Sister Street Fighter

Director: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
Writers: Manfred Kakefuda, Norifumi Suzuki
Producers: Kineo Yoshimine, Kenji Takamura
Cast: Sue Shiomi, Sonny Chiba, Harry Kondo, May Hayakawa
Year of release: 1974
Country: Japan
Reviewed from: UK VHS (Stablecane Video)

Sister Street Fighter is one of the most brilliant, most bonkers, most hugely entertaining martial arts films ever made. It is sort of a spin-off from the Sonny Chiba Street Fighter movies, in that it co-stars ‘Sonny Chiba, the Street Fighter’ but his character is different in this film.

The actual star is the phenomenally cute Etsuko ‘Sue’ Shiomi who made several other films with Chiba including The Street Fighter’s Last Revenge, The Bodyguard, Message from Space and Dragon Princess. Only eighteen when this picture was made, and dressed in either a grey and red Chinese collar-less suit or white pyjamas, she kicks and punches her way across the screen with yells and squeals and a cheeky smile. She is great, displaying the same sort of evident delight in what she (or her character) is doing that distinguishes the great martial arts stars. You always get the impression that Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan love their jobs; you never get that impression with Steven Segal or Don ‘His movies drag on and on’ Wilson.

Shiomi plays Tina Long, sister of a missing Chinese undercover cop named Lee Long, star pupil of the Shorinji School of Martial Arts. Lee has disappeared, Tina is told by a balding Hong Kong police chief, while investigating a drug-smuggling operation. It is up to his sister to save him, initially by making contact with another undercover operative, working at the Club Mandarin and named, um, Fanny Singer.

Tina flies to Yokohama where her attempt to have a quiet meal is interrupted by a bunch of young Japanese men who would like to show the Chinese cutie a good time. She demonstrates why they should not mess with her by spearing flies in flight with a toothpick, then kicks their arses anyway, joined halfway through by her cousins, Jerry and Randy. The three later join Tina’s uncle for lunch; Jerry says Tina is well-known in Japan now, “a real celebrity” although no-one at the cafe in the previous scene recognises her, nor in the next scene at the Club Mandarin.

At the club, which features topless dancers behind the bar, Fanny Singer is identified by a red rose on her thigh. Trying to leave, she is accosted by gangsters but runs out the back when Tina throws a fork into a hood’s hand. Fanny is caught in an alleyway and although Tina beats up some of the gang, others bundle the dancer into a car and drive off - only to be halted by a mysterious stranger (Chiba) who beats them up, takes the car (with Ms Singer in it) and drives off.

At Central Trading Co., the front for the drug smugglers, the guys who failed to kidnap Fanny successfully are berated by their boss's second-in-command, a beaky guy in a sharp suit who looks like he should be second from the left in the Flying Pickets. Suddenly, in bursts Hammerhead, a gang leader who dresses like an ancient swordsman and leads a squad of goons with odd, bucket-like helmets on their heads.

Meanwhile, Tina visits the Shorinji School where pupils are taught about love and zen and peace and karma and a whole load of other tree-hugging hippy crap: “Harmony between yourself and others is the basic condition of the karate fighter.” Wise old master Shorinji pledges the assistance of himself and all his pupils in tracking down and rescuing Lee Long. The odd bit of this is that the logo of the school is a reversed swastika, clearly displayed on everyone’s tunic and on the wall (in fact, the camera focusses in on it). Presumably it is being used in its ancient Sanskrit, pre-Nazi concept, but still...

Tina is introduced to star pupil Emmy Kawasaki and also recognises young Mr Chiba who is, it transpires, martial arts teacher Sonny Hibachi. He has Fanny safely hidden away at a dance school, where young ladies are practising ballet to the strains of Ponchielli’s 'Dance of the Hours' (or ‘Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah’ if you’re an Allan Sherman fan). Fanny tells Tina that her brother was captured breaking into the headquarters of chief bad guy Koki. She gives Tina a lock of Lee Long’s hair, then has a fit and starts screaming that she needs heroin.

At this point, Hammerhead’s bucket-headed goons barge into the dance school looking for Fanny (as it were) but discover that the dance teacher is none other than ‘Shinobu Kojo - karate of the Ryukyu School’. We discover this too, through the first of several similar freeze-frame captions. Miss Kojo successfully fights the bucketheads with the assistance of Miss Long, but when Tina returns to Fanny she is just in time to see her shot by a poison dart. This emanates from a guy on a rooftop opposite who has a Mohican haircut, a billowing cloak and a large African shield - ‘Tettoso - blowgun of the Takasago School’. Before making his escape, he takes a potshot at Tina but succeeds only in killing a canary in a birdcage.

By now, the film has established itself as something much more than just another chop-socky flick, oh yes.

At Koki’s bayside mansion, complete with Olympic-sized swimming pool, we see some more of his killers training”

• Tessin - the sickle user
• Neray - ancient Chinese martial arts
• Eva Parrish - karate champion of Australia
• Amazons 7 - Thailand kickboxing
• Hachigen Ma - Japanese cudgel play

Of these, Amazon 7 are the most memorable, being a septet of oriental lovelies in carefully ragged mini-dresses apparently made from the same fabric as Fred Flintstone’s suit. “I don’t like race horses so I keep killers,” explains Koki to Hammerhead. “It’s like a private zoo. It amuses me. It’s as much fun as a carload of gorillas.” He then shows his visitor close-circuit footage of a cell where Lee Long (played by Kamen Rider V3 himself, Hiroshi Miyauchi) is being held and forced to take hard drugs. Another camera shows Tina approaching the perimeter fence, which she leaps in a single bound. She fights Hammerhead atop a high cliff and onto a narrow footbridge from which he hurls her after informing her that her brother is still alive “because you’ll die soon anyway.”

Koki then shows Hammerhead how he manages to smuggle heroin without the authorities spotting it. In a laboratory deep in the bowels of the Koki mansion, scientists are hard at work saturating wigs in A-class drugs! That’s right - wigs. It may sound bonkers, but - well, no, it just is bonkers. Emmy Kawasaki is onto him and finds, on the dockside, crates of wigs being exported from Japan to Hong Kong. She fights Koki’s goons with the surprise help of Tina, who survived the fall from the bridge. As the Koki gang’s truck catches fire, one of them yells the immortal line, “Save the wigs!”

Tina’s uncle turns up at Koki’s place, trying to pass a message to Lee Long, but is forced by the rascally Koki - who makes him watch his daughter being raped - to call Tina and tell her to meet him. Of course, when she turns up it proves to be a trap and she is forced to fight first Hachigen Ma and his pole of death, then Neray and his lethal clubs.

Things are getting complicated now. Uncle Wotsit arrives back home with Randy; Jerry is already there, as is Emmy, and the four of them suddenly face Amazon 7 who are all wearing odd papier-mâché masks. Having defeated the crap girly kickboxers - with the aid of Tina, who turns up in time for a good fight as usual - Uncle is then felled by a poison dart.

Tina manages to smuggle her way into Koki’s lair by hiding in the back of a truck, but Oki has a new pet killer - Reverend Star. This fellow is a former preacher who comes equipped with dog-collar, wide-brimmed hat and that essential ecumenical accessory, an armour-piercing spear-gun. Reverend Star kills Lee Long in front of his sister, then perishes by his own spear-gun...

...whereupon Tina falls through a trapdoor and regains consciousness hanging upside-down surrounded by Koki and his chums. Koki’s mistress, previously seen being thrown into the swimming pool by Hammerhead, gives Tina a good Ilsa-style whipping and Flying Picket-man gives her another lash for good measure. Then a flame is applied to the rope which holds her and we eventually see, just before it breaks, that she is suspended over a pit of steel spikes. Fortunately, she is athletic enough to somersault out of trouble just as the rope snaps, and pushes Ilsa on to the spikes for good measure.

