 hours. No one can find him!
I don't like it.
That duke out of some light opera!
Put him on the table!
Stelinskalt!
Blood cells paralyzed...
Bormane's had it!
Even though the ganglions indicate
the virus hasn't reached it's incubation stage.
What do we do?
It's very worrying.
All we can try is giving him a shot of 9 to 1,000 every 3 hours.
And absolute rest!
Out of the question.
We can't wait for him to recover,
or leave him on his own.
Ten to one the duke wanted to put our guide out of action.
You make me fear the worst.
That's what I meant by natural defenses!
What the hell?
We're back near the palace!
Why the devil bolt from the castle like a bunch of lemmings
without a guide?
We must have gone 200 km south!
The Memor says we've been on the road 3 hours.
Pass me the map. You can't see a thing in that truck.
Look, we should have followed the Gran Carraterra to km 231,
gone past the Spanish ruins and taken the Indian trail.
There used to be fresh water there.
Are we east or west of the Queen's Lagoons?
We're east.
In 20 km we should pass by the wharves
of the Stelinskalt Union.
The Memor read 6.35.
The cannibals have denounced the native pact!
The sorcerers say the red night must be swamped with fire,
that the Korean girl will only return with the sun,
that she insists the death plant be destroyed
and all it's workers tortured.
THE STEPPES OF THE GREAT BITCH. FISSION -8
Death...
that region of our body where life can no longer recall
the force which lies behind it.
Stop! I need to give Bormane and myself a shot.
This island is conglomerated radom.
Don't say I didn't warn you!
Keep going, Ponthans.
The magnetic field will blow out our memories like cheap radios.
And as for our balls...
Shut up!
Keep going, Ponthans.
It's the last time I ask. Stop!
Later. We're on the right track.
The Stelinskalt Union!
That makes 3 hours you've been putting this off.
They pass secretly info hell.
Eyes like globes of death.
Their space-time change.
We're being watched,
but how many are biting their knuckles at night 'til they bleed?
Tom-toms!
Tom toms!
We're on the right track!
No!
We must stop!
That makes 3 hours you've been putting this off.
In a moment...
right away, in a minute...
I can't take it any more!
If you go on like this, we'll lose Bormane.
Without him, we'll just go round in circles on this godforsaken atoll!
Hell and damnation! That's all I needed!
Stop, Ponthans!
God damnit!
You OK, doctor?
Leave me!
I'll bet $1.000 every germ in the Bitches is going to jump
straight in there and turn my arm to blue cheese.
I knew it...
Damned imbeciles!
Bormane
is going to check out of here any minute!
That God damn skazedrine!
The Memor has blown! I'm not spending 3 days in this shit!
That makes it the 21st.
I don't believe it.
No sense in panicking.
We've been going round in circles.
It was suicide going on without Bormane.
And such a lack of sleep...
We overdid it with Turc's dope.
I told you!
We should have stopped 13 hours ago and gone back.
Anyone would think you wanted to finish Bormane off.
A fine mess we're in now!
You all chomping
away on your
skaz pills all the time!
It fries the brain cells.
It's not the Memor,
it's your neurons that are up the spout!
We're fucked, no doubt about it!
No more markers in time
and our brains all poisoned...
Stinking skazedrine!
Look, Ulysses.
They're all out to lunch!
The cold has bored under our skin.
I can no longer feel a thing.
We've paid him to much heed! He's taken us for a ride.
It's his fault.
Shut up, faggot!
Ponthans is right. We must sleep.
Without me, you'd be lost in the quicksand.
Or already burning at a cannibal stake.
Bormane hoisted me on to the throne of the Death Tribes
and the Korean girl became
my mistress in abomination.
My image reveals itself like hers,
cloaking it's coming in the smell of the incoming tide.
We are doppelgangers exiled from ourselves.
Birds that die at midnight...
Nosferatus...
It's okay. The management's giving us a suite.
A suite?
Forgive me. I need some rest.
They will never know they are wandering
through the corridors of my brains.
But to get back to the Korean girl...
I saw her first in the port at La Cistereia.
Not long after the red night began.
Strikes and factory sit-ins increased
all through that endless twilight.
There was street fighting all over the poor quarters.
Peter Askalt had just found out
the trip north had been canceled that very morning.
No plane could get permission for take off.
For me, nothing much counted any more.
Peter became annoyed.
But all that disorder left me indifferent.
When poor Peter got killed,
Bormane found a way of getting us out.
I knew already my soul would never leave the Bitches.
When Bormane suggested his new deal,
I was already scheming to get back to the Bitches.
