Horror Feast: Sushi Typhoon

For those who don't know, Sushi Typhoon is a Japanese production company specializing in low budget horror, sci-fi & fantasy films. A collective consisting of directors Takashi Miike (ICHI THE KILLER), Yoshihiro Nishimura (TOKYO GORE POLICE), Sion Sono (SUICIDE CLUB), Noboru Iguchi (THE MACHINE GIRL), Tak Sakaguchi (YOROI: SAMURAI ZOMBIE), Yudai Yamaguchi (BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL) and Seiji Chiba (EVIL NINJA).
If you've seen any of the movies I've just mentioned then you should have a pretty good idea of what you're in for when it comes to a Sushi Typhoon release. For those who haven't, well buckets of blood, absurd amounts of violence and cheap digital effects are the order of the day.
So without further ado, let's get into this shit.

DEADBALL (2011)

As a young child, Jubei discovers the insanely powerful force of his pitching arm when he unwittingly destroys his father's head with a baseball. Needless to say he vows never to play ball again. Cut to a few years later and Jubei is a vigilante, visiting violence upon evil-doers. He is caught and sent to a prison for juveniles which is run by a Nazi headmistress who encourages him to join the prison ball team. But their first match against the ridiculously hot and brutal Saint Black Dahlia girls reveals that this is no ordinary baseball game. Blood is what the spectators have come to see.
Exploding heads, elbow-deep cavity searches, vomit eating, Nazis and robots, this movie has it all. And the lead character Jubei (played to perfection by Tak Sakaguchi) is so awesomely cool that he can pluck lit cigarettes out of thin air any time he wants.
Sure the acting isn't great, the story either, and the special effects are cheesy as fuck, but all in all DEADBALL is a explosively fun movie with plenty of gore and humor and is very entertaining.

YAKUZA WEAPON (2011)

Tak Sakaguchi once more takes centre stage but rather than being a juvenile delinquent with a killer pitching arm, here he plays Shozo the unstoppable Yakuza killing machine. Just like Jubei in DEADBALL, Shozo is almost impossibly cool. Like so cool that he can scare landmines just by glaring at them, or catch RPGs with his bare hands, or stand in the middle of a jungle firefight smoking a cigarette while bullets go whizzing past his head. That cool.
Shozo returns to Japan after 4 years abroad to avenge the death of his father who was a big time Yakuza boss. Upon returning to his family's former headquarters he learns that his father was betrayed. Violence and action ensue. But it's not until he gets a cyborg makeover that things get really exciting. A mixture of ROBOCOP & MACHINE GIRL & that special something that only the Japanese seem to possess, YAKUZA WEAPON is over the top, non-stop action with a huge body count.

HELLDRIVER (2011)

DEADBALL and YAKUZA WEAPON may have been totally bizarre but Yoshihiro Nishimura's HELLDRIVER is on a whole other level. A meteorite has crashed in Japan, releasing a cloud of toxic ash which turns people into bloodthirsty zombies (not technically zombies but whatever). Young girl Kika leads a group charged with tracking down and killing the zombie queen - who just so happens to be her crazy, homicidal mother.
Kika carries with her a chainsaw/katana hybrid; a chainsword (not sure if that's what it's called but it's definitely what it should be called). Needless to say chainsword + zombies = lots of blood and limbs flying all over the place. Other things you will see in this strange fucking movie include a car made out of zombies (seriously), lots of exploding heads, flesh eating, and of course gallons and gallons of the red stuff. What more could you ask for?

MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD (2010)

Tak Sakaguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura and Noboru Iguchi work together to bring forth the ridiculous insanity that is MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD. It follows young schoolgirl Rin, who on her 16th birthday discovers that she is the descendant of an ancient race of mutants known as Hilko. She sees her parents killed in front of her and is rescued and recruited by a group of Hilko who train her so that she can understand her full powers. After being sent on her first mission, Rin finds herself unable to kill innocent humans and so confronts the other Hilko. Basically this is a bloody, gory riff on the X-Men, full of lowbrow humor, cheap effects and sexy mutant schoolgirls. Their 'super powers' range from claws and tentacle arms right through to titty-swords and ass-chainsaws. And the blood, oh the blood. There is tons of the stuff. It's everywhere, raining down, splattering the camera, shooting out of limbless stumps. So much blood.