Finally, we get a full-scale fight between the bad guys (including Tessin the sickle user) and the heroic team of Tina, Sonny, Emmy and Randy (and possibly Jerry - the editing is a little confusing at this point). Sonny kills Hammerhead by smashing his face into a mirror while Tina chases Koki through an escape tunnel full of rubber bats to the clifftop, where the final showdown takes place.

Phew.

What a movie. The fights are mostly terrific. Sonny Chiba is always great value, but so is Miss Shiomi and the inclusion of all these oddball specialists just makes a good film great. Though one has to wonder whatever happened to Eva Parrish, karate champion of Australia, who never reappears. The whole film is populated by eccentrics and the plot makes just enough sense to follow whilst making just enough nonsense to take the film to a level rarely attained by such pictures.

Some martial arts films are worth a watch, some are unwatchable, but Sister Street Fighter (Onna Hissatsu Ken) is one that I can watch again and again. This VHS tape was released in 1986 and has a cover painting of Shiomi based on a photograph of her (seen on the back of the sleeve) in a completely different film. the back-cover blurb reckons that the story is set in Tokyo although an on-screen caption clearly identifies it as Yokohama (and it certainly looks more like the latter). More amusingly, the film apparently features Sonny Chiba as ‘a super karate master and Ninja - a fighter who can become invisible.’ Well, if Chiba’s character ever becomes invisible in this story, he only does so whilst off-screen. (Or maybe not, actually...)

Director Yamaguchi (Karate Bear Fighter, Moon Angel) lifts the film above run-of-the-mill mid-1970s Oriental action flicks, possibly because this is, to all intents and purposes, a Hong Kong film made in Japan by Japanese film-makers. The English dubbing, written and directed by the ubiquitous Peter Fernandez, is very good indeed - understandable dialogue that closely matches lip movements, spoken by well-cast actors with real talent - and it is easy to forget that one is watching a Japanese film. Two sequels followed within the next couple of years, also starring Shiomi and directed by Yamaguchi, but I haven’t yet seen either of them. (NB. Most places list the title as three words but this version makes it two words - Sister Streetfighter - both on the sleeve and on-screen.)

Just remember: save the wigs!

MJS rating: A
Review originally posted 1st March 2005

Sure Death

Director: Masahisa Sadanaga
Writer: Tatsuo Nogami, Tsuyoshi Yoshida
Producer: Yoshiki Nomura, Hisashi Yamanochi
Cast: Makoto Fujita, Kunihiko Mitamura, Izumi Ayukawa
Year of release: 1984
Country: Japan
Reviewed from: VHS screener (Artsmagic)

This is an enormously entertaining way to pass a couple of hours and wonderful insight into a rarely seen part of Japanese popular culture, but if I said that I could follow what was going on in any significant way, I would be a lying git.

The print used by Artsmagic has the original on-screen English title The Hissatsu. Now, Hissatsu (‘determined to kill’) was a Japanese TV series which ran for several years in the 1970s in various incarnations, and which has spawned various movies, of which this seems to be the first.

In mid-19th century Edo, a group of professional assassins find that someone else is picking off their number one by one. And, um, that is the sole extent of the plot that I was able to work out. One of the assassins has a day-job as a corrupt cop, and there is some sort of comic subplot involving his wife and mother-in-law. A famous puppeteer is also involved in some way, and a couple of assassins work as roofing tilers, their preferred method of despatch being a well-thrown, sharp-edged tile. There’s a local gangster who runs an illegal brothel where he mistreats the girls, one of whom wants him dead because he killed the only thing she cared about in the whole world, a little kitten.

But as for who is who, who does what or why, I am stumped.

It’s a fantastic film to look at. The cinematography is gorgeous and the use of colour and geometric shapes in the compositions sometimes takes your breath away with its audacity. Though made in 1984 and based on a series which ran from 1972, the film looks much more like a product of the 1960s, especially in terms of editing, title sequence and music, which has a very spaghetti western feel to it.

What I suspect is that there’s a lot of comedy in this which just doesn’t make it through to this subtitled version. Without being silly or wacky, there is definitely a slightly tongue-in-cheek element, as in a sequence where they look to recruit other assassins and we meet one guy who runs a pet shop and has trained a small bird to peck poison onto people, and another who is a professional earwax remover and uses a concealed needle to stab people in the brain. Another assassin uses the ‘mole’ technique, of burying himself by corkscrewing straight down, then burrowing up to his victim before leaping out. This part of the film reminded me of the audition scene in Mystery Men.

But if there’s any element of humour in the dialogue it does not make it through to the English subtitles, and any character comedy is entirely lost on a British audience by our unfamiliarity with these characters. Because this is a spin-off from a popular TV series, there’s just no explanation of who anyone is; it’s aimed fairly and squarely at fans of the show.

The cast includes Isuzu Yamada (Throne of Blood, Yojimbo), Izumi Ayukawa (Baby Cart at the River Styx), Kunihiko Mitamura (Godzilla Vs Biollante, Gamera III) and Makoto Fujita (Zatoichi’s Cane Sword). Mitamura and Fujita were also in the Kinji Fukasaku-directed sequel Sure Death 4.

A terrific, exciting piece of period drama, but completely mystifying. Don’t expect the DVD notes to put the film in context or explain anything, because I wrote them and you can see precisely how little I’ve been able to find out about the film!

MJS rating: B
Review originally posted 27th February 2007.

Uzumaki

Director: Higuchinsky
Writer: Takao Nitta
Producer: Sumiji Miyake
Cast: Eriko Hatsune, Fhi Fan, Keiko Takehashi, Ren Osugi
Year of release: 2000
Country: Japan
Reviewed from: R2 DVD (Artsmagic)

Uzumaki - The Vortex (as Artsmagic’s video sleeve calls it) should not be confused with Rasen (also available from Artsmagic), even though both titles have been translated into English as ‘spiral’ by various sources.

The first feature from Ukrainian-born Japanese director Higuchinsky (who previously worked on the popular fantasy TV series Eko Eko Azarak) Uzumaki is a deliberately enigmatic film which bases it story around a shape - spirals - rather than characters, relationships or events. It’s very different - which is good - but not quite as outré as I was expecting. Perhaps my appetite for Japanese lunacy was spoiled by watching the utterly bonkers Wild Zero only a week or so earlier.

It’s difficult to say precisely what Uzumaki is about (except it’s about spirals). The central character is Kirie (Eriko Hatsune) whose boyfriend Shuichi (former model Fhi Fan) has an odd father, Toshio (Ren Osugi: Audition, Exte: Hair Extensions, Hypnosis, Full Metal Gokudo), first seen videotaping a snail. Shuichi’s father is obsessed with spirals and helices, collecting anything in that shape (even if it means stealing) and eating spiral food; he also commissions Kirie’s father, a potter (Taro Suwa: Another Heaven), to make him some spiral-based pottery.

Eventually Shuichi’s mother tires of all this and throws out her husband’s entire spiral collection, so he commits suicide in a spiral way - by climbing inside a top-loading washing machine!

But other weird, spiral-related things are happening at Kirie and Shuichi’s high school. A boy commits suicide by throwing himself down the well of a spiral staircase, a girl named Kyoko (Hinako Saeki: Misa the Dark Angel, Rasen) has curly hair which grows out of all proportion until she has enormous (CGI) spirals growing out of her head. And a geeky boy comes to school covered in slime, eventually mutating into a human snail.

