DEAD SUSHI

(A.k.a. DEDDO SUSHI)

Keiko (Rina Takeda) is a teenage girl being primed by her chef father to work in his sushi restaurant. But he's an unforgiving bastard who expects nothing less than perfection - whether it's in her cooking skills or during the martial arts classes he also teaches to her.

When the pressure becomes too much, Keiko does a runner and ends up drifting into a job at a remote hotel. Here, she becomes a waitress serving the resident chef's sushi dishes to guests.

A short while later, a local pharmaceutical company turns up on a team outing. They're there for a tour of the hotel and, in particular, its acclaimed sushi kitchens. Company underling Nosaka (Takamasa Suga) clearly takes a shining to the bungling Keiko from the offset.

But as the tour gets underway, no-one seems to have paid attention to the unkempt tramp lurking outside. As one young couple of prospective guests learn early on, this guy carries upon him a mutant strain of sushi which can fly through the air and obliterate its victims' faces with its alien fangs.

Back at the hotel, Keiko is beleaguered by her bosses and bullied by her workmates. Only the friendly gardener is encouraging, telling her that her hands are perfect for preparing sushi.

It's only when the hotel's sushi chef fucks up a presentation in front of the visiting chemists that Keiko is able to demonstrate to everyone else her knowledge of sushi preparation ... and, shortly afterwards during the fallout that follows, her karate skills too.

This leaves Keiko in even more hot water with her bosses. But it all becomes water under the bridge once the tramp advances into the hotel and reveals his true identity - and his motive for getting revenge on everyone in there. Revenge in this case is a dish best served cold: in the form of sushi injected with a luminous green serum that transforms it into flesh-hungry monsters...

How do you offer a critique on a film like DEAD SUSHI? Really?

It comes from director/co-writer Noburu Iguchi. With a filmography which also includes THE MACHINE GIRL, TOKYO GORE POLICE and ZOMBIE ASS: TOILET OF THE DEAD, it should be instantly apparent to SGM readers that this is business as usual for the crazy filmmaker.

The prosthetic monster effects often look like cast-offs from the "Power Rangers" props wardrobe, while the frequent CGI FX is cheaply primitive. Most of the gore is played for laughs - faces stretched or impaled by improbable sushi monsters burying themselves in victims' mouths - which helps make the lousy effects more tolerable. Indeed, it could well be that Iguchi intends the gore to look this incompetent.

It is also, however, abundant. Heads are blown apart, eyeballs spurt out towards the screen (admittedly, this scene owes more to Looney Tunes than Fulci), flesh mutates and splits into bloodied masses: DEAD SUSHI is chock-full of the red stuff, all delivered with similar levels of both the gusto and amateurishness found in STORY OF RICKY.

Iguchi keeps the comedy consistently funny. Broad acting, exaggerated facial expressions, slapstick-style physical humour: they're all here in place of subtlety. It may grate on some viewers but, given half a chance, it does start to make sense as the action races on. It's hard to find such energetic, gleeful silliness offensive - and the in-your-face transparency of the humour is matched by the more serious themes Iguchi wishes to crowbar in at some point.

Loyalty and familial heritage are always strong thematic motivations in Japanese cinema and there's no change here. But the director also comments on wanton consumerism, modern Japan's materialistic greed, and an eco-system that has been compromised in favour of profits. It all sounds heavy-handed and you could argue that it would be, save for the bombastic comedic violence that accompanies each political statement.

Fast-moving, daft as a brush and complete with the obligatory couple of rousing metal tunes on its soundtrack, DEAD SUSHI doesn't break any new ground but does at least deliver exactly what you expect upon hearing its title and learning who its director is.

Whether that's a good or bad thing, is for you to decide...

Monster Pictures' region 2 DVD presents DEAD SUSHI uncut and in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The picture has been anamorphically enhanced for 16x9 televisions.

Colourful and stable is the best way to describe the largely satisfactory transfer. Detail is adequate; blacks are stronger than usual for an Asian production.

Audio comes in options of original Japanese or English dubbed soundtrack. Both are provided in 2.0 and superior, nicely balanced 5.1 mixes. Optional English subtitles are on hand for the Japanese soundtrack, and highlight how different the translation is at times to the English dubbed version.

The disc's main menu is static while an 8-chapter scene-selection menu is animated.

Extras begin with a 2-and-a-half-minute chat with Iguchi and Takeda at the Fantasia Film Festival. Takeda is predictably demure and reserved; Iguchi comes across as irrepressibly chirpy. How can you not love this guy? He speaks of his admiration for the lead actress, and how his motivation for making DEAD SUSHI was to produce something gorier and funnier than PIRANHA 3D. Mission accomplished.

There are also 10 minutes of footage from the same festival, where the director and actress take to the stage post-screening of their film to answer a few questions. There's not a great deal of insight to be found here, but the reception to the screening is rabid.

Again, at the Fantasia fest in Montreal, we're subjected to 13 minutes of a sushi-eating contest which was held to tie-in with promoting the film. Bizarre and oddly compelling.

Perhaps more worthy of your time is an 11-minute "Making Of" documentary. This takes in a lot of on-set footage with video quality presentation but is fun regardless.

DEAD SUSHI's original trailer makes for a rambunctious 2-minute affair; noisy and colourful, it's a pitch perfect advertisement for what is to come.

The disc is defaulted to open with trailers for LITTLE DEATHS, THE ABC'S OF DEATH and ALL SUPERHEROES MUST DIE.

A little more refined stylistically than previous Iguchi films, DEAD SUSHI is - as its title indicates - no less demented. You'll either love it or hate it.

Also available on blu-ray.

Review by Stuart Willis