Wicked City (1992)

Wicked City. Directed by Peter Mak Tai-Kit (1992). 

This is the live action version of the anime from the 87. It starts off at warp speed and just gets more into Yokai Monster territory as it blurrrrs along in a frenetic pace. A boxer’s BBQ’d corpse shows up. The death is attributed to happiness a new street drug. No, it’s not original “Stummys” the drug from KITH: Brain Candy that makes you happy because like Bruce’s character yells on stage “Fuck Happy”! 

The main character gets a hunch there may be monsters (or REPTOIDS) and we’re off into “Monster land”. It’s a mix of The Hidden (1987) and a heavy dose of film noir severed up psychedelic style. 

The two monster hunting agents are played by Jackie Cheung Hok-Yau (Ken) and Leon Lai Ming (Taki). Cheung was also in two insanely great HK flicks worth seeking out, Bullet in the Head and Haunted Cop Shop 2 (which we reviewed here).

Shock the Macaque monkey

The bros battle giant tentacles that claw their way through flesh. One monster looked like vagina face from Breeders (1984, T. Kincaid). Some of the style and lighting reminds me of The Hunger (1983), very MTV influenced. There’s an unhinged kitchen fight with one of the shapeshifters. A character busts out with neon blue lightning squiggling everywhere even on his eyebrows. It ramps up even further a half hour in as spouts of blue blood pours out of neck stumps. One handsome fellow whom I thought was gonna be the breakout star ends up losing his arms, head and then vomits. Ok so a few mins later he’s back! And just before he was rolling around a power plant in the gentle rain with Gaye, a sexy monster lady who’s involved with one of the Special Monster Squad dudes (the HK one not the Fred Dekker one)! 

you have a date with death

Reptoids are a snobby upscaled Alien race Nakadai Tatsuya plays their leader. One female character who wears the same metal bikini as Princess Lea gets into an epic battle that extends to the parking garage. The power plant is where they get their real jollies off at. Two naked characters party hard and shed limbs like Reptoids totally should and do in their natural habitat! I dunno either, just go with it, this movie assumes you’ve already read the comics and can figure out what’s going on. It somehow doesn’t hinder your enjoyment, which is rad! 

There’s so much action, pretty much non-stop. Oh Yeah, there’s a bizarre scene where a guy fucks a pinball machine. The VHS tape of this one came through the record store that I currently work at and it remains unsold. 

the pinball machine FUCKS!

If you love frenetically paced HK hi-jinx with mucho butt kicking and an all-around monster mash, seek this shit out. The anime is easily available to find on blu/dvd but this live action one is not. I watched it on one of the free Tubi style streamers and it's on archive.org in Eng. dubbed form.

Devilman/ Boah

Devil Man /Boah (1987/1989) Directed by Umanosuke lida and Yokoyama Hiroyuki

There are a bunch of Anime titles in the DR catalog that I've sort of avoided, but lately i've been watching a lot of dopey shit from Japan like Johnny Sokko (look for my article in an upcoming issue of Tim Paxton's Monster!) and some Gatchaman and digging it like a madman, so the time is right for me to evaluate an Asian cartoon.

Bunnies and bikechains, not a good mix

Devilman starts off with a bunch of dick head gangsters who pummel Fudoh Akira, a softhearted kid for crying over the death of his adorable rabbits. They whip him with bike chains as he protects his pet (the one that didn't get killed) from harm. His sister Miki-Chan bails him out and they walk around the park. Ryou, Akira's sexist blonde friend pulls a knife on the girl then drives him around in his beat up car. He's not only hates women but he seems to be transgendered. In a flashback they show how Ryou's father was a mad scientist (or archeologist) who chopped off his dog's head and almost stabbed him to death in his sleep. They discover a giant devil mask and once it's on Fudoh's dome, he is transported to the demonic spirit world and it's super fucking trippy, we're talking naked butterflies that spew ectoplasm on dinosaurs and all types of ill shit (to coin a phrase from Don't Be A Menace To Society, While Drinking your Juice in the Hood).

Trip out on this, Boobs with teeth!

They reference Dante's Divine comedy and the myth of Satan trapped under ice, waiting to break out and re-emerge again. Ryou believes his father entered the world of the demons and learned their ways. Next octopus and spider demons show up and attach themselves to his car as snazzy jazz plays (the music is wildly inappropriate-- it sort of reminded me of Woody Allen's Sleeper). In order to fight demons Akira must turn into one, makes sense right? 

