easternkicks.com » Horror

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl

Andrew Heskins — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:00:38 +0000

In a marketplace swamped with vampires, here’s one that will really stand out – the latest from Yoshihiro Nishimura, the man behind the outrageous gore of Tokyo Gore Police and The Machine Girl…

High school student Mizushima (Takumi Saitô, RoboGeisha, Tamami: The Baby’s Curse) is (almost literally) torn between two women: the spoiled Keiko (Eri Otoguro, Chanbara Beauty, Shaolin Girl, Shutter 2008), who only wants to go out with Mizushima because he’s the most reasonable looking boy in calls, and whose father is the school’s meek vice-principal; and cute new student Monami (Yukie Kawamura, Hide and Seek, A Slit-Mouthed Woman 2), who just happens to be a vampire.

When Monami causes her rivals fall from the top of the school building that doesn’t necessary exclude her from the running. Her father is in fact a deranged professor with delusions of becoming Frankenstein, and Monami’s blood has given him to key to bringing the dead back to life. A showdown is coming, and Mizushima has the unfortunate honour of being caught in the middle.

Those familiar with Yoshihiro Nishimura’s work as director, special effects and make-up wizard on previous grindhouse splatter movies like Tokyo Gore Police, The Machine Girl and Meatball Machine will know what to expect. Right from the beginning Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl gets started with the excessive bloodletting, in a scene that hardly holds with the rest of the film other than as an excuse to start the film.

Left to his own devices Nishimura and co-director Naoyuki Tomomatsu love drenching the screen in blood, but this effort, based on Shungiku Uchida’s manga, is arguably less gory and, dare I say it, unpleasant than his previous efforts. Sure, there’s that pre-occupation with wrist slashing – this time with an ‘annual wrist-cut rally’ – but he almost seems to hold back, an instead relies a little too much on cheap-looking CGI. In fact the whole thing looks really, really low-budget, far more than the previous films. And the final showdown on the Tokyo Tower is somewhat reminiscent of that in Cutie Honey.

The tone is decidedly lighter than those other films, what with a gang of Ganguro (or Japanese ‘Black face’) girls – a fashion trend of the late 90s as offensive as it sounds – this is far more a case of being played for laughs. Every time Monami lets blood in a kill, a terrible, English sung Japanese pop sing starts.

Perhaps the highpoint is a guest appearance by Ju-On director Takashi Shimizu as a Chinese language teacher with smog hardened lungs – though it’s hardly subtle as he just goes on about the films and their director! Tokyo Gore Police’s Eihi Shiina (Audition) also appears in a cameo as Monami’s mother.

With the very appealing Yukie Kawamura in the lead role, it’s hard not to find this a likeable and very silly horror romp. Yet there’s nothing really new here on the films that have gone before. Sure, thankfully this isn’t Twilight – but it’s not The Machine Girl either!

Murderer

Andrew Heskins — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:00:36 +0000

Two/thirds effective, efficient thriller starring Aaron Kwok, one/third bizarre (and near ridiculous) revelation – you will never guess this twist!…

Pretty boy Aaron Kwok stars as Chief Inspector Ling Guang, found unconscious at the site of the work of a serial killer he was investigating whose trademark is to drill hundreds of holes into his victims. Ling wakes not remembering anything about the investigation, and the fact that the latest victim is his superior Tai whom he called to the location starts to through suspicion on him.

Ling can’t help but try and piece together the missing pieces of those weeks, despite his bosses and colleague Ghost’s (Eddie Cheung Siu-Fai, Exiled, Mad Detective, in a superbly understated performance) recommendations that he should spend time with his wife and adopted child. Every time he thinks he gets a lead, it points more closely back to him. Is he going mad? Is he really responsible, or os someone trying to frame him?

It’s hard not to look at the artwork for Murderer and confuse a very harried, manic looking Aaron Kwok for Choi Min-sik in Oldboy. As it happens the film isn’t a pale imitation of a Korean thriller – it’s well paced, nicely atmospherically filmed, and for the main part well-acted with little of the overbearing melodrama of late. It marks the debut of writer/director Row Chow, whose previous credits include crew roles like being assistant director on Lust, Caution.

And a pretty impressive debut it is too, but that comparison to Korean movies comes to the fore in the seeming need from Chow and his co-writer Christine To Chi-Long (Jiang Hu, Fearless) to find a startling revelation for the audience. (Also making it reminiscent of that king of last minute surprises, M. Night Shyamalan.) Now no one’s going to accuse Chow of being unoriginal, but whether you find that revelation at all believable or even just faintly hilarious is another matter.

(And no, I’m not even going to intimate what that is. There are certain things I’d love to discuss in this review but that would just ruin it for you…)

So is it worth waiting for? Well, I’d say yes. It’s a pretty entertaining trip into the ensuing psychosis and paranoia of lead Kwok – by now a dab hand at playing stressed out, obsessed and slightly unhinged police detectives, mainly thanks to roles in Divergence and C+ Detective (aka The Detective), and seems to relish the opportunity. (Though whether it’s deliberate or not, his character becomes a lot less sympathetic towards the end. And I think it is.)

