Tag Archives: Gore

Capsules

CAPSULE: VAMPIRE GIRL VS. FRANKENSTEIN GIRL [Kyûketsu Shôjo tai Shôjo Furanken] (2009)

4 Comments

DIRECTED BY: Yoshihiro Nishimura, Naoyuki Tomomatsu

FEATURING: Yukie Kawamura, Takumi Saito, Eri Otoguro

PLOT: Two Japanese high school girls compete for the affections of a fellow student. One of

Still from Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl

them is a vampire, the other becomes a “Frankenstein girl” built of composite parts with the help of her mad scientist father.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It certainly has its share of weird and outrageous moments, but on the whole Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is too slick, too self-aware, and too ho-hum to warrant a place on the List.  Splatterpunk has its place there, but this is not the best representative of the genre.

COMMENTS: Narrated by Jyugon, a spineless but attractive high school boy, the film attempts to parody several high school subcultures while the paranormal plot thickens.  Though Jyugon is forced to date Keiko, a bossy Lolita, he soon finds himself the object of the affections of quiet transfer student Monami.  She feeds him a chocolate with her blood in it and turns him into a vampire, and inadvertently kills the jealous Keiko.  The latter’s father is the unassuming vice principal to the naked eye, but with the help of the sexy school nurse he secretly kills students so he can attempt to reanimate them in his basement lab.  He has a breakthrough with a magical drop of Monami’s blood and is able to assemble a new body for Keiko so she can wreak havoc on Jyugon and Monami’s tepidly developing romance.  There doesn’t seem to be much at stake, really, since Jyugon isn’t actually interested in either of the girls who are fighting over him.

Shooting a good portion of the movie as if it were a music video, directors Yoshihiro Nishimura and Naoyuki Tomomatsu don’t lack for visual ideas.  The kabuki costumed mad scientist, wide-jawed vampire, acid-trip hallucinations, non sequitur demon fight opening, wacky Bride of Re-Animator-esque composite creatures, and of course showers upon showers of blood tie well into the quick cuts, fluorescent lighting, and spontaneous musical numbers.  Scuffles with a feisty drop of blood and all-out duels between a crazed re-animated nurse and a manservant wielding human bones as weapons are sure to amuse any fan of weird Japanese grindhouse flicks, with a number of solid blood-based tools adding that vampiric flavor.  The model-attractive high school students and mini-skirts bring an appeal to various other viewer types.

With about an hour of build-up and 20 minutes of reward, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl tests the audience’s patience.  The scenes involving the wrist-cutting club and Ganguro club are meant to be satirical but feel haphazard and irrelevant, while Jyugon’s narration is over-obvious and not as funny as it was probably intended.  Of course one wouldn’t expect well-developed characters or an especially clever script based on the title alone, but it just isn’t as fun as it could have been.  Everything is very slick, choreographed, and over-digital, making it less loose and enjoyable than many other films of this ilk.  Its interesting battle scenes and goofy gore don’t quite make up for lackluster humor, poorly thought-out characters, and an unsatisfying climax.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Japan has never really been shy of weird and crazy horror flicks… Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl is the latest to join the cult… [this entry is] a more comedy-oriented film that still bears all the typical treats of its predecessors, but adds a layer of silly comedy not quite unlike Cromartie High. The result is mighty strange, as you might have expected.”–Niels Matthijs, Twitchfilm (DVD)

Capsules

CAPSULE: NECROMENTIA (2009)

1 Comment

DIRECTED BY: Pearry Reginald Teo

FEATURING: Layton Matthews, Chad Grimes, Santiago Craig

PLOT:Various characters lives entangle when the gateways to Hell open.  They seek lost loved ones or retribution, which can be granted by learning the mysteries of a Ouija board… carved into human flesh.  Of course there is a price to pay, and it isn’t pretty.

Still from Necromentia (2009)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It is an unoriginal and ho-hum horror movie. Once you get past the human Ouija board, all you are left with are uninteresting characters and standard “torture porn” clichés. Almost nothing is overtly weird, and nothing is exactly new either.

COMMENTS:  I keep waiting for a new horror movie that is going to knock me for a loop. “Torture porn” and the recent resurgence of vampire lore has overstayed its welcome.   For a genre that seemingly has unlimited weirdness potential, horror usually churns out the same old recycled thing.  I caught the trailers for Necromentia a year ago and it looked dark, exciting and new.  It should come as no surprise, but in fact, it was a huge let down.

