Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness (1995) 1h 20m

Ever since I bought this film, I continually forget that I own it.  I wasn't even looking for it when I was searching for a film to watch, it just happened to be in the same binder as tomorrow's film and I found it first.  So what does that say about Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness, aside from that title is too long?

Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness (or Eko Eko as I'm going to call it from now on) opens with a satanic cult using magic to kill teenagers.  Their apparent goal is to take the lives of 13 innocent teens in order to bring Lucifer to Earth to do whatever.  This film is really vague on what the end goal is here so we get: Step 1: Kill Teens, Step 2: Summon Lucifer, Step 3: ????, Step 4: Profit!  At the end of their opening ritual they get a warning about a strong witch coming that they should not make an enemy of.  Enter Misa, said teenage witch that ends up trapped in the school with 13 other students and two perverted teachers.  Her goal is to find the head person behind the killings and prevent the rise of Lucifer as this is apparently all she does in each school she goes to.

I forgot this happened.

Eko Eko had this weird feeling to it, like it never sat quite right with me.  It looks like it was just a made-for-tv-movie and its short running time (at least compared to most J-horror films) only bolsters that sentiment.  The plot is relatively straight forward and some of the set-up and magick effects look okay but you can tell that this was most likely made for a PG-13 audience.  This isn't to say that films under an R rating are bad, just that in this case it all feels a bit immature.

Eko Eko was based off of a manga from the 70's and apparently spawned six fucking sequels and a short television series.  I don't know how I feel about that info.  I would like to go back and read the manga for a comparison just to see if they toned things down or if this was always as tame as I perceive it.  You know, because I perceive the magickal murder of teenagers in order to invoke the rising of Lucifer to be a mundane task.

I give Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness 2 I-no from Guilty Gear out of 5:

Helldriver (2010) 1h 57m

If you haven't noticed by now, this week I'm going through my J-Horror collection and reviewing those things that I bought mainly because they looked cool.  Surprisingly, I only just realized that a majority of these films that I own have something to do with Tokyo Shock (The Asiatic cinema/television focus of the larger company, Media Blasters).  It makes sense though since most of my favorites have high powered blood sprays, lots of action, and insane creature design.  So with that fresh in your brain, let's jump into Helldriver!

Kika's home life isn't ideal. She comes home one day to find her mother and uncle eating her still living father.  During her escape attempt a meteor crashes through the mother's chest but her mom pulls Kika's heart out to replace her now missing one.  At the same time, the meteor was an alien which takes over the mother and encases her in some sort of amber-like shield.  Kika is thrown to the side but not before she gets the same shielding.  The mother than shoots space spores into the air which turn those that breath it in into zombies with strange fungal antenna on their forehead (like ophiocordyceps unilateralis in ants).  Kika is rescued and turned into a cyborg (although they say android here) with a metal chest plate and a chainsaw katana.  She and a small group of sudden friends attempt to take out this zombie queen and save the world.

Look at this Silent Hill shit!

All the things I love with these Japanese hyper-gore films are present here.  There's a lot of blood, intense action scenes, absurd and nonsensical things that only work for this movie (ie. a car made out of zombie body parts), and the overall feeling of not taking itself too seriously where it would ruin the film.  If I had any real complaint with Helldriver then it would be my usual gripe about pacing.  I was about 45 minutes into it before the title card appeared which made me feel like the whole first half of the film was meant to be an intro to the latter half, and in a way it really was.  We have so much time spent establishing our characters and the world that, when we get to the heart of the matter, doesn't really need to exist.  It's like playing an RPG and you have to grind for a few hours before you're even able to leave the first section and get to the actual adventure.

Helldriver is really a niche film.  This isn't something I could just drop on a friend and tell them to check it out without advanced knowledge of their cinema tastes.  In this case, it would have to taste like blood... a fire hose of blood all yelling at you in Japanese.

I give Helldriver 2 zombie ants out of 5:

Devilman (2004) 1h 52m

Coming from the same table at the same anime convention (although a year earlier) is 2004's entry to the Devilman series.  Created by Go Nagai back in the early 70's, Devilman has had a manga, multiple films, and anime series with the most recent being on Netflix.  Though much tamer than its counterparts, let's jump into today's review.

Grandma got me a Hot Topic gift card!

