The forgotten hybrids of Japan’s Y2K horror boom

At the turn of the century, Japan was on the brink of an unlikely international cinematic awakening – and a man named Takashige Ichise was at its centre. Ichise’s producer credit can be traced across almost all of the Y2K era’s headline Japanese horror hits, from Ring (1998), Dark Water (2002), and the Ju-on films (2000-) to Hollywood remakes like The Grudge (2004-). When first emerging in the industry in the ​’80s, ​“there really was no market for Japanese horror films,” he tells Little White Lies. ​“I’d read the novel Ring and began working on a film adaptation in the early ​’90s,” he continues. ​“But the companies I’d approached for funding told me that projects like this wouldn’t be a hit. I abandoned it.”

But by the end of the century, that picture had changed dramatically. A new potential for horror films had been signalled following the releases of Hideo Nakata’s Don’t Look Up and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure in 1996 and 1997. And so, following the word-of-mouth success of the Ichise-produced Ring in 1998, the pioneer doubled down on the genre – spinning hits into franchises while also experimenting with the genre’s central talent pool in a bid to ​“expand boundaries”. Domestic successes led to era-defining blockbuster remakes in the States, while the discomfiting originals infiltrated the UK on VHS tapes and DVDs by specialist distributors, and via late-night transmissions on Channel 4. Audiences tired of Hollywood slashers and franchise reboots had already discovered a sinister alternative to the mainstream via atmospheric indie works like The Blair Witch Project (1999) – it was only a few shelves down in your local Blockbuster or HMV that the ​‘World Cinema’ would offer further horror salvation.

Today, a small, well-defined canon of these cult Japanese horror films constitutes the celebrated ​‘J‑Horror’ lineage – low-budget, dread-inducing psychological works with muted colours, long-haired ghosts, and a dose of techno-paranoia. But beyond these defining touchstones, there were countless further horror-coded productions being made by the same core talents that failed to make the same impact overseas. As Third Window Films’ new release of the Y2K Japanese horror hybrids Crazy Lips and Gore From Outer Space blows the canon open wider in September 2026, the question remains: why were some of these innovations destined for immortality, and others resigned to obscurity?

On the surface, Crazy Lips had all the right DNA when it hit Japanese cinemas in 2000: with Ichise as producer alongside Audition production company ​‘Omega Project’, it connected talents like actress Hitomi Miwa from Ju-on: The Curse (2000) and Cure composer Gary Ashiya with a script by Ring screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi. The latter, says Ichise, was a kind of horror cinema mentor – a man whose ​“unique gift lies in his ability to embed an uncanny, sinister quality into his screenplays, as though all his thoughts have passed through a horror filter before being expressed.” The film would tell the story of a girl who misguidedly visits a psychic after her brother is accused of murdering four schoolgirls.

But whereas Ring and Ju-on – with their folk‑y tales of vengeful spirits, curses, and Kabuki-inspired ghosts – tapped into the lineage of vivid ​‘60s horror films like Kuroneko (1968) and Kwaidan (1964), Crazy Lips sought influence from a different kind of horror cinema from the same period. ​“We wanted to create a project reminiscent of the erotic, grotesque, and absurd ghost stories produced by studios like Shintoho and Okura Film in the ​‘60s,” director Hirohisa Sasaki tells us. (He cites Hiroshi Matsuno’s The Living Skeleton and the ero-guro films of Teruo Ishii elsewhere.) And then there were the confounding genre influences from overseas: ​“I also wanted to create a film with the kind of worldview found in Bollywood,” he continues. ​“And to have an action team from Hong Kong to ensure that the action was authentic.”

The resulting comedy-horror hybrid features spooky shots of decapitated schoolgirls hopelessly searching for their missing heads, but also gratuitous, pervy sex scenes; eccentric supporting characters; unexpected sing-songs; and a maximalist martial arts sequence at the climax. ​“When I read the script, it reminded me of Peter Jackson’s Braindead,” Ichise later remarked.

Though largely ignored by critics, Crazy Lips enjoyed a successful six-month run as a midnight movie in Japan, says Sasaki. And so a similarly bizarre sequel featuring cameo appearances from J‑Horror titans Hideo Nakata and Kiyoshi Kurosawa – who play a mysterious suited man and a newspaper courier, respectively – was released a year later, titled Gore From Outer Space.

The films didn’t exactly support Ichise’s 2005 statement that ​“Japanese horror is scarier than American horror”, but they were exemplary of his unwavering belief in the genre as an inexpensive, and therefore, low-risk arena for experimentation. Many of these kinds of absurdist horror-hybrids were ultimately able to ride the J‑Horror wave overseas to great success: Ryuhei Kitamura’s no-budget zombie apocalypse romp Versus (2000) and Takashi Miike’s fantasy musical horror-comedy The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001) both became cornerstones of the Tartan Asia Extreme collection in the UK. So why not Crazy Lips and Gore From Outer Space?

“Personally, I think the strong emphasis on eroticism and action made Crazy Lips a hard sell as a horror film,” says Sasaki. The project had been initially pitched to Shintoho Eiga – a company largely known for their softcore pink cinema – but they subsequently cancelled their plans for the film. ​“It then failed to sell internationally because it was deemed too erotic,” Sasaki continues. ​“And re-editing the film for overseas markets was difficult, because one particularly graphic rape scene was central to the movie’s core.”

By the time Crazy Lips received an overlooked US DVD release in 2004, the Japanese horror boom had already subsided. And though Ichise did produce further, under-seen hallmarks of the genre – Kurosawa’s Retribution, Nakata’s Kaidan, and Ring screenwriter Takahashi’s The Sylvian Experiments – the buzz never really came back. ​“It was a genre that could be produced on a low budget, and so it suffered from a flood of shoddy, mass-produced films that caused it to lose the support of audiences,” Ichise concludes. ​“And a second reason is that there was a failure of new talents to emerge.”

But for the Western consumer, these new releases of Crazy Lips and Gore From Outer Space mark the latest unlikely expansion on a once revolutionary sub-genre that was, for a long time, limited in exposure beyond its most recognisable works. With Arrow Video’s 2024 ​‘J‑Horror Rising’ box set (featuring the Ichise-produced Noroi: The Curse); Tom Mes’ brand new ​‘Frightfest Guide to Japanese Horror Films’ book; and the just-announced Imprint Films ​‘The Origins of J‑Horror’ box set, which collates foundational works produced before 1997, the strange and uneven lineage of the last great Japanese horror explosion is now more accessible than ever. With that, the weirder and lesser-known oddballs of Japanese horror cinema are finally finding a home overseas – kung fu kicks and all. 

Crazy Lips and Gore From Outer Space are available to purchase on Blu-ray via Third Window Films and will screen at The Nickel Cinema on September 28.