The least exhilarating still from Tokyo Gore Police.

Tokyo Zombie
Directed by: Sakichi Sato
Starring: Tadanobu Asano, Sho Aikawa, Erika Okuda
DVD released by: Madman Entertainment

Tokyo Gore Police
Directed by: Yoshihiro Nishimura
Starring: Eihi Shiina, Itsuji Itao, Yukihide Benny
DVD released by: Madman Entertainment

Below are a few conclusions one can come to about wider Japanese culture after viewing Tokyo Zombie and Tokyo Gore Police back to back:

– Merciless beatings count as slapstick.
– Japanese men have deep castration anxiety, despite readily offering their junk for the biting.
– Work is an unending cycle of supplication and oppression resulting in corporal punishment, shootings and seppuku.
– A guy in an eyepatch is likely to be evil.
– Mt Fuji and the Tokyo Tower can be seen from anywhere in Japan.
– The passing of time can only be demonstrated in cel and computer animation.
– Every Japanese person has a beloved mentor who returns as their arch nemesis.

Aside from these recurring themes, Tokyo Gore Police and Tokyo Zombie couldn’t be further apart in quality.

Sakichi Sato’s 2005 film Tokyo Zombie has been billed as an Eastern version of Shaun Of The Dead and that would be true if it had a witty script, warm performances, jokes, or any narrative arc. Two workmates, a pitiless mentor and a childlike brute, accidentally dispatch their boss and choose to dump his body on a mountain of toxic rubbish known as Black Fuji. Surprise, surprise, not only is the rest of Tokyo’s population carelessly dumping bodies on this tip, but the dead are also being reanimated to chomp on the living, à la every single zombie flick ever.

Now, low-budget films usually rest heavily on trashy effects and clever ideas but Tokyo Zombie has neither. The script is a sequence of non sequiturs, attempts at jokes are so weak that they’re barely perceptible and the direction is ponderous to the point of negligence. The film is split into two parts, before and after the zombie apocalypse, and only gets interesting during the crude anime intermission and in the final, camp Monkey-esque sequence.

The most exhilarating still from Tokyo Zombie.

No character has any motivation for any of his or her actions. It’s bizarre but not interestingly so. What little gore there is isn’t even funny, when it should be OTT bananas. Tokyo Zombie feels like it was assembled from the cutting-room floor of another, slightly better, pulp film; you can’t even mock it from a cultural relativist point of view. Witless and pointless.

Where Tokyo Zombie falls desperately short, Yoshihiro Nishimura’s 2008 stylish splatterfest Tokyo Gore Police ascends to stomach-churning glories. In a dystopian future of privatised police (decked out in samurai-themed riot gear), a race of mutants called Engineers can convert any injuries into weapons. What kind? Well, a giant bloody demon penis that fires rounds, gun-barrel eyes under an uncovered brain, acid breast milk blasting from both nipples and the navel, bio-chainsaws… Y’know, the usual.

It’s queasily hilarious to witness limbs wantonly severed as blood literally showers onto the camera and all the actors. Add a bondage rubber fetish party. Holy fuck, there’s a mutant pissing sex scene! There’s a woman cut up in a box! A teenager crunches and squelches through a mouthful of bugs! More than one person gets their entire face sliced off intact!

What stops this from being a cynical, nihilistic gross-out contest are the shades of Robocop and Starship Troopers’ fascism satire. Silly commercials appear for “The Wristcutter” for teens, a Wii game with a sword where you remotely slash real prisoners, and nasty recruitment ads for the new Tokyo Police Corporation. There are also bright news breaks and cute visual gags, such as the Saab police cruisers with pitched Japanese roofs. Then there’s the deliciously bratty ’60s garage-soul girl-group soundtrack. It’s super-stylish and some shots could even be considered beautiful, in a repulsive way. If Quentin Tarantino did the DVD commentary to Tokyo Gore Police, it would be a 100-minute orgasm.

Tokyo Gore Police would be the perfect movie to show in the background of a particularly drunken party. The gleeful insanity will blow your guests’ minds and make them question your good taste. Tokyo Zombie wouldn’t even register.