Zombie Self-Defense Force

Zombie Self-Defense Force is the first of Naoyuki Tomomatsu's trio of zombie productions. I've had this movie for probably six months before I actually got around to watching it, but now that I have I think I just might be intrigued enough to look into those other two. That's not to say that it's a great film (it's not), but in this case I think that this trainwreck turned out to be hilarious enough for repeat viewings, from several angles.

The movie starts out with a ridiculous CGI spaceship being seen over Fujiyama, Japan. After a drawn out display of every single Japanese citizen's reactions to the U.F.O. the thing crashes, bathing the surrounding landscape in an electric green light.


As luck would have it, the Kibara platoon of the Japanese Self-Defense Force is in the forest already, on a "routine mission."

When we meet them they're just arriving at a corpse hanging from a tree. They see the spaceship, but decide to take care of the body before heading out to the crash site. While they're digging a grave for her, the dead woman suddenly springs back to life as a green-skinned zombie.

Also we find out the forest is haunted by ghost soldiers...

Wow. Things are really picking up fast now, and it hardly ever slows down again. We get one ridiculously gory gag after another as we plod along a truly skeletal plot. Essentially if you were to take zombies, aliens, ghosts, robots, and volcano eruptions (and the rest of this post's tag list), and come up with some ridiculous way to string them all together and throw them on screen in the span of 45 minutes or so, then you'd pretty much have the plot of Zombie Self-Defense Force... so long as you sprinkled in a healthy dose of sword fighting and arterial spray. With that being said, this isn't exactly a plot-driven movie anyway. As a cheap romp through a sequence of sight-gags and gore effects, this is actually pretty entertaining.

It's most easily compared to the scores of Troma films that follow about the same formula. While I personally don't mind some of Troma's more self-indulgent melon-crushing escapades, the quality bar's not set very high on a lot of those, and that's about what I was expecting going into Zombie Self-Defense Force. To my surprise, this actually turned out to actually be better than a lot of the Troma stuff.

Here are some of the high points:

Long, weird, but interesting opening propaganda spiel about why the U.S. government and its military actions are bad, but hamburgers and George Romero are good.

A flying zombie fetus that explodes from the womb of a dead, but pregnant, zombie...

... which then immediately lassos the innkeeper with his umbilical cord and goes Blanka on the innkeeper's face.

We eventually meet the aliens that are causing all of these problems... this is what they look like. As it turns out they're not built for dealing with robots + swords.

The final showdown between robot-lady and ghost-man. Same as all the other fights, but with even more sparks and hilariously inappropriate sound-effects than usual to indicate how epic it is.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra

If you long for the days when filmmakers could take a camera and a couple of bucks out to the middle of nowhere and return with their beautifully weird sci-fi masterpieces, then you're in luck, as Larry Blamire seems to believe that those days aren't over.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra starts by introducing us to Dr. Paul Armstrong (Larry Blamire) and his wife Betty (Fay Masterson), as they are going away to spend a few days in a little cottage in the woods where the scientist can of course, do science.



At the same time, a couple of Marvians from planet Marva, Kro-Bar and Lattis, crash land their ship in the same woods. After the crash, the Marvians find that that what they need to repair their ship happens to be the same material that Dr. Armstrong is studying. To top it all off, their pet mutant seems to have escaped during the crash.


As if that wasn't enough, Dr. Roger Fleming (Brian Howe), a sort of mad scientist, happens to be interested in the very same area, only he's there to try to find a haunted cave and awaken the titular Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (a biology class model bought on ebay) and use his power for himself. Although he clearly wasn't quite counting on finding such a sassy and unaccommodating skeleton.


What ensues as they all bumble through the forest running into one another is 90 minutes of memorable, quotable hilarity in a near perfect comedic tribute to 50's sci-fi.

I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up Animala (Jennifer Blaire). She completely steals the show, while being almost completely mute aside from her single repeated word of dialogue. In her black tights and short hair, she's an apparent throwback to another bit of 50's sci-fi, Cat-Women of the Moon.


The only real problem here is knowing the whole time that there's a completed sequel that's been lying around for a long while awaiting distribution, and that won't be available until mid-2010.

Mark your calendars.

Aliens Gone Wild

When I came across this in a North Carolina thrift store and saw the name "Aliens Gone Wild," I bought it without even glancing at the back. I believe I paid $4 for it, any more and I might have gotten disappointed. This is not the "Aliens Gone Wild" movie I was imagining.

A couple of minutes in, I found out that this was actually meant to be a highlight reel from some of Full Moon's alien-based movies in the past. Except at 3 hours long... it's a lot more than just the highlights. You actually almost see enough to follow some of the stories for the films, but because they basically just jump around to the action scenes, you miss all the rest and just get exceptionally unsatisfying versions of a bunch of different alien movies.

It's kind of like watching one of those movie trailers that gives away every plot twist and scare shot in the movie... only there are about a dozen of them back to back, and they're all about 15 minutes long.

The only redeeming qualities are the few extras and the fact that Full Moon has such a large catalog represented here, it's bound to lead you to a movie that you'd actually like to see. That's not quite enough for me to suggest this to anyone else though.

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians

"Hooray for Santy Claus!"

Full Movie:

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