No matter how you slice it, Noboru Iguchi's Dead Sushi is a very daft film, and will most likely be a love it or hate it experience for the majority of viewers. While I usually enjoy outrageously OTT Japanese horror (I loved Machine Girl, also directed by Iguchi), I felt that this one wasn't anywhere near as much fun as intended, the craziness and stupidity taken several steps too far. The film also suffers from some fairly terrible special effects: unconvincing make-up and bargain-basement CGI, which might have been intentionally naff to up the camp value, but which I thought made the film look cheap and nasty.
The ridiculous plot sees Keiko (the very cute Rina Takeda), daughter of a highly regarded chef, running away from home and taking a job as a waitress at an inn renowned for its sushi (the inn's owners played by Takashi Nishina and Asami). When a group of business people from Komatsu Pharmaceuticals arrive to relax and partake of the establishment's tasty fish and rice delicacies, Keiko upsets the guests, and the inn's chef Tsuchida, by criticising the sushi and the supposed gourmets' appreciation of the substandard food. A fight breaks out, but is interrupted by the arrival of Yamada, an ex-Komatsu employee with a grudge; injecting the sushi with a serum created to revive dead cells, he turns the fishy treats into ravenous flying monsters.
What follows is undeniably different, but I found it to be neither as funny as I had hoped, nor as grotesque, and I was glad when film came to a close (with some end-credits behind-the-scenes footage proving far more entertaining than the main movie). Zombies spewing rice; sushi having sex and birthing baby sushi; mediocre martial arts; a man 'reborn as a tuna'; sushi nunchakus; a friendly egg sushi called Eggy that squirts acid; singing sushi; a Gunkan maki battleship with blazing cannons; and Asami doing impromptu robot dancing (which, admittedly, she is pretty good at): if that sounds like your cup of saké, then by all means tuck in, but I found the whole thing about as appetising as actual sushi (horrible slimy food of the devil).
2.5/10, rounded up to 3 for an amazingly gratuitous spot of female nudity: it adds absolutely nothing to the story, but was a welcome change from the badly-rendered, computer-generated, flying, fanged food.
The ridiculous plot sees Keiko (the very cute Rina Takeda), daughter of a highly regarded chef, running away from home and taking a job as a waitress at an inn renowned for its sushi (the inn's owners played by Takashi Nishina and Asami). When a group of business people from Komatsu Pharmaceuticals arrive to relax and partake of the establishment's tasty fish and rice delicacies, Keiko upsets the guests, and the inn's chef Tsuchida, by criticising the sushi and the supposed gourmets' appreciation of the substandard food. A fight breaks out, but is interrupted by the arrival of Yamada, an ex-Komatsu employee with a grudge; injecting the sushi with a serum created to revive dead cells, he turns the fishy treats into ravenous flying monsters.
What follows is undeniably different, but I found it to be neither as funny as I had hoped, nor as grotesque, and I was glad when film came to a close (with some end-credits behind-the-scenes footage proving far more entertaining than the main movie). Zombies spewing rice; sushi having sex and birthing baby sushi; mediocre martial arts; a man 'reborn as a tuna'; sushi nunchakus; a friendly egg sushi called Eggy that squirts acid; singing sushi; a Gunkan maki battleship with blazing cannons; and Asami doing impromptu robot dancing (which, admittedly, she is pretty good at): if that sounds like your cup of saké, then by all means tuck in, but I found the whole thing about as appetising as actual sushi (horrible slimy food of the devil).
2.5/10, rounded up to 3 for an amazingly gratuitous spot of female nudity: it adds absolutely nothing to the story, but was a welcome change from the badly-rendered, computer-generated, flying, fanged food.