Kyonyû doragon: Onsen zonbi vs sutorippâ 5

I remember hearing about this film's existence when it was released a couple of years back. The title is irresistible (I think the original title it was appearing under at festivals was just Big Tits Dragon, and the UK DVD is entitled Big Tits Zombies; I opted to list it under its literally translated Japanese title), but I kind of figured it would be a Snakes on a Plane scenario where the title was by far the most amusing thing about it. I was mostly correct, but it wasn't a total... um, bust, I guess. It's bad, probably even godawful, but it's so dumb and silly and cheap that it has a kind of charm. It kind of comes in a wave of Japanese splatter flicks that were popularized by movies such as Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police. This one has like no money behind it, though, so the special effects are all made with super-cheap CGI. Except for one bit where two of our stripper heroes get fake blood spattered all over their big tits, I think all the blood is CGI. The five hot actresses help make the film a lot more tolerable. Aoi Sola is the star. She's a pretty popular Japanese actress who, indeed, has some big tits. She's gorgeous and I actually have a couple of more films with her in it coming up (in fact, I rediscovered this movie because I had just ordered a different movie with her in it; she also stars in a film called A Man, a Woman and a Wall which is on Netflix Instant and which is frequently recommended to me by the site). Risa Kasumi (looking a bit like Eihi Shiina from Audition and Tokyo Gore Police) and Mari Sakurai (playing a goth chick who likes to cut her wrists, a weirdly common character in these sorts of films) play the other two major characters, with Tamayo and Io Aikawa rounding out our Strippers 5. There really isn't that much nudity in the film. The total amount of boob shots equals about one whole minute. It's pretty tame for a Japanese film - probably could have premiered on Japanese Nickelodeon if it weren't for it's most hilarious scene, which features a fire-belching demon vagina.

Five exotic dancers—busty slut Lena Jodo (AV star Sora Aoi), sexy redhead lolita goth Maria (Mari Sakurai), ex-jailbird Ginko (Risa Kasumi), immigrant Darna (Io Aikawa) and older stripper Nene (Tamayo)—discover a secret passageway that leads to a hidden room containing a library of rare occult books. When Maria reads a passage from The Book of the Dead, she unleashes a horde of zombies from The Well of Spirits, a portal to Hell.

There's a very memorable scene in Big Tits Zombie where stripper--turned-zombie Nene adopts the crab position and shoots flames out of her pulsating toothy snatch; the whole strippers versus zombies might have been done before in western efforts like Zombie Strippers and Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!, but they never showed us anything quite as demented as that!!!

Japan is, of course, renowned amongst fans of seriously insane horror for going places no-one else even thinks of, and Big Tits Zombie is no exception: it's a totally bonkers, low budget trash-fest dedicated to blood and big breasts. The acting is undeniably crap, the special effects atrocious (loads of CGI blood), and the story just plain daft, but when you're in the mood for an hour and a half of sheer mindless fun, this kind of nonsense can't be beat.

As well as the aforementioned fiery cooch, viewers also get to enjoy a zombie woman with a detachable head and tentacles extending from her stomach (supporting strings clearly visible), numerous badly made-up zombies (including zombie ninjas, a zombie geisha, table-tennis zombies, and a zombie schoolgirl), assorted chainsaw and samurai sword dismemberment, and a female sumo contest, watched over by an elderly dwarf and his lackeys, which sees the loser becoming a naked sushi bar (mind the grated wasabi—yeowch!).

Oh, and there's tits, of course—lots of lovely big tits!

The various titles of this are rather perplexing. While there certainly are some big "T"s and some zombies, there are not a whole lot of big-breasted zombies on display, rather this is kind of along the lines of recent American flicks like "Zombie Strippers" and "Strippers vs. Zombies" as a quintet of Asian strippers working at a nearly deserted Japanese resort are besieged by undead zombies after one of them (a Gothic lolita type) accidentally raises the dead. So will these buxom girls lose their tops in gratuitous catfights? Will most of them become zombified themselves? And will they kick major zombie ass while shoving their own barely clad ones in the camera at every opportunity? Yes, yes, and oh, yes!