Higuchinsky inserts spirals everywhere he can - keep an eye on the clouds and on patches of sand - but does it all actually mean anything? It seems to be symbolism for its own sake and there’s no truth revealed at the end about life or the world. There’s no doubt that Higuchinsky has a distinctive style, which he has apparently repeated with symetrical butterfly shapes in his second feature Tokyo 10+01, but weirdness for the sake of weirdness rapidly pails and he will need to concentrate more on story if he is to achieve anything other than novelty value for his films.

Nevertheless, Uzumaki is well worth seeing. It’s unique and bizarre and quite scary/gruesome in places too. Artsmagic’s disc includes 21 stills, one piece of promo artwork and trailers for this film, Evil Dead Trap and Junk. There are also bio/filmographies for the director and some of the cast from Yours Truly; if the choice of cast members featured seems odd or eclectic, please remember that I write these DVD notes before I see the film, so I have to take an educated guess (based on printed or on-line reviews, if there are any) as to which characters are the main ones.

Finally there is Uzumaki Q, a short ‘making of’ featurette incorporating a not-terribly-informative interview with Hatsune. There are some interesting behind the scenes shots and design sketches seen very, very briefly - but that’s what the ‘still’ button on your DVD remote is for.

MJS rating: B+

Review originally posted 6th May 2006

Ugetsu Monogatari

Director: Kenzi Mizoguchi
Writers: Matsutaro Kawaguchi, Yoshikata Yoda
Producer: Masaichi Nagata
Cast: Masayuki Mori, Saka Ozawa, Machiko Kyo
Year of release: 1953
Country: Japan
Reviewed from: UK festival screeing (Far Out 2005)

This is yet another variant on the Japanese kaidan staple of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy discovers girl was a ghost.

In this instance we have two couples, living in a village in the 16th century during a time of war. Genjuro (Masayuki Mori: Rashomon) is a farmer who has a sideline in pottery, living with his loving wife Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka, who was in a 1932 version of The Loyal 47 Ronin and played Princess Yamato in The Birth of Japan) and their young son. Their neighbours are Tobei (Saka Ozawa: Godzilla 1985, The H-Man, Gorath and the 1958 version of The Loyal 47 Ronin), who longs to become a samurai, and his nagging wife Ohama (Mitsuko Mita: Duel on Ganryu Island, Duel at Ichijoji Temple).

When Genjuro takes a cart of pots to a local town to sell, he makes a tidy profit and realises that he has found a way for his family to escape from poverty. With their neighbours' help, Genjuro and Miyagi fire up a big load of new pots, but have to flee the village when the soldiers come round looting and raping. Genjuro is terrified that the kiln fire will go out and ruin the pots in which he has invested so much time, effort and expense, but fortunately the work survives.

The five friends set off with the pots towards another nearby town, travelling across the lake by boat to avoid the soldiers, but they encounter a nearly-dead man in a drifting boat who has been attacked by pirates. They put Miyagi and the boy ashore to return to the village for relative safety, then continue.

In the town, the pots sell like hot cakes, but Tobei is distracted by some local samurai and determines to spend his cut of the money on some armour and a weapon so that he can join them. Searching for her husband, Ohama wanders out of the town and is raped by a soldier who throws her a few coins as payment.

Meanwhile, Tobei witnesses a famous general, close to death, asking his lieutenant to finish him off. This the soldier does, off-screen, removing the general's head, presumably to prevent identification or use of the head as a trophy. Tobei takes the opportunity to stab the weary soldier and take the head, which he presents to a rival warlord as proof that he has defeated the mighty warrior in question.

Back at the market, Genjuro meets Lady Wakasa (played by Lotus Blossom herself, Teahouse of the August Moon's Machiko Kyo) and her nurse, who praise his work and purchase several pieces to be delivered to a mansion outside the town. Well, fairly obviously the pasty-faced woman is a ghost and fairly swiftly she seduces Genjuro who wakes up to find that he is, apparently, married to her. And so life goes on for a while, with plenty of food, plenty of sex and plenty of serving maids in attendance. But when he goes back into town to buy the Lady a gift, he finds that local traders want nothing to do with anyone claiming to live at the mansion.

Genjuro meets a Shinto priest who can see that he has encountered supernatural goings-on and who writes various prayers on the potter's body to ward off spirits. When Lady Wakasa and her nurse see these they react in horror, especially when Genjuro admits that he has a wife and child at home. This leads to a scene of a mentally anguished, bare-chested Genjuro hacking his way through the mansion's walls ... and he is woken up the next morning by soldiers who accuse him of stealing the sword in his hand from a temple. Genjuro sees at this point that the mansion is actually just a few charred timbers and has been for many years.

Back with Tobei, we find that he is now a highly regarded samurai with a whole entourage, all based on this one supposed success that he had over a legendary general. His soldiers persuade him to let them rest at a large bordello where Tobei comes face to face with Ohama, now a very successful prostitute. There is a reconciliation of sorts as each recounts how they have risen/fallen since they last saw each other.

Genjuro arrives back at his village to find Miyagi cooking a meal for him. However, we know that she is also a ghost because (a) there is a neat camera trick where the camera pans away from an empty fireplace then back to find it aflame and tended by Miyagi, and (b) we previously saw her stabbed by some stragglers from the army who stole the food she was carrying.

The next morning, Genjuro is awoken by the village elder who explains that Miyagi is dead and he has been caring for Genjuro's son since then. Genjuro sees that his house, which last night seemed so welcoming, is in fact empty and cobwebbed. The film finishes with Genjuro, Tobei and Ohama back in the pottery business, while a voice-over from Miyagi explains that she will watch over her husband and son from beyond.

A lovely film this, which won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival (there's a caption to this effect on the front of the subtitled print that I saw). But I'm damned if I can discern the moral story. If anything, the Tobei/Ohama subplot seems to have a stronger rationale; he is driven by an unrealistic ambition, while his wife's criticisms go beyond talking sense to actually nagging. Tobei achieves his ambition by luck but - although it is made clear that one of his prime motivations is a desire to impress his wife - his pursuit of his dream results in Ohama's fall into prostitution. Ironically, she becomes very successful as a whore and achieves, within her field, a degree of respectability while he knows that his lofty status is based on a lie and could come crashing down around him at any minute. Eventually they meet again by accident, realise that all they need is each other and live happily ever after. He doesn't try to become a samurai and she doesn't nag.

But what of Genjuro? He's not a bad man. He works hard (two jobs: farmer and potter, though we never actually see him do any farming) to provide money for his family and drag them from poverty. He's a good father and a devoted husband who seeks to keep his wife and son safe from pirates. He's a skilled potter whose work is admired and in demand. He doesn't even set out to spend time with Lady Wakasa (who says, at one point, "You probably think that I'm a ghost.") and certainly never sets out to marry her. In fact the only evidence of Genjuro's bigamy is Lady Wakasa's claim that they were married the previous night while drunk. Possibly in Vegas.

So okay, perhaps he stays with her longer than he should, but he then pays the price by losing all the profit he made from his pots when he awakes and is accused by the soldiers of being a thieving beggar who has taken a sacred sword from a temple. And what has Miyagi done to deserve a random and brutal killing as she carries her little boy home? Nothing, and maybe that's the point, but if so I'm not sure what the point is. Then she remains with her husband as a voice-over ghost, suggesting that there's nothing wrong with having a ghost wife so long as it's the right ghost.

It seems to me that Genjuro and Miyagi, who are good to each other and to their son, suffer unduly while Tobei and Ohama, whose love is hidden behind bickering, achieve redemption. I can't work it out at all.

