Wetbones

This short film is not what you'd expect from the director of of the misanthropic ANATOMIA EXTINCTION and the arterial-spray epic TOKYO GORE POLICE. It tells the story of an odd creature (or is he a human mutant?) called the Speakerman, who served duty in a small mining village by sounding the siren/megaphone that is his head to tell the workers when it was time for lunch and to alert people in case of a mining accident. When the mine closes, Speakerman ends up lonely and in search of new friends and meaning in his life. The film plays like a warped fairy tale and is oddly affecting despite its weirdness. I'd even go so far as to recommend it as a film for children were it not for the climactic fight between Speakerman and a Cannibalistic Shushi Chef... SPEAKERMAN shows that Nishimura is capable of much more than just pumping geysers of gushing blood all over movie sets and is worth tracking down for people who are interested in watching something different.

This was fascinating to watch. TOKYO GORE POLICE is far from a direct remake of this film, though there are commonalities. The Engineer is already in this short and he does infect people by inserting a piece of mutant flesh/tumor into the opened-up bodies his victims. There is also already some of the satire regarding the privatization of the Tokyo Police Department. But that's where the similarities end.

The story is about a man who becomes infected by the Engineer and slowly mutates. The chase scenes between the man and the Engineer are very reminiscent of Tsukamoto's TETSUO: THE IRON MAN, in my opinion. Once infected, the Engineer's victims go on relentless murder sprees (there is a hilarious nod to DEATH RACE 2000 in a scene of vehicular homicide) and it is made quite clear that this is seen as the only way to get the exploding population (the world's in general and Japan's in particular) back under control.

In short, ANATOMIA EXTINCTION is sort of set in the same creative universe as TOKYO GORE POLICE but ANATOMIA EXTINCTION and TOKYO GORE POLICE tell totally different stories.

Nishimura showed plenty of talent with this early short film and in retrospect it is both surprising and a bit sad that it took so long for him to be recognized and given more chances to work. ANATOMIA EXTINCTION is definitely something fans should seek out to discover where Nishimura started from.