There’s action choreography by Chin Kar-lok (Shinjuku Incident, My Lucky Stars, Lust, Caution), who also appears as Ling’s suspicious police colleague Andy Chan.

It’s the conclusion, following that earthshaking denouncement, where the piece starts to fall apart, and all too quickly. Even references to Seven (you’ll quickly guess what I’m referring to) can’t save it then! Like those aforementioned Korean movies, Chow is by no means averse to graphic images, from the bone crunching beginning through drills to a plainly yucky use for nails.

Murderer is an impressive and beautifully filmed start for director Row Chow. Let’s just hope he doesn’t follow M. Night Shyamalan and get hung up on last minute revelations…

Blood: The Last Vampire

Andrew Heskins — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:00:32 +0000

A solid, good looking action film with great fight sequences by choreographer Corey Yuen, but plot inconsistencies and a baffling conclusion don’t make the best for Chris Nahon’s live-action adaption…

Let’s face it, the original anime Blood: The Last Vampire was something of a tease. At 48 minutes long, the original intention of the film as part of a multimedia project including a video game and manga was lost on most of its audience, myself included. Those of us that saw it still loved it as a brilliant, if incomplete variation on Ghost In The Shell.

Nearly a decade on the film has recently become an Anime series, Blood+, loosely based on the original premise, and now Chris Nahon, director of the impressive (and arguably best) Western Jet Li vehicle (Kiss Of The Dragon), has returned to Asia inspiration of a glossy, nicely shot live-action version. Indeed Blood tries hard to reproduce the original, the opening subway scene is all but an exact reproduction, in a 300 or Watchmen sort of a way, down to the original’s yellow-filtered, 70s exposed light.

The first half-hour or so is pretty much an exact re-run of the original, with Saya (Gianna Jun, Il Mare – the original of The Ice House, The Uninvited) part of a mysterious agency going undercover on an American Base high school to coax out deadly vampire demons that feast on humans. Sure, some details have been mucked around with, but the main difference is the addition of fellow student Alice McKee (Allison Miller, 17 Again, Take) who, kind of, takes the place of the original’s Japanese born school nurse Makiho Caroline Amano.

Here the film rather lets itself down with it’s own lack of ambition to take the ideas further, and add imaginative layers that could have supplanted the original.

We begin to learn Saya’s history, and rather than the 19th Century past hinted at in the original, and used in the series, the live-action instead moves her past to edo period Japan. We discover her father was a great vampire hunter, but was killed by Onigen (Koyuki, The Last Samurai, Pulse, Alive), most powerful of all the demons, and hence Saya seeks revenge.

With Tokyo seeming rife with demons, it seems that increased demon activity points towards a devious plan by them, and the presence of Onigen. Saya’s chance for revenge is at hand, but at what cost?

As action films go, Blood: The Last Vampire is by no means terrible. It’s obvious that director Chris Nahon has an understanding of how to film action, and – having worked with action choreographer Corey Yuen on Kiss Of The Dragon – know when to hand over the reigns. It’s beautiful to look at, even if sometimes the CGI work is less convincing than the original. (Mind you, the original being one of those ground breaking anime’s that kept the right side of almost looking too real – well, how can you compare with that?)

It would be easy to blame it all on the tortured production. Billy Kong, producer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, House Of Flying Daggers, and Lust, Caution, announced the live-action version of Blood with The Bride With White Hair director Ronny Yu attached. That didn’t work out, but ultimately Chris Chow’s (Fearless) script plays too readily into both their histories when taking the film on from its original premise.

In the flashback sequences, Blood tries hard to take you back to the films that inspired Crouching Tiger. It’s Lone Wolf and Cub and classic Shaw Brothers films wrapped in revisionist, noughties style. It’s all swords and wire-fu, wonderfully done, but you wonder, hang on, where are the demons? Later Saya’s showdown with Onigen seems too reminiscent of The Bride With White Hair. But Blood doesn’t seem to know how it’s demon vampires should look, or fight for that matter. It’s here, then over there, horror, then old school wuxia. Enjoyable, but perhaps somewhat misguided by Saya’s use of a sword. (Which in the original, by the way, breaks anyway!?)

It’s an odd mix, not helped by the fact that as a Brit – that as an international production – it relies on British actors to fill in the gaps in the cast. It can be disorientating to see Ruby In The Smoke’s JJ Field or Dog Soldiers Liam Cunnigham as Americans, but not as much as seeing UK TV stalwart Larry Lamb, last most noticeably cast in EastEnders, as a US army base general.

Casting wise, Gianna Jun is fine in the lead role, but weirdly not as feisty as you’d like her to be – all torn by her past and overly upset. (You wonder if someone like Love Exposure’s Hikari Mitsushima might have been been better?) As a character Koyuki’s Onigen just isn’t shown as evil enough – come on Chris (x 2) will you? Give us more to work with!

