Lust of the Dead 2 - review

2013 (Japan)

2014 Tokyo Shock DVD R(1)

Contains spoilers.

  

If I wasn't already on a list, after importing and watching part 2 of director and co-writer Naoyuki Tomomatsu's sleazy  and horrendously b-movie soft-porn zombie nonsense I almost certainly am now. Excessive, misogynist and exploitative Lust of the Dead 2, or Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead 2 is everything that's wrong and shady with this odd little particular porn niche. It's a cheap one trick pony relying on the fun and games of horny rather than hungry and the willingness of actresses to show some flesh whatever the reason; and yet for such nonsensical zombie bunkum, it has to be said, the original origin narrative is surprisingly fleshed out and almost coherent, there is a semi-legit story being told and some of the audacious and stupidly bad set pieces and gore is surprisingly entertaining.

Following the events of Lust of the Dead, Tokyo really is now the post-apocalyptic wet-dream; a smouldering ruined city-scape with desperate isolated survivors hiding from the now grotesque, charred and mutated men that survived the nuclear blast. Two such figures are Shinji and Maki who hungry and scared are at least safe in their apartment and able to celebrate their anniversary, with love, candles and wine. That is, of course, until zombie-penis-boy bursts in, rips off her top and panties, fondles her breasts then gets himself ready for a good ol' rape. Any hope this wouldn't just be succeeding the first in premise and setting alone is immediately quashed. Tomomatsu's Lust of the Dead 2 is the story of desperate women rallying together, of scientists scrambling to find answers, of a world torn asunder, but it's still a silly little one with otaku virgins forming a cult to take revenge on all the women who humiliated them, daft American robots with laser eyes, flamethrower mouths and perfect breasts, and an opportunity to screen a lot of half naked women and indulge an obvious public groping fetish.

If you don't remember, I'll refresh. For some reason; a meteor, the ozone hole, or even some evolutionary Gaia reason all men have become infected with a bacteria that removes any and all imperative other than to have sex with any and all women. I say all men; it's really only dokyun aka successful, sporty, normal that turn, with otaku aka manga, idol, anime, loners and virgins that while infected can somehow keep their urges dormant. Lust of the Dead 2 elaborates, explaining otaku are safe because in many ways they're the modern samurai; their years of abstinence and screen watching, actually a zen like philosophical conditioning akin to Bodhidharma's nine years of wall gazing. They're actually the enlightened ones. They're also quite a terrifying nonsensical bunch of losers and though I believe their ignorance, justified violence and deplorable objectification of 3D women (as in not on screen, ala real) is by design and a deliberate parody, like the first, there's always a line of dialogue or a particular sequence that makes you think you really ought to stop laughing along.

Gone are the randy little Japanese business men, instead in the aftermath of the blast, they're replaced with giant penis wielding monstrosities that appear more comical than frightening. Though it's never been a film anyone involved ever intended to be considered horror, for a film about rape and death it's incredibly light and frivolous. With the otaku now the main threat there is less rape; but what there is perhaps more graphic, though maybe my memories of the first have been deliberately purged (or repressed). The soft-porn has definitely upped a notch and titillation has now upped a base and it's no longer just jiggly boobs, but hands in pants, touching and obvious stimulation. I should also mention the obligatory and utterly incongruous lesbian and masturbation scenes, which as obviously uncomfortable and strained the actresses look, are equally awkward to watch.

Both men and women do a good job with what's obviously a mediocre b-movie script that's entirely driven by the porn scenes, and even the painfully drawn and staged backdrop they're forced to work with for all outdoor shots. In fact the two long sequences where there actually isn't any 'action' are painfully paced and entirely tedious. Half way through, there's an attempted philosophical diatribe, with added aesthetic twinkle, that tries to explain all the otaku bull, but more criminal is a brilliantly staged conversation, ala The Return of the Living Dead, with a genuinely good and graphic prosthetic zombie carcass with semi-detached head, but impressive erection, and a primal insight into the caveman brain, yet ends with appalling cognisant justification with nonsense about gender ratios and the relatively recent judicial outlawing of mans natural right to take any woman he wants, whenever he wants.

And then it was all over. You see Lust of the Dead 2 was shot with Lust of the Dead 3. I say shot with; I think the actual phrasing would be Lust of the Dead 2 was filmed then cut in half with some bright spark thinking two sixty odd minute films with nothing cut would be better, financially, than a single well edited entry, thus explaining the poor pacing and the overly drawn out exposition we're subjected to throughout. A soft-porn monster movie no one thought we'd ever want or need, Lust of the Dead 2 is brazen with its desires and painfully honest with its execution. Now with parts 4 and 5 finished it's obviously a niche somebody wants to see and though I did have moments of fun I do rather find the whole rape fetish, as trivially, and justifiably played with as it is, uncomfortable and unsettling. Still, it's not a film I can honestly say is possible to take too seriously and I'm not going to end the review with a moral lecture. It is what it is and I do actually now want to see how the story ends, so it must have done something right - 4/10

Steven@WTD.

