Toronto After Dark, Day 7: Dead Sushi
Dead Sushi is what I like to refer to as a party movie. As a reviewer of fine cinema it is easy to disregard it as an terrible exercise in filmmaking, but watch it in a theatre surrounded by 400 other people looking to have fun, and it is possibly the greatest movie of all time.
Basically the film is about… well… sushi that comes to life, grows fangs, and starts flying around and eating people. The star of the story is Keiko, played by Rina Takeda of “High-Kick Girl!” fame, a martial artist and sushi chef who is both adorable and hilarious. There is also an axe-wielding man with a fish head, a battleship made of roe, a gardener with a severe phobia of knives, and buckets and buckets (and buckets) of blood.
Really the plot isn’t terribly relevant, as this is purely delirious Japanese madcap comedy, replete with terrible special effects and plenty of overly sexual humour and partial nudity. It’s crude, silly, over the top zany, and just gets progressively more out of control as it goes along. With this number of completely outrageous attempts at being funny, you know that not all of them are going to hit the mark, but far more of it works than doesn’t.
Before the show we were all told to scream “sushi” and “danger” at the screen whenever we saw sushi or danger, and people were all yelling and having a fine time. This isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and I would suggest gathering a crowd before viewing, but if the mood is right, this is ridiculous Japanese absurdity at its finest. And you might just learn something about sushi. 4 out of 5 stars.