Baiorensu jakku: haremu bonba (1986)

... aka: バイオレンスジャック ハーレムボンバー

... aka: Violence Jack: Harem Bomber

... aka: Violence Jack: Slumking

... aka: Violence Jack, Part 1: Slum King

... aka: Violence Jack: Slumking - Part 3

Directed by:

Osamu Kamijô

A large comet hits the Earth, immediately causing widespread death and destruction. Volcanoes erupt, the Earth splits open, extreme twisters and "hell quakes" level cities and the majority of the population perish. The Kanto region of Japan has since become a lawless, dusty wasteland filled with violent nomads and barbarians and where "death is the only escape from the tyranny of life." Rising to ranks of master in this dangerous new world is the sadistic Slum King, the self-proclaimed "Lord of the Wasteland." Immediately under him is Captain Bomber, a huge long-haired blonde who wears a metal head casing and runs a sex slave ring. Opposing them and their goons is the enigmatic Violence Jack, who has seemingly risen from within the Earth itself. Jack, a hulking, muscular giant with the strength of 50 men, the fangs of a tiger and "an unquenchable thirst for destruction," may be a demon from hell or the spirit of death itself yet he's shown as a doer of good here. 

Upon learning of his existence, the Slum King immediately orders his followers to find and kill him. Easier said than done, of course. Not only super-strong, agile, inhuman and possibly immortal, Jack also comes equipped with a powerful jack knife.

Meanwhile, some of Captain Bomber's helpers are going around kidnapping young women, with plans to force them into lives as sex slaves. While transporting a load of abducted girls, their vehicle is overturned and the latest shipment of prisoners are able to escape into the wasteland. Two of the girls, the punk-look Yumi, who wears green lipstick and has orange and yellow hair so you know she really can't be trusted, and the preppy Mari, who only came to this area to search for her missing lover Kenichi, run into an abandoned building to hide. Jack appears long enough to help the girls escape from their kidnappers by ripping one's head off and then smashing another with the headless body, but they're re-captured soon after he disappears.

Taken to one of the few crumbling high rise buildings still left standing, Yumi and Mari are tended to by a sadistic, one-eyed dominatrix named Rose, who makes it her personal mission to break the girls in. With help from some chubby perverts dressed in leather harnesses and bikini briefs, they're degraded, lashed with a thorny whip, raped and forced into lesbian sex. Kenichi, who swore allegiance to Bomber after he saved his life during a feral dog attack, has been working as a helicopter pilot for him ever since. However, once he discovers they're holding Mari captive, he decides to sneak her and Yumi out of the complex. He then makes an arrangement with Bomber to help kill Violence Jack in exchange for letting him and Mari leave.

I'm not sure how the original version plays, but the English-language version is a laugh. There's useless and hilariously overly dramatic narration, title screens thrown in to introduce just two of the characters (including changing the name of "Harem Bomber" to "Harlem Bomber" for no good reason) and atrocious dialogue like "God damn it! Where the hell is Jack!? Fuckin' chicken shit! Fuck him! Fuck it! Shit! Fuck it! Shit!" However, the original Japanese-language version likely wouldn't be much better due to the poor, confusing script, crude animation, thin and bland characterizations, aimless plot and awful editing and pacing.

I also can't figure out why American distributors decided to re-title this chapter Slum King when he's not even the primary antagonist. Hell, he's barely even in the film at all, after being introduced at the beginning, though he may factor more into the two follow-ups: Violence Jack - Evil Town (1988) and Violence Jack - Hell's Wind (1990). While the running time of around 40 minutes is far too short for what this OVA hopes to accomplish, if one isn't too caught up on things like dialogue and narrative, this is loaded with blood sprays, gore (slashings, shootings, stabbed heads, decapitations, fingers and hands cut off...), nudity, rape and profanity.

This was based on a popular and long-running manga series, which began all the way back in 1973 in Weekly Shōnen Magazine and still continues on to this day in one iteration or another. The manga was co-written and illustrated by Gô Nagai up until 1990, but there have been many spin-offs, reboots and remakes since, like Shin Violence Jack (2005-2008) and, most recently, Violence Jack 20XX (2021-2022). The manga also spawned at least three novels.

After its initial Japanese release, this and its two sequels were distributed in the U. S. by Manga Entertainment in a slightly cut form, though the films would later be released uncut by The Right Stuf / Critical Mass. Discotek Media would eventually acquire the series and release them on DVD in their uncut form, with audio options consisting of the English language dub or original Japanese soundtrack with optional English subs. Note: The series was initially released out of order here, with this original being called "Part 3".

★1/2

Shen jian dong shan he (1981)

... aka: 神劍動山河

... aka: Excalibur Moves Mountains and Rivers

... aka: Heaven Sword

... aka: Thrilling Bloody Sword

... aka: Thrilling Sword

Directed by:

Chang Shing-I (Hsin-Yi Chang)

You know what Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was missing? Laser fights, demonic creatures, blood, ghosts, living skeletons, fire-breathing dragons with nine heads, talking chickens encouraging mob violence, fart humor, decapitations, bisection, swords going up asses and weird biblical allusions. Thankfully, this warped Taiwanese children's fantasy is around to remedy those oversights.

