Biotherapy

Longer than most short films, but still a bit shy of feature-length, Biotherapy hit the spot as a condensed piece of gory horror. The main villain here has the supernatural/otherworldly powers of Freddy Kruger and the love of causing pain that Art the Clown has, so every time he shows up there are inevitable shenanigans.

People are investigating a strange substance in a lab, and then people connected to it are also dying violently, and then there's a bit of time spent with an environmental message being hammered home. Godzilla vs. Hedorah made me realise Japan was way ahead of the rest of the world when it came to making movies about environmentalism, and I guess Biotherapy follows through on that.

Biotherapy is slim, silly, and much of it is an excuse to show extreme violence. But I kind of liked how to the point it was, and what it managed to do with a small budget and a pretty thin story. Honestly, not a bad way to kill 36 minutes at all.

Biotherapy is a cheesy Japanese horror that has the cliché story that might have been repeated a few times, but with scientists, sadly, the unoriginal story isn't enough, we get this very cheesy alien disguise, who appears to wear clothes, which we should explain which planet where aliens dress like human, all we got is a big fat ignorance from the director, he clearly was making a bad movie right on set and we're supposed to have that feeling, but basically Plan 9 is the best worst movie is the feeling I'm having, at least that film was fun. This was not. This is just a terrible movie with a dull story that has been used several times. We get it.

Biotherapy might have been a good horror short but it's just a brainless gore fest where the alien goes on a rampage and kills people without any explanation. Why is the alien killing people? Where did the alien come from? It's best for the director to not answer these questions because he's more brainless than this movie.

Biotherapy has some of the worst special effects on screen. Every creep who watches this just loves how bad the FX is. We can see the freaking pixels around the alien's hands. Biotherapy has a really irritating sound queue that loops over and over until you will go almostly insane. Biotherapy is pretty much a lost Japanese horror film and deserves that treatment.

Biotherapy is a horror/sci-fi shocker that clocks in just short of an hour. That's right, short so you know a lot of logic is bound to get pulled out of the story like an eyeball from a screaming scientist. The story is that some scientists at the Hirose Research Institute of Biology have developed a GT (glutamyltransferase, if you're interested) serum derived from meteors which speeds up biological growth. As it turns out, not everyone is cool on this serum: an ugly alien-like thing, described as a "miraijin" or time traveller, in the film and probably played by the director's big brother, has been sent to retrieve the serum and cause the most unnecessarily gory violent deaths to those who developed it. Why? At under an hour do you care? Actually, since no edition of this film has any kind of English subtitles, all of the time traveller's dialog was made much harder to understand since it was overdubbed with this cheesy echoplexed "demonic" voice that has been used in Japanese TV and films for, like, ever. Let's just assume that our time traveller friend objected to the scientific and moral ramifications of the serum's use or, heck, maybe he just wanted to tear various limbs and innards from a gang of earthfolk. It's all about the same thing, isn't it?

Gore-wise, Biotherapy has some pretty nifty scenes and did win a special effects award from, of all sources, the manga magazine Young Jump. I've seen comparisons to the Guinea Pig series and, yes it does have its share of entrailsectomies, tonguesectomies, and eyesectomies but this is misleading. If anything, Biotherapy owes a lot to slashers and specifically Friday the 13th; the time traveller wears a mask to cover his face and always breathes heavily a la Jason as he is stalking his victims (and in an unintentionally humorous touch, his appearance is signaled with a lightning-like flash and a synth drum beat). There is one scene in which a character is stabbed in the chest with several test tubes and blood, geyser-like, pumps out of her chest. This is the type of scene I was looking for (and failed to get) in Commando's death by pipe impalement scene.

In all, not an entirely bad film to check out if you can but there are better things you can do instead of watching it. Like watching half of a better film.

If, like me, you are a gore-hound in possession of an un-subtitled and un-dubbed copy of this film, and your Japanese is a tad rusty (ie., you don't understand a word they are saying), then worry not: at 35 minutes long, Biotherapy is still entertaining stuff, even if you haven't a clue what is going on. Thanks to some brilliantly realistic and very bloody special effects, the film is definitely worth a watch if splatter is your thing.

The story, from what I could gather, sees a glowing, masked, hat-wearing alien (who seems to be in search of some kind of special chemical), chasing a group of scientists and killing them in a variety of nasty ways. Gruesome highlights include an impressive eyeball removal, death by broken test tubes (they are rammed into a woman's chest and her blood pumps messily out of the ends—very juicy!!), and a yucky disembowelling.

At the end of the film, the alien is unmasked, revealing a rather amusing toothy creature.

Biotherapy is good gory fun, and perfect fare if you've a tight schedule and can't fit in a full feature.

Kashima's only movie is most definitely worth the view, and makes you wonder what would have become of his future works if he would have made any. The character development is high, special effects are okay, gore everywhere and a pleasant atmosphere as threat is hiding elin every frame of the picture. It looks like something I could have written myself, so that's very comical to see such mirror reflection.