Still, this is an interesting 'kaidan', very nicely shot and acted though never scary or even spooky and if Lady Wakasa's ghostliness is meant to be a twist, it's a thoroughly obvious one. The title is usually given in its Japanese form because it's not really translatable: 'monogatari' just means story/stories but 'ugetsu' is usually translated as 'pale and mysterious moon after the rain' which is a pretty specific thing to have a word for.

The film is based on two stories by Akinari Ueda which probably explains why the Tobei/Ohama tale and the Genjuro/Miyagi tale don't really have any connection other than the couples being friends and neighbours, the story wobbling rather uncertainly between all four characters. Director Kenzi Mizoguchi was born in 1898 and made his first film in 1922 after a few years as a cross-dressing actor. Ugetsu Monogatari was one of several films he made primarily to be shown at the Venice Film Festival. He also directed the 1941 Loyal 47 Ronin. Cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa lit Gonza the Spearman, Baby Cart in Peril, Yojimbo, Rashomon and a bundle of Zatoichi movies as well as other films for Mizuguchi.

Also in the cast are Ryosuke Kagawa (Sword of Doom), Shozo Nanbu (Warning from Space) and Ikio Sawamura who was in several Godzilla films as well as Atragon, Frankenstein Conquers the World, The Hidden Fortress, Throne of Blood and two more versions of The Loyal 47 Ronin in 1960 and 1962. It must be something you have to do to get your Japanese Equity card.

MJS rating: B

Ultraman II

Director: Sidney L Caplan
Writers: Sidney L Caplan, Tom Weiner, Steve Kramer, Wally Soul
Producers: Noboru Tsuburaya, Sidney L Caplan
Cast: Barbara Goodson, Steve Kramer, Joe Perry
Country: Japan/USA
Year of release: 1983
Reviewed from: UK VHS

Isn’t it bloody typical? For years I search the video shops of this land for Ultraman tapes (or indeed any other Japanese superheroes). All I ever find is multiple copies of Ultraman: The Alien Invasion, a feature-length re-edit of the first few episodes of the Australian series Ultraman: Towards the Future. I’m not even sure that the second volume of that was released in the UK; I assume it must have been but I’ve never seen it.

So, in the summer of 2005 when I was writing about the character’s history in a feature on Ultraman: The Next for Neo magazine, I stated with some confidence that the Aussie series is the only one ever released in the UK. And while that issue was on sale - while it was on sale! - I came across this 1983 tape of the 1979 animated version, which was simply called The Ultraman. Bloody typical.

The on-screen title, clearly generated after the fact, is Ultraman 2: The Further Adventures of Ultraman which is all very odd because of the four episodes which make up this faux feature, the first is the series’ opener about the creation of 'the' Ultraman himself. So what, if anything, was in the first animated Ultraman ‘film’, if such a beast exists?

Okay, here’s the set-up. In response to some weird writing that appears in the sky, the Earth Defence Force (sometimes called the Earth Defence Organisation) establishes ‘Emergency Science and Defence Squads’ in every ‘zone’ on Earth. Captain Adam (sometimes called Captain Adams) is put in charge of the Eastern Zone ESDS. He agrees to the job provided that he can have at his disposal a super-amazing aircraft (and occasional submarine) called the Super Star (sometimes called the SS13 - as you can, see there’s not much consistency here).

He gathers around him a team of four people: fat comedy sidekick Marconi, tall engineering genius Glen (who is not mentioned by name until the second episode), beautiful Lieutenant Ann Johnson and enigmatic Commander Harris who has been serving aboard Earth Space Station 3. Piloting his one-man spaceship back to Earth, Harris goes through the usual Ultraman scenario: red light blah blah blah lose control blah blah blah giant figure blah blah blah. Ultraman (for it is he) tells Harris that he must go to Earth, using Harris’ body: “The survival of the whole universe, including Earth, depends on it.”

The story proper starts off with an iceberg that crosses the equator without melting and which eventually cracks open to reveal a giant bipedal dinosaur thing which somehow, shortly afterwards, turns into four identical giant bipedal dinosaur things. And let me tell you folks, with their little arms akimbo and mincing gait these are the campest monsters you ever saw. Nevertheless, the crew of the SS13 - which can launch smaller aircraft from itself - succeed in keeping a straight face long enough to defeat the beasties with the assistance of a mysterious giant stranger dressed in red and silver. (Harris has a green star which he places on his forehead to become Ultraman for a limited time. Of course, as is traditional, none of the others have a clue that their giant benefactor is actually their colleague.)

And so, 22 minutes in, we leap to a different episode which takes place just before Ann’s birthday. Marconi and Glen both have crushes on her, of course, but she is most interested in Harris. In this episode a tornado attacks a power station which derives energy from a giant whirlpool. Investigations reveal that at the centre of the tornado is a monster that looks like a five-tentacled heart. After some more flying around, Ultraman appears and gives it a good hiding.

The third story starts with the team enjoying a bit of a holiday but they are swiftly called back into service to investigate a giant red cloud. Glen manages to capture some of it in a bottle, takes it back to the lab and discovers that it coalesces into a living thing when it gets wet. Adams tells him this is very useful information but it’s not really because it has already started raining and the cloud has become a giant pink yeti. The SS13 battles the big beastie until Ultraman appears, dispels the rain clouds and causes the monster to revert to cloud form.

Probably the best of the four stories is the final one, not least because it has a vaguely decent monster, a sort of giant crocodile thing. We start with Marconi destroying this threat by himself using a hand-held rocket launcher at close range - which everyone agrees is very impressive. We then see something that must happen after most kaiju eiga but rarely gets shown: somebody clearing away the bloody great reptilian corpse. The guy supervising the crane and lorry involved turns out to be the Chief of the Space Biology Group who wants the body to study. Oh, and it’s not quite dead (sorry, Marconi). At the same time, a young boy discovers a baby version of the monster and adopts it as a secret pet, despite local warnings that the authorities are looking for a strange creature which could be dangerous. Of course, ‘Baby’ grows at an alarming rate and eventually becomes a full-grown crocodile-thing. Both plots in this episode show some promise and it’s just a shame that there is no apparent connection between them.

Oh, and there’s one really curious thing which I haven’t yet mentioned: the obligatory robot sidekick. In this case it’s a squat, crinkly, alien-looking blob named PDQ who carries a very tiny grey monkey on his shoulder. He makes no significant contribution to any of the stories, is absolutely never explained (nor is his monkey) and really only serves to raise the weirdness quotient of this otherwise distinctly lacklustre cartoon.

Even if you enjoy anime (and as I have observed elsewhere, I can’t stand the stuff) you have to be pretty tolerant to sit through Ultraman II. Stuff like Battle of the Planets may have been fun when we were kids but it doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of 21st century eyes and The Ultraman isn’t even up to Battle of the Planets standards. Frankly it’s barely up to Thunderbirds 2086 standards.

The characters are one-dimensional, the plots arbitrary - not nonsensical enough to be entertaining, just boring - and the animation is as simplistic and basic as the scripts. The music is derivative and obvious, the monsters for the most part are bollocks and Ultraman is hardly in it at all. This is definitely one for completists. I watched the tape once then gave it away for someone else to ‘enjoy.’

The Ultraman/Ultraman II has no connection with the rest of Ultraman continuity, kicking off with an origin story in a world where the Ultra Brothers are completely unknown (much like Ultraman: The Next, but there the similarities end!). In Japan this version of the character was apparently known as Ultraman Jonias or Ultraman Joe and featured in some stage shows as well as the cartoon. It took me a while to track down confirmation but apparently there was a previous western release of animated episodes which was called The Adventures of Ultraman. However, as this ‘sequel’ kicks off with episode one, it’s difficult to see what could have been on the first volume.

