User reviews

For quite some time my friends had been telling me about this nifty little Japanese zombie film called "Stacy." So the other day when wandering around a video store I noticed that they had it, so I rented it. The word bizarre comes to mind when talking about this film.

The movie starts out with three little kids poking a dead sixteen year old girl (I'd wager they thought she was asleep), the girl reawakens as a Stacy (the official word for the zombies) and kills the little kids. The movie has a rather interesting take on the zombie apocalypse. Instead of affecting everyone it only affects girls between the ages of fifteen and seventeen. To combat the threat of the Stacies the Japanese government created the Romero Repeat Kill Squad (an obvious reference George A. Romero), the Repeat Kill Squad is for those who are too wimpy to kill their own daughters. Apparently to "repeat kill" a Stacy one has to chop the body up into 165 different pieces. So to try to combat the Stacy threat people are encouraged to kill their daughters, and they even sell these implements of death in stores and infomercials, they even have a pamphlet on how to repeat kill the Stacies.

This movie has a neat concept and a pretty cool storyline, but it just sort of fell apart. The movie is just very campy, and at least it doesn't try to take itself too seriously. There are some points in the movie that you'll find yourself asking "why the hell did they do that?!" Perhaps if I read the book in which it's based the movie as a whole would've made more sense, I don't know. But as it stands Stacy is a somewhat enjoyable film that is only marred by its occasional annoying scene, and a truly annoying ending.

There is something endearing about a film that wears its influences as openly as Stacy does. There are several nods to George A. Romero, a very cool homage to the Evil Dead franchise with a running gag about a "Bruce Campbell" chainsaw and even a random shout out to Drew Barrymore with a Charlie's Angel-esquire kill squad who name Drew as their idol. The director is obviously well schooled in the horror genre, providing an entertaining mix of pop culture references, black humour and bloody carnage.

The film's basic premise is that girls between the ages of 15 and 17 begin dropping dead, only to arise as flesh hungry zombies - known as "stacies". There is no explanation or mythology behind this unusual turn of events, although I assume it is simply an excuse to fill the screen with perky Japanese girls in school uniforms. There is something a bit twisted about a film that basically involves the slaying of school girls but I'm not complaining. In order to eradicate the "stacies", death squads roam the streets. Some of the funniest moments come from TV advertisements for the death squads, my favourites include the "Join the Squad and kill your own daughter!" advertisement and the Bruce Campbell chainsaw infomercial with the crazy bunny woman.

The film follows two distinct plots; one involves a medical student who has joined a death squad with the goal of saving his "pen pal" Momo, while the other is a slightly disturbing romance between a middle aged puppeteer, Shibu-san, and Eiko, a girl in the final days of her pre-zombie state. The first mentioned storyline is responsible for the film's gore content. There are sufficient acts of dismemberment, flesh eating and general carnage to please horror fans. Unfortunately, while the quantity of the gore is impressive, the quality of the gore effects is uneven at best. The decapitations are very unrealistic and one axe victim is quite clearly a mannequin. The film manages to overcome these shortcomings with injections of black humour, from the awesome "Drew" death squad to our hero declaring the zombified Momo as "my lover".

The other plot line is less entertaining but far more innovative. The scene in which Shibu-san uses puppetry to tell Eiko a story about a toy cat is mesmerising. There is also a wide underbelly of black humour derived from Eiko's manic pleas to be "repeat killed" and her most thoughtful chainsaw gift. Natsuki Kato does a great job as Eiko, making her a very sympathetic prospective zombie. The film attempts to tie these two story lines together with a cheesy conclusion but personally, I could have done without the sappy epilogue.

Stacy is an enjoyable zombie film from a promising director. Genre fans familiar with the quirks of Asian cinema will not be disappointed.

Japanese weirdos…you got to love them! Not one nation's cinema industry proved itself so eccentric and imaginative during the last ten years as the Japanese one! Especially in the field of violent cult and spooky horror, the young Japanese directors rule with an iron fists. `Stacy' a.k.a Attack of the Schoolgirl zombies is one hysterical bunch of nonsense, but oh so fun to look at. For no particular reason, girls aged 15-17 years die and metamorphose into gut-munching zombies. Preferably, they should be re-killed by their loved ones and cut up into 165 (!) pieces. How about that? Naturally, the plot is inferior to the huge amount of splatter madness and sadistic humor Stacy is filled with. I'm practically sure the scriptwriters of this film were hooked on some kind of vicious drug! How else would you explain some of the silly stuff they're presenting us here? But…you got to hand it to them: they know their classics! The multiple references and tributes to milestone zombie-films are priceless! The chainsaw brand their using, for example, is called `Bruce Campbell's Right Hand', the zombie-squad members are referred to as `Romero' (as in George A.) and the sleazy scientist is some sort of Baron Frankenstein replica with artsy pink glasses! Terrific trivia stuff.

