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The action-hor­ror hybrid that took Asia Extreme to a whole new level

07 Dec 2020

Words by James Balmont

Two young men engaged in a physical altercation in a wooded setting. The image shows one man grabbing the other man's arm forcefully.
Two young men engaged in a physical altercation in a wooded setting. The image shows one man grabbing the other man's arm forcefully.
Ryûhei Kitamura’s fre­net­ic, crazi­ly-ambi­tious cult favourite is low-brow film­mak­ing at its mind-bog­gling best.

It’s some years since Asia Extreme’ took Block­buster shelves by storm, where every hor­ror movie want­ed to be the new Ring, and any­thing Japan­ese and vio­lent was mar­ket­ed as a Y2K Video Nasty. Most of those lack­lus­tre copy­cat titles have been for­got­ten – but Ver­sus cer­tain­ly hasn’t. Here is a film that didn’t so much fit the trend as tear it a new one.

A zom­bie-samu­rai-action movie hybrid made on a $10,000 bud­get in a for­est some­where in Japan, Ver­sus was the prod­uct of an over­ly-ambi­tious film stu­dent who, until then, had spent more time singing in rock bands than actu­al­ly going to film­mak­ing class­es. But when Ryûhei Kita­mu­ra final­ly did get around to mak­ing his fea­ture debut, he had his eyes set only on the big time.

Refus­ing to stoop to the low-risk V‑Cinema mar­ket after pro­duc­ers proved unwill­ing to fund an all-out action fea­ture (Hol­ly­wood and Hong Kong action flicks reigned supreme in Japan), writer-direc­tor-pro­duc­er Kita­mu­ra decid­ed instead that he’d just do it all him­self. They told him he would nev­er get away with it. Well, guess what? He did.

Set in the mys­te­ri­ous for­est of Res­ur­rec­tion”, the film fol­lows two escaped con­victs as they clash with a yakuza gang bury­ing bod­ies at a near­by clear­ing. Due to a geo­graph­i­cal over­sight – the for­est lies atop a por­tal to hell – the dead begin ris­ing from their graves, result­ing in a three-way brawl involv­ing pis­tols, swords, back­flips and buck­ets of blood. The bat­tle lasts for most of the first half of the film.

All the while, a pair of hap­less gov­ern­ment agents (one of whom has mas­tered all forms of mar­tial arts”) are on the hunt for the escapees with some gen­uine­ly huge guns, and an ancient deity with a cen­turies-old grudge turns up to bring some extra heat. It turns out that one of the con­victs was the latter’s neme­sis back in feu­dal-era Japan. Cue more fighting.

The act­ing is cheesi­er than a box of ful­ly-loaded nachos, with the com­ic book-style yakuza gang leader, dressed in a green-and-pur­ple suit, the worst offend­er. Oth­er char­ac­ters are dis­tin­guish­able by visu­al pres­ence rather than act­ing mer­it: our leather trench coat-clad pro­tag­o­nist offers stereo­typ­i­cal tough-guy cool; a gang­ster hench­man spends the dura­tion of the film hav­ing an extend­ed pan­ic attack. There’s also a detec­tive with one hand, a text­book damsel in dis­tress, and a guy with red hair who… has red hair.

But no one comes into Ver­sus look­ing for a com­plex plot or char­ac­ters. Back in the day, it was the film’s gnarly poster – a sil­hou­et­ted man wield­ing both a sword and a gun – that was the clinch­er. Those who had seen the trail­er (includ­ed on the Japan­ese trail­er reels bun­dled on count­less import­ed DVDs from the ear­ly 2000s) were enticed by the promise of zom­bies, kung fu and excess gore. What they found was pure film­mak­ing spec­ta­cle – in the words of the direc­tor, a movie about the biggest fight in the world.” This was low-brow film­mak­ing at its mind-bog­gling best.

Mex­i­can stand-offs, decap­i­ta­tions and slow-motion fist­fights notwith­stand­ing, the most impres­sive thing about Ver­sus is that it’s actu­al­ly enter­tain­ing for a full two hours. There’s bul­let-time, com­ic relief and break­beat tech­no music. There’s a scene where a man punch­es through anoth­er man’s face and snatch­es his eyes out. There’s an epi­logue set in the future! And all the while, Kita­mu­ra and his crew demon­strate a gen­uine affin­i­ty for action cin­e­ma, com­bin­ing real stunts and dynam­ic cam­era move­ments plucked straight out of the John Woo playbook.

The film’s great­est achieve­ment, how­ev­er, is how per­fect­ly it cap­tures the sense of fun that goes into mak­ing a movie. Ver­sus is car­ried by a cast who had to dou­ble as on-set chefs, pro­duc­tion assis­tants and stunt co-ordi­na­tors in order to finance the film – and they all had so much fun that they did it all again a few years lat­er, shoot­ing a load of extra footage for an expand­ed release. It’s a B‑movie mas­ter­piece, a bar­gain bin clas­sic, and the stuff of leg­end. See it now, and don’t ever look back.

Ver­sus is avail­able on Blu-ray from 7 Decem­ber via Arrow Films.

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