JAPAN: Tôkyô zonbi aka Tokyo Zombies

Director: Sakichi Sato
Stars: Tadanobu Asano, Sho Aikawa
Release date: 10 Dec 2005/DVD release June 2006
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Length: 103 mins

This piece of insanity finally hits DVD in July. Still no sign of English subs, but Yes Asia & CDJapan have it for pre-order. Looks even more rioteous than the English flick Shaun of the Dead.

From Philadelphia Film Festival.
The feature directing debut of Sakichi Sato, a writer (he penned the Miike films Ichi the Killer and Gozu) and actor (he was the “Charlie Brown” waiter in Kill Bill Vol. 1), Tokyo Zombie is simply a wild widescreen funhouse ride of slapstick humor, genre parody, gore gags, and general horror-comedy anarchy. It’s pretty irresistible. Japanese genre film favorites Tadanobu Asano (Survive Style 5+) and Sho Aikawa (the Dead or Alive trilogy) – both saddled with haircuts that will provoke giggling anyway – star as two blue-collar laborers with dreams of being jujitsu champions, a shared goal sidelined by the sudden invasion of a zombie army storming Tokyo, descending from “Mt. Dark Fuji.” The duo are separated by fate (but can one become a zombie if you’re bitten by someone with false teeth?), but reunited years later – just when you think the film can’t get any more outrageous, Sato throws you a Kill Bill-styled anime exposition transition, and then a parody of Romero’s Land of the Dead, with wealthy survivors enjoying the spectacle of zombie wrestling. A laugh-out-loud blast from start to finish,

• Website. Windows Media trailer included.