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Kakuei Shimada
Sogo Ishii and Takashi Miike have nothing on this punk-rock film-maker who embraces absurdities, nonsense, chaos and nihilism as if it's in his blood. Literally anything goes in his films, characters break out in absurd non-sequitur dialogue about anything and everything, there is impenetrable Japanese-centric cultural humor in very silly sketches, cartoonishly over-the-top insane characters with continuous facial grimaces, flippant violence against anyone at any time in over-the-top ways, dominatrices, perversions, violence involving Yakuza, relationships between Yakuza thugs and crazy girls, impossible events where no rules or physics apply, and often with an energetic punk attitude. Needless to say, his films are largely plotless, though snippets of plots do pop up, then are pushed aside a minute later for some more random fun. As with Japanese forms of comedy Manzai and Konto, the emphasis is on misunderstandings, verbal gags, odd random stories, absurdities, escalation that breaks reality, overacting cartoonish energy, wordplay and nonsense, therefore much is lost in translation and is confusing even with subtitles, and coherence goes right out the window. His films are sometimes like a deadly combination of random comedy in the vein of Katsuhito Ishii's early work, and Sogo Ishii's early nihilistic and violent punk movies, but he also makes pure comedies as well. Some of his goofy sketches are fun in an absurd way, but most will only leave you scratching your head. A very silly and random punk/yakuza movie, the whole 'story' told by two people as they are falling to their deaths from a building. There are some punks, some yakuza-hunters, and some yakuza. Each of them are hunting down each other, but not before they wander the streets and encounter a series of very strange people for some completely random sketches of absurd comedy that will make you scratch your head for 100 minutes. One guy unzips his body and reveals that he is a woman. There is an insane older yakuza hunter who teaches people violent lessons while taking calls from Godard, who, amongst other things literally forces one man to eat his crap because he couldn't answer his quiz. One punk has a sexual relationship with an insane older homeless lady and is followed by a very weird jittery young girl who likes random violence. One guy has an obsession with fish sausages and eats them out of a wall. One sketch has a guy being chased by his own giant rolling testicle. A choir sings a song about your mom finding your porn mags. There's a stomach zipper, a guy with dogs for hands, a Beatles-cover band with only Ringos, a piss-rainbow, Ghandi-ranger superheroes, a religious argument over whether it's better to chop off penises or insert them into guys, virginity compared to a nuclear reactor. There is random sodomy, a random very silly punk-rock music video, random blowjob castration, random resurrection of dead people, random pop-culture references, and of course random violence. And finally there is a mind-warpingly insane sodomy-ring of dozens of guys involving random shooting, transcendence, outer space and a giant Buddha. And all this is only 5% of this very random film that you won't know what to do with. Practically a conventional comedy by Shimada's standards but it's still a collection of random absurd sketches. The plot involves a Yakuza thug thinking of retiring or dying, who develops a relationship with a Manzai comedienne who falls for him and tries to cheer him up. The thug has been given a task to kill a big boss who visits a rooftop repeatedly to act out some strange behavior, but every time he tries to do something, another random odd stranger interrupts the assassination. There's a hippy who kills animals, a paraplegic who forces the Yakuza to change his diaper, some random transvestite 'head-office' guys pretending to be bodyguards, a very aggressive girl in a bar who threatens everybody, bullets that decapitate people and leave them standing in cartoonish fashion, an old guy who walks around with his severed hand, and lots of inscrutable Manzai performances. This time there is no dominatrix although the odd, aggressive partner of the Manzai duo dabbles in it for fun. Basically this is a mildly entertaining, Manzai-style Yakuza comedy. Absolutely bonkers nihilism with no plot. Some kind of punk creature of chaos and Death falls from the sky during a 'tsunami' of falling people from the sky, all of which splatter onto Japan, except Death. He is promptly greeted by an insane lactating instant groupie, and he wanders the city having bonkers 'comedic' and ultra-violent interactions with them before basically killing everyone. While this is happening, two dominatrix girls with 3 out of 4 prosthetic legs wander from house to house leaving only one member of each household alive and negotiating the death of everyone else. Included in these random vignettes are scenes where: Four guys are forced to become a punk-rock band after removing their eyeballs and three dismembered killers are beaten with baseball bats to train the band members. Four Yakuza members are forced to cut off their tongues and given random impossible tasks while a crazy woman tortures the boss. A couple with cerebral palsy are helped by their daughter to have sex, after she complains about them not using condoms. A completely insane director redefines "chewing the scenery" and rants about Vietnamese balls as he trains people to take part in a ridiculously random play. A chauffeur changes the diaper of a bizarre criminal plant-man boss who is then reincarnated as a sperm of a masturbator. And Death plays some hardcore punk to a select audience then kills everyone. The character of Death is acted by 'Crazy SKB' a punk-rock cult icon in Japan who also happens to be a wrestler. Frankly, this is too random and incomprehensible to be enjoyable, but the film is too hypnotically chaotic in a comedic way and insanely punk to stop watching. Yet another title for this film is 'Vomit Love From Rancid Town'. These titles don't even begin to describe the random plot-free madness however. A group of circus people