When Alice’s character starts spouting cod-philosophy it’s all a bit hard to take. (The purpose of the original school nurse character being a lot more poignant.) And then comes the baffling finale, which makes no sense at all other than playing up a reference to Alice’s name.

All in all Blood comes in pretty short for an action film. While I welcome an action film that runs well under 2 hours for a change, it’s all a bit telling on the production side. Indeed, the release date was put back a couple of times due to post-production not being finished in time. For all that, it’s not half bad looking (though you do wonder if the DVD could be more enlightening with deleted scenes and, possibly, abandoned or early scripts).

If you’re expecting entertainment, then Blood fulfils that and more, think Blade Trinity meets later episodes of Buffy. However, if you’re expecting an imaginative re-write of the vampire genre, seek out Park Chan-wook’s Thirst or Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In…

» We spoke to both Gianna Jun and Chris Nolan exclusively earlier in the year…

…and don’t forget, you can win the DVD here!

Thirst

Andrew Heskins — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:00:14 +0000

One of the worlds finest directors returns with a superb deconstructionist take on the Vampire myth…

It’s been a couple of years since Park Chan-wook’s I’m A Cyborg, But It’s Okay opened to somewhat mixed reactions. His visually delightful, if rather offbeat romantic comedy failed to find an audience even in South Korea, let alone the rest of the world. Seemingly audiences want something more obviously sinister from Park – not that I’m A Cyborg wasn’t riddled with darker themes – and that’s just what he’s given them in Thirst…

The remarkably versatile Kong Sang-ho, who appeared in Park’s breakthrough film JSA and Sympathy For Mr Vengeance, plays well-meaning Catholic priest Sang-hyun, a volunteer at a local hospital who decides to breakout of the endless cycle of human sadness by participating in an experiment to find a vaccine for the deadly Emmanuel Virus. The experiment fails, and Sang-hyun becomes fully infected with the disease, but after receiving a blood transfusion to save his life he finds he begins to recover astonishingly quickly.

News travels fast of Sang-hyun’s recovery, with devout parishioners camping outside church grounds, convinced he has great healing powers. Meanwhile the true nature of his recovery soon becomes clear as he finds himself drawn to human blood, and without it his virus quickly relapses. During this time he meets an old, childhood friend Kang-woo (Kong’s co-star in JSA and Sympathy Shin Ha-kyun) and becomes attracted to his downtrodden wife Tae-joo (Kim Ok-vin, Dasepo Naughty Girls, Voice/Yeogo gwae-dam 4).

That attraction soon grows into an affair between the two, but as Sang-hyun’s desire for Tae-joo grows, his hold over his own personal morality and the bloodthirsty urges he can only barely keep a hold on blurs, and he soon succumbs to the sins of the flesh…

(Readers beware – possible spoilers ahead…!)

Park describes the film as being some 10 years in the making. Initial sketches that Park had inspired a the central notion of a Catholic priest turned into a vampire, but it was an idea to marry these with Émile Zola’s 19th Century novel Thérèse Raquin that enabled him to bring Thirst to the screen. Oddly, if anything it echoes Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, and those recurring themes of the moral innocent, in this case the priest, corrupted by events and manipulation. The major difference being the redemption that was rarely a part of his earlier films.

After the ocular overload of I’m A Cyborg (which I highly recommended to anyone in the film or advertising media – those of you who haven’t already ripped it off – even if you can’t dig the rom-com elements) in comparison Thirst is a remarkably stripped down affair, even though Park once again collaborates with cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon, who’s been involved in every feature the director has made since Old Boy. If anything, the one thing it most obviously has in common is a more developed sense of Park’s black humour.

Around the grimly unpleasant, gory goings on Park drops in plenty of on screen laughs. Somehow the mix of ‘bodyshock’, almost David Cronenberg-esque horror – played up well thanks to a keen ear for unpleasant, gut-wrenching sounds – makes for an occasionally queasy watch. (Let’s face it – it’s not like Park Chan-wook has been known to pull back from what he shows on screen.) And yet it’s also often hilarious!

This time Park’s focus is far more on a simple telling of the story itself, rather than using flashy techniques or surprises. There are no flashbacks, for the first time since Sympathy For Mr Vengeance, and no last-minute reveals. The movie seems desaturated, under designed and almost as if it was filmed on a 70s film stock, but is still typically arresting. Park appears to have stripped the film of self-conscious effects to counter to the fantastic nature of the plot.

(Indeed, easily the least successful scene of the movie is the overly CGI’d scene where Sang-hyun chases a newly ‘turned’ Tae-joo leaping over the rooftops of the town. Again, the preposterous scene plays straight into a heightened awareness of Park’s humour, yet is utterly incongruous with the minimalist approach of the rest of the film. I hate the way human forms are animated in CGI!)

