Ha! Ha! Miike returns to his old unique universe (the
one he created during his Golden period 1995-2005) with this
weird and totally nonsensical movie. A Mix of Miike that combines his
Yakuza gangsters, surrealistically weird Kaiju
monster madness with zombie-vampires in a crime action comedy.
The Film constantly gives you the feeling it's about to implode with
the actors shaking their heads and leaving the set
yelling obscenities at the director ... But, somehow the film manages
to avoid falling into chaos by a narrow margin.
Again, Miike - as in his superior As The Gods Will - use a well known
figure, a video character and Good Luck charm
in Kaeru (The Frog) as a Kaiju monster. And as in Kamisama
no lu Toori where he used the kawaii, cute
figures
Maneki Neko (The Cat) and Shirokuma (The Polar Bear) as murdering monsters,
the Monster Frog is delightfully
hysterical to watch. You just must Love Japan, a country with directors
capable of making insane films as this.
The Story ... well, something like that anyway:
The Yakuza underling Akira Kageyama (Hayato Ichihara)
works for (and admires) the Old man, boss Kamiura (Lily
Franky), he wants to be like him. Kamiura's a very popular boss in his
area, helping people with money during the
hard times, and he seems to be undestructible as no-one can kill him
no matter how many bullets or knife stabbings he
takes. That's because he's a vampire and he keeps bad guys chained in
his cellar for blood drinking ... knitting chained
bad guys. Now some sort of vampire hunters appear and kill the boss,
but not before Kamiura's severed head manages
to bite his trustful underling Akira and transfer his undead powers
to him. Soon, a vampire-zombie plague is spreading
through the neighbourhood.
The New boss Zenba (played by Reiko Takashima) and her
remaining living yakuzas are unhappy with the situation as
the people in the hood, turned into zombie-vampires, are no longer afraid
of the yakuza gang.
If this sounds strange ... just wait. Soon a Kappa troll turns up and
a martial arts fighting Kaiju Frog who murders people
with a baseball bat. People are grown and harvested as vegeatbles and
... what's happening with the world ?
Just as in the end of As the Gods Will (Kamisama no lu Toori) the question
could be - Is This Armageddon?
I watched this fun film by Video On Demand streaming
video and Njuta Films has released the film in Sweden