Nonetheless, `Stacy' won't ever join the list of Japanese cult-classics-to-be which already includes titles such as Battle Royale, Itchi The Killer or Ringu… It's just too goofy and amateurish to be highly memorable. Unlike the exiting topic of zombie violence, Stacy contains a couple of boring moments, lousy acting and – worst of all – way too many `what the f**k'-moments. Several monologues and sequences simply don't make any sense and they seem to be made up by illiterate monkeys. Luckily for the viewer, those dull moments are almost always followed by wild and nasty zombie action, so it remains bearable at all times. Therefore, I recommend `Stacy' for what it is…a refreshing and light-hearted gore galore that'll make you laugh for a good 80 minutes. No more, no less! The absolute highlight of absurdity: the amateur-Frankenstein scientist separates a girl's head from her body and by doing so, he pulls out her entire spinal column with it…You have to see it to believe it!

A virus is killing young girls from 15 to seventeen, right before they die they go through a Near Death Happiness or NDH, if you will then die. Once dead they rise again as zombies The government has commissioned the "Romero re-kill Squad" to dispatch said zombiefied school-girls. There's also illegal re-kill teams to pick up some slack. Sad to say, but this movie didn't really work for me. Satire is more then merely naming something after Georg Romero or having a chainsaw weapon after Bruce Campbell (shouldn't it be 'Ash's Righ Hand' anyway). It also tries to tell us a message. What that message is, who the hell knows. It tries to be a love story between an middle-aged man and a under-aged school girl, this too is misguided and contrived. The gore will keep your attention for maybe 10 minutes at the most before you keep checking your watch wondering when this mis-fire will finally end.

My Grade: D+

DVD Extras: Uncut version, other then that just a Theatrical Trailer

This was 79 minutes of my life that I will never be able to get back.

The movie is absolutely terrible, I don't have the faintest idea how somebody could watch this nonsense and actually appreciate it. The filming is terrible, the special effects utterly suck (and I've seen my share of low-budget movies), there is no storyline - absolutely none - and even if there was then the utterly crap acting would make you instantly forget any storyline.

The movie is filled with absolutely pointless "deep thoughts" that do little else than annoy the hell out of you, accompanied with annoying bell sounds that will slowly drive you nuts.

If total boredom won't make you run away screaming, then please take my advice and stay as far away from this movie as possible.

Young girls between 14 and 17 are falling into a coma and dying. When they wake up they are flesh eating zombies called Stacys. Weird gore horror comedy social commentary that never quite comes together. Its too gross (blood goes everywhere), too knowing (the zombie fighters are called Romeros, a chainsaw is a Campbell) and too odd ball to ever really have a shot at any audience. Give the film points for trying, but the low brow humor mixed with not very pointed social commentary doesn't seem to go anywhere. I won't even mention how the blood and guts quickly become too much to take. I had read a couple pieces that invested the film with some great purpose and meaning, I never saw it in the sea of severed limbs and chainsawed faces. If you like blood and guts try it, but I'd steer clear.

Stacy (2001) is the kind of movie that you'll either loathe or love. The whole subject matter is trashy and sleazy. Young school girls, dressed in sailor suits turning rabid when they mature. It's so wrong but it's fun at the same time. Everything about this movie is a riot. The Romero Squads, the Drew Barrymore gang and the Bruce Campbell chainsaws are some examples. The only thing that i didn't like was that the movie was shot on Digital Video,that's my only real gripe. This movie has everything that I like in a horror film. It was cheesy, bloody, sleazy and disturbing. I highly recommend it. If you love zombie movies and movies that don't take everything so seriously.

I would rather watch ten movies like this than have to sit through another Resident Evil picture. For true horror fans only!!

I feel like I need to sleep for a month to recover from watching this garbage; god knows how many brain cells I've lost. Asian horror seems to fall into two categories; you've got the boring ghost stories, with films such as Dark Water and The Grudge, and then you've got the ridiculous attempts at 'schlock' horror, with films like Versus and this rubbish. I'm not sure which one I hate more, but I know one thing is for sure; I'm not going to see any more horror films originating from that part of the world. You can only be stung so many times. So anyway, onto this film; Stacy is Japan's attempt at a zombie flick. The film takes obvious influence from stuff like 'Anime' and 'Manga', and this is shown by way of the ridiculous comic plotting. The film works on the idea of women catching the zombie virus and coming back as zombies, which have been nicknamed 'Stacie's'. This is a problem across Japan, and so the government has implemented several initiatives to deal with the problem, including the zombie search and destroy squad, named Romero (the phrase 'ham-fisted' springs to mind). The main plot seems to be the one dealing with some guy called Shibukawa and a soon-to-be-Stacy.

