Chanbara Beauty or as it is sometimes known Oneechanbara, is the next in the seemingly long line of Japanese Gore flix that I made myself suffer through. At least for my sake, the movie was much better than the game.
In a world gone mad, zombies have overrun the Earth; not in that happy fun way like in Fido, either. Actually, the way the zombies looked and moved reminded me a lot of the game series “Siren.” The zombie outbreak apparently was started by the “D3 Corporation” (which is a gratuitous plug for the game publishers of the same name). They began inexplicably raising the dead back to life. Naturally, once this happened they started attacking the living and thus creating more reanimated corpses for the zombie hordes. “Madness has swallowed up the whole world.” The story follows Aya the bikini-clad zombie slayer on her quest to kill the evil Dr. Sugita, who is the one responsible for creating the zombie “virus” and thus pushing the world to the edge of total destruction. Dr. Sugita is also responsible for turning Aya’s own sister, Saki, into some sort of hybrid human-zombie killing machine of evil. Aya is a master swords-woman and the only living descendant of the Imichi Clan. Why that makes any difference in the story, I am not sure, but the Doc sure does talk about it a lot.
Aya is aided in her quest by Katsuji, the dim-witted, comedy relief fat guy, and Reiko, a gun-wielding, motorcycle-riding, leather-clad badass. Reiko is not just badass because she kills zombies, but because of her preferred method of dispatching them. She carries what can only be described as the world’s ONLY sawed-off, double-barrel shotgun of its type. Not only does it have the ability to fire countless rounds of ammo without reloading, but it also fired bullets instead of shotgun shells. This chick would give Ash (of evil dead fame) a run for his money with this gun. Anyway, Reiko is hunting Dr. Saguita because, as said before, he created the zombie outbreak and thus caused Reiko to have to kill her daughter when she became a zombie.
The action in the movie is very, very fast. Aya swings a sword made of what appears to be pure light energy most of the time. The zombies usually show up in packs of about 30 at a time and Aya and Reiko usually burn through them in a matter of minutes. The zombies themselves don’t really look all that great. Like I said, they remind me of the ones from Siren: they are just basically painted faces and expressions that make them look evil. The bulk of the budget was spent on special effects. Death scenes are played out wonderfully, with fountains of blood and severed limbs. Where money was not spent, however, was in lighting. This movie is just plain dark, and not just because it takes place mostly at night, or in dark warehouses.
The end fight scene between Aya and Saki is like something out of a Dragonball Z cartoon. The fight’s special effects are way over the top and it only adds to the visual splendor that this movie has already delivered. Saki and Aya also sound very similar to Venus and Serena Williams in a heated tennis match, each yelling and grunting at top volume. The end was a little disappointing, but I guess I wasn’t really expecting it to be much more.
This movie is all about being over the top. Everything in this movie is done to the maximum: the special effects (where they existed), the script, even the acting. I was actually caught off guard during one scene, though. Katsuji has to confront his sister that was changed into a zombie and ends up having to kill her. This particular scene was pulled off rather well compared to the rest of the film. The emotion came across well, and it wasn’t campy or played up too much.
There apparently is already a sequel to this flick called Oneechanbara Vortex. In which it seems that Aya and Saki AND Reiko all team up to fight zombies. This is quite strange given the fact that not only do Aya and Reiko want to kill Saki in the first film, but both Reiko and Saki DIE at the end of it. I guess it really doesn’t matter, given the source material. Who cares, honestly, when you have a film about Japanese chicks in bikinis killing zombies?
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