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.

Ninja Terminator

"The police say he was found with pieces of metal in his back. That definitely means someone wanted him dead."

Ninja Terminator is an absolutely terrible kung-fu movie. But if that's exactly what you're in the market for, then this is a real gem.

Basically, there's a "golden ninja warrior" statue that is divided into three parts: the chest/head and two arms. Whoever possesses the full statue gains the power to be impervious to blades (also, the power to laugh maniacally).

The Ninja Empire master owns the statue, but three of his students steal it, taking one piece each.

Up until now, Ninja Terminator has gone along pretty much like any standard martial arts movie. There's a little more eyeliner and wigs than usual... but nothing too crazy. As it turns out though, after we get that bit of backstory out of the way, things quickly descend into madness.

This is what it looks like during the movie's "normal" phase.

The rest of the movie consists of the Ninja Empire trying to get it back, while the students try to get the rest of the pieces from each other. This leads to there being enough conflicts to have a fight about ever two minutes. Even so, the movie awkwardly forces a fight to happen at this frequency even when the story doesn't provide one.

"I'm looking for a restaurant."
"You're looking in the wrong place. Around here... THERE ARE NO RESTARAUNTS!"
(Fight)

I should probably mention that the above scene is set to Pink Floyd's Echoes.

Pictured: Music for ninjas.

Things deteriorate pretty quickly into a bombardment of utter chaos and nonsense. We suddenly have ninjas teleporting from place to place, but apparently they can't go very far, so they just teleport about 6' over and over.

They also have some inexplicable ability to disappear while wearing street-clothes and then suddenly reappear wearing their ninja outfit.

Here's a basic timeline for the important plot points in the rest of the film.

12:04 - Random violence against a melon.

13:40 - Random violence against a crab.

36:50 - Asian guy's dialogue dubbed to a hilarious redneck accent.

39:15 - Ninja Empire's most threatening "death message" delivery.
50% toy robot and 50% Garfield phone

In the end, there's a final showdown. They all teleport the sheaths off of their swords and then teleport back and forth poking at one another.

Eventually the mustachioed, camouflage-suited ninja gets all the statue pieces and we find out the movie's secret.

It's been channelling Troll 2 the whole time.

You can watch Ninja Terminator here.