So, Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass hit theatres last week and barely managed to take top spot at the box office, hampered - as expected - by competing in 2D dollars against an array of films charging extra for 3D while also having to deal with a shoddy US marketing campaign.
Also as expected is the wave of protest against having a twelve year old girl spout words like 'cunt' whilst slicing and dicing an array of bad guys into a bloody pulp. Surely, the morally upstanding cry out, this represents a new low in cinema, all our kids are going to hell and it's all Matthew Vaughn's fault.
Well, people, if that's how you feel then be thankful you don't live in Japan. Why? Because over there a certain block of film makers are currently engaged in a game of cinematic one upmanship on the extreme violence and shocking content front. Sure, these are nowhere close to being the biggest releases in the nation but they do all receive at least limited theatrical releases and some of their creators have gone on to be major stars.
On one side of the spectrum are Noboru Iguchi and Yoshihiro Nishimura, the duo responsible for charming films like Machine Girl (Iguchi) and Tokyo Gore Police (Nishimura) and currently at work as two thirds of the directorial trio behind the upcoming Mutant Girls Squad. While small budget affairs, these are far from underground, with both directors receiving backing from Japan's Nikkatsu studios, one of the oldest film companies in the world, very much a mainstream player, and - incidentally - a company that survived the lean years of the 1970s by shifting their entire production slate over to nothing by soft porn for better than a decade. Starring a series of pin up girls bathed in astounding amounts of blood, the Nishimura / Iguchi connection - plus a small circle of their close friends - are already genuine cult phenomenons around the globe and their films are positively chock full of stuff that'd leave those upset by Kick-Ass absolutely apoplectic with rage.
Arrayed against the Iguchi / Nishimura squad is pretty much everyone else in underground Japanese film. It's not that they don't like the guys - pretty much everyone does, they're as much fun in person as they are on screen - but that they've become such steam rollers in cult film circles that everyone is forced to take up a contrary position just to avoid being missed entirely. And the latest to do so is cult film maker Takao Nakano. Announced with a hysterically funny press release that asked readers if they were tired of school girls and geishas yet - a clear jab at Iguchi and Nishimura - Nakano's latest stars international porn queen Sola Aoi (aka Sora Aoi) as a zombie-battling stripper in the appropriately titled Big Tits Zombie. Yes, you read that correctly. That's Aoi hard at work in the photo above and you can find a trailer by clicking on the film title. And did I mention the film was being presented in old school anaglyphic 3D? Because it is.
If Red State America isn't ready for cussing pre-teens, how do you figure they'll respond to this? Me, I'm shopping for plane tickets.