The main problem with this is film is that it's just ridiculous. The plotting is illogical in the extreme, and as the film flicks between various different plots; it bypasses entertainment and only serves in being boring. This movie made me want to chop myself up with a chainsaw, just for something to do. Quite how anyone can draw any kind of enjoyment from a messy load of rubbish like this is beyond me. Speaking of mess...this film features a lot of gore, some of which is actually quite good, but it's so comically over the top that it can't be taken seriously. Stacy relies a lot on the fact that it's "zombie schoolgirls", but seriously...so what? Stacy does feature some originality in the zombie stakes, which we don't often see; things such as the teleshopping channel selling chainsaws shows ingenuity; but it's too little in a film with so many negative elements. The tributes to zombie classics only serve in reminding the audience how much better this type of film can be, and calling the zombie squad Romero is as lame as the rest of the movie. All in all, this is bad even for an Asian horror film. Getting to the end is akin to running a marathon. See it only if you are in dire need of sleep.

A film named after me??! How cool is that?! I decided to go for this DVD having heard it contains 3 of my favourite things - zombies, chainsaws, and young women dressed as schoolgirls.

Typically Japanese over-the-top gore comes in dribs and drabs with more than a passing nod to greater horror flicks such as 'Day of the Dead' and 'Dawn of the Dead.' The plot is sadly lacking, and the film is pretty slowly paced, although there are some fun moments to be had, particularly with the 3-girl anti-Romero repeat kill squad. I liked them.

If you're gonna get yourself a decent Japanese zombie/gore flick, then do yourself a favour and buy 'Versus' or 'Junk' instead. THAT'S how to do it properly.

The DVD from Synapse is pretty good, with a very nice anamorphic transfer and Dolby 2.0 stereo sound with player-generated subtitles. However, I would only buy it if you're a hardcore zombie fan or collector of crazy and bloody Japanese flicks.

4/10 for some good gore scenes and a couple of chuckles.

This is the single worst film that I have ever seen in my life. Just to clarify, I do not regularly make this statement and I am not one of those people who sees a bad movie and then calls it the worst they've ever seen. In fact, I can't remember the last time that I said a film was the worst I've ever seen. That's how infrequently I say it.

I sat through this film even though around the 20 minute mark I wanted it to be over. Badly. I don't know why, it's just something I always do. No matter how bad a film is, I'll never shut it off without coming to the end. That way I feel that I can make a clear headed and complete decision on what I thought of the film.

Well, with Stacy, I can't think of a single thing that was done well. Everything - and I mean everything - from the screenplay to the direction to the lighting, was AWFUL. A note to aspiring filmmakers everywhere: if you're going to make a film, take your time and come up with a story that is interesting and that you can confidently tell. When people rush into things, we end up with dross like Stacy.

I'm not going to tell people to stay away from this film, however. It is worth watching simply to see the mistakes that make a truly terrible film truly terrible. At the very least, the violence is cartoonish enough to make you laugh with its over the top depictions of decapitations and gut yanking. That isn't enough to actually entertain you, but you'll come away from the experience never wanting to put an audience through similar visual torture. And the fewer films like Stacy that ever see the light of day, the better.

"Stacy" is what you expect from a Japanese zombie movie; bizarre and over the top in every way.

The story told in the movie, is a bit lame. But you quickly get past that and enjoy the movie for its outrageous existence. Quickly summarized, then the movie is about girls reaching N.D.H. (Near Death Happiness) when they are in their late teenage years, only to rise as flesh eating zombies once they die. And that is pretty much it.

There are way too many characters in the movie that you don't really get attached to, because none of them have much screen time actually, and none of them are given any chance to have any depth or really outstanding personality. But then again, most people are only there for adding some stupid fact to the movie; such as the Romero Rekilling Special Unit military force that showed no particular military training or structure. It was all a big farce.

Sure the movie paid homage to George Romero's movies as well as the Evil Dead movies and especially Bruce Campbell. It was done in a funny enough way, that you got in to it, because it was so far out there.

The acting in "Stacy" is horrendous, but what can you expect in a movie of this type? There was a lot of overacting and the zombies, in particular, looked like crazed drug addicts staggering around looking for their next fix of amphetamine. What was up with the flicking tongues and rolling eyes? I suppose it did give the movie a comical approach, but it just didn't work for me.

As for the effects in the movie, well they were alright actually. They had gone through some work with the gore. Though some of the prosthetics looked really fake. But again, being an outrageous Japanese comedy/horror, you can live with it. I suppose movies like "Stacy" paved the road for future movies like "Tokyo Gore Police", "Meatball" and "Machine Girl".

