Every now and again a movie is made that is so abundantly mental, so skull bludgeoning in its sheer depth of illogic, that you instinctively know there is but one nation that could have birthed the mutant freak and brought it kicking and screaming out of said nation’s B-Movie nether regions – and on to a screen near you.

And so to recent Japanese flick Big Tits Zombie 3D, the film that the Jenna Jameson fronted Zombie Strippers wishes so desperately it could be.

I can say that Big Tits Zombie is not a technically good film, camera issues abound, the micro-budget affords them one set and the script is generally pretty abysmal.

But I can also say that this is a movie featuring a chainsaw wielding stripper, fighting a zombie version of what appears to be the Mighty Boosh’s “hitcher”, who has been transplanted to Japan and wears those paper 90s anaglyph green and red glasses whilst an Ennio Morricone inspired score soundtracks the ensuing violent insanity in three psychedelic dimensions. Three! Well its sometimes in 3D at least.

And if that sounds like the sort of thing you’re into, a little poor filmic technique is probably not going to matter a great deal.

The “film” begins by introducing us to Lena, who after a recent jaunt to Mexico (the reason, I presume, is to justify the fact that she is dressed throughout the entire movie as a cowgirl) returns to Japan and falls foul of a small time gangster.

Our heroine is a hard drinking, good time girl and takes to his suggestion of exotic dancing at his club in “the Texas of Japan” with little to no protestation. At the seedy joint we meet her fellow strippers, namely a Goth who will go on to raise the dead whilst wearing a sort of emo schoolgirl get up; the Madame who does tarot readings; a South East Asian immigrant who is always after money to send back home to her sisters (troublingly for the bleeding heart liberals out there); and the spunky one who recently got out of the clink after serving a term for murder.

Together they’re a bit like a stripper version of Sharpe’s Rifles.

After some gratuitous topless wrestling over who gets to wear the fluffy sex kitten outfit we arrive at the first of many arbitrary 3D scenes. In this case the girls kind of line dance in old school green and red 3-D, and yes the little glasses sign comes up in the corner of the screen just like it did on Comic Relief 93.

However for those of you worried (or hoping) that Big Tits Zombie 3D is but a mere excuse to see lady udders in all their bouncy glory then fear not (or return dejected to your Google searches, pervert) for there is very little actual nudity. In fact with the exception of a fire breathing vagina dentate, a weird bit involving eating Sushi off a naked girl and a pair of topless women being sprayed suggestively by blood from a decapitated body, the whole thing is, thankfully, rather tame.

Not that this is a bad thing, it just squarely positions the film as a silly fun rather than a borderline porno.

The influence of The Evil Dead films hangs heavy. Indeed the previously mentioned Goth stripper actually finds a book entitled “The Book of the Dead” (from Italy) and with her inexplicable Latin fluency she uses it to raise an army of the damned. She then torments the other girls with said zombie army because they used to bully her about her self-harm problem and body issues – which actually seems fair.

There’s also something about a sister of one of the strippers being murdered, and that’s why she went to jail because she killed the guy who did it and now he’s a zombie and she has to kill him again but he’s a zombie pervert who touches the living’s boobs or something.

But it all seemed rather ham fisted and out of place in a film that also has zombies playing ping pong dressed as ninjas and geishas so we’re just going to ignore that aspect just like we‘re going to ignore: The rest of the script, the acting, the cheap, tacky looking CGI blood, the fact that some zombies do Kung Fu, the dated 3D for which I did not have glasses for, the sound effects (when breasts are revealed they are revealed to a loud cartoonish “Boing” sound, fun until you think about), the juvenile nature of the subject matter, the eyeball lollipop, that bizarre sushi moment the horrible digital stock, the…

Ah hell you just can’t quite ignore it after a while; this is a bad movie.

But your enjoyment of the movie should not be tied to this fact. The “it’s so bad it’s good” mantra is a real cop-out and excuses a lot of problems that seem to undermine many of horror’s budget gems. The Troma movies show that whilst a movie can be silly and nonsensical, cheap and lurid your enjoyment of these films stems from the fact that they are pure Hollywood, pure Americana blockbuster movies filtered and distilled into something subversive and new.

I mean is Surf Nazis Must Die, a film where gangs of fascist surfers patrol the California coast, but are brought down by a retired African American lady with the best Blaxsploitation one liners this side of Blacula, really sillier and than, say, Avatar?

No, it does the exact same things, it plays with conventions and uses spectacle to create a satisfying effect somewhere in your stomach by the time the credits roll.

The real reason anybody sees either of these movies, or any movie is because you know you’re in for a certain amount of fun and to make a film fun takes craft, technique and intelligence. Big Tits Zombie 3D delivers on the fun but only in fleeting moments.

The set pieces are great, the fights are depraved and ridiculous, the zombies are ghoulish and over the top, and there are the more base charms of attractive topless women but the majority of the film is spent waiting for any of the above to come into shot.

There is no scaffolding around these moments of sheer unadulterated entertainment to support the rest of the film, no real moments of craft, technique or, perhaps most importantly, wit and charm – the qualities its far superior spiritual father Evil Dead II had in abundance.

As such Big Tits Zombie 3D comes close to that sublime state of a filmic idiot savant but just, and only just, misses out on the savant part.

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