Saigo no bansan

I have just seen this at Edinburgh's Dead by Dawn festival and was thoroughly impressed with it. I had never heard of it before so had no idea what to expect.

A renowned plastic surgeon and budding media darling develops a taste for human flesh after taking a bit of lypo-suction fat home with him, frying it up and having a munch.

It's a pretty sick concept but has good comedy moments in all the right places. It is almost a pro-cannibalism in the way the story is told and is unlike anything I have ever seen before. It went down really well with the festival crowd and was easily film of the day.

It is also very well shot, with some excellent lighting in certain interior scenes, superb timing and decent acting throughout. Very implausible at times, but that does not take anything away from it, and fans of Japanese horror will be used to this anyway.

I hope lots more genre fans get to see the surprise gem.

Have a hankering for meat? After just watching this exploitative gloomy little shocker you'll be licking your chops or simply not hungry… maybe for days. The low-budgeted Japanese film 'The Last Supper' is a clinically weird, demented and often tasteless (but some might find it amusingly laughable) cannibal story about a plastic surgeon who goes from dweeb to popular after reverting to eating women's liposuction fat and this would lead to murder when the fixation becomes an addiction to keep this demanding persona. Everyone loves the unknown meat he always cooks up; suddenly he's the caught the gaze of an infatuated nurse and the cops begin their suspicious questioning after a disappearance of one of his patients.

Perversely shocking and humorously twisted with deadpan sprinklings (and this is suitably done with the wedding gift towards the end that has to be seen to be believed!). Vegetarians keep clear. The camera likes to focus on the bloody, juicy meat at every opportunity and there's a scene that would have animal lovers in an uproar. It's bold, audacious and writer/director Osamu Fukutani's establishes a stimulating unpredictable and patient screenplay (off Kei Oishi's novel which would be an interesting read if this film is anything to go by) on a familiar concept involving a protagonist/cannibal surgeon (soberly humanised performance by Masaya Kato) detailing how his craving for woman's flesh began and eventually the patterns he went about to feed his hunger (like the sequence involving finding a secret club of cannibals and his actual first kill). There might be something hollow and disconnected to it, but it stays gripping and interesting in it's hauntingly close to heart illustrations.

Fukutani's direction is competent in its limited scope and hypnotically tailored in a slow-ease and artsy style (look at the neon-lighting), but during the grotesque and splatter scenes he doesn't hold back. Simply in your face with the decapitations and dismembering of his victims, as you grit your teeth and recoil due to the nauseatingly squishy sound effects. Cracking bones (thanks to one hack-saw sequence), skin pealing, blood dripping, body parts sliding out and flesh chopping. Straight into the bubbling frying pan. Tasty! The allurement of the forbidden fruit and its strong essence is almost like an organism for those who eat it. They can't get enough of this ecstasy and that makes it slightly unnerving.

Digital photography helps invoke a real sense of intimacy and the music is subtly dramatic with its scattered choices. The performances are tolerable with Hiroki Matsukata making for a weaselling detective.

'The Last Supper' is cheaply produced, but a luridly fulfilling meal of delicacy.

The Last Supper is a stylish, bloody, and sometimes darkly funny tale from some very twisted minds from Japan. I was reminded of Paul Bartels' equally sadistic cannibal themed film from the early 1980's, Eating Raoul.

Dr. Kotorida is a rich and famous plastic surgeon to the stars. The man has a strange taste for the flesh of young women. He murders the girls, butchers and fry's them with all the right seasonings. I was reminded of Dexter from the Showtime series who kills people but is a normal police lab investigator to everyone around him.

Director Osamu Fukutani and Masaya Katô as Dr. Kotorida have created a memorable screen character as I have seen in a long time. This is not for the squeamish or for those offended by blood but I was definitely entertained for 93 minutes.

This movie is an unbelievable drag... first of all it has a very trashy look that is obvious from the opening of the movie. The acting is rather unrealistic, the characters couldn't make you care less and the plot evolves unbelievably slow. There are dialogs in this movie that take forever and make no point. When a Detective talks to the Surgeon I though the movie switched to slow motion or someone dropped downers in my drink. Besides these endless sequences with barely anything happening or people talking you get ridiculous over-acting. Watch out for the gay couple in the human meat bar or the epileptic stabbing of the surgeons young colleague. There's plenty of scenes that are beyond ridiculous and many don't push the plot at all.

So what do you get? A surgeon working in a beauty clinic gets obsessed with female meat, starts taking home fat and body parts and cooking them and obviously soon starts killing for fresh meat. Thats about it... he goes on a trip to Hongkong to search for human meat traders, ends up in a discotheque where he meets a girl who soon reveals she wants to be eaten. All this happens in a totally random fashion.. and after that Mr. Surgeon drives home and the plot continues.

Most of the movie is not really repulsive except for the fact that the cinematography is pretty ugly and tasteless throughout the movie. By the end you get a load of gore that looks unbelievably fake (best joke when heads fall out his closet and he beats a guy with one of the heads which is obviously just one of these plastic heads with a wig on. Its hard to say if "Last supper" was supposed to be funny or is unintentionally funny because the crass overacting and the over the top sound FX that remind me of one of those horror-sample CDs are laughable.

I have seen many Asian movies and know they can be pretty slow but this one takes it to the top and makes you wonder why the heck a dozen of scenes are stretched to the max. This movie is as entertaining was watching paint dry and horror fans should fast forward to the end to save 90 minutes of their precious lifetime.

When you don't want anymore to eat pork meat, you start eating human meat. That's the idea of this "film". The story is sub-stupid, the acting is super-bad, I was watching and I couldn't believe what I'm watching. They call themselves filmmakers. I would call them butchers. Butchers of the 7th Art. I hope not all Asians are crazy. There is still Kurosawa, Kaneto Shindô, Hiroshi Teshigahara. Somebody has to do a parody upon this. Maybe you'll say that I'm too sensible. I am not! Life goes on and I'm still hungry: I'm going to eat some good cheese with fresh tomatoes.