The movie is a comedy/horror and I suppose for a Japanese movie it might be alright, but for a western audience, a movie like "Shaun of the Dead" is far better in both production and entertainment value.

I love horror movies, I love zombie movies, and I love Japanese movies, so I had thought that "Stacy" would have been just the right thing for me, but sadly the movie was just too much. It failed to be funny and it failed to be scary. It was just something like having a lukewarm, soggy sandwiched served for lunch. Not a good thing!

nonethless watchable. u gotta give credit for their tribute to george romero, if u wanna do a zombie flick, then it's a nice, humble gesture to remember and imortalize The Man. Now the movie itself, the plot is fine, it's pretty original as u would expect from this sort of japanese movie. it's not a gore-fest but if you're looking for gore, let's say u won't leave empty handed. at some point i tend to find most japanese movies kind of slow, but hey, maybe that's just me.

Don't really like the whole hopeless sorrow thing, too black. Marrying an emotionless zombie girl as solution?! Evolution? This is just plain sick. Besides the zombie thing, it's somewhat similar to a manga I read: by the end of 21th century, mysterious illness spreads out, teenage girls suddenly becoming more and more beautiful day by day, and so as weaker and weaker, then eventually die off. End of humanity... Come on, horror film should leave some space for hope (not a twisted one).

Well, this is so horrible it's brilliant! I just watched this in my horror film class (the professor didn't show it willingly, but after the suggestion of a fellow professor) and my classmates and I were laughing our heads off! This movie is even too awful to show on "Mystery Science Theater." It is a joke within itself. I've read some reviews, saying that it's parody. Let's not kid ourselves. "Airplane" is a parody. This is plain ol' silliness. If there's anything I have to say, you can't fall asleep through a movie like this, because you can't wait to see what ridiculous thing will happen next! If this is parody, then critics aren't lying when they classify it as the laziest genre. When you're laughing at a film, rather than with it, it's trespassed the lines of parody. It's hard to describe my feelings about the movie, because I think it's one of the worst films I've ever seen, yet at the same time I suggest people check it out (if you get the chance; don't spend a hell of a lot of money to purchase a copy of it!). But as long as you're in the mood for a good laugh. If you want to learn what NOT to do when making a horror film, then watch "Stacy." You can't play elevator music during a horror film, because it brings it to a complete halt--or any film for that matter, but especially in horror. That's what happened whenever one of the Stacys would start speaking, and camera zoomed in on her--that damn cheesy elevator music would start playing. I wrote a horrible parody of film noir when I was taking a screenwriting class. I felt like reading that screenplay after watching this, because as horrible as I think it is, it can't be as horrible as this movie. The same goes with an awful student film I made in high school. This is like a Japanese Ed Wood flick. This is the "Plan 9" of Japan. It gotta be seen to be believed! Horrible dialogue, horrible acting, horrible effects, horrible story, horrible camerawork, horrible everything!

My score: 1 (out of 10)

'Tis a story of love 'Tis a story of death 'Tis a story of love beyond death

But most importantly...

'Tis a story of chainsawing hot zombie school girls.

"STACY"

At the dawn of the new millennium, young girls, aged 15-17, entered a state of bliss, dubbed, Near Death Happiness, or N.D.H. But from there, turned into flesh eating zombies, that couldn't be stopped unless their bodies were cut into 165 small pieces (then left on the curb in trash bags, for the Romero Rekill Squad to come and dispose of).

While style isn't this movies strong point, the story, originally by Kenji Otsuki, is a deep and compelling one, but at the same time, hidden by comedic killing, and wantonness gore. This movie pays great homage to Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Army of Darkness. Under all of this though, is a story that is very driven, and complete. It takes zombie movies in an unheard of direction, and sets a bar far beyond any other zombie movie has yet to surpass, and will not for a while.

This movie is truly a great watch, the special effects are at times cheesy, but at other times (beheaded girl) are a real treat to watch. Supposedly this movie has a semi famous cast, I don't recognize anybody in there, but I'm sure after being in a film like Stacy, they are probably all living on their own private islands right now, surfing in pools of pudding.

Action fans will love it because of the zombies, girls will love it because of the heart warming story of love, zombies will love it because of zombies, In fact, this movie is probably the key to world peace.

Watch it or die.

I only just started really paying attention to foreign films. I have seen a few in the past but not really digging in. This film is cool because it is so different from the norm. The acting is good, and while i was watching with subtitles, the dialogue wasn't corny like most of the Japanese films I have seen. The film was doing great until around the last 10-15 minutes then it lost its luster. There are great call backs to Army of Darkness and Bruce Campbell as well as George A. Romero. Fun to watch even if you have to read it, seems like, for me anyway, that i didn't need to read the text the last 30 minutes of the film.