They both seem ecstatic about the harsh decision to leave their humanity to rot and then hit a disco to try and possess humans, above all a demon's motto is "abandon all reason, act only on instinct".

A fake Ratt band plays as both humans shred their inhibitions and give into ultra-violence by slicing faces open with a broken bottle (for some reason tons of girls are topless) and toward the end they all burst into giant monsters, ejecting spittle everywhere. One girl's breasts sprout fangs and do the air chomp! Akira transforms into DEMON MAN, which means he had wings on his head and a tail. Even Ryou is nervous that he's created a monster as the Devil creature saws through opposing monsters like wet tissue paper. In the catalog these came without sub titles, which I'd imagine would've been boring as fuck and it's unclear whether more than one episode or if the original cartoon from the 70's was included instead, Danzig is apparently a big fan of the original show (who cares).

Monsters love coke and Disco it's a fact!

This 87 version is a more hardcore violent remake of a 70s Manga, I watched the first original episode and it's very demented for children, but certainly not Deep Red fare. On the tape it comes with the Anime Boah, which I've included in keeping with the spirit of the original intent of the videotape.

Selsun Blue, gives you laser beam hair follicles 

BOAH, 1989 Directed by Yokoyama Hiroyuki

This one starts off like Akira crossbred with Plague Dogs (which sounds better than it is). An adorable girl with a creature perched on her shoulder has telekinetic powers and is stuck on an experimental train.I cant tell what kind of pet she has, it looks like a rabbit/squirrel. Boah is a giant dude with flowing hair in S&M gear similar to Lord Humungous from The Road Warrior. Next he's in plain clothes and gets stabbed by a Rambo style knife, but it doesn't effect him or interrupt his lunch. Things become Boah, which I gather is a genetic tag given to each mutant the evil scientist operates on. It's frightening power happens when it gets mutilated, they show a tiny dog savagely attacked by a lion, don't worry though it gets revenge. Everytime somebody says look out it's a BOAH, I chuckle because it sounds like "Bowel"!

S&M Lion-O

When an assassin stabs Ikiru, it slithers out of his body after he mutates and than the creature dissolves his flesh like melted butter. It turns out Boah is a parasitic worm that feeds off the host, giving it inhuman powers, but it's weakness is that it must be burned to a crisp.

Ikiru's friend is 10 years old and she is also a mutant that assists him in figuring out when the assailants are about to strike and she has an unhealthy fixation on him (their age difference is a major problem).

I'm just as confused as you are

Ikiru looks kind of like Nightcrawler with more purple festive hair and a giant red orb in the middle of his forehead. His little friend is abducted and used as bait by the creeps who injected him with the Boah in the first place. Everytime they think they've bested him, he becomes insanely more powerful. during the last 10 minutes a beefy Indian named Walken battles Boah and is beaten to a bloody husk. The cheesy celebration music sounds kind of like Turn The Beat Around by Vicki Sue Robinson.

Cybernetic Navajo Joe

Anime is a weird genre, it's either too soft, too porny or good and gory (which is obviously the best kind). There's endless amounts of it (just wade through Huluplus for an hour and nearly scratch the surface of what to watch). I saw this on Youtube and the super graphic stuff is not that easy to find, Boah falls somewhere in the middle of cutesy and explicit and it's pretty entertaining. No anime can ever match the impact of Akira in my mind though, that's still my all time favorite. Devilman is pretty great though, I highly recommend Gatchaman and Fist of the North Star as an anime novice. The Wandering Kid (or Urotsukidoji) otherwise known as the Citizen Kane of tentacle rape cartoons is also featured in the catalog (I'm not so sure if we'll get to that one, it's possible). Leave a message in the comment section if you think we should give it the GUTS treatment.
       
B'OWL

Twilight of the Cockroaches (1987)

Twilight of the Cockroaches (1987, aka "Gokiburi-tachi no Tasogare", directed by Hiroaki Yoshida, screenplay by Hiroaki Yoshida. English version dialogue by Steve Kramer.)

Review By Goat Scrote

     There’s something about roaches that triggers deep revulsion in most human beings. Perhaps it’s right down in our genes to recognize them as an ancient enemy, a despoiler of food and invader of our homes. The cockroaches see things differently, of course. This is their story.

