House of Dead

It seems like an inordinate number of bizarre cult type films are coming out of Japan these days – to the point where mainstream films seem to be getting less and less attention outside of the country. Certainly, it is these smaller films of late that have captured the imagination of many western film fans with movies like Battlefield Baseball, Cromartie High, Wild Zero, Executive Koala, Calamari Wrestler and Yaji and Kita finding audiences, foreign distribution and acceptance. These films don't really fall into any specific genre – they simply survive on their amusing weirdness and no holds bar imagination. They often take place in the real world but they create rule sets that are absurd and totally unrealistic and then play it perfectly straight – zombies killing on the baseball field, singing samurai homosexuals on motorcycles, a giant squid in the ring, gorillas attending class, a koala bear in a business suit going to the office – are all part of the natural order of things in these worlds. "Oh! My Zombie Mermaid" can certainly take its place among these films for its absolute sense of absurdity and wonderful tongue in cheek humor.

Like many of these cult films, it is played in total seriousness by the characters but has spoof written on it in loud chuckling letters. At a high level you could say this is a combination of Battlefield Baseball, Game of Death and Splash (and let's throw in Zatoichi towards the end), but it's not an easy film to describe its essence because on the surface it could sound like an almost normal film, but it's the treatment that is so silly. The action is over the top crazy and the melodrama is just a wonderful parody of the over abundance of corny schmaltz that Japanese films can be full of. At least I assume it's a parody – with this film it's rather hard to be sure if it's trying to be serious or not. Japanese wrestler Shishio (Shinya Hashimoto – a real life wrestler) has built his wife Asami's (Urata Awata) dream house for her and his family and makes the mistake of throwing a house warming party for his wrestler friends. His arch enemy Ichijoh (Nicholas Pettas) shows up uninvited and taunts Shishio for killing his brother in the ring and this leads to an all-inclusive brawl that pretty much demolishes the house – and what is left intact is blown up minutes later by an explosive device set inside. The wife who was upstairs happily playing the piano and singing "If I were to build a house I would build a small house" through all of this is badly hurt and sent to the hospital – but her recovery seems underway when mysteriously her skin begins to peel off – revealing . . . scales underneath – the dreaded Mermaid bacteria – soon she can only squeak in a high pitched voice and begins to develop a fin. Shishio doesn't care if his wife is turning into a fish though – he loves her no matter how scaly she gets. With expenses piling up and a hope that building a new house will cure his wife, Shishio accepts the offer of a sleazy TV producer (Shiro Sano) who wants to put on an extravaganza on live television – fights to the death. On each level of a pagoda like structure Shishio will have to fight a different opponent to the death - among them a huge man mountain gajin, an Amazon with gigantic breasts (April Hunter), electrified baths, a zombie who rips out his intestines to strangle Shishio, booby trapped chandeliers and others. Almost the entire final forty minutes of the film is one big crazy non-stop action scene – at one point his lovely sister-in-law Nami (Sonim) heroically joins in the fight like a lady ninja– and its great fun and very brutal – but what would you expect from a fight to the death – a dinner at Elaine's? These kinds of films are so quirky that one can usually judge that they won't like it if this sort of film just isn't to their taste – my guess would be that Dick Cheney would not find this amusing, George Bush just might. But either it clicks with you or it leaves you feeling superior for thinking it idiotic rubbish – I disliked Battlefield Baseball, didn't think that much of Calamari Wrestler but really enjoyed Cromartie High – and really have no clue why. Same with this – I really liked it but for no rational reason that I can think of – it just clicked with me - perhaps because underneath all the zaniness and absurdity lies a very sweet story of romance and the love of a man for his wife.

A rival of the wrestler Shishioh (Shinya Hashimoto) destroys Shishioh's new house. Shishioh's wife is injured and at the same time seems to have caught a very strange disease which turns her into a mermaid (!). Shishioh agrees to take part in a bloody fight against very weird opponents, arranged by TV producers out for sensation, but pretending they wish to help Shishioh and his wife. „Ah! House Collapses!" (the title of my DVD is „House of Dead" with a similar aversion to the word „the") is a mixture of violent action, tragic drama and silly comedy - and not very good at any of these three. The fight between the two ladies on the bridge over electrified water is the best scene in a movie which hopes its cheap sadism (Shishioh crawls on his knees a lot and has blood all over his face most of the time, it seems) makes it easier to sit through, but I'd rather recommend a dozen of good old Shaolin flicks instead.