Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009)

Directed by: Naoyuki Tomomatsu, Yoshihiro Nishimura

Writers: Shungicu Ushida (manga), Naoyuki Tomomatsu

Yoshihiro Nishimura has been one of my favorite directors ever since I saw the wonderful Tokyo Gore Police. I definitely prefer him to his colleague Noboru Iguchi, who (with the exception of The Machine Girl, which I loved) reaches for vulgar toilet humor too often, and besides, in my opinion, he harbours a bit unhealthy obsession with human ass.

 

Strictly speaking, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is primarily a Naoyuki Tomomatsu movie, but Nishimura is credited as a co-director and he also did the special effects, so he had a huge influence on the visual side of the movie, if not for the story. Speaking of Tomomatsu, his name wasn't familiar to me before, but after this movie I'll give him a chance, though titles like Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead and Eating Schoolgirls don't promise something that would be my cup of tea.

 

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is a successful J-sploitation splatterfest, which works simply because it's so damn entertaining. If you've seen any of Nishimura's films, you'll promptly find yourself on familiar ground when some cheerful pop music starts to play while fountains of blood flow and severed body parts fly around in slow-motion.

 

Basically, it's a story of a high-school love triangle, where a poor young boy called Jyugon is sandwiched between Keiko, the vice principal's daughter and (I guess) the most popular girl at school, and Monami, an extremely cute newcomer with mysterious background, with both of them wanting him to be their boyfriend forever. So, why the hell did I just call him "poor"? Well, for one, Monami is a vampire and wants to turn him into one, and Keiko is a bitch, at least at the beginning. Then she dies, is revived by her father (who, in his free time, is an insane Dr. Frankenstein wannabe) and turned into a horrifying cut-and-paste monster made of body parts stolen from different people. And she's still a bitch! Jyugon chooses the lesser of two evils, so he and Monami are forced to fight the disturbingly enhanced Keiko and her mad father throughout the rest of the movie.

 

As with other similar films, the plot is just there to serve as an excuse (heh, like we would need one) for hilarious over-the-top violence, body parts abuse and colourful characters which never get boring. To list everything would be impossible (not to mention undesirable), but some of the highlights are a wrist cut competition, a club of black wannabe girls (this alone in America would probably put the author in jail for a long time due to racism), vice principal who dresses like a witch doctor, inventive body part combinations (a severed arm used as a propeller, eyeballs instead of nipples, to mention just a few trivial examples) and of course endless mutilations whose crowd pleasing potential is immense.

 

It's recommended to see this in the company of your male friends, especially if you can pair it with a similar but longer film, like Nishimura's Helldriver. You can also play it to your girlfriend if you want to get dumped quickly. Whatever you do, don't miss it.

The ABCs of Death (2012)

Directed by: See the review

Writers: See above

You've all watched numerous films that consist of three (sometimes four) stories, but sure as heck you haven't seen twenty six different stories in one movie before! Apparently, some producer, whose name I forgot, came up with a brilliant idea to make some kind of horror alphabet - for each letter of the alphabet one short story whose title is a single word beginning with that letter. Each story was done by a different director - they were given only the letter and the title and of course the story were entirely up to them.

 

Good thing about this concept is that stories follow one another so rapidly that the movie hardly ever gets boring. The bad thing - well, it's not the fault of the concept, but the fact is that today it's hard to find twenty six (or even six) good horror directors to fill the space. Of course, it's impossible to please everyone - I could bitch about the absence of Alexandre Aja, David Bruckner, Marcus Dunstan, Darren Lynn Bousman, Hideo Nakata etc., but on the other hand I have to be pleased with the presence of Yoshihiro Nishimura and Ti West (even though he failed miserably). Even if some of them were present, there's no guarantee that they wouldn't have failed miserably like Ti West.

 

OK, anyway, on to the movie itself. I won't even try to describe each story separately (I've forgotten most of them, anyway), so just a few general remarks: The quality in general is below average and the lack of good ideas is horrifying. There are no vampires, werewolves, Japanese long haired scary ghosts (even though at least four or five directors are Japanese), or even ghosts of any kind, no decent (post)apocalyptic story (even though the first one is titled A is for Apocalypse) etc. What have we instead? Two stories are actually meta-movies about their directors' lack of inspiration, at least three of them heavily feature toilets, one is about farting (directed, not surprisingly, by Noboru Iguchi), one contains masturbation competition (this one is actually well done, but it's sick beyond words), one about (and titled) orgasm, many other aren't even horror and... you get the idea. If "toilet humor" is an appropriate term to describe most of today's comedies, then "toilet horror" is sure fighting for its place in our favorite genre.

 

The style and quality vary considerably, there are "normal" stories, some of them are animated, one contains stop motion animation, some (like O is for Orgasm) are so heavily stylized that it's hard to tell what the hell's going on, some feature traditional Japanese bloodbath insanity, but it's all at best watchable and hardly anything will make you go "Wow!", except...

 

... for better or worse, there is a story called D is for Dogfight, directed by Marcel Sarmiento (previously known for Deadgirl, which was an OK movie with an interesting idea, but not terribly spectacular), which is so above everything else story-wise and execution-wise that it's simply unbelievable. It's like putting Akira Kurosawa next to Kevin Smith. The story is about some guy, obviously a prisoner of some kind, who is forced to fight with a particularly vicious dog. Some nasty people are watching, placing bets, etc. So, the fight starts, the dog is biting the man, the man is hitting the dog, you know, standard stuff, and then... something clicks between the two of them and we have what's pretty damn close to a best ending ever. I was literally overwhelmed with joy and wanted to kiss Sarmiento (in a totally non-gay way, of course) on the forehead. Story aside, you simply won't believe how well this was made. Shot almost entirely in slow motion, it features probably the most realistic man-animal fight scenes ever, with close-ups of dogs teeth biting the man's flesh, but also of the dog's head being hit by the man, all of which will probably make you extremely uncomfortable for all the right reasons. Moreover, without a single spoken word, the story will make you feel sympathy for both the man and the dog, which makes the ending even more brilliant.

 

So, what's the problem? Well, the stories go in alphabetic order, so this one is the fourth from the beginning. That means that after something that's probably one of the best short movies ever made, something so seriously and professionally devised and executed, after that glimpse of brilliance you have to sit through twenty two mostly lame half-assed uninspired attempts. It would have been better if Sarmiento hadn't been there to remind us what the true greatness looks like.