1999, Japan. Directed by Atsushi Muroga. Available on DVD (HKFlix).

I don't know what happened, but somewhere along the way, people forgot to keep making zombie films. There for a while, they were going strong. George Romero was blowing people's minds with his films, and the Italian were blowing people's minds with graphic scenes of people having their minds blown out. When I was a wee sprout, I went from old Universal horror films directly into zombie films. No other horror category captured my attention the way zombie movies did. There was something overwhelmingly creepy about them. I remember the first time I watched Dawn of the Dead. It was pretty cool while I was watching it, but it wasn't until days later, when it had been tumbling about in my head, that I began to get really creeped out by the whole concept of being caught in a world populated by the dead.

Fear of the dead has always interested me. When if comes right down to it, about the only people you can trust not to harm you are dead folk. It's the living people you really have to watch out for. And weirdly enough, despite turning that notion on its ear and unleashing a swarm of flesh-eating ghouls, even George Romero's films made the point that it's other living people who will do the most damage to you.

In the 1980s, interest in zombie films tapered off. Maybe Day of the Dead had just been too damn grim for people. Maybe they simply wanted to go and have a good time watching teenagers get slaughtered in the fast growing slasher genre. Whatever the case, zombie films slowly faded into the mists, even in Italy. Despite the popularity of recent video games like Resident Evil, few people seem interested in reviving the corpse of the zombie film. Even though companies like Anchor Bay have rekindled interest in discussing the zombie films of old with new releases of films like Let Sleeping Corpses Lie and The Beyond, it hasn't been enough to stop film makers from churning out a billion new teen slasher films or goth rocker vampire movies. Oh please save me from vampire movies! Or at least make one about a blue collar vampire who doesn't wear Renaissance Festival shirts, write poetry, wear long leather overcoats, or any of that other crap. And don't give him a name like Asgoth or Mandrial. Call him Stu or Lenny.

There have been a few here and there, but for the most part the zombie film has gone the way of that joke involving an overweight older man in a little sailor boy outfit with a cute hat and oversized lollipop. You just don't see it too much these days. In recent years it seems the only people with any vested interest in making zombie films are the one bunch of people who didn't really get into the zombie films the first time around: Asians.

As discussed in our review of the Hong Kong film Bio-Zombie, Asian film makers are no strangers to their own particular brand of zombies which, like their vampires, bear little resemblance to their Western counterparts outside of their hatred for the living and the fact that they're dead. In some older Asian films, the zombies are actually far more in line with the zombie traditions from Haiti and other Caribbean nations. The Shaw Brothers produced Revenge of the Zombies stars Lo Lieh who uses the living dead as his own personal slaves and lackeys, controlling them through a variety of magic incantations and potions. This is quite similar to the "real-life" zombie of the islands, which was often a person who returned from the grave in a somnambulistic state only to be used as slave labor by the master. Actual accounts of zombie-ism in Haiti suggest that the "magic" powder used to create a zombie is a concoction that viciously attacks a person's brain, resulting in a comatose, death-like state followed by a "return from the dead" that leaves them without a will of their own.

More times than not, however, the zombie in Asian films was just some dead guy come back full of supernatural kungfu badness, as we see in films like Kungfu Zombie. When most people these days think of "zombie films," they aren't thinking of plantation slaves or White Zombie starring Bela Lugosi. They're thinking of flesh-eating ghouls a la George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. It's his creation that molds modern-day concepts of the zombie far more than actual, traditional accounts. In much the same way that everything we know about vampires comes not from the ancient folklore of Eastern Europe, but instead from Bram Stoker's novel, and in much the same way just about every modern idea about Satan comes not from The Bible or any religious sermon, but from Milton's Paradise Lost, George Romero created the tradition and the mythology all over the moment he had a stumbling ghoul attack Barbara in the cemetery.

Romero-esque zombies never really caught on in Asia, and until recently, the only Asian zombie film that was obviously inspired by the Romero mythos was the Japanese film Emergency: Living Dead in Tokyo Bay, which featured familiar flesh-eating ghouls, but also couldn't resist putting the darling Cutie Suzuki in some super-powered battle-armor and having her go to town sci-fi style. It wasn't until Resident Evil hit video game systems that Asia started dabbling more frequently in zombie territory. Hong Kong gave us the wildly uneven but generally enjoyable Bio-Zombie, and Japan stepped up to the plate again with the delightfully outrageous Junk.