Despite the very obvious breaks between episodes, it’s clear from the linking narration that it was added after the shows were combined into this ersatz feature. The ‘film’ finishes with a series of still images which presumably were designed to play under the closing credits of the episodes if the show was broadcast. There was evidently a Region 1 DVD release of this a while back but that is now deleted.

The voice artists are Barbara Goodson (who was the voice of Rita Repulsa in the early series of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and both Power Rangers films, and also contributed voices to Akira, Vampire Hunter D, Robotech, Digimon, Cowboy Bebop and stacks of other interchangeable anime), Steve Kramer (who wrote the English script for Zeram), Tom Weiner (also credited as narrator) and Joe Perry. Director/writer/producer Sidney L Caplan apparently also produced Bert I Gordon’s Necromancy and Reginald Le Borg’s So Evil, My Sister. The film is presented as ‘produced by Tsuburaya Production Company Ltd and Associates Entertainment International’; Noboru Tsuburaya’s credit as producer is the only Japanese name to be seen.

MJS rating: C-

[Addendum: Would you Adam and Eve it? Less than a month later, I found a 1987 reissue of this film so it was actually released twice in this country. - MJS]

Ultraman: The Next

Director: Kazuya Konaka
Writer: Keiichi Hasegawa
Producer: Kiyoshi Suzuki
Cast: Tetsuya Bessho, Kenya Osumi, Kyoko Toyama
Country: Japan
Year of release: 2004
Reviewed from: screener DVD

Watching this latest incarnation of the long-running movie/TV series, I couldn't help thinking about the similarities between Ultraman and Doctor Who. Both franchises started in the 1960s ('63 for the Doctor, '66 for the big silver guy) and star an alien who comes to Earth where he befriends and protects humans, while also continuing his adventures in outer space. Both characters have 'superhuman' abilities of some sort and super-advanced technology without being conventional superheroes and can pass for human when necessary.

Both series have changed constantly over the years, including not only their lead actor but the nature and identity of the lead character, even though that lead character has in other ways remained constant (and both have experimented with teaming up different incarnations of the lead character in various combinations). Both are primarily TV franchises which have spun off into films, books, comics, stage shows and other media as well as inspiring plenty of toys and collectables. They are, on the one hand, children's series yet enjoyed by many adults - not merely for nostalgia value - and have attracted a cult following outside their country of origin where the subtleties and intentions of the stories can be widely mis- and re-interpreted.

On the negative side, Ultraman and Doctor Who have both become bogged down - the former with repetition and formula, the latter with continuity and back story. They limit themselves by catering increasingly for established fans at the expense of those coming to the franchises anew. And their effects, especially their monster effects, have become outdated and a little embarrassing - or at least, are viewed as such by many people who don't actually watch the series, which is almost as bad.

In 2005 Doctor Who returned after a 16-year-hiatus (the longest that Ultraman has ever been absent from the screen, I think, is four years) with Christopher Eccleston in the lead role. The new version skipped over a lot of the old continuity without contradicting it or throwing it out, leaving viewers pleasantly uncertain/unbothered about whether this was a sequel (effectively, a continuation of the old series) or a reinterpretation (basically starting from scratch again). The essential premise remained unchanged, successfully fulfilling both the concept of that premise as it existed in the wider cultural zeitgeist and the concept as understood by the hardcore fans. Sufficient iconography was there to please everyone, no matter how detailed or vague their memories - TARDIS, Daleks, sonic screwdriver - without getting in the way of those for whom the series was something completely new.

Around the same time, the character of Ultraman was similarly reinvented in this movie which hit Japanese cinemas in December 2004 - and with, in this reviewer's opinion, similar success. What do we know about the Doctor? He's an alien, a 'Time Lord', who travels in time and space using a spaceship that looks like a blue telephone box (called the TARDIS) which is bigger inside than out. He has a young female companion with him in a strictly platonic relationship, and of all the races he encounters the most deadly are his sworn enemies, the Daleks.

And what do we know about Ultraman? He is an alien who comes to Earth and somehow melds with a military or quasi-military individual. When danger threatens, usually personified by one or more giant monsters, that individual can transform into Ultraman who is a giant humanoid, clad in a silver and red outfit including a helmet with blank staring eyes. Ultraman is never seen without this outfit which may actually be part of him - is that really a helmet or is it his head? He is handy in a fight against any giant monster, whether grappling one-to-one or blasting off rays. But he can only exist for a short time and must return to human form when a light on his chest starts flashing to indicate that his strength is nearly exhausted.

The more recent series - Ultraman Tiga, Ultraman Dyna and Ultraman Gaia - sought to reinvent the franchise from scratch and although they were evidently more successful than the rather poor 1996 Doctor Who telemovie, nevertheless they may end up being viewed as some sort of 'alternative' franchise. On the other hand, the new TV series Ultraman Max (featuring episodes directed by Gamera helmer Shusuke Kaneko and Takashi Miike!) which is in production as I write this in mid-2005 apparently returns the character closer to his roots and it could be this movie which becomes the equivalent of the Paul McGann Who film.

So what is Ultraman: The Next all about? Tetsuya Bessho (Godzilla vs Mothra, Parasite Eve) plays air force pilot Lieutenant Shunichi Maki, who flies an F-15 Eagle and whose nearly-six-year-old son Keimu (Ryohei Hirota) suffers from a terminal blood disease that means he may not see his seventh birthday. Understandably wanting to spend more time with his little boy while he has the chance, Maki retires from the air force and takes a job piloting a light aircraft for private travellers, operating from a small local airport.

Just before Maki retires, he and his wingman Captain Kurashima are scrambled to intercept a mysterious radar blip travelling at incredible speed. Kurashima's instruments go haywire and force him to abort but Maki carries on and finds that the UFO is a glowing red light which envelopes his plane. He finds himself seeming to float in some sort of glowing tunnel where he can see a giant humanoid. (The tunnel effect is, by coincidence, basically the same as that used in the title sequence of Doctor Who!)

Maki's Eagle explodes and he is believed dead, but he later stumbles into a roadside diner, tattered and bruised but without any serious injuries, and with no idea how he survived.

Once into civvy street, Maki's life settles down until a passenger on one of his flights (who has been secretly following and photographing him) pulls a gun and forces him to divert to a nearby highway, which has been specially closed by the military in order for his plane to land. He is then driven to a top secret military base where he is interrogated about what really happened on that mysterious flight. Back at the airport, Keimu waits for his daddy with Maki's wife Yoko (Nae Yuki) and their joy when his plane lands turns to dismay when they find that the pilot is not Maki but Kurashima, accompanied by two soldiers. Kurashima can't tell them anything about where Maki is, but he can at least confirm that he is alive.

That female passenger who pulled a gun and is now interrogating Maki is a military scientist named Sara Mizuhara (Kyoko Toyama: An Obsession) who works for an anti-terrorist organisation called the BCST. She explains that a similar (but blue) light was reported in the seabed location of a downed UFO a few weeks earlier and had similarly affected the minisub pilot who was sent to investigate it: the sub was destroyed but he somehow survived. Archived security camera footage shows this poor soul, Takafumi Udo (Kenya Osumi), in a cell where he can be seen to be gradually mutating into some sort of reptilian beast. He later escaped, drawing to himself and absorbing hundreds of lizards which enabled him to grow and mutate, eventually blasting out of the base. We actually saw this in a dimly lit prologue, with Sara unable to fire at the monster as Udo's human face reappears briefly.