     “Twilight of the Cockroaches” is a a fantasy-melodrama about the fall of a cockroach civilization. It uses a fusion of animation and live action to tell the tell of a tribe of cockroaches living in a paradise: The apartment of slobby drunk Mr. Saitô (Kaoru Kobayashi), who treats them almost like pets. Paradise starts to unravel when  Saitô-san gets a girlfriend (Setsuko Karasum) and cleans up his act. The concept is similar to the later American film “Joe’s Apartment” (1996) but this movie is better.

ジョーのアパート (Joe's Apartment)

     The animation is cartoony, as you’d expect from a 1980s anime feature. The color palette is very dark. The animated cockroaches are highly anthropomorphic to help make them easier for us to identify with. We see the world from  their perspective at floor level and from inside cracks in the walls. Even a human toe seems to take on a gigantic scale. The score by Morgan Fisher is beautiful, especially the heart-aching main piano theme. The human characters have no dialogue at all but their expressions and actions speak for them.

Let's leave some Roach feces in this continental breakfast.

     Naomi is a young female cockroach, age 19 in roach years. Her peaceful tribe lives in harmony with their human host. Naomi and her fiancee Ichiro greet Mr. Saitô and he simply ignores them and drinks liquor. Food is plentiful and available to all, and they can travel safely anywhere in the apartment without fear. The cockroaches are having a huge party and Naomi and Ichiro have a discussion about moving in together. Life is happy and domestic for the cockroaches.

just call me an Asian Paul Lynde as Templeton the rat, "Smorgasborg, Forgusnord!"

     A strange roach appears, Hans, from a tribe in another apartment nearby. It looks like Hans has had too much plastic surgery. His people are trapped in endless warfare against the humans they live with.
     The local roaches celebrate Armistice Day, when their own war with humankind came to an end. The way the cockroaches tell the story, the other side retreated. The horrible roach-slaying family moved away and their “savior”  Mr. Saitô moved in. The roaches take a slightly superior attitude toward the tribes elsewhere who can’t seem to make peace with their human hosts. They are quite content, oblivious to the fact that it can’t last for long.

If I give her some money will she finally leave?

     Naomi finds out one of her friend is pregnant again by a new lover. What a cockroach slut! When Hans leaves, Naomi realizes she has developed feelings for him. She goes outside and meets a genteel talking turd. The stop-motion turd directs her after Hans. Ichiro and the others are concerned for her but a severe storm prevents them from following. After many trials in the hostile outdoors, Naomi arrives at the apartment where Hans lives.

offical Talking Turd action figures found in some China Town shops

     Life is hard in the other apartment. They must struggle for every bit of food. They drive away the human preparing a meal, but the family comes back armed with swatters and bug-spray. Hans throws himself in front of the aerosol can to prevent the spray from hitting others, and survives it. For some reason Hans has a heavy fake German accent even though his peers mostly don’t even try to pretend. He and Naomi quickly become a couple.

     Ichiro, back at the other tribe, is a little delusional and refuses to call off the wedding. A politician claims that God chose the roaches to inherit the world. The self-satisfied complacency of the peaceful roach tribe is apparent. Naomi accidentally gets carried back across the field to her old home in a purse, and Ichiro is overjoyed.

The S&M portion of a typical anime wedding.

    
     The wedding goes forward as if nothing happened but the human woman begins smashing the roaches mid-ceremony. The roach leader promises to meet with Mr. Saitô to figure out what happened. He soon ends up impaled on a dartboard, but that's not the only sign of trouble. The human girlfriend comes over armed with bags of supplies. The humans begin the genocide with clouds of bug spray. The roaches watch as the poisonous jet gets closer and closer, unable to believe what they’re seeing until too late. Whole families get sucked up in a vacuum cleaner. Oh the humanity!

What about the ozone, jerk?

     “Humans love cockroaches!” Ichiro insists, until he learns the true history of the tribe. The Armistice Day story is a lie made up by their leader. The reality is that Saitô has lived there since the old days. He was their great enemy until his wife and daughter left. Now that there is a woman back in his life he is going to begin the slaughter again. He even uses a rapid-fire pellet gun to shoot roaches.

     The other cockroach tribe shows up in force, their soldier in disciplined ranks unlike Ichiro's soft decadent tribe. Naomi reunites with Hans and the love triangle is revealed but they mutually agree to settle their personal issues after the war. That's pretty sensible!

RAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIDDDDDD!

     The soldiers attack the humans in force but they’re up against bug-bombs which fill the room with insecticide. Bug spray, bug powder, and stomping feet turn it into a slaughter. The humans have had enough and start dropping poison into the vents and spaces in the walls. Hans is the last of the soldiers to be crushed.

