Tokyo Gore Police
Dir. Yoshihiro Nishimura (Japan 2008)
Rating: 4 out of 4 Stars (great)
Review by: David Austin

I’ll confess I had low expectations for this one. Another crazy Japanese splatter-punk film with sexy girls and over-the-top gore, ho hum. The first two minutes seemed to confirm those low expectations. Five minutes later, while Eihi Shiina (of Audition fame) performed a double chainsaw dance over the mutant she had just literally defaced, I sat up and took notice. By the time the opening title flashed on screen, I was applauding along with the audience. By the end, I was a convert, because this movie is freaking awesome.

Tokyo Gore Police plays as if it were a Troma film – the greatest Troma film that was never actually made by Troma. It combines the freaked-out practical special effects and body horror of Videodrome and John Carpenter’s The Thing, the winning stupidity and tacky cheapness of the much beloved Story of Ricky, the dynamism of Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo the Iron Man, and the clever parodic asides of Robocop, and wraps them up in a shame-free bow for your delectation. Just to give you some of the highlights, it features a bondage-clad quadruple amputee whose limbs have been replaced by blades, a yonic crocodile, more split heads and spurting blood than any three Lone Wolf and Cub movies, and even takes time out for a birthday party.

All the more impressive considering the film supposedly was shot by Yoshihiro Nishimura in just two weeks. Remarkably - given the tight schedule, Nishimura’s limited experience directing commercial films (he is known primarily for his effects work) and the ridiculous subject matter – Tokyo Gore Police scores in all the fundamentals as well as the slop. It is an impressively well shot, edited and scored film, with fun performances and a solid script that manages to be genuinely, intentionally funny. Of course, it was not until one of the characters started using the blood spurting from his severed legs to achieve jet propulsion that I had to acknowledge Nishimura’s innate genius.

Warning: Tokyo Gore Police is not for everyone!

TOKYO GORE POLICE PLAYS AT THE IFC CENTER THURSDAY, JULY 3D AT 4:20 PM

---

Dainipponjin
Dir. Hitoshi Matsumoto (Japan 2007)
Rating: 3 ½ out of 4 Stars (very good)
Review by: David Austin

[WARNING – This film is best seen cold, without any knowledge of the subject matter.]

Dainipponjin comes very close to perfection but for one enormous flaw (on which more later). The film is a mockumentary in the Christopher Guest style, relying heavily on a deadpan serious performance by creator and comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto as Daisato, heir to a great family tradition of growing to enormous size and fighting monsters that periodically invade Japan. Lately, this would-be Ultraman faces little but abuse – his aides are elderly, his salary is tiny, and he is castigated by environmentalists and those who are sick of his destructive battles. Throughout, Matsumoto brilliantly combines comedy and pathos – when Daisato’s estranged wife won’t allow his young daughter (who Daisato would like to follow in his footsteps) on camera, the compromise is that the little girl’s face is blurred like a criminal.

The one enormous flaw is the ending. Up until the conclusion, this is the story of Daisato. We are invested in his character and in his fate. The ending, however, switches from a gentle satire of documentaries and Japanese “rubber suits and monsters” films to a wacky parody of Japanese superheroes, and becomes more Airplane than Spinal Tap in the process. It is undoubtedly extremely funny, but the film loses its focus on Daisato the man, who literally becomes a bystander to the action. The closest example I can think of is Spike Jonze’s Adaptation, which follows a brilliant beginning and middle with wickedly clever (and signposted) final act that is brilliant in its own way, but unfortunately also takes you completely out of the film you already had invested in. I enjoyed it, but it might have done better as a DVD extra.

Putting aside that flaw, Dainipponjin is quietly brilliant – nowhere more so than when we see Daisato preparing for his transformation, standing in an enormous pair of trunks.

DAINIPPONJIN PLAYS AT THE JAPAN SOCIETY ON FRIDAY, JULY 4TH AT 2:30 PM