With the monster (codenamed 'The One', and still played by Osumi inside the costume; interestingly he is actually a professional dancer) now on the loose somewhere, the military are naturally keen to contain and study Maki as his development may give them some clue about how to defeat The One. He is codenamed 'The Next' - which explains the movie's apparently ungrammatical title - and held in a fortified underground cell. When The One comes calling, apparently attracted by some sort of psychic link with The Next, something takes over Maki and he is able to break out of his cell, then grows to about twenty feet tall and mutates into some sort of silver-clad alien being.

It's a measure of the maturity of the film-makers that we are nearly halfway through the film before we get our first sight of Ultraman (and that the character is never referred to by that name until right at the end of the film, when a news reporter comes up with it).

The two large (but interestingly, not giant) aliens fight as Sara looks on, incredulous. At one point, she is about to be thrown aside by The One's lengthy, powerful tail but The Next throws himself in the way. Eventually The One smashes its way out of the building, as a light on The Next's chest starts to flash and he collapses into a heap, morphing and shrinking back into the form of Maki.

There are further revelations between this point and the climactic return match, but they mostly concern the people, not the monsters. We never find out what The One and The Next actually are, or where they come from, or what sort of hold they may have over their respective hosts. We do later see Udo once again in human form, further cementing the similarities between the two aliens, although the alien-human connection seems to be different with Udo/The One. The implication is that two warring entities have come to Earth and are continuing an existing fight, with humanity now caught up in the middle. This gives the film a strong narrative thread which stands alone without requiring any foreknowledge of Ultraman's past.

Where the movie really scores is in exploring the way that all this impacts on the lives of Maki, Sara and everyone else who is directly or peripherally involved, which I have always held to be a large part of what good science fiction is about. Take your science fictional premise - whether it's aliens or artificial intelligence or time travel or nanotechnology or whatever - and show how that would affect people. (The new Doctor Who does this terrifically too. For the first time, we get to see how the sudden 'disappearance' of the Doctor's companion affects those closest to her.) We learn more about Sara and discover why she didn't kill Udo/The One when she had the chance, and there is redemption for Kurashima who feels guilty over his collusion with his friend's kidnappers. There are some great minor characters too, including the boss of the airport where Maki works and a junior military officer who challenges Sara over her actions which have resulted in the deaths of some of his men. When did you last see a monster movie where somebody was actually bothered that a squad of miltary grunts had been killed by the beastie?

Although the 'terminally ill son' subplot gets a wee bit soap opera-esque at times, it gives the character of Maki greater depth and clearly defined motivation, both in seeking normality and in resolving to accept the responsibility thrust on him to aid the military organisation which kidnapped him. But more than this we get some real insight into what it might be like to actually be Ultraman's host - a concept which of course implies that Ultraman himself is a form of parasite. Maki doesn't know that he is (or could be) the defender of mankind against alien attack. All he knows is that under certain circumstances he loses consciousness and/or control and something alien (in every sense) takes him over for its own ends. We do later see Ultraman save a mother and child from a collapsing building, but we are left to make up our own minds whether this is the action of a sympathetic human father (Maki is the first ever Ultraman host to have a wife and kid) or a philanthropic alien - or some melding of the two.

Ultraman/The Next may be a superhero (he isn't really one in this movie, except in the broadest possible sense, but he could become one) but Maki isn't any sort of hero at all, super or otherwise. He's just some poor guy who is being used by something beyond his, or anybody's, understanding - and also being used by the military. The great irony lies in the fact that Maki was a military man himself, a terrific Eagle pilot, but he tried to escape the responsibilities of that life, only to have something bigger and worse thrust upon him (and by proxy, upon his family) against his will. It's his acceptance of this, but only on his own terms as much as he can (for example, he briefly escapes his captors when he hears that his son is in hospital) which makes him an ersatz hero, not his uncontrollable ability to grow to 50 metres high and fire energy blasts from his forearms.

The difference between this version and previous incarnations is summed up perfectly in a line that a shaken, confused, possibly even terrified Maki says after that first big fight with The One: "I became a monster." In fact there are numerous dialogue references to Maki's new giant alter ego as a 'monster' - and none as a 'hero'.

And yes, Ultraman does grow to his traditional giant size before the final battle, to match the now-similarly enormous The One, although there is an unusual scene at one stage where the good guy, even at 20 feet or so, is dwarfed by the newly grown monster, something that has rarely if ever been seen before.

As well as a script which brings new depth and breadth to both plot and characterisation, Ultraman: The Next also benefits from good special effects, including a CGI Ultraman for the climactic flying sequences (these were directed by Ichiroh Itano whose anime credits include Urusei Yasura, Macross and Megazone 23). Those who consider anything less than state-of-the-Hollywood-art effects to be 'cheap' will no doubt bring their prejudices to bear and still mock, but this movie is a huge step up from 1970s/1980s series that many people in the West might recall. There are still limitations in the suitmation; for example The One has a quite long but completely rigid neck - the actor's head is between the costume's shoulders - which means that the monster often tends to not look at where it is going or what it is doing. This is a shame because the head itself is an excellent animatronic effect with moving jaw and eyes. If a flexible neck couldn't be achieved on the budget available, then the neck should have been shortened to almost nothing. It's a design problem rather than a construction one.

On the whole, however, The One is a terrific monster. There is a marvellous sequence towards the end of the film when he draws to himself, and absorbs, hundreds of crows. As with the lizards (and rats in another sequence) this causes him to grow and mutate, in this case sprouting a massive pair of wings in preparation for the climactic aerial showdown with The Next. In striking a heraldic pose, and in another shot when he bursts out of the ground, The One reminded me of the recent Thai monster flick Garuda, though this is probably just coincidence. The removal/destruction of these wings, incidentally, is arguably the highlight of the film, a pair of successive images which form a real 'double wow' moment.

Ultraman's own costume is fantastic. It looks enough like the (many) previous incarnations to be recognisable but has been given a 21st century make-over, resembling a suit of body armour or an android body. As mentioned above, I subscribe to the theory that what we see as a 'costume' is actually the being himself, and this stylish, effective design plays to that idea much more than the old silver ski-suits with their baggy wrinkles at hips and shoulders ever did. We do, incidentally, finally get to see the iconic crossed-arms pose but like so much else here a rationale has been found for this. It's a way for the character to steady his forearms and blast off his energy bolts accurately. He doesn't just stand like that because That's What Ultraman Does and the fanboys expect it. Similarly, the flashing light on the character's chest, which has always previously been an entirely gratuitous 'ticking clock' to add tension (and sometimes to keep effects sequences to an affordable length!) is finally given a genuine reason to exist in this movie.

Another interesting point of note is that there is very little miniature work on show. Two of the three main Ultraman-vs-monster fights (monster-vs-monster?) actually take place indoors and the third is mostly green-screened (very effectively, using low-angled shots) against real buildings, before shifting up into the sky. The camera is frequently positioned at human eye-level, looking up at the two giants, which works wonders. There is a tendency for effects unit directors on kaiju eiga to place their camera at the eye-level of their protagonists which often hinders the suspension of disbelief required to accept that these are giant beings, not just two men in costumes. Similarly, many effects directors on these pictures don't bother to overcrank the camera during action shots, which is essential to slow down the movement slightly and give these giant beings weight; it's done properly here. Ultraman: The Next is a film made by people who have looked at current and previous productions within this genre and learned from them, without ditching what made them great in the first place.

This is director Kazuya Konaka’s fourth Ultraman movie, following Ultraman Zearth 2, Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna and Ultraman Gaia: The Battle in Hyperspace (which was actually a three-way team-up between Messrs Gaia, Tiga and Dyna). He also directed the thoughtful sci-fi picture Dimension Travellers and ghost story Shigatsu Kaidan. Keiichi Hasegawa’s other scriptwork includes the aforementioned Gaia/Tiga/Dyna picture, various episodes of the Ultraman Tiga TV series and the Godzilla kaiju-fest GMK: All Monsters Attack. The cinematography is very dark but that is more likely a problem with the timecoded DVD-R screener that I watched rather than the work of DP Shinichi Ooka. Yuichi Kikuchi (GMK: All Monsters Attack, Godzilla X Mechagodzilla) is credited as special effects director.

