Stacy
Director: Naoyuki Tomomatsu
Year: 2001
Duration: 79 minutes
In the world that this film inhabits, love
doesn’t mean not having to say you’re sorry – it means carrying around
a chainsaw and being prepared to slice up your cherished one at the drop
of her head. Sometime in the 21st century a mysterious plague spins furiously
out of control around the planet in which girls between the age of fifteen
and seventeen suddenly die and then return as flesh eating slow walking
mumbling zombies in school uniforms. This leads to a worldwide catastrophe
as nations go to war and people go insane resulting in a global population
decline of fifty percent. Now, not a lot of this is actually captured on
screen – so don’t expect “War of the Worlds” - since this film has a budget
that wouldn’t feed Mary-Kate of the Olsen Twins for a week and it doesn’t
take itself seriously for a second. In fact, this is a completely idiotic
film that spoofs two cult icons – zombies and Japanese schoolgirls – and
intermittently hits both squarely with a deadpan sense of humor that is
wonderfully silly at times.
Silly is the operative word here as it spits out
gross out gore and giggly schoolgirls in equal proportions. It has a comedy
skit sensibility except that the skit goes on for nearly 80-minutes and
falls into the danger zone of becoming somewhat stale and tedious, but
saves itself from time to time with a momentary splash of blood or sophomoric
wit. This feels like the model for “Battlefield Baseball” with an anything
goes mentality, but is much lighter on its feet – but then I kept waiting
for a musical number that never appeared. Singing zombies is the only thing
this film missed out on. Director Tomomatsu had directed a few pornographic
videos prior to this film, but he keeps it clean here – well except for
the buckets of blood and torn limbs that litter the landscape.
These girls turned zombies are termed “Stacies”
and society has organized itself to hunt them down and kill them – again.
Doing this is called “Repeat Kill” and it is the duty of every good citizen
to do this – the only effective way is to cut them – or blast them – into
multiple pieces. Things are so well organized that they have special “Stacy”
recycle days in which their body parts have to be put on the curbside in
special bags and please don’t mix body parts with plastic. Before death
comes to the young girls, they are affected by “Near Death Happiness (NDH)”,
which causes paroxysms of delightful laughter and overblown giggles. You
might ask how this is any different from the way so many Japanese schoolgirls
are portrayed in films and I kind of think that’s the point of this film.
I expect this state of zombieism is symbolic of girls going through puberty
and becoming sexually active. Almost all the victims are male that the
girls vociferously munch on and the men often seem to welcome their own
death like a giant orgasm.
The plot as it is hops around haphazardly from
sub-plot to sub-plot. In one Eiko (Natsuki Kato – “Battle Royale II”, “Gun
Crazy 4”) is looking to find a man to love so that he will cut her up when
she turns into a zombie. She finds him in Shibu-san and even buys him the
“Bruce Campbell Chainsaw” – the best on the market as is testified in its
TV commercial. In another, a seemingly mad scientist (fiction writer Yasutaka
Tsutsui) is looking for a cure as he slices up one zombiette after another
in his lab. One of his assistants is looking for his old girlfriend - who
has gone zombie on him - because he wants to run away with her and live
happily ever after (with her mouth securely gagged). Finally, two illegal
organizations that specialize in “Repeat Kills” are competing with one
another – one named the Romeros (after George) and the other is called
Drew (after Barrymore) who are composed of three girls (like Charlie’s
Angels) and are accessorized by a gun, sword and nunchuka's. This is the
kind of film that is almost intentionally bad and campy and so it is rather
hard to judge it – is it bad and campy enough to be fun I guess is the
test and I would have to say it is even if it does drag at times like a
meandering zombie.
My rating for this film: 6.0