Devilman focuses on Akira and Ryo.  Ryo is essentially a violent delinquent that describes himself as "pure evil."  Akira is Ryo's only friend, despite being the opposite of Ryo in every way.  Akira is the only person that can calm Ryo on his angsty rampages.  One day Ryo has Akira go with him to his father's lab where an experiment with demons and demon energy has lost control and released the dark entities to our plane of existence.  Akira is hit by a particularly nasty demon but is able to retain his humanity, while Ryo becomes angelic.  The world descends into chaos as the released demons possess bodies and feed upon humanity and only Akira can stop them while also trying to save the world from itself.  Ryo has other ideas in mind.

I've said this about other films in the past, but this is truly the center point between amazing and crap.  Despite the long time it didn't drag too much but at the same time I wish the story pacing were a bit stronger.  The CG could be a bit questionable but it works well for the fight scenes where there's a lot of action and not a lot of time to focus on the details.  I also wish the Ryo reveal was done a bit more tactfully.  We're presented with info in the second act that should really only exist for the final reveal.  Otherwise, it is a solid film.  It's just not enough for me to get behind.  I would recommend Devilman with an apathetic "you might like it."

I give Devilman 2.5 '72 anime Devilmen out of 5:

Wild Zero (1999) 1h 38m

Holy shit, Wild fucking Zero!  I picked this up a few months ago at the yearly anime/J-culture convention.  There's one booth that is 90% anime sets but if you walk around to the side of the table they have a stack of movies and weird shit for you to sort through.  This has been on my list to get for a while now as I never had the chance to see it but I knew about it through the early 00's Pittsburgh punk scene.

Wild Zero has a lot going on in it so bare with me.  We start with a bunch of spaceships approaching the earth.  While that's happening a meteor crashes into a town and zombies begin to overrun it, a la Night of the Living Dead.  At the same time, we meet Ace, a Guitar Wolf fan that idolizes their rock n' roll machismo.  When Ace stumbles into a stand-off between Guitar Wolf and a club manager he stands up for rock n' roll only to get knocked out.  After Guitar Wolf shoots the fingers off the manger (while Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf comb their hair) he creates a rock n' roll blood brother pact with Ace and gives him a whistle to call Guitar Wolf if Ace ever needs them.  The next day Ace inadvertently stops a robbery where he meets his new love interest, Tobio.  Zombies attack, the club manager is attempting to track down Guitar Wolf for revenge, and the alien invasion eventually begins... and it's all turned up to 11.  ROCK N' ROLL!

Fuckin' right on, Guitar Wolf!

After watching Wild Zero, this film is definitely in my top 10 all-time favorites, maybe even top five but I'd have to spend more time than I want thinking about that right now.  For a movie that came out in 1999, it's surprisingly progressive.  It takes all the things that I personally like about punk and rock, n' roll and rather than pushing the say, Motley Crue model of excess, it pushes this acceptance of everyone in the name of rock n' roll.  It's almost like it's a polytheistic lifestyle, elevated above everyday life.  Are Guitar Wolf gods?  Is this their bible?!  I'd go to church if it were just going in and having the word "rock n' roll" shouted at me from a microphone that shot flames!

This movie is hands down amazing.  There's a drinking game on the disc as well if you're into that.  If you are, then just do so responsibly.  Drunk driving is not rock n' roll!

I give Wild Zero 5 copies of Joan Jett's I Love Rock and Roll out of 5:

Ju-On: White Ghost Black Ghost (2009) 1h 1m / 1h

In the rivalry between the two, I prefer Ju-On over Ringu.  Maybe it's because Kayako has the additional striker of the small semi-naked child that just makes cat noises which gives her the advantage to topple Sadako, or the fact that I just find the entire concept of a Ju-On much more frightening than a well ghost creeping on you with outdated media.  Either way,  I've owned this for longer than I'd like to admit after claiming to be a fan of something.  Also, post script to this, I've had Shudder for like two years and still haven't watched Sadako vs. Kayako, but that's mainly because I watch so many horror movies for this website.

Why must you haunt me cursed ghost?!

White Ghost Black Ghost is actually two separate films.  White Ghost kicks things off with someone that I refer to as Sentai Sanata (due to his clothes and motorcycle) delivering a Christmas cake to the Ju-Oh house.  After a short time he realizes the woman interacting with him is actually acting on a loop and his investigation of the house causes him to find the bodies of a murdered family before finding the Ju-On spirit.  In this case it's an older woman holding a basketball because she's about to bring the Shaq Attack and dunk all over his ass!  Actually you find out why later but she does have a basketball each time she appears.  The rest of this film jumps around in regards to the characters and their spot in the timeline.  It leaves you a bit bewildered at first until you begin connecting the threads.