Ever since my trial following the Italic-Libyan affair,
the tricks played by my entourage,
and my wife Ada's rejection of me
...without whom my ambitions had no meaning...
well before I was convicted of drug addiction
high treason and psychosis,
I knew I could expect nothing
except prison and a chemical straitjacket.
In any case, I regret nothing. Revenge is sweet.
I'll admit the disorder which reigned those first few days
...the War of the Dead... warmed my head.
I thought only of sticking to my contract with Bormane.
I came to the Great Bitch
to rebuild the Kryo'Corp empire.
This Babel drunk with portents of the Apocalypse
delighted me beyond my wildest expectations.
After thinking I recognized Ada
in those glimpses of the Korean girl,
I very soon became convinced she was magical.
She appeared every day to me
over the first nine days, each time in a different light.
Each apparition seemed to take her further from me,
but she indicated I was slipping away from my own life,
as much as Ada was from this image of a Korean girl.
Until the ninth day...
Rubio serves as perfect example.
BENEATH THE DEBRIS. (Act 4)
We can't weigh ourselves down.
Someone“ mm up.
It's all I can do
to remember what we came here for.
Everything suddenly seems so vain,
so absurd, so empty...
Another gram and...
It's the smell.
My shot, my shot...
Yes, go ahead, you get your fix.
Don't worry, doctor, the captain will get us a machine.
I've no illusion left.
No one returns twice from the Great Bitch.
Unless their name is Bormane!
There's no point
in you getting any ideas either.
Look at those guards.
Puppets,
every one, and the Devil pulls the strings!
They have no minds of their own.
They're stowed away on this godforsaken atoll
'til Kingdom come!
Hell has ripped their brains out.
Their neurons are frying in a vacuum.
I'm talking to you!
It's all over for me.
All the Devil wants is to kick me out of here.
In a few hours we'll be fleeing the soil
of a New Iceland!
You've got
the contract etched in your veins.
Matter
always ends up forgiving any spirit
who dares defy it with the weapons of the Devil!
Everything
is coming unstuck in the hinter world.
Aldellio's your only chance!
Find Aldellio!
ZERO HOUR ON THE 27TH AND STILL NO PLANE...
Pour us another one.
Let's drink to the new embrace.
I'm for sharing magic.
To Lady Death Aldellio. Cheers!
The eternal victim only sacrifices himself for strange women,
as Rodanski would say.
Right then, astrologer, out with your star chart!
Or I'll detach this sparrow skull of yours from the rest of you!
You let us down, Bormane.
Do I break you neck or blow your brains out?
You know we're nice guys. All we want are those masters cards.
This mess is not my fault!
Here we go again...
We need a plane, Bormane. Things are heating up.
HELD TIGHT IN THE CONVERTER OF THE DEATH PLANT!
Well?
You poor fool!
Expect nothing from him! He's the one who got us
into this mess!
Well? What?
Translate, Bormane.
Try surprising them one more time.
Don't listen, he's trying to divide us.
Don't listen!
He's listening to us!
Block your ears and don't say another word!
The silence and it's noise of death.
They've jammed the turbines
and destroyed the toxic gas evacuation system.
High tides and impending disaster.
Red alert.
The waters are rising.
The volcano is going to implode.
The time has come to stop lying!
Ulysses!
Get out!
You who came here to dispossess me.
Your freighters are cruising off the archipelago.
Try to reach them, but watch out for the swamps.
They want you to expiate the death of the Korean girl.
What about you, Bormane? What do your stars say?
What?
You're losing your powers, your stars remain silent?
I warned you about the temptations of the flesh.
Out here, they have a terrifying effect.
Gambled over the odds and lost it all!
Stay alone
in the cell of silence,
waiting for the cannibals to invade the death plant.
You will discover our real world
when they cut out your tongue.
Come, Ponthans, it's time we ran forward
into the void.
Let's hurl ourselves into the void!
I manufacture it!
I am a reactor. I thrust myself forward in space-time,
creating a vacuum which sucks me on,
further and further.
Listen to the tom-toms!
In one hour they will have overrun the castle.
There's no point hoping for a helicopter. There are no more!
They've bombarded the terrace of the plant.
There are stakes all along the old Indian trail.
Lines of human torches!
Elsewhere, the tom-toms are 100 times louder.
Our men can't hold out, the walls are thick with cannibals.
Human clusters devouring the walls of the plant...
Forget the evacuation to New Iceland.
The end is near.
There's a risk our world will implode.
We should run away.
Run away!
I can no longer see anything,
no longer remember anything,
except for the sun and the void!