CHANBARA BEAUTY (Japan, 2009)

INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE

86 minutes, digital projection, in Japanese with English subtitles
Directed by: Yohei Fukuda
Starring: Eri Otoguro, Chise Nakamura, Manami Hashimoto

Showtimes: FRI June 20, 10:45pm at the IFC Center [Buy Tickets];
WED June 25, 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.

When the dead rise from their graves to feast on the flesh of the living, it's up to bikini girls with samurai swords and motorcycle mamas with machine guns to send them back to Hell! Based on a series of videogames from Japanese publisher Tamsoft and D3, this itchy, twitchy, finger-popping, head-lopping hoedown is the cinematic equivalent of a light, summertime beach read, if the paperback shot laserbeams out of its eyes and had a thirst for vengeance.

Known as "ONECHANBARA" in Japan (pronounced "o-nay-chan-bara" and literally meaning "sister swordplay"), the stripped-down story takes place in a chaotic, desolate future world where civilization has broken down and the streets are filled with zombies. Why? Because that's what apocalyptic futures are like. Don’t ask silly questions. The result of a series of mad experiments by deranged scientist Sugita, the zombies are thankfully of the old school, slow-moving kind, but they also know how to use weapons and can be trained to form an undead army (of course). Luckily for the few human survivors, there’re a pair of dangerous women roaming the land, wearing barely enough clothing to hide their weapons, and dedicated to destroy all zombies. Aya (Otoguro, also seen in this year's American remake of the Thai horror film SHUTTER) is a cute-as-a-button, cowboy hat-wearing, bikini-clad warrior chick who's a zombie's worst nightmare, if zombies had nightmares. She's joined by Reiko (Hashimoto), a shotgun-wielding, leather-clad biker whose daughter was killed by the living dead and who lives only for revenge. Together they're unstoppable, until they meet death in a school uniform: Saki (Nakamura), a swordsgirl with the same deadly abilities as Aya...because she's her younger sister! Responsible for the death of their father, Saki is in league with mad scientist Sugita and when she and Aya finally butt heads, it's a total grudge match.

This ain’t exactly Akira Kurosawa here, but CHANBARA BEAUTY improves on Kurosawa’s movies in a way, offering up all the zombie-killing bikini girls with machine guns that Japan’s legendary director almost definitely wanted to include in his movies like SEVEN SAMURAI and RASHOMON. Director Fukuda, a former cinematographer, uses his low budget like there’s no tomorrow and he knows how to deliver the goods: for every minute of walking and talking his characters do, they spend four minutes slicing and dicing. Some may say that a good film festival should accurately reflect the cultural zeitgeist of the countries from which it sources its films and we have no argument with that - in fact, we'd insist that a movie like CHANBARA BEAUTY may more immediately reflect the preoccupations of Japanese pop culture than something more meaty like SAD VACATION or UNITED RED ARMY, because we believe that inside every middle-aged salaryman is a sword-wielding bikini girl, waiting to hack her way out and start killing zombies.