Black Ghost focuses on a young girl in the hospital.  Following in White Ghost's steps with an erratic time line, we find that after an episode where the girl freezes, screams until the Kayako noise comes from her mouth, and then face plants, her parents are concerned for her health.  Her father checks on her only for her to grab his right hand and say "you killed a woman with this hand."  It was an awesome moment.  Most of this is focused on trying to find out what is wrong with the girl but when we learn what is wrong with her and how it gets handled it makes this the far superior of the two films.

I have a ton of notes on White Ghost Black Ghost, a lot of which is me popping off at different moments with "OMFG!" or "That's fuckin' rad!"  It helps to come into these knowing the previous two films.  Kayako is absent from both but I like that since it allows us to apply the Ju-On curse to anyone that dies in a rage, not just this one specific individual.  It also prevents the staleness that can happen with the "slasher" genre where screenwriters attempt to break things up with a fake Jason or an evil Halloween mask company.

If you could only watch one of these, then I would say to definitely watch Black Ghost, but both are pretty great.

I give Ju-On White Ghost Black Ghost 5 oni masks out of 5:

The Bloodthirsty Trilogy 2-Disc Blu-Ray + Extras (Arrow Films)

Oh shit!  We're coming back with another Saturday Screamers and this one is huge!  Today we're going to be talking about Michio Yamamoto's The Bloodthirsty Trilogy 2-disc set that was lovingly sent to us from our friends over at Arrow Films.  So thank you, Arrow Films!

To catch you up on what The Bloodthirsty Trilogy is, from 1970-1974 Mr. Yamamoto combined Japanese and European vampire lore in order to create three movies.  Released by Toho films, The Vampire Doll, Lake of Dracula, and Evil of Dracula can be sited as one of the first instances of our modern gothic take on vampirism seeping into J-horror.  Their pale visages with golden eyes become wrapped in flowing white gowns or dapper gentleman clothing to create a mash-up previously unseen.  Shot and scored similarly to the U.S. Hammer Films with a dash of the Universal Monsters and, of course, Toho's style, this is a great collection of rare J-horror that may have been overlooked in the past.


The first film, The Vampire Doll (a.k.a. Legacy of Dracula) takes us to an affluent home where a man has come to visit his beloved, only to find that she died two weeks prior in a car accident.  He is still given room and board while he deals with his feelings but he begins to see his lady friend in the house or running through the grounds at night.  The product of a curse brought upon her family by her father, she can only rest once the her father pays for his crimes... and then she deflates like a balloon.

The second of the trilogy is Lake of Dracula which was the weirdest for me to watch.  When a woman was five years old she lost grip of her dog's leash and followed him to a strange house where she was almost attacked by a man with golden eyes.  She woke up safe later and it was assumed to be a dream.  Flash forward to the film's present day and she's now a full grown woman with a totally different dog that has the same name.  She is haunted by the golden eyes in her dreams and when a coffin is delivered to her town without any return address then vampire shit goes down.

The reason this one was the weirdest to me starts with the dog thing, but then the score and foley work.  At one point the music sounded like the composer was playing a slide whistle through a series of effects pedals or at least an odd theremin.  Then, when our main character is an adult and finally catches a glimpse of the vampire the sound cue right before her discovery sounds like a quick deep fart.  It's hard to stay in the movie moment when I assumed the vampire farted and that's how she found him.

Rounding out our trilogy is Evil of Dracula where a girl's school becomes terrorized by their vampire principal.  I'm not quite sure if he's been doing this all along and just upped his game or if this just all started because he was grooming a new man to be his replacement principal.  I watched all of these in a row and this one was probably the loosest and least attention grabbing of the three.

Despite my waning attention span with the third film, I definitely enjoyed this collection.  There is really only one big extra which is the journalist/horror author Kim Newman talking about the vampirism in the films.  Other than that you get the OSTs and film trailers but compared to something like The Addiction that I covered last week, there is less additional content.  Although if they brought Michio Yamamoto back from the dead for an interview then that would've been awesome.  Unfortunately I don't think Arrow has the money for that.  Anyway, you get three films with this, so it's a fair trade off.

If you like real vampires (not sparkly ones), J-horror, or just look and feel of Toho or Hammer then I recommend picking this set up.  Thanks again to Arrow Films for the hook-up with this.

Also, if you're interested in picking up this film you can do so here from Amazon.  It's currently running around $26, which for a blu-ray with three films on it is a steal.  Also, if you order by clicking that link then that means Amazon kicks a little back to us so that we can pay for this website and fuel it with canned energy drinks.