with random wild costumes, including one mostly-dead old man who sucks on fingers, are re-visiting a friend in a crazy small town. One promptly climbs into a washing machine to wash herself. A local Yakuza member goes crazy and shoots everyone's head off and starts a random killing spree. One bizarre lady tries to catch a thief by dangling her panties on a fishing pole, lies on the train tracks every day, hides a Yakuza by dressing him in women's clothes, tattoos a Buddha on his back with a knife, and washes condoms. The troupe make random bizarre performances in the streets including a cosplay dance, vagina-darts, a comedy act with the dead old man, asking pedestrians to kick a man in the balls, and one man eats live snakes. A Yakuza member walks around with a bullet in the head. And this is only the first 30 minutes. It only gets crazier and goofier after that. Later sketches include one where a loving girl cuts off her arms and legs for her boyfriend, there's a random robot, a Yakuza learns how to make sculptures out of ping-pong balls and wires by passing them through his stomach on stage, and another one gouges out his eyes just so he can cosplay as a blind swordsman, then a truck blows him up using a tube. One of the wackiest movies by Shimada with extreme randomness, and that's saying a lot. For much of this one's running time, it almost feels like a more conventional comedy with a plot and a theme, relative to Shimada's other works, but that's not saying much. A young detective investigating mysterious suicides and deaths related to an S&M web site becomes romantically involved with a dominatrix. A lot of the movie involves humorous or absurd scenes of S&M interplay and humiliations, amusing sketches of how various weird people got turned out by the idea of S&M and dominatrices, scenes of how dominatrices became what they are, and some violent scenes of suicides and deaths of S&M customers. This is intermixed with a couple of punk-rock performances. But then, gradually the plot is forgotten and gives way to Shimada's usual random scenes of weird humor, this time a bit more surreal. There's a very random abduction by punks who connect detectives to a bizarre punk machine, there's a punk chick with a vagina-gun, a dominatrix who is hired to rehabilitate a Hikikomori recluse who invented some kind of super-drug, a dominatrix gets the face of her lesbian lover after her suicide and an encounter with a mystical potato chip, and there's a fantasy about fighting Hitler tank-bots. This one actually has its funny moments. Shimada does his version of a 'heartfelt drama'. That is, the film is structured as if it's about a few touching stories of strange people finding themselves in a store run by a sage owner, but it's really just random nonsense. There is a punk shop full of bric-a-brac run by a single mother who always has just the right advice and commodity to give to her wide range of wacky customers. While she does her thing, she frequently breaks out into goofy song and dance when a mad, bloody street-guitarist starts playing. There is a disabled morose transsexual who gifts her with his penis and wants people to eat him when he dies. Being a Shimada film, there is random dominatrix humor of course. A midget randomly gets run over by a car. Her ex-husband calls her for money while he is having sex with his new girlfriend. There is a girl who hates her masochist father who asks the shopkeeper to cut off his finger. Her daughter is obsessed with squid sushi, a Yakuza brings her an ex-customer's decapitated head, one girl gets her upper lip stuck, a girl shoots a Yakuza for not dating her, etc etc... completely random and unenjoyable nonsense. The film is mostly random non-sequitur dialogue and hardly any visuals or fun this time. More random, nihilistic, very silly, goofy and violent shenanigans in the streets by random odd people, and another relationship between a Yakuza and a crazy girl who likes changing road signs and who gets molested with sex-toys at the restaurant where she works. As in many of Shimada's film's, the crazy girl abuses the Yakuza thug in various ways, this time she orders him about as his 'princess' while they fall in love. One Yakuza boss keeps a pigeon in his pants, there's a crazy old man in outrageous costumes who wants to be a pop-idol who trains a Yakuza by throwing underwear at each other, there's random sodomy and cosplay, a very obnoxious family that chew the scenery in the wackiest ways for ten minutes, the Yakuza harpoons a guy who raped his girl in high-school, they form a rock-band that randomly stabs each other, they try to act in a movie with a guy who uses a bedpan for robotic Mickey-Mouse ears, and so on. This redefines how extremely silly one can get. Way too silly. A crazy woman whose husband and baby are both dead walks around with a knife threatening or stabbing people. She forces a socially withdrawn young man, whom she assumes killed her husband, out for a walk. They meet a crazy old poet wearing corpse-paint in the cemetery. These three crazy people have random interactions and dialogue with random people with the usual Shimada sketches of odd, impenetrable, random humor and very bizarre over-acting. The old man's many, many outrageous costumes and facial grimaces are constant and particularly bizarre. There's a gory stabbing which may be delusional, a girl with a prosthetic leg and a tail thanks her for it, they form a patrol to guard the city from 'heavy-metal murderers' and the old man guards from inside a sewer, there is random Yakuza ultra-violence including a man who eats eyeballs, a crazy prostitute gets hatred out of her system by beating a plastic bin with a face painted on it, her father was killed by someone she thinks is an alien, a man sleeps in the fridge, a man walks around on fire after being told by a ghost he shouldn't kill himself, a dominatrix pees on a dead person, and so on, with occasional very bloody but goofy, random violence for the most absurd whimsical reasons. There's a constant feeling that something is getting lost in translation even with subtitles. Random, and not the fun kind. |
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