Starring Yumiko Hara, Eihi (AUDITION) Shiina, Yurei Yanagi, Kazuki Namioka, Kentaro Kishi and Mizuki Kusumi. Written by Daichi Nagisa, directed by Yoshihiro (TOKYO GORE POLICE) Nishimura, produced by Yoshinori Chiba and Hiroyuki Yamada
for Nikkatsu/Something Creation.
When a strange cloud of ash spreads across northern Japan, creating infected maniacs with horn-like tumours poking from their foreheads, the authorities are forced to build a wall to divide the country and keep their citizens safe. Though the prime minister continually stresses that the zombie-like denizens in the north should still be treated as humans, another member of the government secretly has a young, injured woman called Kika (Hara) turned into an experimental android… who is unleashed up north so that she can start killing off the infected. Kika is more than willing to do this because she wants to hunt down her mother Rikka (Shiina), who is patient zero: she’s the person who was hit by an orange meteorite and is symbiotically connected to the alien starfish that controls all of the infected!
This is J-sploitation cinema at its most extreme and bizarre. Amazingly splattery geysers of blood deluge victim after victim, the designs for the zombies are outlandish, colourful and outrageous, crude-yet-cool special effects, which are purposefully stylised sometimes, continually assault the eyes, and the film is madly, urgently, perversely imaginative throughout.
Director Yoshihiro Nishimura, who wrote and edited the movie, as well as doing the character designs, doesn’t try to make a film that operates on a real world level: in the reality of this flick Kika can have her heart pulled out by her evil mother and still survive! It’s explained that alien goo from the meteorite changed Kika’s body chemistry so that she doesn’t need a heart, but you get the feeling Nishimura doesn’t really care about what would really happen, he just likes the excuse to come up with madcap visuals, including the scene where Rikka triumphantly holds up her daughter’s bloody heart and shoves it into the gaping cavity in her own chest!
Somewhat reminiscent of early Peter Jackson gore flicks, this Japanese movie is far more anarchic and surreal. Where else would you see a purple-faced zombie chopping off the heads of other zombies with a big sword, catapulting the mass of still-living heads through the air in a barrage that strikes the vehicle Kika and her companions are driving in? Where else would you see a zombie woman with extra ‘child arms’ poking from her face and many other arms sprouting from her limbs? Even her legs are actually arms, and a male forearm extends from her groin! Where else would you see Kika’s zombie uncle (with a swastika branded on his forehead) chasing the protagonists and collecting a bunch of body parts so that he can construct a bizarre zombie car made from limbs, feet and torsos?!
Some sequences reach a level of utter strangeness that you don’t think can be topped… and then an even more odd, imaginative & weird thing occurs, such as when we’re confronted by Rikka sitting on top of a massive headless body constructed from the parts of thousands upon thousands of zombies. And yet… it gets even more bizarre and outrageous, as the giant figure grabs two rockets and uses them to propel itself through the sky, with the thousands of zombie parts shifting about, so that the giant figure now resembles a passenger plane made from living corpses! Oh, the madness!
The film fetishises the recurring images of characters getting totally drenched in eruptions of blood, and Nishimura does get crueller sometimes, for instance when he shows one captive young woman getting her nipples bitten off, causing yet another deluge of spurting red stuff.
Lurid shifts in colour, from blues, to greens, to reds, to purples, pinks and yellows, add to the visual overload, while heavy rock guitars dominate the soundtrack. The movie’s credits suddenly appear 48 minutes into the film, just as Japan’s prime minister is torn limb from limb in a furious fountain of more blood! Border guards wear implausible, curved helmets, Kika has an engine strapped to her chest that powers her chainsaw-sword, and a female zombie uses her zombie baby as a weapon, swinging it around on its umbilical cord! A bulky zombie dude is covered in samurai swords that poke from his body like metal porcupine quills! The deviant uncle zombie gets chainsawed up the backside and yells, “I dig it! I dig it!” The alien parasite that has wrapped itself around the back of Rikka’s head resembles a cyclopean Patrick Star from SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS, and, well, I can’t go on describing all the mega-carnage, creative character concepts and kaleidoscopic chaos in this film any longer!
Just go watch it and see for yourself!
Monster Zone 