Ghost Squad (Review)
Ghost Squad
aka ゴーストスクワッド aka Gôsuto Sukuwaddo
2018
Written and directed by Noboru Iguchi
G-g-g-g-g-ghost Squad!! Sorry, just getting the “g-g-g-ghost” joke out of the way early! Ghost Squad is the latest from splatter auteur extraordinaire Noboru Iguchi, who has been covered by TarsTarkas.NET many times and will be covered many more times, as his films are usually filled with fun dumb energy and lots of ridiculous effects and plots that manage to entertain and occasionally comment on various aspects of society in the warped way that only exploitation cinema can. Ghost Squad joins the pantheon of his fun films, with plenty of crazy action and weird effects. Splatter fans might find little to be excited about, as the gore is subdued for a Iguchi film. But there are ghost ladies beating a guy in the junk with a meat hammer arm, a ghost with a dog for an arm, a ghost with a Machine Girl-style gun arm, and a gun with a baby face. So embrace the ridiculousness of a squad of murdered ghosts coming together to get their revenge with Ghost Squad!
Rika (Anna Yanagi) is your normal teen girl with an abusive father (Iguchi regular Yûya Ishikawa) who also sees ghosts. She explains this to her scoffing boyfriend Yosuke while also observing a ghost named Keiko Furukawa (Sumire Ueno) who struggles to write a letter to her father while slipping between being aware and unaware that she is dead. Rika goes to work as a waitress, but Yosuke follows her to harass her. But he didn’t count on Keiko also following along, as well as another ghost named Akari (Minori Mikado), who soon spring to action just as Yosuke is slashing Rika’s wrist. They beat him down and give him a few extra holes due to impalements, but let him survive enough to be in the hospital later.
Rika awakens at home with her wrist bandaged, and soon learns from the ghosts that they can only interact with the physical world when she is close to death (she learns this as she tries to hang herself from depression and guilt!) She quickly makes friends with Keiko and Akari, and also a third ghost named Yoshie who at first is a story telling framing device but quickly joins the main story as a fellow ghost. The three ladies need to get revenge on the men who attacked them in order to pass on to Heaven. It’s the law, Ghost Law. As we see later when Naomi Ohishi (Asaka Nakamura) shows up, it actually is the law and there is a whole bureaucracy set up to make sure they get revenge on everyone. Biggest critique here seems to be only lady ghosts have to get revenge, as we see a male character murdered later who goes directly to Heaven. That is totally unfair, we need to reform our Ghost Laws!
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Categories: Movie Reviews Tags: Anna Yanagi, Asaka Nakamura, Japan, Minori Mikado, Noboru Iguchi, Sumire Ueno, Yuni Hong, Yuya Ishikawa
Dead Sushi
Dead Sushi
aka デッド寿司 aka Deddo Sushi
2012
Written by Noboru Iguchi, Makiko Iguchi, and Jun Tsugita
Directed by Noboru Iguchi
Summing up Dead Sushi in one picture!
Dead Sushi combines two of my favorite things from low budget Japanese cinema – Rina Takeda and Noboru Iguchi! While I wish these two combined to make something amazing, Dead Sushi turns out to just be above average. While certainly a lot better than either of the prior Iguchi and Takeda films I have seen (Zombie Ass and Kunoichi), Dead Sushi suffers from trying to be too many things. Sure, it’s got zombies, killer sushi, and face kicking, but there is also a big lecture on the proper way to make, eat, and appreciate sushi. Dead Sushi takes as much from Jiro Dreams of Sushi as it does from Machine Girl or High-Kick Girl! Unfortunately, they drag the movie down to a more average range.
Finally a movie that isn’t afraid to spit the truth!
The two main attractions to Dead Sushi are the gore effects and the choreography. First – the gore effects are okay, but not so different from what we’ve seen before. The humor comes from the instigators of this gore, living sushi pieces that talk gibberish and fly through the air, skeletonizing people. After the gimmick wears off, Dead Sushi gives us zombies to allow for some actual fighting against something other than CGI and puppets. While zombies are overused and boring (despite these zombies spitting up rice!), the occasional fights against CGI sushi have their fun, and remind me of Birdemic.
Why you should never eat cheap take-out rice!