     The cockroach civilization is devastated. Naomi prays to the idol of her people, a toy rabbit, and the spirit of one of her ancestors speaks to her. An unmerciful God created humans to test the cockroaches, to refine them by culling the weak. It is Naomi’s destiny to carry her stronger traits forward. Ichiro finds Naomi but she gets blasted with poison. Ichiro is blown apart by Saitô-san’s pellet gun.

All praise Bun-Bun, Dread Lord of the Cosmos!

     Naomi is not dead, however. As a result of selective breeding among the roaches, she is more poison resistant than the others. She grows to old age after bearing a litter of offspring partially fertilized by both of the cockroaches she loved, restarting the cycle of cockroach civilization.

     It’s an odd little movie and the use of animation and live action together is inventive, especially for this era. The movie is clearly intended to be deeply thought-provoking but never quite got there for me. It’s a little bit depressing but moderately entertaining.

     3/5 - Slightly Recommended.

The female Titan is attacking!

Shojo Tsubaki (Midori, The Camellia Girl)

Shojo Tsubaki (Midori, The Camellia Girl) Directed By Hiroshi Harada

In the DR catalog there are a few anime titles, aside from Akira and Urotsukidoji, I was extremely bored by the whole genre and never watched any of the ones featured. Later on I found out many of the titles in the catalog were based on Manga's like Star Of David, RapeMan, and Story Of Ricky. I'm a complete novice to the world of cutesy cartoons with bulging "Margaret Keene" inspired eyeballs, ripping off Blade Runner (or Anime as a whole), but I like graphic violence, so lets dive into this sushi role of nails and broken glass!

   I became aware of this film through clips on various tumblr's (the always reliable Illcon tumblr ramped up my interest enough to seek this hideously ugly cartoon out). It's originally based on a Japanese 20's era paper drama (or Kamishibai) and its director Hiroshi Harada spent 5 years painstakingly animating the film in isolation like a demented Charles Shultz!

too many Midori sours

   Midori (no not the "Herbert West" colored girly drink mixer), the Japanese one, doesn't fuck around, it swirls around your psyche and dunks you headfirst into a cruel world where rats infest the corpse of your mother and you have to fend for yourself on desolate roads, finding shelter among a Japanese version of Todd Brownings Freaks (I even spotted a nod to Prince Randian, the human worm)!

   Midori's parents are killed and after thinking she's applying for a job as a flower selling girl, she immediately gets tricked and raped by circus freaks (or fairground people). The story has Disney connotations, only with smashed puppies and horny circus freaks.   

Everybody do the body dysmorphia shimmy

    Anything Midori cares for is crushed or stolen from her, it's a gut wrenchingly bleak existence. A sadistic hermaphrodite smushes a few innocent puppies and than uses the meat for a stew. There are so many revolting and yet fascinating images that make someone like me, who has no interest in Anime feel like they should give it another chance. 

   In the second act, she starts to adjust to her new life and falls for a dwarf magician. Things seem better and her confidence slowly returns, mainly because her new husband has shape shifting powers and the cruel freaks stop bullying her. Things soon go from tolerable to miserable again, because the dwarf encases his wife in a giant glass bottle and turns the audience at one of his shows into a hurricane of bursting entrails and human deformities!

   For a minute all seems on the verge of looking up, than it all comes crashing down into ultimate darkness again. The is one of the most hateful, nihilistic cartoons I've ever seen, filled with dazzling and revolting imagery that's supremely existential. Brace yourself for the unpleasantness and for christ sakes avoid internet memes showing all the juicy bits before you see the whole shebang! 

Not recommended for the severely depressed, because it may push you over the cliff!

somebody call cartoon PETA

WATCH HERE

Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge

Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge Directed By Takuji Kitamura (2007).

Review By Goat Scrote

First of all, points for the title. That’s what made me give the first ten minutes of the movie a chance, and I was glad that I did. This is a pleasantly weird superhero-kung fu-supernatural-romance film, not so much a horror film. There’s no gore and no scares. In fact I don’t think anybody died at all. That’s something of a disappointment since there is a very scary-looking villain who would be right at home in a teen slash-a-thon. He’s a creepy cowled figure in black with lots of gratuitous chains and a big emm-effing chainsaw with pistons made of human skulls. This monster is such a badass he keeps his heart in a cage of bone in his chest. Yeah, I know, technically we all do that, but the way he does it is much, much cooler: His heart is partly exposed and the cage around it is held together by screws in the flesh. Now, if you or I walked around like this, it would be a serious problem for any number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that anyone could come along and stab us right in the heart. This is in fact what happens to the villain, but he demonstrates why he can walk around with his internal organs exposed: He pulls the knives out and throws them right back.

