Santa’s revenge
The most Christmassy thing I remember seeing in Tokyo was some promo girls dressed in green Santa hats handing out energy drinks. This makes it all the more surprising that Japan has made its own offering to the Killer Santa genre.
Vampire Doll (1970)
Vampire Doll is brilliant stuff, and it's made all the more fascinating with the handful of cues it appropriates from western horror. But don't expect a traditional, bloodsucking tale. This is a kind of gloomy and spooky cinema unique to Japan.
Snake Girl transforms and attacks!
Filled to the brim with mad effects and hallucinatory sequences, The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch perfectly captures the lunacy of an Umezu story. To whet your appetite, here's a scene that had me grinning ear-to-ear.
Red Room (1999) & Red Room 2 (2000)
The flat out absurdity and unabashed goofiness of the Red Room films mean that they sit outside the world of truly soul-destroying Japanese films like the Guinea Pig series. Yamanouchi just can't play things straight. In the past this has worked against him. Here, it works.
Absurd tongue torture in Japanese Hell
Jigoku is two unfinished films mashed awkwardly into one, and the results are as messy as you'd expect. The absurdity hits its peak towards the end of the film where we watch a bunch of evil assholes get tongue tortured.
Ghost Cat of Arima – Japanese poster
I've watched my fair share, but there is one ghost cat film I just cannot find anywhere: Arima neko. I have no idea whether the film is actually any good. But I love its poster — one of my favourites from my collection.
Ridiculous death scene from Kazuo Umezu’s Death Make
Death Make is atrocious. It's awful. It's worse than atrocious and awful. It's a disaster in every aspect of its production. In a way, perhaps it is a success, because of its horribleness it has stuck in my mind more than any other entries in the Horror Theater series.
Biotherapy (1986)
Biotherapy made me wish that more splattery horror films were 35 minutes. Gone are long-winded scenes of padding used to reach the usual 90 minute mark. The film is left with its bare essentials: death and shouting.