The lightness of touch is greatly helped by a fantastic ensemble cast including sterling performances including Kim Hae-sok as Tae-joo’s mother in law; Song Young-chang as Seung-dae, an aging Police chief and family friend (who appeared as Sang-ho’s marvellously overbearing bully of a boss in The Foul King); Park In-hwan (The Quiet Family) as blind mentor priest Noh; and Oh Dai-su. It allows Park to use fleeting glances to imply the back-story behind the characters without explanation, and just like that lack of flashbacks, he never feels the need to spoon feed the audience with a full explanation of what happen to Sang-hyun in the first place.

Oddly Tae-joo’s ‘godless’ character is ultimately without boundaries, she enjoys the full potential of her new-found powers with no boundaries, but Park’s sympathies seem to lie with Sang-hyun. There’s an implication here that you need faith or a religion to keep you in line? Her character’s manipulation of Sang-hyun echoes that of Kim Novak over James Stewart in Vertigo, or even Richard Todd’s deception over Jane Wyman in Stage Fright.

Coincidently a companion piece of sorts to Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In – Park is keen to point out that he wasn’t aware of the resurgence of Vampires as a popular theme (don’t even think of mentioning Twilight!) – it mirror that films deconstruction of the vampire myth. Both owe much to the more adventurous, independent horror of the 70s. Films like George A. Romeo’s Martin and Kathyrn Bigelow’s Near Dark spring readily to mind, though– as we’ll reveal in our interview later in the week – it was a lesser-known film from the 80s that influenced Thirst.

Once again this is a fine piece of work from Park, and worthy of an audience beyond Asian film fans. My one criticism is that my sympathies don’t connect the characters, particularly the lead Sang-hyun, in the way that I’d ultimately hope they would. It’s surprising, considering that it’s Kong Sang-ho, undeniably one of the finest actors in film today. Not sure why….

But this is still a ‘must-see’!

Thirst is released in UK cinemas on Friday 16 October, with a DVD and Blu-ray release early in the new year from Palisades Tartan.

The Fox Family

Andrew Heskins — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:00:49 +0000

Kudos for the release, but this Korean black comedy musical falls, well, a bit flat. Literally…

Nowadays, when a relatively new DVD distribution label comes along I feel like I should support everything they put out there. Hell, there’s a lot going awry in the industry right now, times are tough with all you naughty downloaders out there, downloading movies, not paying for them, not going to the cinema anymore, etc.

So along come Terracotta Distribution, who already have a couple of really worthy efforts under their belt with Yim Phil-Sung’s Hansel And Gretel and Singing Chen’s God Man Dog, not to mention an annual festival, and they drop this on us…

Ah, no don’t get me wrong… By now you’ll be thinking this film is terrible, which it simply isn’t. But it’s also not – as the distributors may try to persuade us – on a par with Takeshi Miike’s Happiness Of The Katakuris or The Rocky Horror Show. Which makes this all a little tricky…

Meet the Fox Family. Outwardly a travelling circus troupe, they are in fact just that, a family of fox spirits waiting for the chance to permanently become humans – a rare opportunity that comes once every thousand years, as long as they eat a human liver that night. So the race is on to find some unwitting volunteers.

Unfortunately macabre murders left behind by a serial killer are putting the family in the limelight of a police investigation. Will they be successful in their quest to become human…?

Part fable, part musical, part black comedy, but mainly little of anything, The Fox Family is a victim of never successfully bringing these strands together. The tone is messy, but really the problem is it never truly takes itself far enough down one line or another. The fantasy elements could be made stronger, the humour is a little too juvenile, often dropping into dead end parody skits, and honestly, the songs are lame. Away from the immediate novelty of the cast breaking into song – which frankly doesn’t last long as they’re so prominently flagged up – there’s little left to stick in your brain. It lacks the baffling unpredictability of the aforementioned Happiness Of The Katakuris. (And no, the songs aren’t a patch on Katakuris’ either.)

Occasional glints shine through when the film is at it’s most abstract, like when a standoff between police and protesters turns in to a break dancing standoff. But even this only underlines the films problem, having no relevance the plot whatsoever. Which is a shame as the cast, including Ha Jung-woo (Like You Know It All), former Miss Korea, Park Si-hyeon (Marine Boy), Ju Hyeon (A Love) and Ko Ju-yeon (Epitaph, My Wife Is A Gangster), do a pretty fine job with what they have to work with. It’s well shot too, but the cinematography is definite more solid than inspiring.

So what am I trying to say? Okay film, but don’t hold this against Terracota – give the guys a chance as I’m sure they have plenty more interesting releases in store for us…

Tokyo Gore Police

Andrew Heskins — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 09:00:50 +0000

From the producers of The Machine Girl and the effects and makeup supervisor of Meatball Machine and The Machine Girl, director Yoshihiro Nishimura, comes the latest Japanese splatter-fest that’s already built up a cult following on the festival circuit. Does it live up to its title? What do you think…?

