Meatball Machine and Meatball Machine Kodoku (TLA Releasing, 2005 and 2017)

50 films that I dug up on Tubi.

Enjoy!

Meatball Machine (2005) and Meatball Machine Kodoku (2017)

It’s a double-header in more ways than one, as I settled down to watch a couple of films that bookend a period known to cinephiles as Gonzo Japanese Splatter. Between these films, we were served up classics such as Tokyo Gore Police, Machine Girl, and the afore-reviewed Toilet of the Dead and Dead Sushi, but those are just the tip of the grue-coated iceberg.

If you are familiar with Tetsuo: The Iron Man from 1989, you’ll already have a grasp of the themes in these films; isolation, sexual desire, transformation, body horror and extreme gore.

Meatball Machine was directed by Yūdai Yamaguchi with effects by long-time Noboru Iguchi collaborator Yoshihiro Nishimura (Nishimura would later go on to direct the Meatball sequel). It looks like it was shot on digital video, with blown out colors, and I’m not a fan, but that could also be down to the dodgy copy Tubi has.

The story concerns Yōji, a downtrodden young man who has a rubbish job and stifles his loneliness by pining for a young woman, Sachiko, whom he watches from afar during his lunch breaks. In the background of this sob story, we learn that parasites are taking over people and mutating them into killing machines, for reasons.

Yōji stumbles across the carapace of one of these creatures and takes it home. One night, after saving Sachiko from a sexual assault, they finally get to sit and talk, and discover they are both lonely. This is all building up to a sweet moment, but then the carapace springs into life, attaching itself to Sachiko and OH MY FREAKING GOD. Yamaguchi cranks everything up to 11 and covers everyone in dripping gore throughout the rest of the film. It’s wild, utterly bonkers, and ridiculously entertaining (if you like that sort of thing, you disgusting person, you). Multiple fights and plot twists ensue, and a new sub-genre is kickstarted into horrific life.

Meatball Machine Kodoku takes the idea in a completely different direction, leaning heavily into an aliens angle while also expanding upon the lore. Director Nishimura, always on the lookout to outdo himself and everyone else in the genre, goes completely potty, coming up with some of the weirdest and most wonderful body transformations I have ever seen.

In this film, Yuji, a downtrodden, middle-aged man who hates his debt collecting job, secretly pines for a cute young woman, Kaoru, who works in his local bookstore. When he saves her from a potential assault, they finally get together and, yes, you guessed it, everything goes to poop. So far, so very similar.

However, this time the parasites infest a whole city, not only that, but they trap the entire city in a giant alien bell jar, and let everyone kill each other. For reasons.

One aspect I enjoyed about this one was that when mutated by a parasite, your body’s weapon is the thing you are most recently connected to. So a construction worker gets a jackhammer for an arm, while a burlesque dancer who was eating spaghetti ends up with a fork. It’s especially fun watching the parasites control their hosts with outlandish levers in their little pod ‘brains.’ This film is actually light on horror for the first 30 minutes, and then BOOM — a chopped off willy and a bisected pair of lovers kick off the whole shebang — and it all gets set to ludicrous speed.

It’s hard to elicit any sympathy for Yōji and Yuji, as in both films they immediately objectify their love interests, but in the end you can’t help rooting for them.

Naturally, if you have an aversion to extreme body horror, writhing tendrils, copious amounts of gore, boob and pantie obsessions and tasteless deaths, then these aren’t the films for you. However, I laughed a lot, and not necessarily at the right moments.

Let me know if you watch them!

7/10 and 8/10 respectively

Too Late (Vanishing Angle, June 11, 2015) and Chawz (Lotte Entertainment, July 16, 2009)

Too Late (2015)

Taking a break from gonzo Asian splatter-fests, I found myself settling in for what one might describe as a ‘cozy’ horror-comedy. Personally, I’d describe it as a missed opportunity, but a cursory glance at other reviews reveals I’m in the minority, so what do I know?

Violet (Alyssa Limperis) is the assistant to a famous stand-up comedian, Bob Devore (Ron Lynch), and she helps him find new talent for his late-night live show, Too Late. He doesn’t just need raw talent to entertain his crowds though, as Bob is a supernaturally old, shape-shifting monster that has to eat every four weeks. He’s been in the entertainment business a very long time, and only the most talented acts will sate his hunger. When Violet falls in love with one of his potential meals, she must find a way to terminate her contract and save herself. And that’s about the gist of it. A not-so-subtle allegory for the destructive nature of showbiz.

I’m good with this. It’s a solid concept and the film is well-shot and directed, and for the most part well acted. Fred Armisen and Mary Lynn Rajskub pop up for short cameos, mainly, I suspect, to help get the film funded and to put on the DVD cover, and the rest of the cast is filled out with the usual roster of genre types. They all do their jobs admirably. The horror itself is fairly tame, and other than a shot at the end, relatively bloodless, and I didn’t mind that either.

What I did object to though was the notion that this all takes place against the backdrop of a comedy club, and not a single one of the performers was funny. I get it. Comedy is subjective, but come on, some of this was the dullest observational humour I have ever heard. Not the main focus of the story, but it still irked me enough to get salty as I watched it.

