nasteen8

I picked up a copy of this film back in 2010 but was highly disappointed when I found there were no subtitles, so for a long time I had no idea what was going on. Sufficed to say, I finally found the subtitles so I can properly give this title a review.

Many people may regard this as a horror film, due to the horrific content, but to me this is about as far from horror as you can get. There's no build up of tension, no jarring moments (other than the extreme gore, excrement and decay) and no backstory. This is as art house as art house gets, and if you've seen any of Marian Dora's other films, you know what you're getting. At first glance, this film is rather tedious and underwhelming. But after really watching it, I found the cinematography to be rather awesome. To me this film portrays decay and death rather well. You can almost smell the rotting flesh, human excrement and other foul stenches you would find in an open air mass grave. Marian Dora certainly knows how to portray putrefaction and disgust. This sort of film will have it's supporters and it's definite critics, as it should, but perhaps that's just because it's so hard to define. The acting was mediocre, the script a bit overplayed but well made and the camera work quite well for the obvious small budget. So I'll give it high marks on these merits. There's one thing that I absolutely hate...

The animal cruelty. No movie producer should ever feel the need to kill a cat on camera for shock value. That's just stupid, wrong, and should be punishable by prison time. I give this film a big fat ZERO for the use of several animals for death scenes. I can look past the pig slaughter, because you eat a pig after you kill it. But just wasting an animal for no reason? That's terrible. Torturing a human on camera, or smearing excrement on them, or whatever is fine because people have the cognition to understand what's happening, a cat does not.

For the latter part of this review, I will never be supporting Marian Dora's work from this point forward. This is sad because I really like his work as an artist, but I cannot get behind art that harms animals for no reason. I give this a 5 star only on the merits it deserves, if it had been without the cruelty, I would have rated it far higher and I would be purchasing all of his work.

Rather than looking at the title of this flick and thinking "oh, another stupid American style zombie flick", you should definitely be considering this as a Japanese action/gore/over the top madness flick. If you've seen this director's other films (Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police), then you know exactly what you're getting into. Blood, gore, fecal matter, tapeworm zombies, farting, more fecal matter, spinning tapeworm heads, kung fu fighting.... etc. You get it.

Personally, I love these Tokyo Shock flicks for all they're worth. Some folks will certainly hate this stuff, cuz frankly, most Tokyo Shock is absolutely bizarre and weirdly fetishistic. But hey, if you can't laugh at some tentacle rape and ridiculous farting tapeworm zombies, why are you even here? Lighten up, have some fun and pop in a good ol' fashioned Japanese Shock Action flick like this and laugh a bit.

I've watched all of the "August Underground" films a few times and feel like I can review this one now. I won't bother with reviewing the other two, because they're basically the same thing, so why try.

First off, I'd like to point out that I've seen the worst of the worst Z grade garbage out there and this one is not as bad as those. While the dialogue and acting weren't top notch, it certainly wasn't totally horrible acting. The people in this film definitely make it quite convincing as a snuff film, so it certainly accomplishes what it set out to accomplish. I've even turned it on for a few friends and they were so shocked, they thought I had actually put on a real snuff film. I had to show them an interview with Fred Vogel just to convince them it wasn't real. The special effects were top notch, and the torture was almost too real. So if you want to see some absolutely horrendous stuff on screen, by all means go ahead. I give this film a 9 for the effects, 5 for acting....

Now, on to what I hated about this. The camera work. I can see trying to make it convincing with bad lighting, and a bit of shaky camera work, but anyone, anywhere can hold a camera on somebody. There was absolutely no reason for them to swing the camera around so wildly the entire film. I have a hard time watching this thing just because the camera work makes me angry as hell. If you can put together such amazing torture scenes and effects, why would you actively try to use a camera in such a way? There is no reason for it and it's very annoying. I give this film a big fat zero for that. If I could talk to Fred Vogel myself, I'd give him a thumbs up for effort on effects, but I'd ask why in the hell he had to make the camera work that bad. It makes this film seem way too strained.

All in all, it's a tough one to stomach, and anyone with any sense of moral comfort will probably get sick watching it. If you can see past the horrendous camera work, it's worth a watch if you like the pseudo snuff genre. All others should just avoid this thing like the plague. I give this a total of 4 stars.