Gantz:O (2016) 1h 35m

Here's something new to the 30 Days of Plight.  I've covered live action films of manga/anime with the Netflix Deathnote film, I talked about the anime inspired Castlevania series in my Choice Cuts, but now we get a CG film based on a manga/anime.  I just need a legit video game movie to pop up now.  Maybe one of the three Resident Evil animated films... which I own on blu-ray... shut up!  I like them!

Gantz:O is like watching an hour and a half video game cutscene (I'm looking at you Kojima!).  After Kato is stabbed and killed by some psycho in the train station he wakes up in an apartment with four other individuals and a large black orb known as the Gantz.  In this version of Japan some people die only to resurrect as part of a game where they battle real life monsters in order to gain points.  If a player collects 100 points in a round then they are granted a "wish" where they can get a special weapon, bring back a dead teammate, or be set free from the game and never have to play again.  Kato needs to survive, not only for himself but for his younger brother he cares for.

This is my first exposure to anything Gantz.  I knew of it, but never what Gantz's plot was.  After watching this though I definitely want to check out at least the manga.  I was afraid the use of CGI was going to detract from the film.  Luckily the CGI is just lifelike enough that your mind is kind of tricked into thinking it's live action.  This is in opposition to other similar films such as Advent Children.  Keep in mind though that Gantz:O is years later than Advent Children so technology has only improved.  The creature design for Gantz was impressive, with a great collection of creatures inspired by Japanese mythology with parts swapped out like custom action figures.

I will say that certain plot lines get confusing with this, especially when it comes to the very end.  I had to look up interpretations online but this just left me with more questions as this timeline apparently takes place after Kato's second death and he has no recollection of his prior time in the game.  These elements don't detract from the movie though and even the ending part could be read as set-up for a sequel.

I give Gantz:O 3 Onna Nue out of 5:

Temple (2017) 1h 18m

Horror films have taught me many things over the course of my life.  One thing is that children are most likely all ghosts or the devil.  Just because that creature was "born" doesn't make up for the fact that there were a solid nine months where you had no idea what it was really doing in there.  I've seen sonogram images that look like that thing is summing all the powers of the dark lord into him!  Seriously! Do you have multiple children?  Well then one is a ghost and one is Satan, or they're both the ghost of Satan, I don't know.  I don't have kids!

The Temple takes us to Japan where white people act like entitled assholes and can't take "no" or "not for sale" for an answer.  A woman finds an old journal in a used book store but when she attempts to buy it the shop owner tells her that the book is cursed, not for sale, and kicks them out and closes up shop.  If this isn't a sign of "don't fuck with that book," I don't know what is.  Of course, one of the men with her goes back to find a small boy in the shop and buys the book from him (red flag #2).  He stops at a ramen stand where he is told by the chef and the other patron to not go to the temple in the journal (red flags #3 & 4), but one of them still tells him where the temple is.  So guess where these people all go the next day?  This plot is trash.

I was really hoping for something great when this film started but it took me down a long and lonely road of boredom.  I held no sympathy for any of these people because they're all trash and multiple levels.  It's the deepest trash I've ever seen.  An ocean of trash.  The only thing that caught my attention was maybe three to five seconds long and it was the guardian spirit of the temple coming to life and attacking one of the men.  The rest of this film can be shot into the sun for all I care.

I give Temple 0 dumpsters out of 5:

Death Note (2017) 1h 41m

I knew this day would come.  I fucking knew it!  I just hoped that it would be much later than this, and on Halloween of all days!  So I've read all of the original Death Note manga, saw all of the anime, and own two of the three Japanese films (Death Note and Death Note II, but not L Saved the World).  When Netflix said they were going to make their own movie based on Death Note it was met with some excitement and some skepticism.  Then it came out and all I heard about it was that it was trash upon trash.  So how does this really measure up?

If you're unfamiliar with the premise, Death Note is about an ultra intelligent teenage boy named Light.  He finds a notebook labeled as a "Death Note" and a list of rules inside of how to use it.  The book itself belongs to a Shinigami (death god) named Ryuk who acts as an influencer and voyeur to Light's use of the Death Note.  After donning the name "Kira" (an indirect form of the word "killer" in Japanese), Light uses the Death Note in a self-conceived notion of global morality by eliminating criminals.  A special operative, another teenage boy of extreme intelligence, known only as L is put on the case to flush out Kira.

