Our favorite movie mogul turns the big one double-Oh-OH! today. And like all men who live past the age of ninety-five, he's become the spittin' image of George Burns.
So celebrate accordingly: watch some Shaw flicks, and check out this three-part, vintage Shaw's docu on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UE24UnCmHA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxW3u5ORPx8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBCMZd6gUew
Hold on to your dicks, 'cause this one's a doozy. 
Mikadroid (1991)
Despite a box cover claiming “Available for the first time in North America”, we all know that this Mikadroid has been around the block, only under a different name: Robokill Beneath Disco Club Layla. One that Discotek has decided to tag on, you know, for ghetto nostalgia. A feeling I’m starting to get.
“The cyborg slashes away her clothes while viciously slicing her body”. Yep, that’s what got thirteen year-old me to scrawl that glorious title onto the lime green order form. Weeks later it arrived, via Miami, a fresh batch of yellow labeled tapes which may or may not have contained traces of Florida snow. I was ready for the Robokill.
What I wasn’t ready for was the unimaginably graphic contortionist porn I got instead. Phone calls were made to my friends, viewings were held. All that was missing was a circle jerk… and Robokill. More weeks pass, this time the real thing arrives.
While it didn’t make me as popular as The Twister, it still brings back memories, and not just ones of a blond with her ankles pulled behind her head. It represents early Japanese movie watching that didn’t involve Street Fighters or Baby Carts, but Evil Dead Traps and Sweet Homes. Late night video romps in the basement, where any thing with a cool box cover, or a lurid description, shot through my VCR faster than a thin-crust through my colon. Nowadays, while I lay off the Domino’s, a lurid synopsis can still do the trick. Kinda like this:
Showa year 20, the Japanese army is undergoing construction on a new breed of indestructible super soldier, the project’s codename: Jin’ra. Men turned into humanoids, one turned into 100% killing machine, the Mikadroid. The plans are halted, and the project buried deep underground, until…. 1991, the disco club Layla, where the preferred dress code for boogieing down is a large medallion, sports coat, and no shirt. Its dance magic gets the sparks flying down below, to the resting place of the ultimate killing machine; bringing it to life in the neon land of Mister Donut. When the club lets out, all paths lead to the underground garage. At midnight, the gates are locked, leaving those inside trapped with the Mikadroid. 
It’s nice to be wrong. At thirteen, while I liked the Robokills of the faux-title, it just wasn’t all that impressive after seeing Ron Jeremy lick his own penis while exclaiming “Look what I can do!” No, it was worse than that: it was boring. I didn’t pay to see boring. Then again, I did pay to see Van Damme and Dennis Rodman in Double Team. Eight times.
This time I had fun, not viewing number three of Double Team fun, but fun all the same. Director Tomoo Haraguchi and his crew know their horror; as they visually quote everything from Deep Red to Maniac. Even blaxploitation-actioner Hell Up In Harlem gets a shout out. Though initially wanting to make a zombie epic titled Mikado Zombie, Haraguchi still delivers the goods with this Red Sun Tin-Man slasher, which boasts killer work from modern SFX ace Shinji Higuchi, and, like any hack n‘ slash worth it‘s weight in karyo syrup, loads of inventive kills. While the pacing issues are still present, it doesn’t diminish its position as a true relic of the rough and ready V-cinema days.
So maybe I’m a big nostalgic push over, or maybe I just like crap, but I say dance your heart out in that disco club called Layla; dance all night, then make your way underground to that dark, dank garage, and see what you find. Who knows, maybe ten years down the road it’ll give you some memories.
Wes Black
Discotek
Anyone with access to a Netflix account should rent 10 to Midnight as soon as they can. I really want to say more, tell you all about the crazy shit that happens, but I won't. You just need to rent it, sit back, and ask yourself "Do you know what this is for?!"
Ready, set, blast off....
Sayonara Jupiter
“You, you’re destroying the cosmos, and the solar system!” says the black beanpole with the feathery weave. But see, he’s got it all wrong. They’re gonna save the cosmos, and the solar system. They’re gonna save it all, but to do that they’ve got to say “sayonara,” sayonara to Jupiter.
In the year 2140, man has colonized in space, and the universe is in need of a second sun. Thus begins the battle over the fate of Jupiter, and why they must say “bye-bye“ to space’s King of the Gods. Leading this Jupiter Solarization Project is Dr. Eji Honda, and with child prodigy Carlos, he’ll take his favorite planet, and use it to bring a new life to mankind. 
On the sunny beaches of earth The Church of Jupiter, led by singer/songwriter Peter, and his pet dolphin, wait for it, Jupiter, look to stop the re-birth of the planet they worship. They take pills that give them “no fear, without any of the consequences”, and argue that mankind doesn’t need to go into the space, it’s too big, so lonely. They don’t understand the truth; that earth is too small to contain man.
