Rage of the Undead - DVD

Film: Young Aiko (Maimi Yajima) has to deal with a more than annoying task at her job in a small production company. Out of countless unlabeled videotapes, she is supposed to pick out footage from previous weddings of a famous singer who is about to get married for the fifth time. During this research, Aiko comes across an old instructional video on how to behave during a zombie apocalypse. While her colleague Hashimoto, an avowed horror movie junkie, is totally enthralled by the video, Aiko would prefer to turn it off immediately. But as luck would have it, just at that moment a zombie plague breaks out in the streets of Tokyo, which soon causes the building of the production company to be besieged by the undead. With the help of the video, Aiko, her uncle and Hashimoto must now not only try to survive the attacks of the hungry zombies, but also to reverse the plague. And in the process, they uncover a terrifying secret...

Rage of the Undead is a completely over-the-top Japanese zombie comedy that mixes absurdist humor with hearty splatter interludes. However, there is little left of it in the German version, as the film was shortened by almost 3 minutes in this country. This is incomprehensible, since the film in this mutilated version has received a release from 16 years, but the DVD is released due to trailers only from 18 years. Why then interested genre fans aren't offered a less severely cut 18 version of the film, which would surely have found more buyers, is a real mystery. After all, the film appeals to a rather special target audience, which in advance already inquires very carefully in which cut version a film is released in Germany.

Due to the cuts, which have been set but very obvious in two scenes, the film has lost quite a bit of show and entertainment value. To enjoy this absurd zombie invasion anyway, you have to like the very own humor. The fact that all zombies grow a Tintin & Struppi-memory-hair-roll after the infection, that Aiko's uncle acts completely overdone poncey or the half-zombie Kannasbun (Saki Nakajima) fooling around with wide-open eyes and shrill demeanor through the scenery, might really not be everyone's cup of tea. But there are also some really amusing ideas, like the old zombie instructional video, whose presenter at first comes across as very serious and suddenly, when it comes to slaughtering the zombies, only gets down to business in a bra and skimpy shorts. Or when the shy Aiko, who finds horror movies totally disgusting, mutates into a tough zombie killer herself. In such moments Rage of the Undead is really a lot of fun.

However, despite the rather high fun factor, a buy recommendation cannot be given with a clear conscience even for big fans of Japanese horror comedies of the particularly wacky kind. The cuts made are just too obvious for that. Only those who can do without cruder splatter interludes and just want to see unrestrained silly zombie fun, can risk a look here to learn how to behave in a zombie apocalypse really right!

Picture + Sound: The DVD's picture pleases with a very powerful color scheme and good image sharpness, only suffering intentional quality drops in the scenes where clips from the old instructional video are shown. The sound is dominated by the very centrally mixed dialogue, with only small sound effects here and there providing audible exploitation of the surround channels. Neat!

Extras: As a bonus is unfortunately only the trailer on the DVD.

F Conclusion: Rage of the Undead is a completely over-the-top zombie comedy from Japan, which is unfortunately in Germany only in a version mitigated by just under 3 minutes to have. Since some cuts have been implemented very obviously, the fun of the fight against the undead is clearly clouded. The fact that the DVD also only has trailers as a bonus does not really increase the incentive to buy. If you like wacky horror-comedies with the very own Japanese humor, you can definitely risk a look. But the many cuts make it impossible to give it a convinced buy recommendation

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp