Batoru gâru: Tokyo crisis wars

Japanese low budget underground film maker Kazuo "Gaira" Komizu is the man behind the hyper sleazy Guts/Entrails of a Virgin trilogy from the late eighties. Those films are filled with (almost) hard core level sex scenes, nudity, some very bizarre goings on, some ultra gore plus monster semen. Yes, you read right, those three films are perfect examples for those who think they've seen it all in the genre of low budget horror cinema. "Gaira" has also written a film called Female Market (Yasuaki Uegaki, 1986), one of the most deeply disturbing and sadistic rape related films I've witnessed. His lightest film may very well be this, Living Dead in Tokyo Bay aka Battle Girl (1992) which stars the female wrestler Cutey Suzuki, and she is, as her name suggest, quite cute.

The film is about some meteorites that crash into the Earth, bringing some kind of a zombie virus here turning people into flesh eating monsters very similar with the Romero ones. There's also an evil general that tries to take the world domination by using the virus as his weapon. One brave lady (Suzuki) is a daughter of a military officer and she is sent to fight the evil general as well as the zombies, dressed in a cool black leather uniform with incredible powers, martial art talents and ability to use various weapons! Unfortunately I only saw the unsubtitled Japanese version so any possible noteworthy things or bits of social commentary in the dialogue went sadly beyond me, but still I have plenty of positive things to say about the film.

Craig Ledbetter wrote in the ATC magazine, having just seen the English subtitled version, that the film indeed is a metaphor of the Japanese society and its history as Japan, for example, exploited the World War II by making horrible human experiments to the Chinese in the name of science, a truly horrific and disturbingly sad part of the world history depicted detailedly in a film Men Behind the Sun (1987) by Taiwanese/Chinese film maker Tun Fei Mous. This kind of low low budget zombie romp having such important message and metaphoras is a very great thing and it naturally raises this film to higher level.

The film is also very enjoyable as pure zombie horror with some inventiveness to fill the gaps caused by the lack of money. The film is not too long and thus never boring (especially if I had managed to understand the dialogue parts, too) and there are plenty of action and mayhem to keep things interesting alongside the calmer parts. The visual look is pretty dark which is nice, and the effects consist of much colored and naturally over-the-top "gore", rather well done zombie masks and zombies plus not so convincing but still good enough for a film like this meteorite scenes at the very beginning.

The film is naturally pretty close to George Romero's zombie classic Dawn of the Dead (1978) with many almost identical scenes. One poor soldier can't take it anymore and kills himself. A group of gun selling punks arrive to fight the ghouls, just like the Tom Savini led motorbike gang at the end of Romero's film. Still I don't find these things irritating or exploiting at all since "Gaira" knows what's he doing with his limited budget and always adds his own ideas and ambitions to the soup, and since the problems in the society haven't vanished since the Dawn's days, why should the fight stop?

This is, in fact, among the more enjoyable and interesting low budget action horrors I've seen from Japan and everything the director couldn't buy or pay for, he created otherwise with creativity and that's why the film looks so good and heart warming for those who understand the sub genre. 7/10

Battle Girl is an example of what I look for in a movie: Dark, somber, slow paced, low produced, gritty, absurd, stylish and imaginative. But one thing that kept this movie from b-movie gold is the inconsistent tone in the action sequences. It ranges from p!ss poor slow ass choreography to intense and bad ass. It's funny but it is sort of distracting as well and can kill the pacing. I recommend this movie to those who like gritty and dark ass sci fi action movie lovers.

a so-so zombie movie from japan. if you like zombie movies, i guess this one's not bad. it never really excels, even within the genre, but...it's not bad. well, put it this way: some of the zombies had some cool makeup and there was some cool atmosphere. those two things are the true essentials of a zombie movie - alone, they don't make it good, but their absence will always make it bad. unfortunately, the plot just kind of goes into a downward spiral after the first 30 seconds, and some of the later stupid things include: 1) a maniacal military guy hellbent on controlling the world (to save japan's reputation?), and 2) half-mutant, half-zombie "monsters" which were spawned by simply injecting humans with the zombie virus and mixing it with other virii. this enables them to grow things like Wolverine-esque metal claws. no, i don't understand it either, but this IS from the same people who brought us the wonderfully-yet-bewilderingly bizarre gift of anime. oh, and the fight scenes...ugh. no, i won't go into them. but if you like zombies, you won't do too badly picking up this corny-but-entertaining flick from asia.

