Zombie Ass – Toilet of the Dead

[adrotate banner=”1″]Zombie Ass is an actual movie coming out, from all places, Japan! Noboru Iguchi is the mad genius behind this title and film, which by all accounts will be yet another entry in his splatter gore genre that has made him a cult fan favorite around the globe. Zombie Ass will premier at Fantastic Fest 2011 in Austin.

I can’t read all the names on the posters, but Asami and Demo Tanaka are back, and it also stars Asana Mamori (Gravure Idol) and many more names that are too blurry to read and too close to nakedness to Google at work.

The synopsis from the Fantastic Fest website:

We are going to flush you! The most crap-tastic zombie movie ever to emerge from the sewers of low-budget filmmaking is finally upon us, and it’s from the perverted mind of cinematic madman and legendary ass-fetishist Noboru Iguchi, creator of THE MACHINE GIRL, ROBO-GEISHA and KARATE-ROBO ZABORGAR! Given free reign by a generous, independent producer to plumb the depths of his toilet-obsessed imagination, Iguchi has created a splatter comedy guaranteed to warm the bowels of those with the stomach for it. Wracked with guilt over the suicide of her sister Ai, who was tormented by high school bullies, pretty young karate student Megu accompanies a group of older friends on a camping trip into the woods: smart girl Aya, her druggie boyfriend Také, big-boobed model Maki, and nerdy Naoi. Things start to go badly when Maki finds a parasitical worm inside a fish they catch – and wolfs it down alive, in the hope that it’ll help keep her skinny! Soon after, and not so unexpectedly in situations like this, zombies show up and begin to complicate things further. After they’re attached by a crowd of poop-covered undead who emerge from an outhouse toilet, the group seeks refuge at the home of strange Dr. Tanaka and his daughter Sachi. But unbeknownst to them, Tanaka has been conducting experiments on the parasites—and the zombies!—and has another fate in mind for the five strangers from the city. What’s the connection between the parasites and the zombies? And can Megu’s karate alone help them escape, or will she have to rely on the liberating power of farts to save the day? Featuring special effects by FF 2009-2010 guest Yoshihiro Nishimura, and some truly jaw-dropping contributions from Iguchi’s genius subconscious (parasite anus-zombies?!?), ZOMBIE ASS is a heaping plate of bad taste that may go down rough but is guaranteed to come out smooth and regular.

Zombie Ass
Zombie Ass

Source

Horny House of Horror (Review)

Horny House of Horror

aka Fasshon heru aka Fashion Hell

2010
Directed and written by Jun Tsugita

How many different ways are there to film girls chomping off a guy’s johnson while keeping thing interesting? Well, Horny House of Horror has an answer to that, and the answer is “not enough.” As we’ve seen time and time again the past few years, Japan has become a great exporter of films that fit a genre of ridiculous gore – The Machine Girl, RoboGeisha, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, Mutant Girls Squad, Gothic & Lolita Psycho – are all examples that TarsTarkas.NET has taken the time to view. And I admit that I think some of those films are rather good, in a WTF fashion, and I’m even shocked that the genre has lasted as long as it has without getting on my nerves. But when you get enough of something, parts of it will be crappy, and with Horny House of Horror is that part.

Up until the last third of the movie, the majority of the blood on display is arterial spray gushing out of the crotches of three unfortunate men. The rest is talking. And talking. And anticipating. At this point in the genre’s life, it is too late to try to do a slow buildup to the crazy, we’ve gotten to the point where we need a constant stream of crazy violence, much like the sprays of blood desired.

With a pedigree including writer/director Jun Tsugita (Mutant Girls Squad), and gore effects by Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, and many more), this seemed like it would be a treat. Even some of the familiar cast members from Sushi Typhoon films pop up. But things just don’t go together right. And though the film gets around the banishment of full frontal nudity in Japan by using black circles over the severed and non-severed dongs, the limited freedom isn’t incorporated in a way that takes full advantage of the effect. It’s simply an afterthought, not part of the film itself. Though a small point, it is indicative of how much of the film doesn’t go together well.

The opening 16mm slideshow strip of a guy going to a sex massage club on the way home from work was rather nice – it is probably my favrite part of the film as a whole, and made me expect that things would be good throughout. But shadows of the strip remind me of my reading of Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein, which will sour you on the sex industry in Japan like nothing else will. We jump into our first victim, whose gets is wang rolled into a sushi roll that is promptly chomped by his working girl as he screams helplessly and blood reddens the world.

So let’s meet the cast!