The box cover declares this movie to be a cross between Saw and Hellraiser, but “better than both.”  Um, no.  During my younger years, I ate up Clive Barker’s twisted visions.  Barker was the more dangerous Stephen King, focusing on horrors of the flesh and demons straight from Hell.  Necromentia borrows heavily from Barker’s “Hellbound Heart” which eventually was adapted into Hellraiser (instead of using a puzzle box, the filmmakers decide to open up Hell by carving a Ouija board onto someone’s back).  The iconic villain Pinhead is poorly replaced by a dude wearing a gas mask and cranial-halo headgear screwed into place. Even a summoned demon is an updated Hellraiser Cenobite… it’s the Chatterer, on steroids!  Necromentia is a blatant rip-off in many regards.

We have four central characters: Hagen, who longs to bring his lover back from the dead; Travis, who wants to join his handicapped brother in the afterlife; Morbius, who is bent on revenge against those who have betrayed him; and Mr. Skinny, the mysterious figure who holds the secrets to the Ouija board.  Their stories come together by the end, but by that time I couldn’t have cared less about any of them.

There were obvious budgetary limitations.  The gateway to Hell is seen as a long corridor that could be any old building’s underground tunnel leading to the boiler room.  The props for torture are the usual mutilation tools:  hooks, chains, and primitive (but admittedly cool-looking) multi-bladed medical equipment.  It gets gory for sure.  Precise cuts penetrate skin.  There’s a realistic severed pinky.  At one point, we are supposed to be shocked that a female character is not being tortured against her will, but is actually paying for this pain.  Those crazy sadomasochists!  One character, who tortures while striking Christ-like poses, is trying to kick heroin (because that’s obviously worse than torturing people).  And you have scenes of disemboweling and intestines being paraded around.  Are you starting to get the idea?

If this movie has anything that remotely flirts with weirdness, it comes in the form of a character wearing a pig mask manically playing a piano while reciting a song to entice a handicapped boy to commit suicide.  It’s a weird little scene thrown in the mix with a hallucinatory atmosphere captured by warped camerawork.  But as far as suicide ditties go, it doesn’t hold a candle to the catchiness of Big Fun’s “Teenage Suicide (Don’t Do It)” in Heathers.

As much as I kind of liked this scene, I couldn’t help thinking how cool it would be if Pinhead came into the picture and began tearing this pigman apart, or maybe just dismembered the generic gas mask man.  I quote from Hellraiser: “The suffering…the sweet suffering.”  I suffered watching Necromentia, but it sure as hell wasn’t sweet.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…wastes no time in becoming very weird… Teo’s latest dark and twisted foray into the mad and macabre is a competent thinking man’s horror.”–Lee Griffiths, Total Sci-Fi Online (DVD)

(This movie was nominated for review by reader “dclxvi” [we’re pretty sure, although he called it “Necromania“]. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THANKSKILLING (2009)

1 Comment

DIRECTED BY: Jordan Downey

FEATURING: Lindsey Anderson, Lance Predmore

PLOT: A killer turkey stalks a jock, a fat hillbilly, a nerd, a naughty babe, and a nice babe in this

Still from ThanksKilling (2009)

hour-long homemade horror-comedy.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  A few of the gags in this holiday slasher spoof push the boundaries of silliness so far that they approach the weird, but in the end this light snack of a killer turkey flick is an honorable time-killer, nothing more.

COMMENTS:  For a junk food film that wears its extreme dumbness as a badge of honor, ThanksKilling makes several smart moves.  The first is keeping the running time to a trim 66 minutes; more fat might have made it hard to swallow.  The second is starting off the movie with a prologue set in “the Olden Days” featuring an wisecracking, axe-wielding turkey puppet stalking an inexplicably topless Pilgrim woman; you immediately understand the level of filmmaking you’re about to be exposed to.  (Don’t get too excited about that topless Pilgrim woman; the movie blows its entire nudity budget in the first five minutes, and hooking the target audience early probably counts as the movie’s third smart move).  Along with the expected parodies of slasher movie cliches and the bad puns from the monster (“now that’s what I call ‘fowl’ play!”), the insanity includes psychedelic poultry point-of-view shots, an animated origin flashback, turkey rape (animal lovers calm down: it’s the bird that does the violating), and a glowing radioactive butterball monster for the final course.  The best, weirdest and funniest sequence involves the turkey successfully posing as the heroine’s father by killing pop and wearing dad’s skinned face over his wattle.  You already know if you’re the intended audience for this movie and if you’re not; if you are, you’ll find it a decent way to spend an hour.  The fun the crew had making this comes through on film; it’s so dumb and carefree you’ll think it was actually made by drunken frat boys over Thanksgiving break.