So by now we all know what we’re in for, right? Flowers, swings, fairgrounds, childhood memories… Eh? Hey hang on, what’s up with these opening titles? Ah, that’s better, an exploding head. I was beginning to get worried.

Welcome to a Tokyo of the near future, where the police force has been privatised and criminals known as ‘engineers’ wreck havoc on the streets with their ability to regrow any severed limbs as deadly weapons. Only Officer Ruka (Eihi Shiina, Audition) stands any chance against them, but her troubled mind often drifts back to the vicious assassination of her father, causing her to self-harm herself in depression.

One of the criminals stands out from the rest by more calmly going about his murdering business (rather than running manically amok amid the populace) the mysterious Key Man. Soon Ruka discovers that the Key Man has much more to do the rise of the ‘engineers than they expected, as well as the death or her, but their confrontation will change her life forever.

The sight of the attractive Ruka running round modern day Japan with a samurai sword might make you think you’ve fallen asleep and woken up during Blood: The Last Vampire – there’s even a confrontation of sorts on the subway – but rest assured you haven’t.

For this bleak near-future, Nishimura draws on familiar sci-fi concepts: the merciless over-violent, over-reacting police force echoes that in RoboCop or Judge Dredd, their costumes a mix of Samurai armour and beady glowing red googles of the (again severe) police unit in the impressive anime Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. Then there’s the police announcer seen only on video screens, whose seemingly inappropriate and perky MTV VJ style resembles that of the presenter of the information film in Battle Royale.

Sure, there’s plenty here for sci-fi and horror fans to get their teeth in to, but there’s no mistaking the biggest influence on Tokyo Gore Police, as Nishimura recycles ideas from his previous work as effects supervisor, particularly on Meatball Machine. For those that have seen it, the idea of human body parts turning into all sorts of cutting, mechanical and bombastic weapons will be quite familiar. It’s a style that draws heavily on the so-called ‘body shock’ horror of David Cronenburg’s eXistenZ and Videodrome. The only difference is that here he takes it much, much further…

Like Meatball Machine, the inspiration itself came from a shorter film Nishimura made in 1995 called Anatomia Extinction. After his work on The Machine Girl the producers offered him the chance to make another movie, which was shot in just two weeks – pretty amazing considering the amount of prosthetic make-up used alone!

Rather tellingly, the film also manages to incorporate some of the ideas behind the bonus short Meatball Machine: Reject Of Death, allegedly made for that films DVD release. There’s the suicidal, self-harming schoolgirl, the more explicit fetish references – even two of the racial stereotypes, the Chinese and Blackman make an entirely unnecessary and rather fleeting appearance. The latter may be an attempt at a running gag, but it does make you wonder just how ‘special’ that movie was after all.

Tokyo Gore Police is darker in tone than its counterparts. It’s said the rather inappropriate adverts seen throughout the movie were actually shot by the directors of Meatball Machine and The Machine Girl, Yûdai Yamaguchi and Noboru Iguchi to, quote unquote, ‘lighten the tone’. It delights in the unpleasant, far exceeding its predecessor’s bloodletting quota, and adding level upon level of repulsive imagery.

True, some if it’s hilarious. A missile-launching penile cannon, acid-spraying breasts, the blood from amputated legs used as jets, all flood light in primary colours like some 80s movie. But often it goes further than even this old dog can take. A scene from a fetish club with mutated female performers ends in an extremely unpleasant take on a ‘golden shower’. (Like that’s not unpleasant enough in the first place?) Strangely it’s the self-harming that unsettles the most – or perhaps that’s not so strange. (After all, it worked for Dario Argento and his writers – make it something everyone can relate to…)

By the time we get to the point when a female character is pulled apart by four cars, beating The Hitcher’s two trucks, any attempt of following a plot – which as it stands is rather reminiscent of the faint revenge and ultimate confrontation of both the former films – is ditched in an attempt to pack in as many ideas as possible. As impressive as this is for such a rushed schedule, the result frequently becomes disjointed (and confusing), becoming more of a collection of set pieces rather than a coherent movie. For instance, a previously unseen police woman with a double-bladed staff turns up to face a now-mutated school girl, herself only fleetingly seen a few times.

Sure, this is one crowd-pleasing bloodfest, but is soon becomes somewhat relentless (in a bad way), lacking the stronger narrative flow of The Machine Girl. Nishimura’s next film is the subtly titled Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, so once again we all know what we’re getting there, don’t we?

And you can be sure (to misquote one of a certain late British comedian favourite catchphrases) ‘it’s all done in the worst possible taste!’

Tokyo Gore Police is released on 3 August as a 2-disc Collector’s Edition DVD by 4Digital Asia.