But, no matter what Peter sings, or what pills they take, Jupiter is bidding farewell.
Years before 2010, you know, the year we made contact, and sometime after the Prophecies of Nostradamus were fulfilled, there was a time of war, Star Wars. Sci-fi became the craze of now and tomorrow, and everything from before and beyond melded in the galaxies, then into the brain of man. One man: Sakyo Komatsu, the big, spaced-out, space dog of Japanese sci-fi fiction. He’s the one that caused the Sinking of Japan, unleashed a Virus on the world, then set loose the agents of ESPY to save us all. But it wasn’t enough, at least not for Godzilla governor and Toho tyrant Tomoyuki Tanaka. He wanted the epic of all epics, the one that truly would destroy the cosmos, and the solar system, man, and he got it.
So leave behind your worries. Leave them all behind, and believe in lovers floating nude through the universe, believe that Mickey D’s can make a “humburger” soar, or that on the beaches, under the sun, you can take a pill that will make you feel no fear, without any of the consequences. That hippie chick may have never given a name to the little green pill, but I like to think it’s the thing that can save us all, the thing that makes us just say it: Sayonara, Jupiter.
Wes Black
Discotek 
Continuing on with the liquidation of my review archives, here's a snappy little number about Teruo Ishii's Blind Woman's Curse. I thought this one turned out pretty good. 
Blind Woman’s Curse (1970)
"When people refer to filmmaking as my job I'm always a bit embarrassed, because I don't consider what I do as anything more than having a great time."
- Teruo Ishii
With an unmatched consistency, the late Teruo Ishii delivered film after film that was, to quote the tagline for Pieces, “Exactly what you think it is.” I’ve seen the looks on your faces when the greatest Japanese cult film you’ve never seen turns out to be Noboru Ando smoking in a dingy bar for eighty-minutes. Hell, I’ve had that look, delivered right to my mug by the greats, but never, ever, by Ishii. With him, the real thing is always better. Which should excuse me from writing a synopsis for this movie, but since I get paid by the word, here we go:
Ishii opens the show with a synchronized, matching-tattoo sword-slashing rain-dance where our gal Meiko Kaji kills somebody’s big boss, and blinds his sister. Then after spending three years in a Technicolor prison cell (years before becoming #701), Kaji returns home to the ol‘ gang. She now must maintain her honor and control while caught in the middle of a twisting, back-stabbing, turn-coating gang war. Oh yeah, there’s also possessions, evil cats, opium den whippings, a dancing, drooling hunchback, an nudie avant-garde haunted house, kitty-cat wire-work (when they’re not yanking it by the tail), and a cane-carrying Ryuichi Uchida in a bowler and red loin-cloth. Anything to avert your eyes from the hairy ninkyo nether regions; something which Ishii admittedly had no taste for. 
Likely looking to cash-in on Toei’s popular femme-ninkyo series Red Peony Gambler. the folks at Nikkatsu concocted their own twist to contend with the lady dice-rattler: Rising Dragon, Iron Flesh. The first two films follow the ho-hum ninkyo pattern, but when number three was ready to roll, those Nikkatsu cats asked for a little horror to be thrown in the mix. What they got was starlet Kaji taking a backseat to a mop-topped dandy driving yakuza spook-house ride at three hundred MPH. A mix-tape of madness that makes Seijun Suzuki’s transgressions in youth action seem not so transgressive. I like Suzuki, I swear I do, but people shitting their short-shorts because he floods the set with yellow lights won’t know how to handle Blind Woman’s Curse. 
Here’s the real kicker: Ishii made better, and wilder, movies in his career, hell, Ishii made better movies than this that year, and they’re all out there for you to find. So tuck away your Yugi-Oh cards, and gasp at the horrors of a malformed man, scour the depths of hell, and discover the joys of torture. It may all sound too wild, and inconceivable, but don’t you worry, that mop-headed man in the sky will be by your side, holding your hand at every atrocity, and sharing a laugh at every off-color gag. After all, the only one enjoying it more than you or I is Ishii himself.
Wes Black
Discotek
Yes, I'm sticking with that blog title. Deal with it.
Here's one to get you wet, hard, or, if you're really freaky, both.
Meatball Machine (2006)
“Some came crawling from the ocean, others falling from the sky. They are here to do one thing: eat each other.”
