Twitter Plot Summary: The tale of a girl too prim and proper to pass wind in public, and her learning to let go. Plus zombies and parasites.
Genre: Comedy/Horror
Director: Noboru Iguchi
Key Cast: Arisa Nakamura, Mayu Sugano, Asana Mamoru, Yuki, Dani, Kentaro Kishi, Demo Tanaka, Asami
Five Point Summary:
1. A zombie! Yay!
2. A woman defecating. Oh my.
3. An homage to The Evil Dead (eyeball…). Very nice.
4. Now there’s something you don’t see every day…
5. Now it’s gone really weird. Seriously, seriously weird.
Ahh, those crazy Japanese. They never make sane films in the first place, so give them the zombie genre and the results will be predictably insane. The title was what drew me to this film, likely an incredibly bad translation of the original, but also entirely accurate in that we see both a zombie ass and a toilet of the dead – literally. The tone is, of course, completely flippant and whimsical. There are copious amounts of comedic sound effects, bodily function gags and ridiculous amounts of amusing gore. There’s also a few homages to other notable zombie films, The Evil Dead among them, which is ideal for hardened zombie-philes.
We’re with a typical cross-section of Japanese teens – the karate-obsessed school girl, the attractive one, the nerd, the cool guy and the other girl, as they shall henceforth be known. After heading out into the woods to fish for trout, they are soon attacked by zombies and their truck stolen. They make their way to. Nearby village where almost everybody in town has now become a zombie, but thankfully (or not) they are saved by the mad scientist residing there. Soon we’re deep into a plot that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, involving parasites infecting innocents and turning them into zombies, just so a girl with leukaemia can survive a bit longer. Things get really weird in the final act, but to go into any detail would ruin the surprise.
An almost excessive amount of time early on sees a woman squatting over a hole in the ground trying to defecate, as a zombie appears from said hole, covered in faeces, and starts slapping her on the backside. This isn’t any old zombie – he’s quite the randy type, fixating on her cleavage rather than trying to eat her brains or flesh. This begins a nearly OTT obsession with bottoms – there’s at least three on show at various points, and for reasons that become clear, are somehow a focal point for part of the story. It does fit in with the Japanese worldview, one that is often understandably odd to us Western types. It’s twisted even by their own very peculiar standards – how many other films have you seen a parade of zombies bent over, their parasites sticking out of their backsides, giving chase after two of the surviving characters? It’s a first in my book.
It’s not big and it’s not clever, but as a standard, if slightly mad, splatter-fest then it does exactly what it says on the tin. Other than the faeces-covered zombies there’s nothing actually original about the story – if you’ve seen one Japanese comedy horror/zombie film then you’ve seen them all. With that said, if you ever wanted to see a film featuring parasite-infected zombies obsessed with touching up good looking women and attacking the living – bums first – then this is the film for you, otherwise it’s probably best it you stick with standard zombie films and avoid Japanese films as the cheese-induced nightmares that they feel like.
Favourite scene: The final showdown. It’s gas powered…
Quote: “I killed him with my butt!”
Silly Moment: Zombies covered in faecal matter…
Score: 3/5
