Reviews by tiffany

Written and directed by Bruce LaBruce (born Justin Stewart), Otto is a confusing heap of zombie. The film won the Best Film award at the 2008 Milan International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and I suppose I can see why.

Otto; or Up with Dead People

Otto (Jey Crisfar) is a deeply troubled, rose petal eating, new zombie who is having trouble fitting in to a society who hates zombies with renewed fervor after having the new lot of them come out as raging homosexuals. He finds a small place to belong with a group of independent film makers who are making a movie about zombies. How convenient.

Otto eating roses

As we follow Otto around through his hardships, we learn he had a boyfriend, a family and used to be a vegetarian butcher. We then learn that Otto also used to be sane. That Otto was never a zombie at all. That Otto is actually a schizophrenic boy with a personality crisis who is eating road kill and gnawing on one night stands because he believes himself to be a zombie. Ahem.

Zombie Roadkill; Otto

This film does showcase a lot of gay bashing (along with flesh wound fucking) and I can feel the aspect of a political agenda behind it. Because of that, I’m more inclined to like it, but if you were to take away the homosexual part, it feels like a tourist trap. If that makes sense.

Otto; Flesh Wound Fucking; Zombie

It’s a good idea, but with false promises. We all enjoy a good zombie flick, but the movie within a movie thing was overdone about a decade ago and with there not being any real zombies at all, I was left with a “really?” taste in my mouth.It was much like eating a bad piece of candy: I will still eat it, and kind of enjoy it, but I will most likely complain the whole time.

There's also this strange aspect of the movie within a movie director, Medea Yarn (Katharina Klewinghaus), being in love with what I presume is a dead woman? I'm not entirely sure what that was all about but in every shot she is grained over with a black and white 35mm super old looking filter and never actually speaks. It seemed oddly out of place and entirely unnecessary.

Otto; or, Up with Dead People movie screening scene

Crisfar is strikingly beautiful, however, and that made the whole thing far more tolerable to sit through. I will say that this is a well executed bad idea and leave it at that.

My official rating: **

Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura (Suicide Club, RoboGeisha) & written by Kengo Kaji (Samurai Princess, Spiral) Tokyo Gore Police is a lovely piece of film candy topped with blood and giggles. It takes place in future-esque Tokyo where a (corrupt) privatized police force is hunting brutal murderers. Nishimura does a beautiful job of blending jaw dropping gore, sincere giggling and head tilting "what the hell?" into one beautiful two hour horror spectacular.

Ruka (Eihi Shiina) is a traumatized girl who lost her father during the privatized police take over. She became an officer and is a noted member of the force to take out the "engineers." An engineer is someone who has become the enemy by having a key shaped tumor inserted into their body that makes them a specific breed of murderer and whenever they're injured, a deadly weapon takes over the part of them that was harmed. The only way to kill an engineer is by severing the part of them that holds said key.

This film becomes quite strange about half way through, when we arrive at a strange sort of sex club, where a certain breed of sexy engineers are, in a way, auctioned off to patrons for pleasure. The unveiling of these creatures is a quick way to fall in love with the minds behind this film, and the images are sure to stick with you. I must comment that the design and follow through of these "costumes" are stunning.

This is one film I am not going to try to give a full synopsis of. There are too many brilliant things that happen in (what seems like) such a condensed period of time. I will, however, give you bullet point highlights of some of my favorite scenes:

* an amputee she-dog on sword stilts
* a hovercraft torso
* a barmaid being torn apart via ropes tied to her limbs and corresponding vehicles driving in reverse
* acidic breast milk
* alligator vagina

If the above don't move you to want to invest in this film, I feel sorry for you and your lack of bad taste. This screenplay was well written, the film was well made, the photography is brilliant, the director has a sense of humor and I adored all of it. One of the best trashy but legit films I've seen since RoboGeisha (same mind, yet to review).

My official rating: ****