Meatball Machine

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:00:06 +0000

Nope, it’s not the food counter at Ikea – Tetsuo meets the Power Rangers in this schlock horror from the creators of Versus, Kabuking Z: The Movie, Battlefield Baseball, Tokyo Gore Police and The Machine Girl…

On the streets of Tokyo a bizarre battle is taking place as parasitical beings take over humans turning them into biochemical weapons. Their hosts are turned into maniacal killers who attempt to destroy each other, furthering their own existence by consuming the loser alive.

In the midst of such chaos we find a love story between shy Yoki (Issei Takahashi, Kill Bill Vol. 1, Detroit Metal City) and equally bashful Sachiko (Aoba Kawai), just about to finally make a move on each other. The only trouble is those pesky parasites are about to pit them against each other. Love doesn’t get much messier then this…

Co-directors Junichi Yamamoto (Kabuking Z: The Movie) – who directed the original short that inspired Meatball Machine in 1999 – and Yudai Yamaguchi (Battlefield Baseball, co-writer of Versus) pull from a raft of references, from David Cronenburg’s Scanners and eXistenZ, to John Carpenter’s The Thing, from Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesheaters to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead – but most obvious of these is Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo. Reflecting not only the mechanical fetishism, but the use stop-motion and even, arguably, the plot – it’s just delivered in a less ‘arty’, more coherent fashion (at least for this sort of thing!)

Like Tetsuo it tugs heavily on a long history in Japan of transforming heroes, from Ultraman to (what became in the West) the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers blended with a fascination with mechanisations that goes back nearly as far. It also mirrors the repressed sexuality that was so much a part of Tetsuo – though it arguably takes the fetishism angle further, and despite the more exploitative nature of one scene in particular (which if anything reminded me of Andrzej Zulawski’s cult early 80s horror Possession for some reason), it somehow seems a lot more wholesome. However, even with the more comic book styled-action it never truly escapes Tetsuo’s shadow.

There’s plenty of stylised bloodletting on show, what with eye gouging, human cannons, saws and nasty (laughing) parasites and so on. It’s all good, low-budget, old school horror fun, and with special effects by Yoshihiro Nishimura – who went on to direct Tokyo Gore Police and supervise effects on The Machine Girl, the film can be seen as the nucleus of the new wave of Japan’s splatter-punk horrors. It’s clear the filmmakers were still learning their trade, and even by the end of the film had come a long way from the start. Even the short film made for the original DVD release, Meatball Machine: Reject Of Death (also included on this DVD release), manages to be a lot slicker in production (as well as being more racially and sexually offensive than the original).

Though likeable, the film lacks the naïve charm of the original short that inspired it – also included on the DVD – even if that has all the finesse of a Screen Test young filmmakers entry (and probably wasn’t far off being that). What it comes down to is even with the addition of an unlikely love story, there’s still not quite enough to propel the story over its 90 minute running time, it lacks the tightness of more recent splatter-punk horrors. The films rather drawn out confrontation between the two lovers eventually starts to drag – but perhaps that’s a symptom of filmmakers finding their feet, and a comparably larger budget!

Meatball Machine is an enjoyable romp for those of us brought up on those (ahem) wholesome horror movies of the 80s…

Meatball Machine is released by 4Digital Asia on Monday 6 July 2009.

Blood: The Last Vampire – the original Anime

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:00:24 +0000

With the upcoming release of the live-action version, what better time to revisit the original that started it all…

In retrospect on the original anime of Blood: The Last Vampire, it’s still an impressive looking piece of film. Essentially a follow-on from Production I.G.’s Ghost In The Shell, both in terms of themes and production, Blood broke new ground in the film was entirely digital – being inked, coloured and animated on computer rather than using animation cells – yet without losing old-fashioned quirks. A revelation that garnered praise from mister CGI himself, James Cameron (who was also a very public fan of Ghost too). It was also one of the first series to be filmed almost entirely in English, no doubt spurred on by the success of Ghost and the financial involvement by UK/USA distribution company Manga Entertainment.

Working for a dubious US government agency, the eternally young Saya hunts down demonic bat-like creatures intent on causing some, undisclosed, havoc on the world. Tensions raised between her and her employers – they refer to her as the last ‘original’ – she is sent undercover as a schoolgirl on an American Air Base in Japan shortly before the start of the Vietnam war. Armed with just a samurai sword that has seen better days, Saya must flush out and destroy these creatures before they fulfill their nefarious plans – but Saya’s allegiances seem strained – she has more in common with them than her human employers…

At less than 50 minutes long, Blood: The Last Vampire was something of a deliberate tease for audiences. Intended as something of a multimedia release, with the story continued in a light novel, and a two-part video game – with hindsight an extremely savvy and forward-looking concept. Of course, for most of those of us unaware of those other release, or even just unable to get hold of them, it was hard not to be somewhat disappointed…

I remember its DVD release coming at quite an opportune moment. I’d just gotten round to watching the original Ghost In The Shell, and spurred on by a love of that film (as well as a new-found knowledge of how much of a rip-off The Matrix was!) I was keen to absorb any similar cutting edge Anime I could lay my hands on, particularly from the same producers. That was in the days when DVD releases were easily over £15 in retail price. Honestly for less than an hours worth of film, however beautiful the animation, that seemed a little steep.