I would love to see more Ultraman like this, although by all accounts Ultraman Max restores such temporarily absent elements as the character’s origins in Galaxy M-78 (and slightly baggy silver ski-suits). Maybe production company Tsuburuya have decided that pleasing the hardcore fans is the way to go. But given how many times the character has been reinvented over the years, I would like to think that there is sufficient room for both sorts of Ultraman.

Being picky, my biggest problem with the film is the music. I recall a meeting with the UK Sci-Fi Channel in the mid-1990s, trying to persuade them to show Ultraman and the biggest stumbling block (apart from the fact that the channel was only prepared to pay peanuts) was the martial, orchestral music, which the channel said would need to be replaced with something more techno. Unfortunately (or possibly fortunately) nothing ever came of that meeting. In this film, the music (credited to Tak Matsumoto aka 'B'z') is rockier and generally very good but unfortunately his 'Theme from Ultraman' which plays whenever the F-15s appear on screen (and that’s quite often during the first 20 minutes or so) is a stirring pastiche of the Top Gun theme which rapidly becomes as irritating as it is derivative.

That’s a shame, but not nearly enough to spoil a corking movie, and most of the other music is great. (The closing credits play under an English language song by Matsumoto's group TMG called 'Never Good-bye', written by bassist Jack Blades, formerly with Night Ranger and Damn Yankees, and sung by Eric Martin from Mr Big - who must be a kaiju fan because his 2003 solo album was called Destroy All Monsters.)

I can't claim complete familiarity with every incarnation of Ultraman - God knows there have been enough of them - but I really did enjoy Ultraman: The Next hugely. It works not just as a new version of a cinematic/televisual icon, and not just as a terrific sci-fi romp, but as one of the new breed of more sensible kaiju eiga. If you can accept the basics, not least that a fifty-metre tall humanoid could exist and move freely without collapsing under his own weight because of the vastly increased size-to-mass ratio, then what you will find here is a well-written, well-made, exciting, thought-provoking science fiction adventure which explores its premise and builds to a rip-roaring finale.

It's not your parents' Ultraman.

MJS rating: A

Village of Doom

Director: Noboru Tanaka
Writer: Takuya Nishioka
Cast: Masato Furuoya, Izumi Hara, Misako Tanaka
Year of release: 1983
Country: Japan
Reviewed from: screener DVD (Artsmagic)

This has to be one of the most obscure films that Artsmagic has so far released - and I should know because as usual I compiled bio-filmographies of director and cast for the film. Well, I found out about the individual people, but a thorough search of my own files, the internet and the BFI library turned up absolutely nothing on the film itself.

So I sat down to watch the screener disc with absolutely no preconceptions whatsoever. What sort of film is this? A horror movie, an action flick, a drama? It’s a bit of all of them I suppose. It’s a revenge movie is what it is, but unlike that most high profile of recent revenge flicks Kill Bill - which is pretty much non-stop revenge from start to finish with the occasional flashback for justification - Village of Doom (Ushimitsu no Mura) is 75 per cent justification and only kicks into full-on revenge mode in the last half-hour or so.

Masato Furuoya, more recently seen in spooky TV series such as Juni Inagawa’s House of Horror and Tengoku e no Kaidan, stars as Tsugio Inumaru in this WW2-set tale. While other young men go off to fight in Manchuria, sensitive, intelligent Tsugio is left in the village because he’s not fit enough for the army. This has its apparent advantages - with so many husbands away, it’s not long before he loses his virginity to an older woman - but all that Tsugio feels is shame.

He lives with his grandmother Han (Izumi Hara: The Magic Serpent) and the two of them are soft touches who frequently lend money to others, unlikely to ever see it back. The isolated village, whose only link with the rest of the world is a rickety railway line, is an insular little place where cousins marry cousins and strangers aren’t tolerated.

Struggling to retain his honour, Tsugio finds that those around him have none. He is tortured by guilt over his occasional flings with other men’s wives and pain at his inability to relate to girls his own age, and a desperate attempt to pass the army physical leaves him feeling even worse. So he goes to the city and buys a gun. And when the village policeman finds and confiscates it, he goes back and buys lots of guns. And swords. And knives. And combat gear of all sorts.

And at the 83-minute mark, the tension which has been slowly building bursts and Tsugio makes his way around the village, coolly and brutally killing almost everyone he meets in a flurry of bullets and blades.

Director Noboru Tanaka (Watcher in the Attic, A Woman Called Sada Abe) worked under Kurosawa on films like Yojimbo before becoming a leading director of ‘roman porno’ soft porn films in the 1970s. Star Furuoya committed suicide in March 2003. The other cast members include Isao Natsuyagi (Tidal Wave, Virus, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge), Renji Ishibashi (Roningai, Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell, Tetsuo the Iron Man and stacks of Kinji Fukasaku and Takashi Miike films), Misako Tanaka (Gonza the Spearman) and Shino Ikenami (Evil Dead Trap 2).

Fascinating and intense, Village of Doom is a look inside the psyche of a troubled teen entirely unfettered by modern western concerns. It’s beautifully shot and elegantly written, but may just be too slow-moving for many potential viewers, because until that 83-minute point, it’s entirely unclear where this is going.

MJS rating: B

Wild Zero

Director: Tetsuro Takeuchi
Writers: Tetsuro Takeuchi, Satoshi Takaki
Producers: Tetsuro Takeuchi, Kaichie Furata
Cast: Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf, Drum Wolf, Masashi Endo
Year of release: 1999
Country: Japan
Reviewed from: advance UK DVD (Artsmagic)

This is mighty crazy rock’n’roll zombie jet movie super ace, yes? Yes, very much so indeed OK!

Wild Zero has no pretensions. It is not great art, not great cinema, it is simply unadulterated fun, filled with zombies, guns, motorbikes and constant cries of “Lock’n’loll!” It’s bonkers and it’s brilliant.

Guitar Wolf are a (real) three-piece Japanese band who play Ramones-esque punk rock. The three members are called Guitar Wolf (who rides a souped-up motorbike), Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf (who follow him in a car). All three are deeply cool - all quiffs and leather jackets - though there is a wonderfully understated subtext in this film that Bass and Drum both think Guitar is faintly embarrassing.

Anyway, we kick off with an enormous fleet of golden flying saucers heading for Earth, a fairly blatant crib from Mars Attacks!, and we see Guitar Wolf’s biggest fan, Ace (Masashi Endo, who does the voice of Scorpos in the original Japanese version of Beast Wars) grooving away at one of their gigs. Ace wanders into a tense, armed stand-off between Guitar and a crooked promoter named Captain (Makoto Inamiya: Zero Woman Returns) and in return for his help is given a whistle that will summon the band whenever he is in trouble.

Shortly afterwards, Ace stops his small motorbike at a service station where he accidentally foils a hamfisted hold-up and meets a cute girl named Tobyo (Kwancharu Shitichai). Further down the road he comes across a bunch of zombies attacking a yakuza boss and roars back to the service station to rescue Tobyo before she suffers the same fate. Ace summons Guitar Wolf, and also mixed up in the action are a geeky young couple who were two-thirds of the attempted hold-up team, and a sexy arms dealer who has the most extraordinary arsenal of automatic weaponry (the yakuza boss was on his way to meet her when the zombies attacked).