Like Bio-Zombie, Junk isn't a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination. The characters are all pretty annoying and childish, not to mention just plain uninteresting. What the Italians never understood, and what the Chinese and Japanese seem to be failing at as well, is that George Romero's films were so powerful because he gave you a handful of characters for whom you could root. You didn't want to see them die. He also gave you hope that they just might make it somehow, despite the odds. Both Junk and Bio-Zombie feature insipid characters for whom one can't drum up a bit of sympathy. With depth of character out of the way, there's not much left to do but sit back and hope for a wild ride. And this is where Junk delivers and Bio-Zombie tended to falter.

The movie opens with two seemingly unrelated events that you know are going to get related really quick. The first involves a couple scientists doing some sort of experiment on a female corpse. If their goal was to bring it back to life as a blood-thirsty member of the undead, then they should get the Nobel Prize for "Reanimating Bloodthirsty Ghouls." There's a Nobel Prize for that, right? I figure if they give a Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger for bombing the shit out of Cambodia and giving the green light for the massacre of the Timorese people by Indonesian invasion forces, then they should give at least some small token to mad scientists who reanimate the dead as flesh-hungry maniacs. The woman zombie makes short work of the scientists, then dons a sexy mini skirt, which I did not know was standard equipment for a secret lab. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it is, but while I expect a Jacob's Ladder and plasma ball, a miniskirt was new to me.

Meanwhile, a group of young thieves are in the process of robbing a jewelry store. Each one of them is wearing a shirt that says "Future Zombie Chow" on it, or they might as well be. The robbery goes okay, although one of the guys get scared and shoots some counter help. Not fatally or anything, because while he is bad, he's not a murderer. "The wacky guy" -- you know he is wacky because he wears Hawaiian shirts -- also gets stabbed in the foot during the heist. So, all things considered, I guess it didn't go so well after all. But they got some jewels, so all in all, I guess it was sort of a lukewarm event for all involved. Once again, I have to wonder if any heist in a movie has ever gone according to plan. Seems like everything goes wrong despite the ridiculously complex and foolproof plan the robbers dream up. Just once, I'd like to see a heist film about the stupid people who try to rob banks. When Scott and I lived down in Gainesville, there were two guys who tried to rob a Barnett Bank then make their getaway on BMX bikes. Of course, once the paint bomb went off, the two guys wearing full camo, covered in bright blue paint, furiously peddling away from the bank with dollars trailing behind them made it sort of easy for the cops to nab them.

While those guys are screwing up the heist, a scientist working with the American military realizes something has gone wrong with the secret lab where they were doing all that zombie research. It's a pretty safe bet that it has something to do with zombies. When they try to trigger the self-destruct mechanism that will obliterate the whole lab and everything in it, they find it's been disconnected and can only be triggered from inside the building. So not only are there zombies wandering about, but at least one of them is intelligent.

The lab is hidden inside an old abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere. As fate would have it, guess where the gang of bank robbers are supposed to meet the fencer who will buy their stolen goods? It may seem like a mighty big coincidence, but remember that Japan isn't very big. Your chances of meeting your fence in the same building where the US military has a secret zombie making lab are much higher in Japan than they are in larger countries. En route to the rendezvous, we learn the female thief is trying to buy a fancy pants sports car. It may not seem like that big a deal right now, but they keep bringing the damn thing up.

I had initial misgivings about the melding of horror and gangster films. Robert Rodriguez tried it with From Dusk To Dawn, a concept that should have been great but instead just ended up being completely lame. Okay, so there was the Selma Hayak stripper scene, which means the movie wasn't totally lame. Say what you will about Quentin Tarantino; he may be an annoying twerp, but he had the good sense to write a scene for himself where he has to lick Selma Hayak's leg. That's got to count for something. Personally, I'm working diligently on my new film script, The Day Selma Hayak and Suzanna Hoffs Pledged Their Eternal Lust to Me, but so far neither woman has expressed much interest.

From Dusk til Dawn not withstanding, it would seem that a gangster film mixed with horror should be pretty cool, and luckily, Junk actually gets the formula right. The crime film opening is kept short, just there long enough to set up the concept of gangsters versus zombies that will please us for the bulk of the film.

