Showing posts with label japanese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label japanese. Show all posts

Wednesday, 19 February 2014

Zombie Ass: The Toilet Of The Dead (2011)

I don't often specify the country of origin of the many movies that I review here because I don't think it makes much of a difference to those seeking out good movies. Of course, there can be major differences between films from the UK, films from the USA, films from Japan, films from Australia, and so on and so forth. But whether a film is subtitled, or black and white, or full of material harvested from the culture of its country of origin, the only thing that matters is whether or not it's any good.

Zombie Ass: The Toilet Of The Dead is from Japan, and I feel it's necessary to point that out because it's a bad movie, and a lot of what makes it bad comes from the humour, slightly fetishised moments, and that real over the top madness that features in a lot of Japanese cinema of the bizarre. Like tentacles poking at various orifices, because that happens too. And, as the word ass is in the title, there are also lots of shots that focus on female posteriors. There's also, let's not beat about the bush here, a lot of shit onscreen. Literally.

The plot concerns some parasites that invade people and make them fart a lot before turning them into zombies with dangerous backsides. Oh, believe me, I know how preposterous that sounds. I was only a few minutes into the movie before I realised that I may have made a major mistake. Such is my lot in life, however, and I soldiered on to the bitter end.

While it may only run for about 85 minutes, this feels like a much longer film. That's down to the fact that this is, basically, a one-joke sketch stretched out to feature length by director Noboru Iguchi (and you'll be unsurprised to hear that he did the "F" segment in The ABCs Of Death too). It boggles the mind that it took three or four people to come up with this story/script.

Leading lady Arisa Nakamura is quite sweet and easy to like, and she shares the screen for most of the movie with Mayu Sugano and Asana Mamoru, a trio of cute females to be splattered with stinky stuff and terrorised throughout the movie. There are also some fun performances from Kentaro Kishi and Kentaro Shimazu, but the film often sidelines the movie in favour of more time with the ladies.

There ARE a few good moments of extreme gore, for fans of splatter, but it's surrounded by too much insanity involving stomach cramps, flatulence and lots of shit. It made me gag, and I would hate to think of what this could have been like in "Odorama", but it didn't entertain me.

3/10

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Saturday, 8 October 2011

Tetsuo (1989)

This is yet another movie that was shown as part of EIFF 2012 so the review has been moved, and slightly improved.

Please check it out here.

7/10

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Friday, 7 October 2011

Hausu AKA House (1977)

Madder than a bag of rabid badgers all wearing bowler hats, Hausu certainly isn't for all audiences and may turn off just as many horror fans as it manages to please. However, stick with this surreal, groovy, rainbow of supernatural shenanigans and bizarre deaths and you will find that it's not only a rewarding experience but also one that has influenced many other movies (intentionally or not).

The plot sees a young girl, spurning the opportunity to spend time bonding with her father's new love interest, taking a number of her friends to spend time at her aunt's house. The aunt is slightly eccentric and the house certainly has character but nobody realises just quite how much character until events are set in motion that put all of the girls in extreme danger. Because the house is hungry.

With all of the girls being named after their main traits (Kung Fu, Melody, Gorgeous, Fantasy, etc) it quickly becomes clear that Hausu is never aiming for something that's engrossing and believable. It's aiming to create a strange blend of lurid and colourful moments, fun sequences that border on the childish and a number of individual scare moments. If you can imagine an episode of The Monkees set during one particularly memorable Halloween (and, for all I know, they may have produced just such an episode) then you will have an idea of what to expect.

But don't dismiss this film as JUST one successive moment of weirdness after another. There's a bit more to it than that. Okay, so the acting is all quite over the top and the whole vibe may not be palatable to many but director Nobuhiko Ohbayashi, working from a screenplay by Chiho Katsura based on an original story by Chigumi Obayashi (daughter of Nobuhiko), works in a backstory that feeds into the events and also weaves one singular story strand from the start to the final scene that throws many of the visuals and events into question. Or not. You can take this movie in a variety of ways, which is a pleasure that so many of the finer Japanese movies offer. Give it a try.

8/10

EDIT: A rewatch led to me bumping up my rating, and generally loving this a little bit more.
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