Her Father, My Lover (2015) – Kenji Yamauchi.

'Pure love is abnormal!'

The close relationship between two female companions is gradually put under increasing stress as one of them Maya (Wako Ando) begins to amorously obsess over bestie Taeko's (Yukino Kishi) father. (Mitsuro Fukikoshi) A richly layered, joyfully eccentric romantic drama with an exceptional text, compelling performances, and a deliciously twisted sense of humour. Mismatched lovers have frequently provided fertile cinematic grist, the avatar being Harold & Maude, and in this instance, Her Father, My Love is a winningly off-beat Maya to December romance! While Maya is often accused of being a sicko, she seems absolutely earnest, the fact that she acts so obliviously to the chaos unfolding around her singular choice of life partner was ultimately pretty adorable. The refined film-making, and wholly naturalistic performances are exquisite, the frequent awkwardness of life are acutely rendered with remarkable sensitivity, and director Yamauchi's choice to let the more emotionally salient moments play out in real-time allowed for greater emotional verisimilitude. I was fully expecting a left-handed climax, but it concluded dramatically in a considerably more skewed fashion than I could have predicted! While I overuse the term 'gem', Kenji Yamauchi's immersive Her Father, My Love truly is a burnished jewel of quirky Japanese cinema.

 Zombio 2: Chimarrao Zombies. (2013) – Petter Baiesdorf.

The gratuitously splatter-slathered sequel to Brazilian cult classic Zombio ecstatically ups the glutinous quotient of gore, and certainly doesn't stint on delivering Grindhouse-levels of scintillating sleaze and arbitrary nudity. Spectacularly lurid, audaciously be-slimed, gleefully amateurish, fabulously crude, and never once less than wonderful! Zombio 2 is so immaculately old school it should come with a super-8 mini-edition, manifestly not 28 Days Later, resolutely cut from the very same foully be-rotted funereal shrouds as Burial Ground, and Hell of The Living Dead, sinisterly slow-moving harbingers of righteously gut-ripping, luridly bile-barfing death! Even without the winningly Russ Meyer-esque sequence of weaponized pendulous breasts, the gruesomely oleaginous, lurch-core zombies won me over almost immediately. Baiesdorf's Zombio 2 is an uproariously entertaining, jungle-set gore-blaster, an unfiltered amphetamoid rush of intensely bloody, exhilaratingly retrograded sleazoid splatter epicness!

Hello Zombie aka Haisai Zonbi(2014) – Soichi Takayama.

Passionate, yet down on his luck indie director Domon's no-budget zombie flick takes a terrifying turn into reality after they closely encounter a bona fide, brain-munching denizen of the dead!!!! Takayama's consistently lively Zombie-com doesn't take itself too seriously, and bouncily provides many juicy, boisterously executed splatter-gags. Hello Zombie is a playful, entertainingly goofy example of super-jocular, J-Horror jackanapes, and if you keep your brain in a jar, a gorily good time will be had by all! I have absolutely no shame in admitting that I watched this solely based upon my zealous appreciation of the fabulously lurid poster art, which effectively captures the spirited energy of this indie gem. While it's clearly spoofing the innate absurdity of the genre, it does so with great charm, and a wholly infectious wit,and it packs a lot of engagingly blood-spattered buffoonery in its 60 min. running time! Hokey Hollywood horror is like a prodigiously watered down JD & coke in a club, whereas J-horror frequently delivers a roundhouse kick like the heroic doses of JD & coke you prepare at home. I'm not even that partial to Zombie horror, but I massively dug this, and Takayama deserves kudos for the righteous, sexy-freaky Geisha zombie, which, I must openly admit, got me feeling more than a tad sexified! Gorehounds may care to note that the bodaciously bloody FX are by madman Yoshihiro 'Tokyo Gore Police' Nishimura.

 The World of Kanako (2014) – Tetsuya Nakashima.