The early 90's weren't the best of times for horror. Theatrical films were becoming more scarce, and even calling horror movies horror (the dreaded "Suspense Thriller" tag) was suddenly dirty. Plus, people were tired of the same old hack and slash and endless sequels. That's why home video was now the place to go for the large part. Studios like Full Moon, Troma and others flourished in this era, offering horror fans something that usually wasn't good, but at least proudly called itself horror. One of the burgeoning things to come from this was V-Cinema, a Japanese style of direct to video releasing that saw some of the more outlandish and outrageous titles come into play. One of the films released in the earlier part of this era was Kazou 'Gaira' Komizu's 1991 zombie flick "Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay."

A meteor crashes into Tokyo Bay, leading to a strange cloud being emitted and covering the city-turning many of it's inhabitants into flesh eating zombies. To make things worse, survivalist gangs now roam the city, and the military isn't exactly doing much to help the situation. There's only one person who can save the day, and it's a girl named Keiko (Japanese Female Wrestler Cutie Suzuki, who certainly lives up to her name), who dons a hi-tech body armor suit complete with guns, the ability to give her superhuman powers, and all kinds of gizmo's. In the process, she finds herself being hunted by a group of advanced killers, and discovers some dark government secrets.

Though he didn't write it, "Battle Girl" is a bit curious considering that some of Komizu's prior works ("Entrails of a Virgin" and "Guts of a Virgin" for example) were notorious for how grotesque, perverse and all around politically incorrect they were. That's because this movie is a rather dry affair, with only small dashes of gore and not an inkling of nudity on display. In some ways, that's a shame (though it is a bit nice to see a movie from him that doesn't barrage you with sexual violence for a change), because a bit more gore would have made this a more enjoyable affair. The films is also far too short (only 74 minutes in length) and at times feels like a movie with some big ideas that is unable to accomplish all it wants because of it's length.

There's still some fun to be had out of the film. The synthesizer score by Ra is a lot of fun, and adds to the almost comic book like atmosphere of the whole thing. The low tech special effects also add to it's charm, especially the meteorite itself, which brought back fond memories of watching 70's-90's genre pictures from Japan-if I had seen this as a teen, I would have thought it was the best movie ever made. The zombie make up is competent enough, and the movie also tries to get away with some political commentary about nationalism (though it feels a bit odd to have critiques of the military in a movie that so lovingly shows off gun play and explosions.) Oh, and while the fight choreography isn't up to muster, it's nice to see Joshi (Japanese Woman's Wrestling) stars deliver Spinning Back Breakers and Tombstone Piledrivers.

As a whole, "Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay" is a slight affair, and is anything but essential. That out of the way, it's a decent time waster with some bright spots that appeal to the 16 year old in me, and should be seen by fans of Japanese zombie flicks, though it's not as fun or over the top as later movies. Look at it as an appetizer

When a meteor crashes into Japan it brings lethal danger:a virus capable of raising the dead and turning them into flesheating zombies.It's up to K-ko to save Tokyo and to fight with living dead and crazed army men.Cheesy and fast-paced Japanese zombie flick which plays like cross between "Dawn of the Dead" and "Resident Evil".First of all "Battle Girl" is nowhere near as violently graphic nor sexually depraved as his earlier features like "Guts of a Virgin".There is not much gore on display and surprising lack of cannibalistic grue.The fights are plentiful,albeit poorly choreographed and the cyberpunk elements are fun to watch.An entertaining and inoffensive zombie effort from Japan.7 out of 10.