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