(It’s notable that the original trailer, which we’ve included above, includes several shots that weren’t only not in the finished film, but don’t even appear to be from the same situations shown.)

But the animation itself is truly stunning. It inhabits a murky gray/brown world of golden tints, not unlike Production I.G./ Hiroyuki Okiura’s earlier Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (except without the Hitchcock-styled soft focus). The studio had used a mix of CG and old-fashioned animation styles for years, but despite the digital conception kept the style full of character, and avoiding the soulless flaws of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Unlike other films of the time, here the 2D and 3D techniques don’t jar against each other, despite some of the backgrounds and objects almost looking too real.

The style is as reminiscent of artist Gene Colan’s work on Marvel’s Tomb Of Dracula in the 70s as it is of previous Vampire-themed Animes like Vampire Hunter D. Perhaps that’s not coincidental, considering that series originally launched the Blade character, which had only recently been turned into a successful movie franchise. Half-human, half-vampire, intent on wiping out vampire-like creatures, the characters have a lot in common. Dressed as a schoolgirl, you could also argue the influence of Buffy. (Director Guillermo del Toro returned the ‘compliment’ by referencing Blood in Blade II.)

The scenes within the school have a superb, tangible tension, as Saya waits for the creatures to expose themselves. Indeed, considering the length this section could have been longer. Like most of the Anime coming from Production I.G. at the time, the pace neither rattles along nor brakes, finding a natural rhythm within the simple, effective plotline. Here the unresolved aspects of Saya’s origin, the government agency she works for and the creatures she hunts down help to cover the flaws in the script.

The action is well shot, if lacking the speed or surprise you might expect from an action/horror. Possibly the most memorable scene is where we first meet Saya, in a subway train leading up to a kill, (fairly) faithfully recreated in the new live-action movie. It obviously left a mark on the Pang Brothers, borrowing much the style and look for an assassination scene in the original Bangkok Dangerous. Elsewhere the Halloween party has obvious potential, but again doesn’t seem fully explored.

Despite the English language the acting in generally good, if occasionally stilted. Its greatly helped by Youki Kudo’s performance as Saya, her career far outstretching the occasional Anime voice-over, previous roles had included Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train and Snow Falling on Cedars, she’s gone on to appear in L: Change the World, Memoirs of a Geisha and, ahem, Rush Hour 3. Joe Romersa, voice of lead agent David, also has had a somewhat unexpected career, an engineer, singer and songwriter for over 30 years, he’s more recently become known for his Anime voice-over work. (And his singing can be heard on Silent Hill.)

There’s a promise of so much more in Blood: The Last Vampire, that without any sort of resolution in its Anime form, doesn’t quite deliver. Fans of Ghost In The Shell should perhaps look first to the earlier Jin-Roh. However, it’s easy to see the enduring attraction to Blood, having inspired mangas, an Anime series Blood+, and now a live-action film. Perhaps we might finally get that decisive conclusion we’re been waiting for…

The new live-action version of Blood: The Last Vampire is released around UK cinemas on 26 June 2009 by Pathé. We also exclusively interviewed director Chris Nahon and lead star Gianna Jun.

**There’s still time to enter our competition and you can win an exclusive Blood t-shirt and this original Anime version on DVD! Click here…**

The Machine Girl

Andrew Heskins — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:00:02 +0000

A girl with a gatling gun for an arm, high school ninja clubs, tempura arms, general dismemberment, a flying guillotine, flesh ripping bras and more gruesome carnage than a shelf full of Italian horrors, it’s easy to see why Machine Girl has already become something of a cult classic… (please note this trailer is for over 18s only!)

Minase Yashiro stars as schoolgirl Ami Hyuga, whose world is turned upside down after she seeks to find the truth behind the supposed suicide of her brother and his closest friend. She soon finds out that her brother Yu was bullied and then killed by school thugs led by son of the local yakuza.

Failing to get any sympathy from the parents of her brother’s friend, nor justice from the police, she confronts one of the gang members in his home only to find his parents far more psychotic and dangerous. Stepping over the line, bloody revenge is her only path. However, despite her keen kung fu skills, she’s no match for the yakuza, who torture her and cut off one of her hands before she barely manages to escape.

Finally finding refuge at the garage belonging to her brother’s friend, the mother Miki (Asami) and her husband agree to help her get revenge, building a custom machine gun for her lost hand, they plan to turn the tables on the yakuza. (It helps that Miki is rather proficient with a chainsaw.) One things for sure, it’s gonna get pretty messy…

Okay, so let’s be clear about this: if you can’t make it through the opening titles of The Machine Girl, then you’d better steer clear of this blood spattered fest altogether. With hands sliced off, heads graphically blown apart, director Noboru Iguchi (Sukeban Boy, Robo-geisha) sets outs the films manifesto pretty quickly: old-school exploitation, grindhouse style! (Unsurprisingly that’s brought comparisons to Robert Rodriguez’s half of the Grindhouse movie Planet Terror, particularly with its mechanical appendages.)