There is no real attempt at explaining the zombies. Presumably it is connected in some way with the golden UFOs which reappear briefly at the end before being defeated by a sword(!), but there is also talk of a crashing meteorite. In fact, there’s not much attempt to explain anything. What there is, is hordes of zombies in pretty good make-up and subjected to plenty of highly enjoyable digital head-exploding effects. And fast cars, motorbikes and the occasional Humvee. And leather jackets, quiffs and lock’n’loll!

To add to the chaos, the enraged (and injured) Captain tracks down the band - and Tobyo reveals a rather surprising secret. There is also a significant, if somewhat unexpected, plea for tolerance and love

Wild Zero is a hilarious, nonsensical ride through sci-fi and rock’n’roll cliches with its tongue not so much in its cheek as ripped out and waved around. It’s fast, it’s funny, it’s gory, it’s sexy, it’s crazy and somehow - don’t ask me how - it all works.

Grab yourself a slice of Wild Zero now, say goodbye to all your critical faculties, and wallow in an hour and a half of LOCK’N’LOLL ZOMBIE JETU MOVIE!!!! Yes!!!

MJS rating: A-

Sabu

Director: Takashi Miike
Writer: Hiroshi Takeyama
Producer: Jun Haraguchi, Tsukasa Ikegami
Cast: Satoshi Tsumabuki, Tatsuya Fujiwara, Kazue Fukiishi
Year of release: 2002
Country: Japan
Reviewed from: R1 DVD (Artsmagic)

Although Takashi Miike may be notorious for the broad variety of films he has made in his packed directorial career, nevertheless Sabu stands out as unusual. In fact it's unusual by being relatively normal, certainly by the standards of the man who brought us Ichi the Killer, Audition, Fudoh: The New Generation and Happiness of the Katakuris (all of which were photographed, like this film, by cinematographer Hideo Yamamoto). It's the only historical drama which Miike has (so far) helmed, an adaptation of a novel by Yamamoto Shugoro which was made to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Nagoya Television.

Satoshi Tsumabuki (Tomie: Rebirth) plays Eiji, sentenced to hard labour on an island prison for stealing from his employer. Tatsuya Fujiwara (Battle Royale) is his childhood friend and colleague Sabu who believes in Eiji's innocence and tries to find out who framed him. And that's about it in terms of plot but there's a great deal more in terms of character. For his first few months on the island, Eiji doesn't say a word. And when Sabu asks around about his friend - they grew up together in an orphanage and were apprenticed together to a maker of paper doors - he is warned not investigate any further. Complicating matters slightly is the boys' shared attraction to Osue (Kazue Fukiishi: Samurai Resurrection).

The bulk of the film switches back and forth between Sabu's bewilderment, failing to understand the local politics and machiavellian going-on which surround his friend, and Eiji's life in prison where he is initially rejected as a loner but gradually becomes respected. There's a terrific scene when a destructive storm hits the island and the prisoners are granted their freedom in order to allow them to survive, yet Eiji rallies them and leads an effort to save the buildings and put out the raging fires.

Though there is a certain amount of violence, directed with Miike's expected realism and grittiness, and the involvement of some organised crime, this is not in any way a horror movie or yakuza picture. It is beautifully shot (and presented in terrific widescreen) and shows that Miike can direct wonderfully without any sort of gimmick. It's not like anything else he has done (at least, any of his other pictures that I have seen) but in that sense it resembles his other pictures in that most distinctive of Miike-esque ways - by not being like any of his other pictures.

Artsmagic's disc contains the two-hour TV version rather than the shorter theatrical edit and is packed with extras including interviews, promotional materials and Yours Truly's bio-filmographies of cast and director. They have for some reason used the Miike biography I wrote for Rainy Dog rather than the one I did for Sabu, but it's only one paragraph different…

MJS rating: A-

Pyrokinesis

Director: Shusuke Kaneko
Writers: Kodai Yamada, Masahiro Yokotani, Shusuke Kaneko
Producers: Toru Shibata, Toshiaki Harada, Kaori Momoi, Hidenori Tokuyama
Cast: Akiko Yada, Hideaki Ito
Year of release: 2000
Country: Japan
Reviewed from: UK DVD (Artsmagic)

Films about pyrokinetics are few and far between. Firestarter of course (and its recent mini-series sequel), the under-rated Specimen and the dire Nice Girls Don’t Explode. Shusuke Kaneko’s Pyrokinesis (aka Cross Fire) is easily the best of the bunch.

For the first half hour this looks like it might be another Carrie-esque tale of a lonely girl with unusual powers. Junko (Akiko Yada: Mai in the TV versions of Ring and Rasen) is befriended by her colleague Tada (Hideaki Ito: The Princess Blade) and meets his younger sister Yukie - who is kidnapped and murdered by a gang of youths. A lawyer’s arrogant son, Kogure (Hidenori Tokuyama: Oshikiri) is accused but let off, and Junko offers to help Tada take revenge using her special power.

As killings continue - both by the gang (for, it transpires, snuff movies) and of the gang members, the police attempt to make some kind of sense of the situation. Detective Makihara (Ryuki Harada: Izo) suspects psychokinesis; his colleague Detective Ishizu (Kaori Momoi: Kagemusha) is initially sceptical but gradually comes to believe.

But there are wheels within wheels and fires within fires in this story, as Junko is approached by Kido (Yu Yoshizawa) ,a young man with his own, non-pyrokinetic, ESP powers, and a young orphan girl Kaori (Masami Nagasawa: Godzilla: Tokyo SOS, Godzilla: Final Wars) is discovered to have similar abilities. It transpires that Makihara has his own personal agenda for believing in pyrokinesis and investigating Junko - but more than that, there are multiple levels of police corruption at work, possibly involving a mysterious secret organisation called The Guardians.

The excellent script is supported by Kaneko’s superb direction. He sensibly holds back on the effects for the first part of the story, but gradually introduces bigger and bigger fire effects - and some truly grizzly deaths. Yet water is also a key motif and a brief romantic scene in the snow is shot magically from above as individual snowflakes melt a few feet above Junko’s head. Possibly because of his experience on giant monster movies (the 1990s Gamera trilogy and 2001’s GMK: All Monsters Attack), Kaneko is as adept at moving the camera in the vertical plane as the horizontal and there are some beautifully composed crane shots. It’s also interesting to see a squad of riot police moving like a giant reptile.

The effects never overwhelm the story but are sensibly used - both real fire and CGI flame effects - and integral. We care about the characters, even as some of them turn out to be not who we thought. Pyrokinesis is a fantastic modern horror film which should be watched by anybody interested in Japanese movies and, frankly, anybody who isn’t.

That said, Artsmagic’s presentation is sadly not up to their usual standard. The anamorphic picture is terrific but the disc’s extra features betray both laziness and carelessness. Filmographies for the principal cast have simply been cut and pasted from the notoriously inaccurate IMDB, reproducing that site’s inconvenient reverse chronology and predilection for nonexistent alternative titles. A bio for Shusuke Kaneko not only fails to mention his Godzilla movie but is apparently missing several paragraphs. It jumps from 1985 straight to 1999, thereby losing any mention of Necronomicon or the Gamera films. Even worse, the outer sleeve inexcusably misspells Shusuke’s name as ‘Kanedo.’ Some stills and promo material round out the extras; what, no trailer?

Despite this, Pyrokinesis is wholeheartedly and unreservedly recommended as one of the best serious horror movies of recent years. (Oh, and watch out for Kaneko’s friend, Fangoria’s Japanese correspondent Norman England, in a cameo as ‘suprised westerner in restaurant’!)

MJS rating: A

[Since first posting this review, Artsmagic have asked me to compile biographies and filmographies for their future releases! - MJS]