[KFCC] Gore From Outer Space Review

Story: Before being sentenced to death for the murder of her own daughter, Satomi tells her story to a nun. It all begins with no one believing Satomi’s story of the kidnapping of her daughter. When the police start to investigate, Satomi’s husband tells them that they never had a daughter at all and that Satomi may have psychological problems.

Satomi decides to start her own investigation with the help of a strange psychic woman who may know the whereabouts of Satomi’s daughter. However, things will take a strange twist when two undercover FBI Agents involve her into a big political conspiracy in which visitors from another planet are trying to take over Japan.

Review: As the sequel to CRAZY LIPS, GORE FROM OTHER SPACE is another cinematic abnormality from Japanese director Hirohisa Sasaki. However, except for a few aspects such as the style, the actors and the crew, the sequel doesn’t really follow the first one. In other words, it is not necessary to have seen the first film in order understand the second one.

Just like CRAZY LIPS, the movie starts like any other ordinary Japanese horror film, but the aesthetics end up evolving into this weird comedy/cheap sci-fi hybrid. The main idea of the story may sound pretty believable and original on paper, but the execution on screen was not. The development with the Alien and the habitants is not very interesting and became overwhelmingly confusing.

Some of the actors appearing in the first movie also took part in this one. The strange psychic woman is there again but her assistant is this time absent as the actor now plays the role of the police inspector. The main actress who played the role of Satomi has also been replaced by a new one, unfortunately not as charming as the first one. Good points at least is that our favourite FBI agents are back and played by the same duo of actors and are by far the most memorable character of this second instalment.

A major difference between the first and second movie is that the second one had a different approach to the style. As explained by the writer Hiroshi Takahashi, the first one had a very serious script and director Hirohisa Sasaki shot the film as a comedy. The end result, not exactly on purpose, was a very entertaining black comedy. However, this time Takahashi decided to write the script as a comedy and asked the movie to be shot as serious as possible. The final product unfortunately didn’t ended up as interesting.

There are still some very wacky moments in the movie, such as a rather strange fight between a killer and the group of policemen or the ingenious idea Satomi finds to get inside the house where she thinks her daughter is kept. But since it was meant to be a comedy at first, the jokes are not always very funny and end up more awkward if anything.

Don’t get too thrilled about the sci-fi aspect of the movie either as it never goes beyond assuming things. We never witness any Alien or space ships. There are both in the film but Aliens have human appearances, a disguise of course and UFO’s only appear as bright lights. To think of it, that flying house was rather funny and interesting… Well, at least for a few seconds.

At least there were two things that were very enjoyable. First, the cameo of the famous Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, which is rather amusing if you know the man of course and also the surprisingly very elaborate kung fu fight scene near the end of the film. The fight, which was again choreographed by a Chinese team, involves a Chinese prisoner against a group of guards. The fight is very dynamic and looks like those 80’s Hong Kong action flicks.

In the end, this is unfortunately a very average flick. It’s worth a watch if you enjoyed Crazy Lips, but don’t get your expectation too high. If you never saw the first one, simply skip GORE FROM OTHER SPACE and try to catch CRAZY LIPS as it is a much more original and surprising film.