At a royal palace, Queen I-mei (Fanny Fong Fang-Fang), is in the middle of delivering her first child when a flaming meteor flies down from the heavens, hits her in the stomach and forces her to push out a giant, bloody, pulsating cocoon, instantly killing her! The king, Gau-shien (Han Chin), then orders his men to put the infant in a basket and send it down river a la Baby Moses. The basket floats through the Happy Forest and right to the village of the seven dwarfs. They initially plot to eat the "flesh ball" but after stabbing it, it spits out smoke and opens to reveal a (human) baby girl. Thinking she has been sent from the heavens, they name her Yaur-gi. Seventeen years later, Yaur-gi (also Fanny Fong) has grown into a beautiful young woman. After almost falling off a cliff trying to grab a flower, she's rescued by handsome Prince Yur-juhn (Shang-Chien Liu) and it's love at first sight.

Meanwhile, a duck-lipped cyclops monster is going around slaughtering people, so the king calls for reinforcements. Female exorcist Gi-err (Elsa Yang) shows up and demonstrates her formidable powers by making an imperial minister's head do 360 degree spins and levitating a sword and impaling a warrior with it. She calls forth her friend, black magician Shiah-ker (Yi Chang), and the two are easily able to defeat the monster. Against the wishes of chief advisor Minister Gan (Shih Chin), the king then promotes the two exorcists to head up his security detail. What he doesn't realize is that his new friends actually sent the monster there to begin with just so they could kill it and then infiltrate the kingdom. The two are working in cahoots with a master demon called Ah-Du and their ultimate goal is to take over the king's empire.

Back at the dwarf village, the love-struck Yaur-gi becomes depressed because the prince, who's been busy slaying a nine-headed sea monster the evil infiltrators have conjured up, hasn't returned to see her. She saves a white bunny with an injured leg, which then transforms into a giggly white "fairy of the forest" (Ling-Ling Hsia) who then offers to grant her any wish she wants. Any guesses as to what she wishes for? In order to get close to the prince, Yaur-gi poses as a maid but her cover is quickly blown since she's a dead-ringer for her mother - the late queen - and is wearing a necklace left in the basket with her when she was sent upstream. She does manage to briefly talk with the prince, who agrees to come see her. Unfortunately, he comes in the form of a man-in-a-suit bear after the evil sorcerers cast a spell on him.

With help from the little fairy, Yaur-gi and her dwarf dads concoct a magical potion in a giant barrel and place the bear prince inside. The kicker is that he has to stay submerged for an entire week for it to work. But since this movie just loves to make stuff up as it goes along, the barrel is opened early when Shiah-ker shows up to kill him and the fairy then whips up an "elixir" to save him. Shiah-ker kidnaps the princess and takes her to hell, where she's possessed by a demon and then agrees to marry him instead of the prince. The only way to put a stop to the madness is by retrieving "the thunder sword," which is said to be hidden in an underwater cave, and a few other essentials needed to defeat the bad guys, which also requires beating a vast array of monsters.

Monsters, you say? Yes, this has them... and tons of them I might add. Aside from the aforementioned cyclops, multi-headed "siren" and demon master, there's a man in a pterodactyl suit, frog monsters played by men covered in black spandex with flippers on their hands and feet hopping around on their butts, four near-indestructible bronze muscleman statues come to life, each with a unique weapon and just one vulnerable point on their bodies (including up the ass!), a bloody corpse that can detach its arms and feet, a set of large flying dentures (!) and a giant genie with heavy eye makeup and a plastic butt (!) on its head.

Aside from all of the fx work (which is technically awful if we're to be honest with ourselves yet still fun) and the fact this is all just too weird to outright ignore, Sword also benefits a lot from nice bold colors and surprisingly good production design, sets, props, weaponry and costumes. But then we have the rest of the movie to contend with...

The story takes forever to really take shape and lurches along for the first hour or so until it finally settles into a hero's quest type of scenario. Some of the main characters are also extremely annoying, starting with the princess, who's a complete nitwit. She's always moping around, just stands there and refuses to ever help anybody, casually knocks over a protective statue that she's been told to stay away from countless times and has to be told repeatedly not to open the lid to the healing bath for the prince or else it will KILL him. I'm not sure why everyone's jumping at the bit to try to marry this chick. She'll probably end up getting whoever does killed! Hopefully no one ever gives her access to nuclear codes or allows her near a button that says "Only hit in case of emergency" in the future or we're all in trouble.

Even worse are the dwarfs. They're loud, klutzy, dumb and obnoxious, spit food into each other's mouths, fart in the talking chicken's face ("It smells bad!") and constantly smack, kick, push and punch each other accompanied by goofy Three Stooges-style sound effects. I doubt even small children would find their antics amusing. The music is all stolen from other sources. I noticed The Burning and Battlestar Galactica but there's other familiar music here that I've heard before but can't quite place.

Up until recently all that existed for this one was a cloudy full screen VHS print. That is until a 35mm print was finally located. It's been given a 2K restoration from its original camera negative for its Blu-ray release from Gold Ninja Video. There are lots of scratches and damage on this print, not necessarily a bad thing in my eyes (or perhaps yours either), but a lot of the visual effects that were added in post cause the background detail to blur. There's talk of a full restoration coming soon.

★★1/2