The title alone should clue you in. This movie knows exactly what it is, and has no shame about it.

It all starts with an outbreak of the Zombie plague in Africa, and cockroach from there makes its merry way to Thailand,  finally biting a Caucasian business man. We take a break from these shenanigans to look in on some totally different shenanigans involving kidnapping, where several thugs take a page out of the Warner Bros. cartoon playbook to nab some rich guy’s daughter who, as it turns out, is quite the kicker of ass herself.

Said rich guy-in turn-hires the local warrior mercenary ninja, Master Thep (Suthep Po-ngam), to retrieve his daughter. He, being a master of management as well as the way of the ninja, delegates the task to our hero, Khun Krabii (Supakorn Kitsuwon). Khun, using the secret arts of ninja blacksmiths, hammers a wok into some armor and gets on with it.

Meanwhile, the Caucasian Zombie is spreading the plague.

Krabii goes to the local dance club…because, oh who the hell cares? Like every dance club in movies, it’s way cooler than any dance club you can ever hope go to in real life.

Meanwhile, the Caucasian Zombie continues to spread the plague.

The movie goes on like this, with the characters cracking more jokes than the audience can. Then the outbreak hits the dance club and it gets exponential, following the accepted statistical paradigms of a zombie invasion. The Thai military shows up, isolates the outbreak to the condominium/dance club, and then promptly gets eaten faster than a Krispy Kreme doughnut at a Weight Watchers convention.

Master Thep hears of this nonsense and gets into his zombie fighting gear, which includes a battery-powered laser sword (no seriously, it’s powered by D Batteries!), hauling master ninja ass to the scene.

What’s completely great about this movie is that, despite the heavy doses of gore and violence, it has a very light tone.  It pokes fun at everyone and everything: Zombie movies, the Thai government, Gangsters, Kung-fu movies, Transsexuals (Hey, it’s Thailand), and even those terrible Asian pop-songs they always seem to play at Pho restaurants.

This alone would make the movie worthy of a Cavalcade,  but the silly special effects and cartoonish characters send it right over the top into the rarified category of Wild Zero and Godzilla: Final Wars. Combine this with another Cavalcade favorite, Bio Zombie, and you recipe for a great Asian Zombie night.

One of the great things about running the Cavalcade is that whenever we’re asked to speak about our desire to bring back the Drive-In Grindhouse movie experience, people can’t help but to excitedly blurt out their own personal favorite B-movie experiences, often leading to us discovering new gems.

On one such occasion, we were introduced to the amazing Kung Fu Cult Cinema website, a fantastic resource for all things Asian Cinema. An attendee of one of our Events was so excited about a little film she found through their site, she couldn’t stop talking about it. It led to us bringing it into our homes and being completely blown away by its sheer….Awesomeness.

And what, pray-tell, was that fine cinematic gem that sent our minds reeling into the outer reaches of the spiral arm of the western consciousness?

Two words: Machine Girl (2007)

This movie has it all. Ninjas. Yakuza. Flying Guillotine. Chaingun Arms. A Drill Bra. Death by Tempura.

It. Was. Amazing.

But while we were still reeling, the DVD followed through with the promise of more to come in the form of a trailer for Tokyo Gore Police , a film that promises to outdo Machine Girl on every level. We’re here to tell you: If there isn’t a ton of gore and  some police against the backdrop of Tokyo, we’re going to have some problems.

When a crazed scientist called Key Man develops a virus that causes humans to mutate, samurai sword-wielding cop Ruka is called in to annihilate the unnatural creatures. Can Ruka wipe out the mutations and stop Key Man before the virus takes over humanity? Little does Ruka know, though, that the slaying of her father years before means she shares a hidden bond with her nemesis. Yoshihiro Nishimura’s fast-paced gorefest stars Eihi Shiina, Itsuji Itao and Shôko Nakahara.

Look. We know we promise that we “look for the worst Netflix has to offer” each week. But frankly, the last few films have seriously impacted that crucial sector of our brains we like to call  our  “will to live“. Give us this one week to actually enjoy a flick, huh? Please?

Please refresh this page to see the latest live-blog post after 2pm the day of the event.