ThanksKilling is evidence that at least one person in the world—director Jordan Downey—bought a copy of Lloyd Kaufman‘s Make Your Own Damn Movie! and actually followed its advice.  In fact, Downey out-Tromas Troma here by making his entire movie for a mere $3500, about what Lloyd spends on a single Ron Jeremy cameo these days.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Filmed for about three-thousand-dollars, to say the final results are bizarre and random would be an understatement.”–Chris Hartley, The Video Graveyard (DVD)

Capsules

CAPSULE: SAMURAI PRINCESS [SAMURAI PURINSESU: GEDÔ-HIME] (2009)

1 Comment

DIRECTED BY: Kengo Kaji

FEATURING: Aino Kishi, Dai Mizuno

PLOT:  In a timeless mystical forest, a rape survivor takes on the souls of her eleven

Still from Samurai Princess (2009)

dead sisters and becomes a cyborg to avenge them.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Samurai Princess is a relatively unambitious attempt to cash in on the biohorror/splatterpunk formula established in Meatball Machine (2005); fans of this stuff will be probably be reasonably entertained, but newcomers would be better off checking out the aforementioned Meatball Machine or Tokyo Gore Police instead.

COMMENTS: In a few short years, the works of an incestuous group of Japanese writers/directors/FX gurus have created a new Japanese splatterpunk formula focusing on slim but fantastic storylines; extreme, absurd gore effects; and the modification of body parts into bioweapons.  This phenomenon is only five years old, but it’s already reminiscent of what happened with Troma: the studio had a hit, and spent the rest of its existence remaking The Toxic Avenger over and over under different names.  Samurai Princess is a lesser entry in this new genre, and at times it feels like the square peg of the splaterpunk formula is being forced into the round hole of a gentler, more reflective fantasy.  The idea of a justice-seeking living vessel infused with the souls of eleven raped virgins feels like an old Japanese legend, but making that instrument of vengeance a cyborg with detachable boob-bombs is a faddish approach that doesn’t click.  The movie’s setting—a primeval forest haunted by brigands, loners and mad scientists, a place that’s even “out of Buddha’s jurisdiction”—is promising.  It’s a place out of time; the kimonos and katanas suggest feudal Japan, but there are plenty of anachronisms like chainsaws, cameras, and novelty sunglasses with blinking Christmas lights on the frame.  The cast that romps through the forest is nicely bizarre: besides the main character (who’s neither a samurai nor a princess), there’s one mad doctor who collects body parts to build “mechas,” a rival cyborg-building maniac with a pair of female sidekicks who speak in unison, a Buddhist nun with Continue reading CAPSULE: SAMURAI PRINCESS [SAMURAI PURINSESU: GEDÔ-HIME] (2009) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: DEAD SNOW [DØD SNØ] (2009)

Leave a comment

DIRECTED BY: Tommy Wirkola

FEATURING: Vegar Hoel, Charlotte Frogner, and other professional but fairly interchangable Scandinavian actors

PLOT: Eight medical students travel to a remote ski cabin for a little rest and relaxation,

Still from Dead Snow (2009)

only to find the snowbound retreat is haunted by pesky Nazi zombies.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  If it’s weird, it’s weird in a familiar way.  There’s a powerful “been there, done that” feel here that will satisfy those who just want to have another laugh in the face of the upcoming zombie apocalypse.

COMMENTS:  Despite garnering some minor praise after a successful midnight run at Sundance in 2009, Dead Snow is a derivative and dull affair—until a derivative but no-longer-dull final half hour, when it redeems itself with a nonstop, intestine spewing Nazi zombie slayathon that sweeps away all logical objections in a river of blood.  Even the key conceit of fascists as undead villains is nothing new—see Shock Waves (1977), Zombie Lake (1980), Oasis of the Zombies (1981)—it’s just that it hasn’t been done in quite a while.  The only thing that’s somewhat original about Dead Snow is the setting: I can’t remember a zombie movie that’s been played out in a winter wonderland (to better show the blood splatters on the virgin snow).  The setup seems to drag on forever, with eight medical students driving and hiking to a cabin in the scenic mountains, snowmobiling, listening to Scandinavian pop-metal, playing board games and drinking beer, and all of the time not making much of an impression as characters.  Eventually a grizzled old man from Oslo central casting wanders into the cabin to tell them the backstory about a unit of Nazis who hid some treasure in the region before the locals massacred them with farm implements.  Low-impact deaths of minor characters occasionally lighten the mood.  Dead Snow is a comedy, but mostly in the sense that it doesn’t take itself seriously, not in a way that makes you laugh.  The movie hits every possible horror movie cliche on its way to the final slaughter.  Instead of going to the trouble of thinking up some original Continue reading CAPSULE: DEAD SNOW [DØD SNØ] (2009) →