gettin' lippy with it.

Day 22 of 31 days of horror, just in case you've lost count.

Crazy Lips (Hakkyousuru kuchibiru, 2000)
Dir: Sasaki Hirohisa.
Cast: Miwa Hitomi, Suzuki Kazuma, Osugi Ren, Abe Hiroshi, Natsukawa Hijiri, Yura Yoshiko, Kuribayashi Tomomi, Yumi Yoshiyuki and Suzuki Ikko

"What is happening inside that house?"

Obviously aiming for the title of world's most dysfunctional family, the Kuramashi's are a tough act to beat.

Not only have they spent years in hiding due to the fact that daddy Kuramashi was executed for being a depraved serial killer but it looks like number one son Michio (Kazuma) may be following in his fathers footsteps after being accused of the vile slaughter of four teenage girls.

Tho' is there any other kind of slaughter?

Unfortunately for the rest of the family Michio has gone into hiding, leaving his heartbroken mum (Yoshiyuki, star of Killer Pussy and the classic Queen Peach) and his young sisters, Satomi (long faced Hitomi, she of Ju-On: The Curse, Last Supper and Misa the Dark Angel) and Kaori (Hijiri, don't recognize here from owt, sorry) to face the snide comments, bullying ways and verbal abuse from the local police, the gutter press and even the neighbours (tho' not Madge because she's a nice lady).

Indeed.

They family rise every morning to find paparazzi scum and TeeVee news crews camped out amongst their begonias whilst the filthy bastard copper Tony Soap (Ikko from the lactate-tasic Visitor Q) takes every opportunity to kick at their door, wear his shoes in the house and slurp his coffee loudly whilst angrily messing up the family kitchen (he even put the spoons in the knife section at one point) and shouting random abuse at them.

Which is nice if a little outside usual police practices, don't fret too much tho' he'll be dead soon.

If that wasn't enough one of the folk that lives over the road keeps lobbing rubbish bins thru' their windows every lunchtime without fail.

With all this going on it's not too surprising that the Kuramashi's youngest daughter Satomi, desperate to find the identity of the real killer decides to hire a a spooky psychic named Mamiya (Yoshiko from the arthouse classic Spanking Love) and her ratty Michael Barrymore of a minder Toumato come over and perform a séance all in the hope of contacting the victims who, in turn can name the mentalist murderer and hopefully clear their brothers name.

It's a wee bit like Eastenders really, but without the ugly birds.


On paper this may sound like quite a good plan till you realize that the dead girls had their heads cut off so are unable to spill the beans.

It's a nice change to not have to caption these myself.

Resourceful as ever Mamiya has a back up plan and orders Satomi to search across town for the missing heads (obvious really) but her help comes at a price.

Realizing that the family don't have a spare ¥5,000,000 lying around (or even hidden in the mattress) the psychic offers to continue helping if Satomi allows Touma to roughly take Mrs. Kuramashi from behind.

Twice.

Sorry, did I say Eastenders? I really meant The Archers.

Your uncle and your girlfriend last Saturday.

Unable to concentrate on her homework due to all the noise that her mother and Touma are making, Satomi sneaks out to the local kiddies play park for a nice wee musical interlude and a quick chat with the tres foxy (and very ginger) FBI agent Lucy Anderson (Tomomi) and her sidekick , 'Foxy' Narimoto (Hiroshi the one that wasn't the giant lizard in Godzilla 2000).

No idea why the FBI are involved or why they decide to recruit a schoolgirl to join a secret organization dedicated to fighting evil cults and rubber monsters but heyho, it must of made sense to someone.

Satomi excitedly agrees and is introduced to the group's leader, the even more mysterious and frighteningly bespectacled 'Colonel' (cartoon Chihuahua Ren) who disguises himself as a reality teevee host and communicates to her via the TV set in the living room.

Same here.

And what does all this have to do with the admittedly ho-hum serial killer/arse sex plot?

Well you see, it appears that the FBI have evidence that Mamiya and Touma are leaders of a maniacal cult determined to awaken an ancient Lovecraftian monster by harnessing the sexual energies released from taking Mrs. Kuramashi up the casino.

Admit it, you'd kinda figured that out tho' hadn't you?

That's not the full extent of their evil scheme tho' as they're also planning - for no reason other than to fill the schoolgirl sex quota - to force poor Satomi to engage in rudeness with the hanging - yet still stiff - corpse of Tony Soap.

How will she explain that to her gran?

If that wasn't enough drama, dirtiness and danger for you the ghostly girl victims - bored with being dead and obviously wanting the movie to finish as soon as possible - have decided to use their spooky powers and find their heads themselves.

No idea how, probably just crawling around randomly picking up round stuff.

You never know one might turn up with a football or a big cabbage.

I'd say that was too silly but to be honest with this movie it wouldn't surprise me.

The big question tho' is will the ghost gals discover the killers true identity before the evil monster wakes from his centuries old slumber or will someone accidentally launch a nuclear strike on the unfortunate Kuramashi family before they get a chance to clear their sons name?

You think I'm joking about the nuclear attack don't you?

From the writer of Ringu, the producer of Ju-On: The Grudge and the executive producer of Audition (as the DVD cover proudly proclaims) Crazy Lips was heralded as Japan's answer to the TeeVee hit The X Files but with added anal violation and death by dildo but minus the drawback of having to look at David Duchovny's horse like face.

Lollypops!

 

 

Lulling it's audience into a false sense of security by starting out like any number of bog standard late-90’s J-horror movies, thirty minutes in Crazy Lips takes a sudden and unexpected U-turn, and smashes any preconceptions the viewer may have about the unfolding story before morphing into into a chaotic car crash of a movie, throwing headless ghosts, dark cults a smattering of kung fu and necrophiliac sex into the mix as if the film makers were hoping at least one of the ingredients would work in context of the story.

Or at least keep the masturbating teens happy.

"Call me Snake!"

Not always enjoyable - to be honest some of it isn't even that watchable - but never the less always interesting to look at, Crazy Lips (and it's sequel Gore From Outer Space) is the type of lazy Sunday afternoon movie that both you and your gran will enjoy.

If, like mine your gran likes a wee bit of necrophilia at the weekend.