• We’re starting up Tokyo Gore Police
• The movie is startign with a light jazzy score and kids in the park…And dad’s a super hero!
• and HIS HEAD EXPLODED!
• This is more like it! Dark! Broody! BLOODY!
• Why are there mattresses on the top of the cars?
• Eeeew, eyeball sushi!
• Sooo this is going ot be a live-action anime. Only…weirder.
• With a heroine having issues with an exacto knife..and her wrist. Hey look, LEATHERFACE!
• Seriously, how can you NOT notice the chainsaw-weilding maniac walking up behind you?
• He just grew a new organic CHAINSAW arm that he can throw with a retractable chain! I WANT ONE!
• Oh wait. Hot school girl rocket jumping with a bazooka. I’m in love!
• Um. Dude. Don’t try to eat the chainsaw. Bad for your teeth.
• SWORD DUEL…WITH CHAINSAWS! Is it wrong that I’m aroused by this?
• All that before the title sequence! I need a cigarette.
• They just executed a criminal for a commercial. That’s marketing we can believe in!
• What’s up with all these people with saws for hands? The coroner has a bone saw for a right arm!
• A key-shaped tumor is a trademark of a mutant? Huh?
• The cops are in full cyber-samurai armor. And the car-tops are temple roofs?
• Ominous chorus, flickering lights…Somebody gonna bleeed soon. OUT COMES THE SWORD!
• The gimp..is..an..amputee? Being walked like a pet dog by a demon cyber-samurai? AWESOME.
• Aaaaand it’s her boss wishing her a happy birthday. This is one F’d-up police department!
• Ok. The police captain is one freaky dude.
• Ok..Thaaaat’s a dildo.
• aaaaand that’s a creepy dude in a diaper.
• Seriously. What is up with the Japanese and doing weird things to schoolgirls?
• *gasp* it’s the key-shaped tumor! This can’t be good!
• Aaaand there goes the madam. I do believe she is being drained of blood into baby bottles..
• DUDE! INTESTINES IN A COMMERCIAL! WHAT. THE. HELL??
• A new packing method of stuffing whole prostitutes into a tiny box for convenience!
• And now the hero is dressed as a prostitute. OF COURSE she is. Oh, and let us not forget the umbrella sword.
• And now for a commercial for fashionable wrist cutting toys? WOW.
• Dude is eating Cicadas covered in maggots. Grossest thing. EVER.
• Ok. One woman you do NOT want to fondle in the train is the one who will cut your arms off!
• Um. Why are you going to sit there and watch him mutate? STAB HIM SOME MORE!
• he PULLED THE TOP OF HIS HEAD OFF AND HAS EYE CANNONS???
• Hard to use facial recognition when you only have the top half of a FACE.
• A Wii mote with a knife where you can actually disembowel people by remote control? That’s a product I WANT!
• The commercials in this movie make those in Robocop look like freakin’ Sesame Street.
• um. the stripper has an eyball in her mouth, and a penis for a nose. not the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
• Golden Showers…FROM A CHAIR. WHAT?
• No. I mean THE CHAIR is peeing on people!
• When the genetically modified prostitute with weird skin grafts straps you down, this is not good.
• aaaaand she bit it off. TOLD you, dude. Told you.
• We have decided we need vodka.
• Her entire lower half is now an aligator jaw! You don’t WANT to know where the throat is!
• Honestly. I don’t know that I can say anything more about this movie. I just watched a mutant vagina EAT a man.
• 4-foot-long PENIS CANNON!
• And now we pause for exposition. Complete with illustrations in crayon!
• The only thing weirder than the movie is its explanation.
• For Supercops, these guys really let people walk up behind them and shoot them in the head WAY too easily.
• “Thanks a lot for telling me…you insane bastard”-Best line in the movie.
• The movie has now become amputee porn.
• Acid-shooting-Nipple-cannons? REALLY?
• We have decided we need more booze.
20 Minutes later…
• We now have strawberry thingamajiggies with vodka and SoCo.
• 22 minutes of solid ultra-violence left….
• There are a pile of body parts, and one of the cops is licking a severed foot.
• Fist gatling gun? I want to MEET the guy who came up with this!
• Flying middle fingers of DOOOM!
• And now we have an epic battle with a 0-limbed amputee that replaced everything with swords!
• The bad guy is flying on Blood-jet propelled leg stumps!
• Amputee now has MACHINE GUN LIMBS! I LOVE THIS MOVIE!!!
• And that’s the end. OH, MY FUCKING GOD, was this movie awesome!
• Last sbot of the movie: “MORE GORE COMING SOON!” With that, we close out Tokyo Gore Police. Thanks all!

The Setup

There, out of the corner of your eye, in the dark of the night, lies the Ninja.

