To say that Japanese humor is very colorful and animated is an understatement. In fact, Japanese humor is so colorful, I distinctly recall seeing a sushi commercial that involved people dumping paint on themselves, and laying on top of each other to create human sushi.
So when I was given a chance to see Zombie TV, which was pitched as a collection of Monty Python-esque comedy sketches done by the people behind Tokyo Gore Police, I said to myself, “You know what, I’m in the mood for something weird. What could go wrong?” Little did I know that these next 77 minutes would consist of me peering into an endless void of insanity.
The premise and the world they set up is actually pretty interesting. Imagine that zombies have become a regular part our everyday living and television producers wanted to make shows targeted towards the demographic of the dead. Kind of like the ending of Shaun of the Dead, with all the zombie game shows. Take that idea, and throw in a mixture of Japanese humor, Tim and Eric Show, and Robot Chicken, and you’ve basically got Zombie TV. What follows are a couple of funny sketches here and there, but they are overshadowed by the ones that go way too far.
The most common failing of the humor in all these juvenile sketches is that they go on for entirely too long. For example, one part of the film is an informative video on how to have sex as a zombie. This sketch has scarred me for life. I usually don’t wince at gore, but when it gets to a point where a bloody naked female zombie is eating her lover’s intestines during coitus, the initial shock value fades and the routine becomes excessive (but she’s got guts, I’ll give her that!). That scene continues to a point where it definitely crosses over in to the NC-17 rating. The film also crosses offensive territory during its Cannibal vs. Zombie wrestling match. It sounds fun on paper, but when the cannibal is revealed to be a man in blackface wearing tribal face paint and bones through his nose, I started to wonder if I was having some sort of unfortunate fever dream.
To be honest, most of the sketches became a blur to me, and that might have been due to the brain aneurism I underwent watching this film. However, there was one sketch that I found genuinely intriguing, funny, and sad. This particular sketch involved a lady who was turned into a zombie, and discovered that being a zombie meant being free from all rules and suffering that one would have as a human. This led to her developing a god complex, as she realized that she had the power to free people by turning them in to zombies. If they kept up that level of writing and humor throughout, this could have been the fun little Monty Python-esque film they claimed to be! Sadly they went for the distasteful humor, which ended up overshadowing anything that was good about this “movie.”
In the end, the bad outweighs the good. Whatever good there was is not worth the 77 minute run time.
Score: 4/10 brain cells left alive
So Ussians, what is the most bizarre film you’ve seen? Whatever they are, comment below and discuss with the Us!
