Review by Tristan Bishop
It’s surprising how few films there are about killer foodstuffs out there. Attack of The Killer Tomatoes (1978) comes to mind, as does Larry Cohen’s The Stuff (1985), but aside from that (and the less said about Charles Band’s Gingerdead Man the better), it’s a strangely underused concept. Happily the idea of what we eating turning against us has found possibly its most satisfying incarnation in Noboru Iguchi’s absolutely barking horror comedy Dead Sushi.
This is the story of Keiko (Rina Takeda), a young girl who is training with her father to become a sushi chef. She fails to live up to his high standards, and so runs away ashamed, and goes to work in an inn. Keiko finds herself bullied by the other girls who work at the inn, and, after embarrassing herself in front of a group of visiting businessmen, gets reprimanded by the owners, Mr. and Mrs Hanamaki. Fortunately the caretaker, Mr Sawada, is a kindly old soul who takes pity on her, noticing that she has the hands of a sushi chef.
When Keiko ends up insulting the entire group of businessmen, and the inn’s resident sushi chef (who is having an affair with Mrs Hanamaki – played by the fabulous Asami), a brawl erupts, made more disastrous by the arrival of a mysterious tramp, who turns out to be a former employee of the businessmen’s company, and who just so happens to be responsible for a formula that is able to revive living tissue, but has the side effect of turning the reanimatee into ‘vicious monsters’ capable of infecting others with a bite. When the tramp is fatally shot, he sends out his pet squid (which he keeps in his jacket, of course) to take its revenge on the company, and to build its own infected empire…
I first caught this film at Abertoir 2012, and it was perfect in a midnight movie slot, going down a storm with a possibly slightly inebriated crowd. If you think the film sounds crazy from the brief plot outline above, the second half of the film brings tuna monsters, sushi zombies, flame-thrower sushi, sushi nunchuks, a flying sushi battleship and even Eggy, an egg sushi ostracised by his fishy peers, who can spray acid and is also a damn fine singer too. If all this sounds too much like entertainment we also get some informative chat about the best way to appreciate sushi.
There’s little to pick holes in with a film this fast-paced and out there – the script is perfunctory, some of the gore gags go on far too long, and the effects are often on the very cheap digital side of things, but there’s so many ideas being flung at the screen it doesn’t really matter. Iguchi knows how to direct comic book style action, and he doesn’t hang around setting up a fairly large cast for this kind of film, before getting more and more outrageous as the film progresses. Dead Sushi has a sweeter, lighter touch among all the mayhem too, with messages about being true to yourself and never giving up. There also appears to be an anti-corporate theme underlying proceedings.
The film’s main attraction here is Asami, an ex-porn star who is beautiful, an incredibly versatile actor, whether being kick-ass or helpless, and seems to be game for absolutely anything – in some of the stranger moments from the film she performs ‘that special Japanese kiss that uses an egg’ (what?) and even does a show-stealing robot dance!
If you’re familiar with the Sushi Typhoon family of film-makers, or with Iguchi’s other works like Machine Girl (2008) or the excellent Mutant Girls Squad (2011) you will already know whether you are going to enjoy this. If you are a newcomer to this peculiarly Japanese form of gore comedy, however, Dead Sushi might just be a perfect way to test the water. Just remember to order the egg.
Dead Sushi hits Region 2 DVD and Blu-ray on 23rd September, from Monster Pictures.