Bottom line, OK.

5/10

Chawz (aka Chaw) (2009)

The Korean title Chaw translates to ‘trap’, but this creature feature wears its influences on such a large sleeve, that it was rebranded to Chawz for its US release, capitalizing on that old shark movie.

I’ve been a sucker for giant, mutant boar movies ever since I first watched Russell Malcahy’s Razorback back in the day. Sadly, they are a bit thin on the ground, but this is a good one, so I’m glad I caught up with it.

It’s your usual monster movie fare; giant creature terrorizes a village, eats folk, is a bit of a nuisance etc., plucky group of tropes band together to hunt it down. So far, nothing new. However, this being a Korean film, it has to meet the 2 hour run time, so there is a lot more going on with a broad roster of characters. We have a fish out of water tale with Kim Kang-soo, a freshly transferred cop, a revenge tale with Chun Il-man wanting to avenge his grand-daughter’s savage death, some light comedy via a clutch of goofy cops and hangers-on, a doomed romance, a crazy lady, an incompetent official, etc etc.

It’s a lot to follow, and the film would benefit from a bit of pruning, but on the whole I had fun with it. The monster effects are fine; a combination of puppetry and B-tier CG, and there are plenty of homages littered throughout to prompt a drinking game.

It’s no The Host, but still worth a look.

7/10

Monster Seafood Wars (2020)

Never one to turn my nose up at a kaiju slam-fest, I started this one with some trepidation, and was wise to do so. It’s all rather maddening. Stuck inside this ‘comedy’ is a decent monster flick idea; a young slacker scientist creates a serum that can make creatures grow huge in an effort to cure world hunger. His invention is stolen by a nefarious rival, who also steals his shrine offerings (a squid, an octopus and a crab), which are then mutated to ridiculous size and promptly go on a rampage.

The aspect I really enjoyed was the fact that the populace discovers these kaiju are delicious, and so they are happy to let them fight while they control them with vinegar cannons, so that chunks get knocked off and turned into gourmet dishes. That’s what the story should have focused on — it’s a great hook that could allow some excellent moral dilemmas, but instead we have to wade through a tedious love triangle and unnecessary ‘mockumentary’ interviews with the witnesses to the shenanigans.

It also doesn’t help that the monsters themselves are cutesy mascot-style designs with googly eyes and fixed expressions. I wonder how awesome this film could be with realistic creatures and a focus on their deliciousness.

Oh well.

5/10

Blood Surf (Trimark Pictures, December 4, 2000) and Body Melt (Beyond Distribution, December 15, 1993)

Blood Surf (2000)

If you know me by now, I’m always up for a killer crocodile/alligator flick, and when I learned that the late, great John Carl Buechler was responsible for the reptile effects, I got mistakenly excited.

You see, it’s a film about a hugely unlikable group of MTV brats who want to film themselves surfing with chum-crazed sharks, but instead get roped into a croc of shit. The effects are not good, lots of dodgy superimposition, and the filmmakers had no idea how to shoot the big croc puppet. The script is aggressively dumb, the actors deliver their stupid lines with zero interest, and the whole thing is a crushing bore.

What with a Jürgen Prochnow ordered off of Wish, a Matthew Lilliard/Seann William Scott hybrid, and two girls flashing their tits at the beast before one says, “I guess that’s what you call a croc tease,” I was done with it all.

The one single redeeming feature was that one character was called Melba, which allows me to make a ‘Melba was quickly toast’ joke.

Bah.

1/10

Body Melt (1993)

Here’s a strange one from down under — a gonzo, sci-fi, body-horror goo-a-thon starring Ian (Harold Bishop from Neighbours) Smith as an evil doctor. Brilliant bit of casting.

The story is about an immoral pharmaceutical company that doles out free pills to the residents of a small community, and then records the various side-effects. Side effects include: exploding body parts (heads, willies, that sort of thing), sentient placentas, randomly placed tentacles, cannibalism, and various amounts of melting.

As you might be able to discern, there are no set rules to the side-effects, and this is the downside to the film. Rather than tell a coherent story, it plays out more as a series of gloopy vignettes, and we really don’t have a main protagonist to follow.

That said, it’s quite ridiculously fun, and there’s plenty of weird stuff going on (and one or two big laughs), so I’m recommending it to all the weirdos out there.

6/10

Previous Murkey Movie surveys from Neil Baker include:

Tubi Dive, Part I
Tubi Dive, Part II
Tubi Dive, Part III
Tubi Dive, Part IV
What Possessed You?
Fan of the Cave Bear
There, Wolves
What a Croc
Prehistrionics
Jumping the Shark
Alien Overlords
Biggus Footus
I Like Big Bugs and I Cannot Lie
The Weird, Weird West
Warrior Women Watch-a-thon

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Neil Baker’s last article for us was Part IV of Tubi Dive. Neil spends his days watching dodgy movies, most of them terrible, in the hope that you might be inspired to watch them too. He is often asked why he doesn’t watch ‘proper’ films, and he honestly doesn’t have a good answer. He is an author, illustrator, teacher, and sculptor of turtle exhibits. (AprilMoonBooks.com).