When the crooks try to exchange the goods for cash, the fence and his thugs decide just to kill our wacky bunch of thieves rather than pay them. Again, doesn't this always happen. How many movies have you see where some exchange had to take place? Right, and how many of those exchanges went off without a hitch? Not a damn one. Someone always tries to stab the other person in the back. The two gangs of criminals chase each other around the old factory just long enough for the zombies to get into the mix. Then, as one would expect, all hell breaks loose. Just to make matters more confused, the scientist and a detachment of soldiers all wearing the "zombie chow" t-shirt show up as well to trigger the self-destruct. In a curious turn of events, the guy who choppers the troops in is very adamant about the fact that he can only stay there for a certain length of time. There's really no reason at all for him to do this. It's not like he has anywhere else to go. No one is going to see him. It's a completely arbitrary thing he does just to be a dick. Well, actually, he does it to assure that the helicopter will not be present at the point it's most needed near the end of the film.

The zombies look great, and the gut-munching gore is pretty good. It's not as wild and over the top as what Romero and Fulci did, but it should satisfy just about all gore fans. It's no surprise that the only two criminals who survive the onslaught of the walking dead are the girl and the wacky guy with the aloha shirts. The scientist makes his way to the control room, with just about all the soldiers getting ripped apart by zombies as they wander about, only to come face to face with the intelligent zombie who disconnected the destruct mechanism. We all know it's the girl from the beginning of the film, but what we learn here is that she is also the doc's former girlfriend who was killed in an accident and seems none too pleased to be reanimated as a flesh-hungry ghoul, though to her credit, she has maintained her nice complexion and overall sexiness. Plus, somewhere in the abandoned warehouse, she picked up a nice bob-haircut platinum blonde wig. What the hell kind of lab is this, anyway? Given the apparent abundance of tight-fitting little dresses and wigs, one expects Dr. Frank Furter to come prancing out at any moment.

There's no real explanation for why all the zombies but her are shambling flesh-gobbling morons, but you'll quickly forget about that the minute she busts out with the super-powered zombie kungfu! Hell, they split her in half, and her torso keeps coming. Chop her head off, and the thing will just come shooting after you! It may not make much sense, but there's no denying this is one of the most insane zombie finales ever. In the end, the scientist sacrifices himself to destroy the lab and all the zombies, and the two thieves escape just in the nick of time.

There's nothing overly original about the plot, although the hyperactive super-indestructable sexy zombie lady with kungfu from beyond the grave was a pleasant surprise regardless of how silly it may have been. Junk makes up for it's predictability with tons of wild action and a frantic pace that keeps you happy from beginning to end. The film's major weakness is that you don't really give a damn about any of the characters. After most of her friends have their throats ripped open and turn into zombies, the female thief laments that "Now I'll never get that sports car." I guess it's supposed to be some sort of character development, illustrating the fact that she has dreams and aspirations beyond petty a criminal, but it just makes her seem shallow and annoying. But shallow and annoying is par for the course in this film. None of the characters are there for anything more than the action and gore, and they have more personality than your average Lucio Fulci character. It was very much the same in Bio-Zombie, but unlike that film, this one doesn't take an hour to get going, and when it gets going, it never lets up.

It's best not to examine the plot too carefully lest the basic flimsiness be dragged into the light. The super-powered kungfu zombie, the amazing string of coincidences that result in everyone being at the same zombie-infested factory, and other holes are more than compensated for by the sheer gut-level energy of the film. What it lacks in sophistication or quality writing it makes up for with gore and action. If you're looking for intellectual stimulation, then Junk probably isn't going to be your cup of tea. It's a dumb movie, make no mistake about it. But it's a damn good dumb movie. Sometimes, you can't ask for much more than that. Sometimes, you can ask for more than that, and what they give you is one of those movies about French guys smoking cigarettes and talking about the bleakness of existence. I may have years of formal film studies training under my belt, but no matter how much they try to turn me into one of those high falutin' academic film critics with a great appreciation for avant-garde French films about sad mimes and a young girl's discovery of her own sexuality, at the end of the day I'd rather just watch me some pro rasslin' and some wild Japanese zombies. You can call me low-brow, but you can also call me happy. You're watching French guys and I'm watching a cute super-powered zombie chick kungfu the shit out of people.

Like I said, Junk isn't a perfect film, but it's a lot of fun, and given the rarity of zombie films these days, I'll take what I can get. It's very much in the spirit of the Italian zombie films inspired by George Romero's films. It lacks the social commentary and character development of Romero's films, and like it's Italian predecessors, features paper-thin characters that are forgettable zombie fodder at best and irksome twerps at their worst. However, like the Italian films, it's easy to overlook the lack of any real characters when the action is this delirious and non-stop. If you're in search of a simple-minded, gory good time full of flesh-eating ghouls, then Junk is the perfect way to get what you're looking for.

Labels: Country: Japan, Horror: Zombies, Year: 1999