Nagisa (Saori Hara) – This sushi-loving masseuse is the newest filly in the herd. She’s also the most reluctant. Saori Hara is an AV star who also does a good deal of softcore flicks. Oddly enough, she’s also in Deep Sea Monster Reigo, as well as 3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy. Back when she was Mai Nanami, I commented that she hadn’t done much of anything. Now she’s done much of everyone!
Nonoko (Asami Sugiura) – The most experienced working girl and the most jaded. Truly enjoys her job, even if it is apparent she hates herself and everyone else. Lesbionic with Kaori Asami is also an AV star, but her biggest fame is appearing in all the Noboru Iguchi and friends ridiculous gore films such as The Machine Girl, RoboGeisha, Mutant Girls Squad, Gothic & Lolita Psycho.
Kaori (Mint Suzuki) – Kaori is the new girl in the club, forced into a life of selling her body after her parents died to care for her younger siblings. But not is all as it seems with her. Mint Suzuki is an AV star whose films you can probably find with a quick Google search.
Nakazu (Yuya Ishikawa) – Nakazu is going to get married to his lovely girl Misa, thus his friends drag him out to have sex with some random chicks! He’s not that into it. Then things get interesting… Yuya Ishikawa is a familiar site in these ridiculous gore films, popping up inThe Machine Girl (plus the short sequel), RoboGeisha, and Gothic & Lolita Psycho.
Uno (Toushi Yanagi) – Uno is no slouch in picking women to have sex with in sex clubs. He’s also a karate master out of nowhere!
Toshida (Wani Kansai) – The bald member of the crew, fancies himself and expert in the ways of sex parlors. Too bad he isn’t an expert in not getting a boner!


Continue reading

Gothic & Lolita Psycho (Review)

Gothic & Lolita Psycho

aka Gosurori shokeinin

2010
Directed by Go Ohara
Written by Kuroki Hisakatsu

Rina Akiyama
Go Ohara’s followup to Geisha vs. Ninjas delves into the genre of the splatter films that have become a popular export from Japan. To help he’s recruited Yoshihiro Nishimura of Tokyo Gore Police, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl, and Mutant Girls Squad fame to handle the gore effects and makeup. Ohara continues the general themes of Geisha vs. Ninjas, with a girl hunting down people responsible for the death of a parent, an episodic structure of bad guy fights, and secret truths being revealed at the end about the parent but it not making a difference in the quest for revenge.
Minami Tsukui
There are only a few fight sequences in this film, though they are pretty long. Some of them are interesting, some of them are boring and overstay their welcome. As a rule, the only interesting fights are against female opponents, though the final fight does get interesting as well. But the guy opponents are either: a psychic who levitates around like a lunatic, a guy who cries for his life for like 5 minutes, or a generic gang of thugs. The final boss entertains an element of danger and risk, though having seen these films enough I knew what the danger would entail, but there was an additional feature of the final fight that made it different from the other ubergore films. It isn’t as wild and crazy as Noboru Iguchi splatter flick, but it does have it’s own charm.

We watched an unsubtitled DVD, so some names are just descriptions and plot points are guesses. At TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles. There’s gonna be spoilers below, so if you aren’t cool with spoilers go read some other review.
Misaki Momose

Yuki (Rina Akiyama) – Rina Akiyama gained fame with a trademark “butt pose” in gravure magazines, leading people to call her “Bishiri no Joo” (Queen of the Beautiful Ass) and “Oshirina” (shorted version.) This movie decides the best way to capitalize on that fame is to put her in clothes that cover and de-emphasize her posterior as much as possible. Hm. Rina Akiyama has been in a bunch of Kamen Rider flicks.
Gambling Maiden (Minami Tsukui) – Head of an underground club where all your secret sins and desires can be obtained, for a price. Overseas the illicit gambling in the facility via her skull blade dice shaker. Slices and dices anyone she opposes. Minami Tsukui was the star of Geisha vs Ninjas so we all knew that Ohara was going to squeeze her in somewhere.
Spoon Guy (Masahito Okamoto) – Johnny ESP here bends spoons like he’s in the Matrix, harasses girls, and flies around like a weird-o. Not particularly scary, just weird.
One-eyed Schoolgirl (Misaki Momose) – One-eyed Schoolgirl is awesome, and the coolest villain in this piece. Her bladed twin-guns of death combined with her schoolgirl attire and dopey attitude make her memorable far after the DVD is out of your player and you’re watching Holmes Inspection on HGTV. Her character name is Redei Eru, but that’s too difficult to remember. Misaki Momose hasn’t been in much, but if this appearance is any indication, she will be popping up in a lot of flicks soon.
Leader of the Cult Masato (Ruito Aoyagi) – This jolly worshipper of the devil laughs all the time. Who knew Satanism was so hilarious? This guy! Leader does not fear the long arm of the law, for his arm is longer…
Jiro (Yurei Yanagi) – Yuki’s father who builds the Gothic Lolita weapons she uses in her revenge quest. He also may know more about why her mother was targeted than he let’s on. A priest who is wheelchair bound after the attack on his family. Yurei Yanagi was in both the first two Ringu and first two Ju-on movies.