A suicidal salary man is readying to hang it up when things go Predator-vision and he‘s tackled by a tentacled extra-terrestrial bent on bodily invasion. So begins The Tingler meets Tetsuo, as two spaceman-manned Necroborgs do a close encounter of the cannibalistic kind. Bionic-buzz saws slice and dice, but they’re interrupted by an amateur alien hunter and his pulsating-pus-ball packing daughter. Two down, who the hell knows how many to go; soon these alien-assholes spread across Japan. A kid gets run down by a truck, turning his limbs into blood-soaked mud-flaps, projectile vomit floods the frame, and tentacles reach out and touch everyone in a twisted marriage of Overfiend and Evil Dead.
Sadly, they can’t keep up this avalanche of atrocities, leaving the middle a scatter shot mess of sleepy-time inducing love story, sloppily intermixed with much-needed snippets of Necroborg annihilation. With any other flick, I would kick up a bitch-fit, but when the third act hits, it’s all the fun of a veiny penis-rocket emerging from your chest. 
With things being so slap-dash, uneven, yet brilliantly imaginative, it’s no surprise to see Yudai Yamaguchi’s name in the credits. Hell, it’s titles like this that put him in a one man race to become Japan’s version of Lloyd “Troma” Kaufman. His influences range from the nonsensical, joke-a-second hijinks of Japanese television, to 80‘s chunk-blower gore-flicks, rounded out with a steady diet of tokusatsu TV and classic Konami arcaders.
All of which make their way into Meatball Machine.
But, it’s not all of Yamaguchi’s invention. Originally a late 90s cult short-film by Jun’ichi Yamamoto, the legend of the Meatball gained enough steam to get a remake, this time with Yamamoto as co-director to co-director/editor combo Yamaguchi. With this Meatball-redux, the Ya-Ya Brotherhood take the Japanese henshin-hero style, blend it with an 80’s splatter aesthetic, and wind up with the long lost Frank Hennonlotter directed GWAR video by way of Tetsuo. Helping things along the way are Keita Amemiya and his gnarly Necroborgs designs, and gross-out FX master, and Yamaguchi regular, Yoshihiro Nishimura, who keeps the impaling, eviscerations, decapitations, and all-around gooiness lookin’ puke-worthy.
Meatball Machine may come barreling at you with a hard-on, only to go limp midway through, but with a climax where the video game meets the video nasty, it’s just a few pumps away from becoming a modern late-night classic.
Wes Black
TLA/Danger After Dark
My body arrived back in Los Angeles early this week from Tokyo, but my brain is still floating somewhere over the Pacific, reeling from the effects of airplane fart-repellent-air and a microwaved dish of scrambled eggs. A typical day since coming home includes waking at 6 A.M, stumbling around, then passing out mid-afternoon, only to wake up at night in a pitch black room, confused and thinking I'd been riding the Ginza line. Oh, and eating left-over birffday cake for breakfast, which is only slightly less ghetto than smoking a vile of crack for breakfast. Now I'm going to watch The Entity, and then hopefully fall asleep at a decent hour.
The remainder of the Tokyo pics and tales coming soon.
Too wiped to write much, but the past two days have featured: A disappointing trip to Video Market in Shinjuku, where I found that I already owned nearly everything there, a more fun than I thought it would be trip to Harajuku where I raided Kiddy Land, ate crepes, and nabbed a wide of Koike's Dummy Oscar and another Go Nagai H Manga Collection from Book Off. Also I must say, forget the Harajuku girls, it's all about the Harajuku Nigerians, you got that wicked style, I like the way that you are, I am your biggest fan.
Today was Daiba by day, and Akiba by night. Had a blast at the high-tech Sega Joypolis, and an even bigger one at the Nostalgia Mall at Decks. After dinner at Gonpachi we headed to Donki in Akiba, and raided it's five floors of madness before hitting the subway, where we were momentarilly stuck without power mid-tunnel in a packed car.
Tomorrow: Tokyo Disney, and maybe Tokyo Tower.
Today was a trip to the electric town, Akihabara, and I must say, I could never bring myself to travel elsewhere for my cheapo USB card and nazi big-tits splooge dojinshi soft needs. Seriously, the place is rad and has officially been taken over by the otaku elite, who apparently have found a away to stop cars from entering the surrounding streets.
I hit every floor of the super-smelly Tora no Anna, saw some busted-looking maids, nabbed some hotly priced, by Tokyo standards, DVDs from Liberty 1, dazzled the locals with my UFO catcher and shooting game skills, turned into a degenerate for about 30 minutes at a pachinko and slot joint, and then spotted some cat-ear-wearing otaku from the USA who seemed a little more than shocked and disturbed that their Eastern counterparts are less about anime and manga than they are discount computer gear and taking candid photos of underage girls.
After that we hit Ginza, where we were priced out, and under dressed for just about everything, grabbed some Korean food, then hit the hotel room for K-1 Heroes.
Tomorrow, pics, video, and possibly a trip to Shinjuku.