An alternate title of this is "Big Tits Dragon", which seemingly makes no sense, but is probably the result of the most memorable scene where one of the zombified strippers shoots fire out of her--well, let's just say it isn't her mouth. I believe that girl is supposed to be a Thai immigrant to Japan, but THIS is something you're probably unlikely to see even in the strip bars of Bangkok. The two cutest girls meanwhile are the Gothic lolita (Risa Kasumi) who starts all the trouble and the incredible Aoi Sola, who plays the lead. Sola, a former AV starlet turned neo-"pink" film mainstay, stays a little more draped than usual, but her character gets in numerous sumo-style catfights, gets blind drunk and ends up in bed with any number of unattractive males (i.e. a homeless man, an elderly dwarf), and eventually turns into an efficient Samurai zombie fighter.

This is pretty dumb actually and not terribly original, but it's pretty entertaining nevertheless. . .

Was I expecting too much from this film? Doubtful. All I really wanted was what the title promised. Big tits and zombies. There are some nice breasts on show, but they aren't that big, nor are they around for very long. This is the kind of cheap Japanese video film that is shot in a few days. The zombies are also not very impressive. Some just have grey faces, making all these zombies look like they died in a fire. Others have horrendous masks a child would be embarrassed to wear at Halloween. Some of the zombies don't even make sense, with one guy donning a skeleton mask, even though he only turned in the last few hours. The film is meant to be laughed at, certainly, but it needed more ridiculous fun to succeed, Successful parts included the running down of a resident, zombie sushi, and the main villain being particularly pleasing to the eye. Sometimes it's camp fun, like seeing the strings levitate a head, but when the film can't even meet quality standards regarding the tits or the zombies, then it's time to move on.

Tired of their line of work, a group of dancers passing the time with a strange occult book in their club end up finding themselves in the middle of a zombie outbreak through a curse inscribed within and must battle the unleashed creatures in order to get away alive.

This one ended up being one of the more enjoyable zombie cheesefests. Most of the film's charm lies in the fact that this one is so unashamedly intent on opting for the cheesy side of the sleaze- riddled storyline it wants to exploit. The entire film is quite apparent in it's overall look and feel, going for the vibrant chaotic look that's readily apparent from the whole environment of the stripclub where they work to the way they behave waiting for their shifts to start yet the main fun of this one is the ease with which it goes for exploitation in the storyline. Never resisting a chance to showcase their physical attributes by shoving the camera into any of their figures, forcing them into skimpy costumes for their risqué dance routines to be ogled over or to have them constantly engage in topless wrestling matches filled with comical sound effects upon the appearance of nudity really gives this a quite cheesy and sleazy feel. This is ably carried over quite nicely once this one works its way into the more frantic and enjoyable second half where they accidentally unleash the zombies, which range from the rather striking and even chilling ritual space down in the secret room where the different relics and body parts are found that includes the fun of the resurrected zombies appearing and slowly ripping their victim to pieces, the chaotic sequence involving the flying sushi pieces coming at them or their interrupted performance where they realize the patrons are really the resurrected zombies are forced to flee the stage deeper into the club to escape the ravenous hordes approaching them. This is filled with all sorts of rather fun and chilling scenes involving the overrun city and their attempts to get outside to safety that provides a ton of rather fun barricades and brawls as they make their way out, and when they manage to escape there's even more fun here as they start dismembering the bodies left behind as well as battling the mutant beast their friend turns into. With this providing the lead-in for the survivors to head into town and clean up after the zombies left behind, the action is so much more impressive and brutal in this section with the various battles and confrontations leading to a slew of fighting and bodily dismemberment that gives this some cheesy fun to be had at the end. Coupled with outrageous gore-gags, tons of splatter and a wild sense of humor about itself with their treatment of the zombies and towards each other, there's a lot of extremely enjoyable parts here which makes for a wholly frenetic and crazy effort. There's not a whole lot here that doesn't work, which starts from the 3D work here which is so low and barely there it's almost not worth it to be included to begin with as only a few things are thrown into the camera for the process to work. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot else wrong here.

Rated Unrated/R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Nudity.