In recent years Japan has started to produce transformation horror films, low budget modern B movies, Wild Zero and Stacy being 2 but in a crowd of films such as “oh my zombie mermaid girlfriend” with an almost full cast of Japanese pro wrestlers or “Battle Girl” aka “Emergency, the living dead in Tokyo Bay”, “Junk” and the larger budget martial arts flick Verses. Without the development through the passage of time that in the west has created a foundation base of zombie movies these new Japanese Zombie Trash Movies are a filmic anomaly, a genre with no ingrained history in the country they originate, a filmic genre with a stolen history.


Zombie movies seem to be emerging from the B-Movie underbelly of the Japanese Film Industry, fed by more western horror traditions. This germinating trash cinema genre draws life from the classic zombie traditions of the American market, stripped of its plot and the gaps replaced with gore and winks and nods to western horror fans this developing category is western in its style and content and mocks Japans commercial and westernization.

Stacy was originally a short story, the author, Kinniku Shojotai, renowned UFOlogist and formally of the rock band Kinniku Shojotai created a series of 3 self contained tales based around a world on the verge of nightmarish change and disaster. Tomomatsu (the director of Stacy) adapted the screen play from a book published by Kadowkawa press, the publishers that gave us the original story of Ring. Stacy’s Director, with his previous career as a porn director, has subsequently (after Stacy) created such films as “Eat the Schoolgirl” and “Zombie Defence Force”. Tomomatsu’s obsession with the massacre and defilement of Schoolgirls seems to stem from his love affair with an un-known porn actress, that when not on film performing sexual acts for cash would attend the local high school. After becoming lovers and then breaking up, Tomomatsu ensued on an unrelenting, epic campaign of stalking that as it unfolded, quickly escalated from harrowing internet posts through to restraining orders being raised against him. Although you might find this all hard to believe it can all be found in his autobiography “Pure Love War Chronicle” all documented in fetishistic detail and he has already announced his project to film his book…


Stacy is a perfect example of the allures of Para-cinema, Japanese horror film history has developed a more psychological horror foundation, and it has missed the transformation horror genre that has become the keystone of western, with its underlying moral examination of the concept of Moe Stacy has underlying moral discourses on Japanese culture. As the girls in Stacy exhibit the symptoms of near death happiness, an elevated feeling of joy and giddiness, and dressed in the stereotypical, fetishised school uniform their days are numbered as a pure example of Moe until they transform into Zombie School Girls or Stacy’s.


Wild Zero is “bad-ass-rock’n’roll-don’t-give-a-fuck cinema” par excellence, Staring Guitar Wolf (the creators of the 'World's loudest album') as the superhero, mega-charged, rock-a-billy saviours of the World.
Lots of blood, drugs, beer, gender confusion, swearing, guns, zombies, motorcycles that have flames coming out of their exhausts and plectrums that are killer electricity-covered throwing stars. This is a piece of crystallised postmodernism, lacking in plot but packed with action this film is the Japanese-Bad-Ass-Zombie Filled-Mutant-Cousin of Spice Girls The Movie and Day of the Dead.