Lust of the Dead - review

 

2012 (Japan)

2013 Tokyo Shock DVD R(1)

Contains spoilers.

You know what you're going to get when you watch a Japanese film titled Lust of the Dead or in full, Zombie Rape: Lust of the Dead; well at least I hope you do. Amateur effects, sets and acting, an inconsistent story that unravels into farce, and enough low budget and totally inappropriate sleaze that it leaves you walking away wanting to wash your eyes out with bleach. And yet; somehow, there's always the chance that the crass and vulgar will make you laugh, the absurd and ridiculous will entertain and the fan service will either titillate or be shrugged off as harmless. It's a tall ask though, as the for every Zombie Ass: Toilet of theDead or Troma flick that's at its brazen best, there are scores of titles that fall so low that merely uttering their names leaves one feeling unclean.

As probably imagined, I really want to throw Lust of the Dead with its rape agenda, its dangerously age inappropriate nudity and its penchant for the systematic objectification of all women, firmly in the latter pile; and for a good hour I was definitely planning on doing just that. Then somehow, it managed  the impossible. Somehow despite the good hour of obsessive breast focus and panty flash and the umpteenth gratuitously shot brutal rape or gang-rape, all I believe totally justified by director and co-screen writer Naoyuki Tomomatsu's ludicrous testosterone fuelled zombie origin narrative, it managed to demonstrate that tiniest spark of self-awareness; like it could actually, maybe, be more than it was.

Don't get me wrong. It didn't try too hard and by elevate itself I'm talking a 3 not a 1. I mean listening to Kanae (Asami Sugiuri) shouting 'Women are not sex slaves for men!' while battling the hordes of horny undead all managing to pull at her kimono until her breasts were free for audience to ogle and the extras to grope, even if she does manage the last word by blasting them all to kingdom come, is, if as a last minute attempt to redress the balance, woefully missing the point. Yet it could be argued it is at least trying, and the five minutes or so of high octane OneChanbara-esque fighting preceding it was head and shoulders better than the sporadic and quite lame scuffles that had come before.

It's normally at this part of the review I start delving into the pertinent zombie origin story, though here I don't know quite where to begin. The Ozone hole, GM crops, space radiation, the Shinto Japanese myth cycle are all cited along with some stuff about bacteria, the origins of oxygen based life and the need for constant evolution. What we do know though, is, dokyun men (think high testosterone, sports, naturally rapey) have all turned into insatiable sex mad zombies driven solely to strip, grope and rape women. I say dokyun men, as the seemingly only alternative is otaku or stay-at-home manga / anime loner men who say they are happy to remain sexless though as we find out the slightest provocation and these guys too turn. So it's kind of all men and as stressed in one of the laboured TV cut-in debate interludes maybe what's wrong with rape anyway as it would begin to redress not just an imagined gender imbalance but all societal, wealth, nature and power imbalances as well; so why differentiate one man from another, we're all as bad or all as entitled...

Lust for the Dead is soft porn pretending to be a zombie film pretending to be soft porn; not only just managing to stay the wrong side of appropriate throughout but on occasion really stepping over by playing that creepy, last seen in Attack Girls Swim vs The Undead, scene that suggests that the those on the receiving end of a right good rape might in some way be grateful for the sexual stimulation. Yet, for all I've just said, it did just enough in its final few throes to stop me from totally hating both it and myself for buying it. Once the North Korea death nuke hits, the zombies suddenly become more interesting in the sense they're really probably quite dead now, even finally looking the part. Also the surviving female companions appear to have found some sudden depth, maybe on screen for more than having their blouse hang open, or to have a clumsy lesbian make-out with a new best friend.

The cityscape they find themselves in too, suddenly has a beautiful yet eerie post-apocalyptic vibe, giving the film an expansiveness not felt in the first hour or so that had them stuck in the same four walls nostalgically flashing back to pre-zombie sexual inappropriateness. I'll whisper this final bit, but the final scene had almost a Zombie Flesh Eaters (Zombi 2) feel; also it would be hard not to mention David Cronenberg's Shivers which too played with the idea of non-dead sexually charged men and women who are so driven their higher self begins to deteriorate though in that instance in with entirely different style, substance, skill and subtlety.

Overall, Lust of the Dead is distasteful misogynistic fantasy; playing with rape and sexpolitation in a really creepy way that not only feels uncomfortable while thinking about the characters but spills over into thinking about the young actresses who had to work with the myriad of older Japanese men who seemed more than comfortable simulating gang-rape, and squeezing and jiggling their breasts at every opportunity. It's a film that some will really enjoy, as gore, zombies, fun and boobies can make a good mix, yet for me, despite thinking it was poking both genders, it's just not enough and I'm left feeling like I need a brain bleach, though I better hold off as there's parts 2, 3 and heaven help us, 4 too - 3/10.