There, in the corner of every boy’s heart, in the dark of the theater, lies the Ninja.

There, in the corner of the bargain bin, in the dark of the video store, lies the Ninja.

While Zombies and Psycho Killers are the perennial haven of the low-budget horror movie, Ninjas were the go-to for the grindhouse martial arts  “epics” of the late 1970’s-early 80’s. First of all, the full-body costumes makes it easy to:

a) Use stuntmen for your leads in fights.

and

b) Use the same stuntmen over and over to fight said leads.

Secondly, the air of mystery surrounding the legends of the Ninja adds an extra layer of “cool” to your movie. It’s exactly that layer that made Ninja movie marathons on Saturday afternoons so much fun.  While all the other kids were outside playing, I was sitting on the couch, munching on dry cereal and watching someone take a Shuriken to the FACE.  My childhood was awesome!

So what kind of Ninja movies are there?

Good Ninjas Vs. Bad Ninjas (American Ninja, TMNT [yeah, we went there], Warring Clans )

The whole point of these movies is that a lone ninja/small band of ninjas has to take down another lone ninja/army of ninjas to save the village/city/world/lady love. A lot of times the Ninja will speak of how violence is only a last resort, before resorting to it A LOT of freaking violence, usually as a FIRST resort. You know, if movies teach us anything, it’s this:

Don’t f*#k with pacifists, man.

Good Ninja Vs. Everybody

(Enter the Ninja, Ninja III: Domination)

There’s very little difference between these movies and those that fall into the other category. The biggest being that, rather than tear through a dozen or so other ninjas before reaching the ultimate badass EEEEEVILE ninja, they instead tear through 3-or-4 dozen “generic” baddies before it’s established that only the ultimate badass EEEEEVILE ninja is strong enough to challenge them.

Formula

First things first, the opening of the movie will have to establish our hero’s (or heroine’s) “Ninja credentials”, because use of an unacredited Ninja violates the union by-laws of awesome. These scenes will either be the standard training montage sequences seen in other martial arts movies. Only, you know, ninjafied to include smoke bombs, shurikens, and…stuff.

Next up, we have to establish the rivalry between the Alpha Ninja  (protagonist), and the arch-nemesis. Frequently, they will have trained under the same master, and in some cases, have been friends. Then someone bogards the cheeze-whiz at a frat party, and everything goes to hell with feet/fists/swords-a-flyin’.

The Menu

Due to the origins of the Ninja, we’re going with a fairly Japanese feel with the Menu.

The Booze: Sake, Cyber Smoke

Since we’re bridging from Cyborg movies, and Ninjas rock the smoke bombs, we thought Orange Juice, Southern Comfort, and Lemon Vodka with a bit of Dry Ice might be the right way to go. Of course, Japanese beers or anything with a stealthy ninja-ish theme is a fine way to go as well.

The Food: Sushi

Sticking with the Japanese origins again. Usually the Ninjas in question are eating Rice Balls, which aren’t exactly a party food. Bonus points to anyone who makes cookies in the shape of shuriken.

The Movies

Learning our lesson from last month, we checked the availability of the movies on Amazon.com well ahead of time.

Kunoichi Lady Ninja (1998): Chicks with swords chop people up while flying through the air with the greatest of ease and shouting out attacks like “Nipple Shock Wave”. There’s been a lot of mixed word on this, so we’re not sure if it will rock the party or not.

American Ninja 4 (1991): When four Delta Force commandos are captured by an elite Ninja force in an African forest, rescue lies in the hands of a retired ex-operative who needs some persuasion – until the sinister enemy’s ultimate scheme of nuclear terrorism against an American target comes to light. It will take everything he’s got when a indestructible Super Ninja is unleashed for the ultimate showdown.

We will probably bring a third movie, in case either of these fail to entertain. Because, fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives!

Suggested Alternatives

Watari the Ninja Boy (1966):  How to describe this movie, save to say it had to have been written after someone injested psychidellic mushrooms? A child ninja battles animated pussy cats, and the jolly green giant!

Ninja Wars (1982): Throw this movie in to actually see some genuine badassery (What? That can be a word!), one Ninjette takes out 200 enemies in a skin-tight outfit that is not-at-all  anachronistic for the period. Besides, Sonny Chiba’s in it. If you don’t know who he is, you’re at the wrong site… But we’ll help you out: Hatori Hazo from Kill Bill, and you know, he was The Street Fighter (1974).

For details about the  Cavalcade Event, please check out the Facebook Event page.