Description

Over in a forgotten corner of a near-future Tokyo sits Black Fuji, a mountain of junk, garbage and unwanted stuff, from discarded appliances to the bodies of whining mothers-in-law and pubescent sex-crime victims. Something dark is happening up on Black Fuji, though – a combination of toxic waste and the souls of rejected household objects is resurrecting the corpses that litter the mountain, and infusing them with an insatiable hunger for living human flesh! Meanwhile, at a fire-extinguisher factory at the foot of Black Fuji, a pair of employees are capitalizing on their boss’s absence to practice their jujitsu. The older of the two none-to-bright buddies is convinced that he can make a true champion out of his younger pal. He’s also convinced that he’s dying, so passing along his wrestling wisdom must be done quickly. Indeed it must – pretty soon, the pair will have their hands full, fighting off the hordes of the living dead!

"At last," howls the oddball, late-night TV host, "we have true zombies here in Japan!" That they do, and yes, the pasty-faced, posthumous cannibals provide plenty of nasty, gory attacks, in proper zombie-flick tradition. But Tokyo Zombie, based on the manga by Yusaku Hanakuma, is hardly your standard chomp-romp. It’s also a biting, surrealist satire of modern Japanese society, a nutty cavalcade of broad, slapstick antics, and perhaps more than anything, a touching tribute to true friendship, the kind that outlives petty arguments, long stretches of time apart and of course hideous zombie-bite infections. The talent involved should be very familiar to Fantasia fans - director Sato (whom you may recall in the role of the innkeeper Charlie Brown in Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1) has previously written the screenplays to the Takashi Miike flicks Ichi the Killer and Gozu, and for this absurd, inspired and utterly irresistible adventure, he tapped stars from those films to play the leads. Tadanobu Asano, who brought such chilly stoicism to his turns in Survive Style 5+, Versus, Gojoe etc., and Miike regular Sho Aikawa (the Dead or Alive trilogy) turn their familiar personas upside down with their uncharacteristically cheerful and goofy performances – and rather disconcerting hairstyles, especially Asano’s explosive afro!

NOTE: We have been informed by the film's distributor that their 35mm prints will not be subtitled in time for our screeening. We will thus be showing the film from a professional grade video source.

—Rupert Bottenberg

"…Never anything less than laugh-out-loud funny… what Laurel and Hardy would make if they were still alive. And Japanese. And George Romero devotees" - Tirdad Derakhshani, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Website

http://www.tokyo-zombie.com/

Credits

Director: Sakichi Sato
Screenplay: Sakichi Sato (from Yusaku Hanakuma)
Cast: Tadanobu Asano, Sho Aikawa, Arata Furuta, Erika Okuda, Harumi Sone, Kazuo Umezu, Maria Takagi, Masaki Miura, Mitsuki Tanimura, Satoshi Hashimoto, Yasuhi Nakamura, Yoshiyuki Morishita
Producers: Yuusaku Toyoshima, Haruo Umekawa
Distributor: Toshiba Entertainment