Despite low-budget concerns (or perhaps because of them) Machine Girl delights in a celebration of gruesome bloodletting. Think of it as part slocky update of Zhang Che’s One-armed Swordsman, more wholesale gore in the mould of Sam Rami’s Evil Dead 2 or Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead, and you soon start to get the picture. This is over-the-top violence in the extreme, all in the worst possible taste, and definitely not to be taken seriously. A welcome relief from the ‘scary haircut girl’ that’s become such a recurring trait of Asian horror, it feels like someone has finally picked up the baton from Ryuhei Kitamura’s Versus.

However, amongst the genuine fun director Noboru has with the material, some of the elements he throws on the screen seem a little misplaced or superfluous. There’s the back-story about Ami Hyuga’s parents having committed suicide after being framed for a murder they didn’t commit, for instance. More disturbing are some of the entirely unnecessary elements, like necrophilia and a suggested rape scene. Under the gallons of blood there are also a few interesting asides, like the fact the parents in general are a lot crazier and lethal than their children, and that Ami’s vengeance breeds vengeance as the parents seek to avenge their son’s deaths.

With other recent films like Ryuhei Kitamura’s X-Cross and the upcoming Yoshihiro Nishimura’s Tokyo Gore Police and Yudai Yamaguchi’s Meatball Machine, this unquestionably marks a turn in Japanese low-budget horror against the wave of US ‘torture porn’ towards more enjoyably super exaggerated, utterly preposterous gore – just like they used to make in the old days.

It might not be for everyone, but The Machine Girl seems like a pretty good start to Cine Asia’s Extreme label…

The Machine Girl is released today by Cine Asia Extreme on DVD in Steelbook packaging and on Blu-ray.

Death Note 2: The Last Name

Andrew Heskins — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 10:00:21 +0000

A satisfying conclusion to the Death Note series, but did we really need this exercise in tediousness to get there…?

Despite my misgivings over the first Death Note film, I really wanted to like the sequel. The idea itself matched with director Shusuke Kaneko’s take on the original manga make an obvious but sincere metaphor for absolute power corrupting absolutely. The cast reunite for this sequel, released but a few months after the first film in Japan, yet somehow none get the chance to shine, with a script that manages to jettison characterisation and extend the running time yet still make you wait what feels like an eternity (over two hours!) while very little happens.

Death Note: The Last Name picks up right where the original left off: with Light (Tatsuya Fujiwara, Battle Royale), supposedly grieving the death of his girlfriend Shiori Akino, offering to help L (Ken’ichi Matsuyama, South Bound) catch Kira, hoping to find L’s real name so he can rid himself of his nemesis once and for all. L, on the other hand, is all too happy to have Light close by, as he still believes him to be Kira and hopes he will give himself away.

With L’s theories about Kira soon blown out of the water when a second Kira appears, Light hopes this new ally will finally enable him to learn L’s true name. Time for the real mind games to begin as the two try to outwit each other, whose name will be last in the Death Note?

With all the original (surviving) cast in place for this sequel, shot back-to-back with the first film, signs were good for an enjoyable to-and-fro between our leads as they continually try to get the upper hand. Sadly – despite the additional of another Death Note, belonging to actress and presenter Misa Amane (Erika Toda, Goemon), and a devious use of an ambitious TV reporter Kiyomi Takada (Nana Katase) given the second death note to help hide his identity – this film lacks any sympathetic roles or true characterisation for that matter. Even Ken’ichi’s terrifically offbeat performance as L rarely breaks through a script that seems content to plod along, simply going through the motions to get character C from A to B and back.

Here the drawn out nature of the films, adding up to a running time of nearly four and a half hours in total, truly impairs your enjoyment. Much of this sequel seems unnecessary at best, making you wonder about the reason for making splitting it into two films. Whatever director Shusuke Kaneko’s argument may be – a cynic might say it was purely to milk the success of the Death Note manga (which it did in on it’s original release in Japan) – it definitely wasn’t to pay tribute to the original Manga and Anime series. New characters have been invented and general liberties with the plotline – mainly cutting major subplots.

As with the first film, the major issue is that L and Light’s battle of intellects just isn’t as clever as it thinks it is. It doesn’t demand the time and attention we’re privy to here. When we finally get to the conclusion – which definitely brings the series to a nice end – it all seems a little late.

Now if you’re thinking this has turned into something of a rant, you’d be right. Death Note: The Last Name isn’t a terrible film by any means. But a much tighter two hour film – rather than a series – would have done this story much better justice.

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**There’s still time to enter our competition and you can win an exclusive Blood t-shirt and this original Anime version on DVD! Click here…**

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