An estranged father chaotically undertakes an increasingly disturbing odyssey as he searches for his missing daughter (Nana Komatsu), starkly discovering her multitudes of sins on his descent into her profoundly twisted world. An extremely bloody, compellingly stylised, live-wired, deeply engrossing crime thriller that offers viewers a number of grisly twists and turns as we follow the tormented ex-detective into Nakashima's violent, deliciously squirely rabbit-hole! It's safe to say The World of Kanako is a frequently hectic one, Nakashima's bravura aesthetic is often day-glow bonkers, providing some exhilarating scenes of truly visceral violence. The World of Kanako references Natural Born Killers, Schrader's Hardcore, and Arthur Penn's downer noir classic Night Moves, and has a sledgehammer performance from charismatic Thespian Koji Tyakusho. The World of Kanako provides Asian genre cinema fans with a high-voltaged jolt of adrenalized thrill-spillage, and while often somewhat shrill, you could never call it dull!!

Moi, Christiane F (2022) – Claire Laborey.

A fascinating discourse over the cultural/sociological import of a German teenager's unexpurgated experiences as controversially precocious heroin addict/protagonist Christiane F. Both the epoch-defining autobiographical book and the subsequent, appreciably gritty film ultimately became an international phenomenon. Laborey's earnest, insightful, informationally dense documentary is winningly replete with some especially compelling period news footage. Well made, and appreciably humane in its outlook, Moi, Christiane F covers a lot of emotive, sociopolitical ground in under an hour, providing a cerebral deep-dive into the social tumult of post-war Berlin/West Germany, and the extraordinary, ultimately melancholic life of this remarkable young woman's terrible battle with addiction. The increasingly displaced youth of Berlin, mirroring the similarly disenfranchised plight of London's urban teenagers of the 1970s, oppressed in the concrete, inhumane colossi of new build Tower Blocks, forced out into the streets to discover their own identities in an increasingly repressive state.

 

 Blue Money (1972) – Alain Patrick Chappius.

Beloved smut-schlockers Crown International Pictures provides a period-hip expose of handsome beleaguered pornographic film-maker Jim (Alain Chappius) struggling with rapidly decreasing finances, shady distributors, lacklustre 'adult artistes', heavy-handed cops, marital issues, and a piping-hot liaison with an especially vivacious nubile starlet (Inga Maria). Arguably less in-sync with the paisley-hued, hashish-infused optimism of the 60s, than the openly hedonistic, coke-raddled nihilism of the 1970s. Chappius's Blue Money remains an intriguingly odd duck, part soapy soft-core melodrama, spliced with a lurid Drive-In discourse over the turbulent schematics of XXX cinema production during a governmental crack-down on hardcore. Blue Money's text, performances, and technical aspects proved surprisingly robust. On a personal level, I kinda dug the film-maker guy, he had himself a pretty sweet set-up, Dolly of a wife, button-cute kid, and a bodacious-looking boat, dishy blonde dude's got me beat on all counts! It might be somewhat of a generalisation, but Crown International Pictures International 70s output proves far more watchable that their more garish 80s offerings.

 Liverleaf (2018) – Eisuke Naito.

Relentlessly bullied by callous classmates, desperately beleaguered Nozaki (Anna Yamada) is understandably pushed to breaking point after both of her parents are killed in an arson attack, she then steels herself for righteously bloody revenge! An engaging, credibly acted, beautifully twisted drama, generously spiked with savage bursts of visceral ultra-splatter. The small town, increasingly enshrouded in bitter squalls of snow, provides an atmospheric backdrop for Nozaki's thrillingly gory reprisals, perhaps a sly reference to the hyper-sanguineous, snowbound slayings of Lady Snowblood. Nozaki is not only a hugely sympathetic protagonist, she's also a complex antagonist, making Naito's wintry Liverleaf an altogether memorable, snow-burning terror treat! What begins as a deceptively linear tale of bloody vengeance in an insular Japanese backwater, culminates in an extraordinarily layered, gore-sotted tragedy of nigh on Biblical proportions! My advice to those contemplating a move to the country...DON'T!!! as is so often suggested in backwoods horror lore, small towns are frequently toxic hives of homicidal Borgias! While much of contemporary horror is no better than refried baloney, every now and again, my faith in the genre is restored by the inventively gruesome likes of Liverleaf.