The choreography is less disappointing, and is what you should seek out Dead Sushi for. Rina Takeda’s Keiko is a sushi apprentice to her father, the sushi chef skills giving her karate skills because that’s just how it works. There is some kicking and punching of sushi pieces out of the air, and later some battles against ineffectual zombies. Dead Sushi then shakes things up with Kentaro Shimazu running around with a giant fish head and a gianter axe to battle Rina Takeda, while the one good piece of sushi – Eggy – does battle with a giant CGI sushi battleship. The fights keep you entertained, whoever the stunt guy for Kentaro Shimazu is matches well with Rina Takeda’s moves, giving us nice fighting to entertain the people. Bread and circuses. Or Sushi and Zombies.
Shaming the shameless
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Better than the movie Battleship!
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Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead
Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead
aka ゾンビアス Zonbiasu
2011
Written by Noboru Iguchi, Ao Murata, and Jun Tsugita
Story by Tadayoshi Kubo
Directed by Noboru Iguchi
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The horrible secret of Bush’s Baked Beans…
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While normally a fan of the Japanese ultra-gore films and Noboru Iguchin in general, Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead ends up sucking ass! What is should be a bunch of fun and ridiculous scenes instead gets bogged down by far too much melodrama, and the replacement of poo for the blood splatter scenes. Which isn’t done in a creative way, and instead rely on the fact that there is lots of poo around for the laughs. Poo may be funny in concept, but in practice it gets boring really fast. While other films like Helldriver and Mutant Girls Squad mix their films with a greater theme, Zombie Ass fails to successfully do that, either. There is a vague theme of bullying that rarely comes in to play, and doesn’t parallel with the zombie tapeworm invasion tale going on. The obvious subtext of body image is barely addressed and would have resulted in a much better film. The ending battle with a flying girl versus a monster is nothing we haven’t seen before, either. It took four people to write something so bland!
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Funnily enough, this method of transportation has begun to catch on in crowded Tokyo
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Zombie Ass‘s few pluses include the design of the tapeworm parasites, they have a brain on them that make them look like the creatures from Fiend Without a Face. I do not know how intentional this homage is, but I hope it was very. I will also score a point for the final monster looking like a sock puppet Jar Jar Binks, because that effect is bad enough it became funny. But besides that, I do not need a heroine who is sad all the time because she didn’t bother to save her bullied sister, nor every other character either being horrible or dating someone horrible. Most of the cast are the type of people who die first or second in a movie, and it was annoying seeing them continue to live beyond their expiration date. I was rooting for the poo to drown them!
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Meesa mutant butt zombie, okeyday!
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Even the appearance by regulars Asami Sugiura, Demo Tanaka, Yuya Ishikawa, and gratuitous nudity don’t save Zombie Ass from going down the drain. You’re gonna want to flush this load as soon as it’s dropped off at the pool. This film doesn’t have much to go on, and this is no smear campaign. Zombie Ass could be more Charmin, and that’s the bottom line. Despite the brown-nosing, Zombie Ass is only a #2. You might want to log off now, these puns sure are on a roll!
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Okay, Star Wars Prequel Abomination, I got the cure!
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Helldriver
Helldriver
aka ヘルドライバー aka Nihon bundan: Heru doraiba
2010
Written by Yoshihiro Nishimura & Daichi Nagisa
Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura
Ah, Helldriver. How damn awesome are you? Pretty damn awesome! If you love the Japanese gore flicks where blood flows like an Old Faithful orgasm-quake covering everyone and everything as they scream, if you love films where zombies build things out of parts of other zombies like the world’s grossest Lego set, if you like chicks with chainsaw swords and cowboys in blade-covered trucks, if you like stories of loss and redemption and revenge, then Helldriver is a movie for you. Helldriver goes…FULL THROTTLE!! Ha! Okay, sorry, that will be the only car pun.
Another in the line of Sushi Typhoon crazed gore flicks, Helldriver features many of the repeat players along with some new leads. Yoshihiro Nishimura is the makeup effects wizard who also helmed Tokyo Gore Police, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, and a chapter in Mutant Girls Squad, along with a massive amount of makeup work in cult flicks. He keeps the tradition alive with Helldriver, and attempts to break new ground. Each of these features attempts to one-up the last one, going further and further over the top. But it’s important to be more than just gross. It must be entertaining. I’ve seen a few that haven’t been so hot. Helldriver is long, has a complicated back story, parts are redundant, and at least one part looks thrown in at the last minute just to add Asami to the cast list. But overall it is pretty cool and zips along.