Steven@WTD.

Zombie Lake - review

1981 (France/Spain)

2013 Redemption Blu-ray R(All)

Contains spoilers.

Director Jean Rollin thought Zombie Lake so bad he tried to hide his role in it and used the pseudonym J.A. Laser, and he ought to know. And I actually didn't mind the whole thing for thirty odd minutes or so. The gratuitous and totally unnecessary exploitative ten minute (well it felt that long) naked skinny dip was at least pleasing to the eye, the first couple of zombie deaths were amusing and original, and the picture of a small rural French town physically and psychologically recovering from the occupation and what they had to do to resist was taking shape. Oh, I'm not for one minute going to say what I was watching was good. The acting was wooden, the narrative pedestrian and the zombies bizarre and unconvincing with appalling make-up and the death of the second victim resembled more of a zombie slobber than a gore but it had a certain European low budget je ne sais quoi. The problem with Zombie Lake though is that this was as good as it was going to get.

With the other hour or so watched I can frankly say I honestly don't know what Rollins who I understand only arrived on set a fortnight before filming, the writers and the crew were thinking when they put this drivel together, but I wished they hadn't.

There's a dark secret to the so called Lake of the Damned town mayor (Howard Vernon) tells reporter Katya (Marcia Sharif) looking for the inside scoop on the bizarre tale of ghosts and the spate of recent disappearances. The dark secret we learn through a convenient if not entirely convincing flashback, was an ambush, ten years earlier by the local resistance on a back peddling patrol of Nazis, with their bodies thrown in the water. For an oppressed persecuted nation I'd hardly call it a dark secret and more a reason to hold a yearly festival; but anyway, this isn't the whole story. We also learn that one of the soldiers (Pierre-Marie Escourrou) was in love with local girl (Nadine Pascal), who nine months earlier had thanked him for saving her from a mortar strike by taking her kit off in the hay barn and letting him impregnate her with a daughter he briefly gets to learn of before being shot.

Ok and I hear you. What does this all have to do with zombies coming out of the water at night to prey on the towns ample more attractive lady folk? Well nothing. But... and this exemplifies Zombie Lake for the incompetent, incoherent, farcical, convoluted nonsense that it is, a few centuries before all this, and apparently this wasn't important to know until near the end, and in fact I get the feeling no one involved in the writing had any inkling either, the 'Damned Lake of the Damned' was actually the site of black mass, sacrifice and all manner of satanic jiggery-pokery and souls thrown into the water were condemned to eternal damnation or something or other. The undead soldiers you see, are up and at 'em because of the combination of all these things.

I don't care to be honest. It's all nonsense and it doesn't come together in any reasonably coherent fashion. The zombies are rubbish, the acting is poor, the music sounds like someone with extreme epilepsy had been put in front of a glockenspiel and they'd turned the strobe lights up to 11, the pacing is all over the place and the story as mentioned is a babbling brew of bunkum and baloney. I understand Rollin isn't adverse to a little titilation but the constant nudity on show here is feeble, contrived and unnecessarily gratuitous. Multiple times the use of the lake is exploited with excessively objectifying up-facing underwater shots concentrated a little too much on the girls crotches with their heads not visible above the surface to be comfortable or ever erotic. I really don't know what Rollin was aiming for as the narrative ends up being an incomprehensible horror, thriller, love story all wrapped up as a European-art house, soft porn Benny Hill style, grind-house/exploitation mess. It never at any time aludes to a singular identity and switches its narrative and presentation style frequently with no reason or consistency and its portrayal of the zombie as the protaganist is no better.

The first thing I took from Rollin's interpretation of the now reasonably established zombie, was the fact they were incredible-hulk comic-book coloured green. Ok, they'd been under the lake for ten years so it could be algae or something but they weren't exactly fetid oozing bloated pustules of slime. There is an attempt to present some of the background undead as a bit dirty and fetid but on more than one occasion, either the love-forlorn main hero-zombie or the zombie nazi commandant made an appearance with clean well tended hair, a dry well pressed uniform and spray on green tan that didn't completely cover all his wrists or neck. The second thing was what a large incoherent mish-mash of ideas were being played around with. From the first zombie emerging from the watery grave to successfully skulk, stalk and take down his prey, to the esoteric uncomfortable zombie-daddy daughter love pact resulting in zombie on zombie wrestlemania, to the random, brazen full-on sieges of the town, there's never any convincing or cohesive reasons for why any of it happening. They're mindless dead thirsting for flesh and blood, they're loving and protective, they're taking order off their old leader, they're sharing a bucket of blood, passing a bowl knowingly between themselves, they're a bit of this, a bit of that and a right bloody cacophany of ideas from people who didn't know what they were doing.