Misaki Momose

Continue reading

Mutant Girls Squad (Review)

Mutant Girls Squad

aka Sento shojo: Chi no tekkamen densetsu

2010
Directed by Noboru Iguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura, and Tak Sakaguchi

Is that all you got, movie?

So I’ll just copy the background of this pretty much directly from the ad material: Tak Sakaguichi (star of Versus), Noboru Iguchi (director of The Machine Girl and Robogeisha), and Yoshihiro Nishimura (tons of effects work and director on Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl and Tokyo Gore Police) got together in 2009’s New York Asian Film Festival, got drunk, and vowed to combine their efforts Voltron-style into one super movie. And here is the fruits of their blood-splattered loins. As those three are masters of the hip new subgenre of Japanese Ultragore, one expects this X-Men-ish flick to be the reddest thing under the sun. Imagine the worst oil spills known to man, only the black crude is instead red goo, and you know what to expect. And Mutant Girls Squad delivers on that effect.

But besides the blood spurting out like the lawn sprinklers at the local driving range, does Mutant Girls Squad deliver on the one thing I want, which is an entertaining film. And I declare that yes, Mutant Girls Squad is entertaining! I actually like it the most of all the gore flicks I have seen so far save The Machine Girl. The characters are more developed than usual, the storyline is a bit more detailed, and it looks like the three directors decided to try to outdo each other with fancier, technical shots.

Trumpy, you can do magic!

At this point having seen movies with girls with machine gun arms, girls with machine gun butts, swords coming out from butts, missing limbs being used as boomerangs, characters turning into mechanical monstrosities, every adult male being insanely perverted, and side characters being simply yelling people in wacky costumes, it takes a little more to make me take notice. Sure, you have a chainsaw coming out of your butt, but as you aren’t fighting a woman with flamethrower breasts I am not jumping for joy. Some of the characters are imaginative, including the girl with a weird mutant head best friend (which is sadly barely touched on) and the not-so secret final form of the Astro-Mutant.

There will be spoilers below, but we’ll not reveal every little detail, though probably enough that if you care you should hold off. We’re not going to point out every cameo and reused actor and actress from previous outings by these directors, as not only would that double the length of this review, it would be embarrassing when I missed like 4 or 5 of them. So we’ll only point out the highlights and let you know now there is plenty of interesting things to see if you pay attention.

Yeah, yeah, we’ve all gone through that phase of life where we have a giant cannon arm and was turned into a robot.

Rin (Yumi Sugimoto) – Our heroine is just a girl who a mutant arm who slaughters dozens of people because normal humans hate and despise her. Then she gets involved with the Mutant Underground and has to fight them as well. Yumi Sugimoto is a model, singer, and actress in such work as the tokusatsu series Engine Sentai Go-onger
Rei (Yuko Takayama) – Rei was sold to a freakshow as a child, and a boy loved her, but he was killed. She can grow a bird carapace and is a good fighter and tough girl. Yuko Takayama is a model and actress who also has a part in the tokusatsu movie Masked Rider Den-o Trilogy The Movie Episode Blue
Yoshie (Suzuka Morita) – The sweet member of the Mutant Girls Squad who breaks out the tentacles when duty calls. Usually dressed as a nurse. Why? Why not! Suzuka Morita has also gone tokusatsu in the series Samurai Sentai Shinkenger. It must be a requirement to be on a tokusatsu show if you’re a model.
Kisaragi (Tak Sakaguchi) – Kisaragi is the Hiruko (mutant) leader who cross-dresses (or is supposed to be a girl, I am not sure) and worships almighty Izanami. Mr. Director! How do all you Versus fanboys like this? I’m not sure this character could get any creepier. Actually, he could if he was a member of Fred Phelps’ church…
Astro-Mutant (Maki Mizui) – Maki Mizui is an AV star and has been Noboru Iguchi’s assistant since at lease The Machine Girl. Fanatical member of the Hiruko group who supports her leader. Miki Mizui’s AV films are some sort of disturbing genre that I don’t know the name of, but since it’s Japanese you can be assured it is both incredibly gross and a result of deep cultural repression.
Okay, movie, you have redeemed yourself!