Seaworld Chainsaw Massacre

 The movie is centered around a series of inconclusive fights that occur between the superpowered heroine and the chainsaw-wielding villain. She is an ordinary woman who suddenly developed powers at the same moment the villain appeared for the first time, apparently. He always arrives flying out of the sky, chainsaw swinging, taking chunks out of the local scenery. She fights back with wire-fu powers, knives, golf clubs, and rakes. These encounters become so ritualized that at one point they make a joke of it, showing Chainsaw Man’s dramatic surprise arrival and then promptly cutting to the aftermath of the combat. Chainsaw Man eventually turns out to be sort of a manifestation of her own dark side, which is why she can only fight him to a standstill and never defeat him.

 

stop following me!

The main protagonist is actually her sidekick, a dopey guy who starts following her around after she saves him. This motorcycle-riding teenaged everyman promptly formulates the idiotic notion that he is going to beat Chainsaw Man to impress his crush, despite a complete lack of superpowers or basic common sense. Ultimately that’s pretty much what happens, though. There’s a weak subplot about one of his friends that used to be good at everything and then died, which is apparently supposed to be his motivation for, uh, trying to be a good motorcycle rider or something. Feel free to skip over those bits and just watch the fight scenes, because those are a lot of fun.

NETFLIX LINK

Battle Girl

Battle Girl (Emergency: Living Dead In Tokyo Bay) Directed By Kazuo “Gaira” Komizu Starring Cutie Suzuki (1991).

   The director of gag inducing massacre's like Guts Of A Virgin &  Entrails of a Beautiful Woman (this man obviously has an offal fetish...Puke!) is behind this robotic flavorless effort.

   Battle Girl is a departure to say the least,it's almost as if he needed a breather from swimming around in the scum pit of entrails, and made something bland, he's powerless without guts! (very apropos for this site)! Battle Girl a is criminally sauceless (bits here and there obviously, but very tame) Anime live action style superhero vehicle.

Here's the deal; a meteor has hit Tokyo and armed forces spring into action Captain Fukioka a sinister leader demands more electricity, is he Battlegirl's Dr. Frankenstein?, not sure yet? But some nice Repo Man style map graphics are shown.

A blockade is set up and it seems that this director is showing the military prowess of Japan when faced with an epidemic, I mean this is not their first monster mash! And 3 days later a horde of zombies infected by amphetimne gas pollution invade the town. Society is rapidly devolving into a safe haven for punks to rob and murder any unarmed citizens left.

Fashion Punk's still not dead!

Punks in a bus party down with weapons (think Japanese noise crust band attire) this is the new youth emerging after this meteor strike, it spawns multitudes of fashion victims apparently!

   At first Battlegirl is unassuming in her dirty jean jacket, but she is powerful in her supreme computer tech skills, an attribute you think would have been obsolete in a future dominated by space zombies and fashionistas fighting for meager survival, but you would be wrong!

The film starts to turn into live action animae (or cosplay) superfast as Battle Girl inherits a Rambo/Robocop suit that's equipped with automatic sunglasses) and goes to work.

The Captain sends his Kiss makeup soldiers after her and soon green hipster blood is spilling like a loose slurpee machine on the fritz!

BattleGirl's more adorable alter-ego

Cutie Suzuki who plays Battle Girl in reality is a wrestler, I like their literal translation of Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling better than ours.

 She finds mutilated casualties in a refugee camp and fights a metal toothed, Wolverine clawed soldier while a Sheena Easton "Strut" style instrumental techno song plays. The violence it pretty tame and videogame-esque. 

United Fruitcake Outlet

   Everyone is infected by the cosmo-amphetamine plague. The fight choreography is the most pitiful aspect of Battle Girl! I've seen better stunts in a Dolemite flick! This film has zero character development and people, shoot a lot of guns and blow up zombies but who cares! It's very plodding and difficult to feel connected to any of the interchangeable characters. A pretty weak effort from a usually hard edged and capable director.Next time stick to what you know best Mr. Komizu, GUTS!!!! Available via Fandor.

Is there a Dentist in the house?

WATCH HERE