Drunken Zombie

Since we haven't had a dose of foreign horror for a while, I thought I'd fill in.
Here are a couple of horror offerings from the home of the most baffling perverts in history: Japan!


Fukushū Suru wa Ware ni Ari, aka Vengeance Is Mine
This extremely offbeat 1979 true crime/comedy/social commentary film by director Shohei Imamura follows the criminal career of notorious confidence man and serial killer Akira Nishiguchi.
Imamura, the mentor of V-Cinema icon Takashi Miike, pushes the envelope on violence and social inhibitions with his customary vicious glee--all in the course of his quest to expose the earthy, visceral undercurrent of Japanese society.

Tikatetsu
Another entry in the underrated horor/comedy genre, one of Masaki Kobayashi's last films resembles a darker retelling of Dickens' A Christmas Carol transposed to a contemporary eastern setting.
A workaholic marketing VP falls asleep in the small hours of the morning on a (mostly) empty train and is confronted by the vengeful souls of those he's betrayed over the years. His relief at finally awakening soon turns to dread as his nightmare bleeds over into the waking world.
The film's momentum is deftly maintained from start to finish thanks largely to Kobayashi's surreal use of color, rapid-fire editing, and bizarre camera angles. Featuring one of the most flawless comedic scenes in all Japanese horror (Toshiro Takemitsu's straight man conductor attempting to collect tickets from a clan of spectral stowaways), Tikatetsu singlehandedly rescues the entire Japanese horror genre from its underserved reputation as a breeding ground for camp exploitation films.

I'm expanding this thread to Asian Cinema in light of the stunning contributions made by Korean fimmakers of late.


Hypnotize
The second film of director In-Shik Kim, completed on his 22nd birthday, can be considered a masterpiece of characterization for its caustic portrayal of a cutthroat gossip columnist. Being driven home from the scene of her latest tabloid coup, her new chaffeur allows the car to become stranded--perhaps a bit too easily--on an isolated country road.
The two are forced to spend the night in the claustrophobic, nearly pitch black confines of the car as a storm rages outside. The ensuing downward spiral of suspicion, sexual tension, and in the end, terror propels the story to its inevitable resolution. Although the pacing is best described as a slow boil, Kim maintains an intriguing narrative centered around the audience's slowly building realization of the driver's true identity.
Contextualized by extremely minimal lighting, this film's pervasive sense of tension is largely achieved by juxtaposing the distant formality of Asian culture against the movie's sinister and even erotic content.

Tell Me Something
Often called South Korea's answer to The Silence of the Lambs, and directed by Yoon-Hyun Chang, hailed as Dario Argento's Asian counterpart, this compelling thriller features suspense, love, and plenty of gore.
Baffled by the glut of mismatched body parts being dumped all over town, the Seoul police call in Detective Cho, a disgraced homicide officer desperate for a chance to redeem himself by solving the serial murderer's puzzle . Cho soon discovers that all of the victims shared the same girlfiriend, artist Chae Su-Yeon. What looks like an open and shut case quickly takes a mysterious turn, and Cho sets out to prove the girl's innocence. The severed limbs, eviscerated torsos, and buckets of blood he encounters along the way are so expertly crafted that even hardened horror fans may very well be put off their dinner. Scenes of unparalleled tension, such as the heroes unwittingly standing not ten feet from the killer, drive the film to its fevered, nightmarish conclusion.

Kirinashi Suenagaku Ima
Startlingly provocative. The four surviving members of female bodybuilding group E Block seek retribution for the grisly murder of a teammate. Their conflicts with the yakuza scum on the waterfronts of Osaka build to a crescendo in one of the most spectacularly executed fight scenes in Japanese crime cinema.
This movie is notoriously difficult to find, having been banned or heavily cut in several countries due to gratuitous nudity and graphic violence. Contrary to the censors' reactionism, the lead actresses' zen rationale and feminine muscularity establish the erotic allegory around which the story revolves, making the unedited original the only version worth watching.


Nippon no Akuryo
Best known for poignant World War II coming of age films, Kazuo Kuroki departed from form only once in 1970. This film is the shocking result. Kuroki's seventh project provides a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been if he'd continued experimenting in the horror genre.
A period piece set during the Meiji Restoration, the film's title refers to the hordes of evil spirits traditionally said to stalk the Japanese countryside, and which feature in the seven vignettes retelling classic folk tales that compose the film's narrative. A lesser director might have been satisfied with word-for-word reproductions, but staged within a post-feudal context, the ghost yarns become scathing commentaries on the restlessness and uncertainty of industrialized Japan. This movie's chilling resiliency ranks Kuroki among the world's legendary horror directors, despite his relative lack of output. The sense of deep unease and profound wonder evoked by this film results less from the supernatural goings-on than from the continual challenges to common assumptions that prevent characters and audiences from taking even the most fundamental preconceptions for granted. Currently available only in the original Japanese on a "raw" region 2 release, this movie will haunt even non-fluent viewers for hours afterward.