Continue reading

Robogeisha (Review)

RoboGeisha


2009
Written and Directed by Noboru Iguchi

Robogeisha is exactly what you would expect from a movie with that title. Needless to say, that means it gets approval here on TarsTarkas.NET. We got geisha, robots, robot geisha, dudes getting killed by geisha, women with various weapons built into their body, fake blood spraying everywhere, and women kicking butt.


Now, Robogeisha sounds like the kind of film that doesn’t have some sort of commentary on culture of Japan or the world, and you would be right to think so, except for the fact that you are wrong. The thing is, Robogeisha is unaware that is has such comments, so we’re really grasping at straws here. Giant, obvious straws.


The plot sort of follows the basic lines of Memoirs of a Geisha for a few minutes before veering off into insane territory. But we have the similarities with the sisters being rivals (substituting the Sayuri/Pumpkin rivalry) and the steel industry tycoon. I’m not saying Memoirs of a Geisha would have been a better film had it had robot geisha fighting a walking building, but it probably would have.


But first the cast…

Yoshie Kagusa (Aya Kiguchi) – Yoshie is just your average sister of a geisha who has supressed rage powers to kill kill kill. There seems to be a girl named Yoshie in almost every Noboru Iguchi film. Weird. Aya Kiguchi is a gravure model/actress, and we set up a gallery post as those are always popular.
Kikue Kagusa (Hitomi Hasebe) – Yoshie’s older, graceful, prettier, spoiled sister. Because jealous when her sister is a better killer than her, so endeavors to once again be the best and get all the attention.
Hikaru Kageno (Takumi Saito) – The long haired Hikaru Kageno is the president of Kageno Steel along with his father, and is the object of desire of the two Kagusa sisters. He also works with his father in a horrible plan to kidnap and brainwash women into killers, and eventually blow up a volcano. Takumi Saito was also in Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl.
Onna Tengu 1 (Asami Sugiura as Asami) – One of the two masked Tengu henchwomen who do the bidding of the Kagenos. Onna Tengu 1 was previously a girl named Yasuko before she was brainwashed. Asami is an AV actress who also appears in a lot of ultragore films, such as The Machine Girl and Mutant Girls Squad.
Onna Tengu 2 (Cay Izumi) – Cay Izumi is a choreographer, model, actress, and pole dancer and the leader of the gothic lolita ensemble performance team Tokyo DOLORES. And yes, they figure out a way to get her on a pole briefly during a fight sequence. Cay Izumi pops up as well in Mutant Girls Squad, Tokyo Gore Police, and was a Ganguro Girl in Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl.
RoboCastle (???) – He’s a castle, he’s a robot! He’s both these things, and he keeps his samurai armor sensibility!


Continue reading

Sukeban Hunters: Soukatsu Nagurikomi Sakusen trailer

[adrotate banner=”1″]The trailer for Sukeban Hunters: Soukatsu Nagurikomi Sakusen has hit the web. The Sukeban Hunters films began life as a 17-minute Yakuza Hunter short film which was included as a bonus feature on the DVDs of a movie called 893239 . Eventually they were announced as a trilogy of films, but now are just a pair of films and have changed from Yakuza Hunters to Sukeban Hunters, which is probably a good title change for selling import DVDs to the USA. Sukeban Hunters: Soukatsu Nagurikomi Sakusen is joined by Sukeban Hunters: Jigoku no Kettou as the sister film. The first is directed by Kazufumi Nakahira and Shinichi Okuda helms the second.

Sukeban Hunters: Soukatsu Nagurikomi Sakusen stars Asami (The Machine Girl and a weird movie I just watched called Mikosurihan Gekijo: Namashibori Super DX) as the main Sukeban Hunter, who is hunting a girl played by Rena Komine (Kamen Rider The First)

We got chicks with swords taking on lots of dudes with guns, psychedelic (they listed it as a feature, so…), girls with machien gun guitars, feather boas, cowboy hats, schoolgirl knifefights, obvious inspiration from Sukeban films, speedboat drivebys, and naked chicks (which is why we are linking to the clip instead of embedding it!)

CLICK HERE FOR THE TRAILER

Rena Komine demands you click for huge!

Rena Komine demands you click for huge!

Source, as usual for awesome Japanese news, NipponCinema