That pretty much sums up what is maybe the first quarter of the original story and more info than you're given for the entirety of this film.  If you know nothing at all about Death Note then you might like this film.  If you know even the slightest bit about Death Note then you know this is a bastardization of the source material set in America.  I could go on and on about why this wasn't good, but those reviews already exist so I'll jump to the two things I did like about this.  First, Ryuk (and more importantly Willem Dafoe's voice acting) was a shining star in the black void of this film.  The lines were dead on, the look was great, and Willen Dafoe fucking kills it with his laughs and line deliveries.  Second, this version of L was much more proactive than the original.  He took risks that were out of character for L, but it made him a bit more interesting.  It doesn't help that I'm not really a fan of L in the manga/anime and much prefer Near, but with this film you have no clue what I'm talking about.

So is this movie the turd sandwich people say it is?  Ehhhh... Like I said, if you have even flipped through the manga then you know this movie is trash.  Although, for people that have no clue about Death Note, maybe this will be their gateway into the real thing, or maybe it will be their intro to manga and anime.  So I can't really shit on that.  Kids still get into metal based on new Metallica albums.  If it leads to them finding good metal or visiting the old Metallica albums, then good for them.  Metal up your ass...

I give Death Note 1 apple out of 5 (in honor of Willem Dafoe's Ryuk):

Friday's Choice Cuts: Tokyo Ghoul (JAP2014/US2017)

This is probably fitting as I had just recently attended Mechacon (the local anime convention here in New Orleans).  Although I didn't do cosplay for it this year, I was thinking of doing Faust from the Guilty Gear fighter series but... maybe next year.  Anyway, back to the matter at hand.

I became aware of Tokyo Ghoul in ways that no 36 year old probably should: Tumblr and Hot Topic.  The combination of these had kept me away from it until I decided to finally take a chance and watch it.  The story itself revolves around Ken Kaneki, a boy that happens to have an encounter with a very dangerous Ghoul which attempts to devour him.  In the process though the Ghoul is killed by an outside force and Ken is on the verge of death.  He ends up surviving because the doctor transplants parts from the Ghoul into his body.

At this point you're probably thinking "da' fuck is a Ghoul?"  A Ghoul is a creature that looks human but must live by eating flesh.  They can regenerate, have a greater speed and strength than humans, and also contain a special "organ" known as a Kagune.  This organ can manifest and be used to attack or defend.  It can also be severed and used as a weapon against Ghouls, as the special "dove" forces do this to fight on the side of humans.

I thought this was going to be much more of an action/horror anime but it really ends up being a drama/horror one.  Most of it revolves around Keneki's internal struggle with trying to maintain his humanity despite suddenly being a Ghoul.  Unlike vampirism, one isn't turned into a Ghoul, they are their own species.  He just happens to be a rare case once he was given Ghoul parts, the main one being his left eye which shifts to black and red when he gives himself over to his darker half.

There are political tones as well.  Similar to the Professor X vs. Magneto views that exist in the X-Men comics (fuck those movies though...), there are Ghouls that wish to wipe out the human threat and those that wish to just exist among them.  In a way, and this could just be me reading into this too much, it has a tone of the civil rights struggle in it.  Maybe I'm applying the X-Men analogy too much though...

This is the first "season" or series as the follow up is Tokyo Ghoul √A which picks up at the end of Tokyo Ghoul.

The Silenced (aka: Gyeongseonghakyoo: Sarajin sonyeodeul) (2015) 1h 39m

I really like foreign horror films.  Primarily because they're something different.  They give me something new to be scared of.  It's a whole new series of plots, monsters, ghosts, and superstitions that actually spark something inside.  I find myself looking up more info, digging deeper, going further than I do with most American horror films.  So what do I do when one suddenly pulls a very American horror plot?  Actually... I kind of liked it.

The Silenced takes place in an all-girls boarding school/sanitarium.  Our main character, Shizuko, arrives because she has contracted TB.  Over time we find out that there was another girl with the same name that just left/vanished one day.  The girls seem like typical school girls but some have weird freak-out moments.  It's as if they've become possessed.  There are some more traditional Asian horror moments that come into play as well: hands reaching out where there's nobody, girls with long black hair being pulled into impossible spaces, etc.  Shizuko begins to change as well.

I want to write more but I know if I cover any more of the plot then I'll spoil this movie.  Most of the time I don't care if I do, but that's on crap, and I enjoyed watching The Silenced.  It's a slower paced film than what most people may be used to but when it picks up it picks the fuck up.  I spent time actively trying to piece together things rather than having it all figured out from the start.  I also like that the filmmakers use the symbolism of breaking glass so well.  It represents everything from  moments of frailty, to a shift in a person or moment, or even someone's breaking point.  At first it seems tedious until you have that realization of "oh, there is purpose to this."

I give The Silenced a solid 3 cheesy Mazel Tov images out of 5:

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