Helldriver clocks in at almost 2 hours in length. Partially because they need to explain the setup, which is an alien zombie infestation that caused half of Japan to be walled off and the survivors forced to crowd into the remaining half, and the various cultural problems that it would result in (arguments over the rights of the infected, overcrowding and stranger families being forced to live together, lack of proper food, and an illicit drug trade based on the horns of the zombies, which can get you high but also randomly explode.) There is a brief bit of narration setting a lot of this up, then later Kika observes the same things herself after she’s revived.
Zombies play a major role in Helldriver, but Helldriver put some thought into their creation and mythos. This isn’t your standard Romero zombie where a brain shot kills them (thank goodness!), they are more of Return of the Living Dead zombies, but with one weak spot – a horn that grows out of their head. People were infected by breathing in an ash, which then dissipated after 6 million were infected. No one bitten becomes a zombie. Zombies are ripped apart and sewn together, creating new and horrible chimeras of destruction.
There is more than just the zombie element to Helldriver. There is a strong theme of family throughout the film. Many of the proponents of zombie rights have relatives who are infected. They even go so far as to bring body parts to their infected children to feed on. Kika has an adversarial relationship with her psychotic mother, Rikka, and her equally crazed brother Yasushi. Rikka literally becomes the zombie queen, and snatches away Kika’s heart just before she dies. Kika doesn’t die, both women are cocooned in space goo, Rikka becoming the queen while Kika being preserved until she’s revived by Japanese government and turned into an instrument of revenge. A generator is built into the hole in her chest, and it powers a chainsaw sword. She’s then abandoned until the powers that be can use her for their own ends to kill the queen. Her heart still lives in the chest of Rikka, cpnnecting the two together. Kika’s last memories are of her father being eaten and burned alive by her mother and uncle. Further flashbacks seem to imply that he was wheelchair bound as a result of their abuse, that everything the family ever had was taken by Rikka and Yasushi for their own. Rikka is so bad it is a wonder she ever even had a child, or a husband who is kind. But the family must have their reunion, Kika wants her heart back, wants to confront her mom for everything she’s done, and can’t ignore her because her mom can torture her through hurting her heart. Side characters deal with their own family issues, from missing relatives to ones that were killed by the zombies. These themes help build Helldriver into something bigger than it sounds like it would be, based on the title and premise.
And then it gets even more nuts when you figure out all the North/South Korea analogies!
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Categories: Bad, Movie Reviews Tags: Asami Sugiura, Cay Izumi, Daichi Nagisa, Demo Tanaka, Eihi Shiina, Guadalcanal Taka, Japan, Kazuki Namioka, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Yukihide Benny, Yumiko Hara, Yurei Yanagi, Yuya Ishikawa
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!
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Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Asami Sugiura, Demo Tanaka, Japan, Jun Tsugita, Mai Nanami, Mint Suzuki, Saori Hara, Toushi Yanagi, Wani Kansai, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Yuya Ishikawa
The Machine Girl (Review)
The Machine Girl
aka Kataude Mashin Gâru
2008
Directed by Noboru Iguchi
One day people will be able to detect awesomeness with a Geiger counter type device. When this Awesomeness Detector is used to measure DVDs of The Machine Girl, it will overload by so much, the explosion will destroy half the universe. This film simply rocks. It is beyond cool. We have a girl with a machine gun for an arm, evil ninja yakuza, and more blood than a Red Cross warehouse. There will be blood. Lots and lots of blood. Blood that sprays forth at like a firehose. Let’s just say that if any woman in this universe ever had her period, the force of the blood exiting her body would cause her to launch up into the air like a rocket and she’d crash into the moon. There’s that much blood.
Much of this film is beyond description, only pictures and video will be satisfactory. It’s an explosion of visual images and over the top-ness that will make your jaw drop and your pants moist. A low-budget original film from Fever Dreams/Media Blasters, hopefully the first of many awesome productions. It was actually released in the US before Japan, which is a first I can get behind. The DVD has both subtitles and an English dub, so of course we will jump right to Japanese with subtitles. Because we are out and proud geeks.
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Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Asami Sugiura, Honoka, Japan, Kentaro Shimazu, Minase Yashiro, Noboru Iguchi, Nobuhiro Nishihara, Noriko Kijima, Ryosuke Kawamura, Women who kick butt, Yuya Ishikawa
