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.

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.

Okay, so there's this meteor, right? Then it crashes into Tokyo Bay, right. This causes green gas to be released into the atmosphere. So far, so good, right? And the authorities want to cover it up. That makes the sense, right? Now, after the first three minutes, it makes no sense.

From there, we transition to what is apparently a few weeks or a few months later (there is no indication that time has passed, we can only guess) as we are now in a poorly lit, post-Apocalyptic Tokyo with a largely zombified population (from the green gas). There are a few humans, like the heroine (as played by female wrestler Cutie Suzuki) left fighting the zombie menace. Or driving around. Or walking about in a daze. Yeah, that's what they do. Eventually, the heroine gets a leather suit from her father that is apparently imbued with special powers (that's never addressed and very poorly implied). She starts fighting these zombies and some random government agents that are inexplicably turning people into super half man, half zombie combos that perform...very...slow...martial arts.

There are some cool scenes in this movie. However, most of the film will result in much yelling of "What the heck is going on?" There is much that is unclear and just never explained. The few explanations there are are fairly stupid and the climax is non-existant. It can be entertaining, but for the most part this movie is rather useless. I can only recommend it for completists.

On a side note, I was surprised, pleasantly, that they didn't have Suzuki do a lot of wrestling. In fact, I can only seem to recall two or three wrestling moves. She mostly uses a one shot Uzi (?) or lifts people in impossible manners thanks to wires.

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.