I could honestly go on criticising Zombie Lake all night, really I could. A real stinker of a film with little to no redeeming quality I'll probably only remember it for the out of place nudity and terrible green make-up. The Redemption Blu-ray is clean and crisp though, if the sound is a tad muffled and muted at times, and presents all Rollin's daftness as well anyone would want. Whether anyone would want it though is another question, 2/10.

WTD.

Attack Girls' Swim Team vs. The Undead (Undead Pool) - review

2007 (Japan)

2011 Switchblade Pictures Nihombie!: The Complete Japanese Trilogy (Zombie Self-Defense Force / Attack Girls' Swimteam vs. the Undead / Zombie Hunter Rika) DVD R(1)

Contains spoilers.

A swimming costume if you think about it, is quite the sensible choice when it comes to zombie dispatching apparel. Hold on, I've just done that gag...

What the hell did I just watch? No really, I don't know. I'm sure it wasn't a zombie film. It's the usual infected but not dead scenario, though I think they'd have liked to have them pulse-less if they'd had 'the', actually 'a', budget, especially as Sayaka (Yuria Hidaka), the mad scientist behind the chaos does throw away a comment that he has discovered the secret to resurrect the dead. I'm also sure exposing and exploiting leading swim-girl Aki (Sasa Handa's) titties as much as possible was obviously the film's main focus, driving the story and narrative. But beyond this I'm fucked if I know.

Aki is the new girl on the block and her first day at high school is also the penultimate days training session for the girls' swim team. It's also significantly the day a doctor and his assistant turn up with an immunisation to save teacher and student alike from an all new and dangerous virus that is on the loose.

The thing is, and this will be a little spoilerish, there's no airborne virus to be worried about and it's the injection itself that's the problem, turning all those that received it into crazed killing machines. Fotunately though, in the maelstrom of flesh gorging and severed limbs, Aki and the swim team realise that they alone are unaffected, something to do with chlorine, and they're going to fight back.

If you're interested at all in the rambling incoherent and frankly ludicrous story you're watching the wrong film. At heart it's a highly questionable soft-porn low budget horror; a cheap sexploitation movie with a fetish for the systematic and brutal rape of the dangerously close to age-inappropriate. As bad taste goes, it's right up there. Now I don't mind the contentious or the questionable and thoroughly admired Deadgirl for how it played around with a dark and extremely bad-taste narrative; the problem with Swim Team though, is it fumbles at it all like a thirteen year old boy. Shower scene? Why not two. Two girls alone? Let's have them clumbsily grope at each other in a drawn out scene that totally outstays its welcome, all the time hinting they might actually be long-lost biological sisters. Flashbacks to a secret past? Let's have her naked and abused in an appalling manner but add some stuff that makes it not only look like she's actually not too upset by it all but might even be encouraging or enjoying it.

As the film progresses so does this need to degrade and demean, culminating in a set of final sequences that epitomises all that is wrong with this films approach to titilation as Aki is rendered immobile then stripped naked and threatened with death and rape. I'm sure the baffling vagina-death-laser finale was supposed to symbolise a feminist triumph over male oppression and make everything better but actress Sasa Handa is still fully in shot, naked with the camera taking every advantage.

The story is contrived to enable the film to move from one soft-core but dark and exploitative scene to another, and another reason for Aki or Sayaka, or both to lose their top. The zombie outbreak is the contrivance to enable some weak blood splatter and gratuitous but cheap deaths. And the zombies are a mish-mash of styles with those in the background obeying either the Romero or Boyle trope and those at the forefront behaving more like deranged sadistic serial killers than primal rabid undead monsters. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it; it never makes sense and I don't really think there was ever any desire for it to do so.

It really looks like Director Koji Kawano had little to no budget with effects consistently as amateurish as the cinematography. Clearly artificial limbs are thrown into frame, blood is squirted from bottles just out of shot, and infected make-up is clearly dots of blue mascara or something. All this in itself isn't a game ender though. I'm all for a bit of a farce and with a bit more work and less of a need to work Aki's clothes off every given opportunity, I think there could have been a cheap but funny zom-com somewhere here.

Attack Girls' Swim Team vs the Undead is contrived nonsense with laughable special effects, amateurish film making and awkward acting. While some of the fighting and gore scenes are so bad I actually found myself enjoying them and I'd be lying if I said I didn't get some enjoyment from watching two unquestionably attractive ladies cavorting around in next to nothing, it's not enough to raise my opinion of the film. A cheap sleazy film truly deserving my first 1, but for introducing me to the concept of a vagina-death-laser I'll give it 2/10.

WTD.