TAMAMI: THE BABY'S CURSE, aka AKANBO SHOJO (Japan, 2008)

INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE

103 minutes, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles
Directed by: Yudai Yamaguchi
Starring: Nako Mizusawa, Goro Noguchi, Takumi Saito, Itsuji Itao

Showtimes: FRI June 27, 10:15pm at the IFC Center [Buy Tickets];
MON June 30, 4:00pm at the IFC Center [Buy Tickets].
Note: "Buy Tickets" links will take you to the IFC Center website (for shows at IFC Center) and to Japan Society website (for shows at Japan Society). Tickets for each venue must be purchased separately

Kazuo Umezu is one of the craziest men in comics. And we don’t mean crazy in a silly uncle who wears a funny hat way. We mean crazy in a schoolchildren crucified, split in two, eaten by babies and offered up to an evil, imaginary god kind of way. His manga series like Left Hand of God, Right Hand of the Devil and Drifting Classroom have made him a household name in Japan, viewed as a cross between that country’s Charles Addams and David Lynch. So it’s with great pleasure that we’re hosting the International premiere of the film adaptation of one of his most notorious manga, AKANBO SHOJO.

Birthed in trauma, Yoko (Nako Mizusawa) is a fifteen-year-old orphan who suddenly discovers that she isn’t an abandoned child after all: her birth family are still alive and they want her back. She arrives at the family mansion to discover that her mother is insane, the housekeeper is a creepy old ghoul and her dad is a kindly, but distracted, professor of...we’re never quite sure. Oh, and there’s a crazed mutant baby in the attic that has the mind of an adult but the body of a killer infant with claws and fangs. And it’s not happy to have a big sister.

Director Yudai Yamaguchi is best known for his nutty comedies like CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL and BATTELFIELD BASEBALL but in TAMAMI he perfectly recreates a horror film from 1983. Dusted with kitsch, every soft-focus composition or Mittel European milk maid’s outfit, every line of insane dialogue, every bizarre plot twist feels like a very strange fashion magazine from another decade come to life. The only things modern about this movie are the sudden eruptions of spurting, Fulci-esque gore that break out whenever Tamami, the evil baby, makes an entrance. With its tongue firmly planted in your cheek, TAMAMI sends up the genre with its creaking doors, flaming candelabra, moving shadows and mysterious noises while it delivers goopy genre thrills. A trip back to the 80’s in the funktastic time machine that’s powered by freakazoid blood, this is a modern day art object disguised as a slasher flick.

Akanbo Shojo will be released in Japan on August 2, 2008.