Hideshi Hino's Theater of Horror Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: A collection of 6 films inspired by the works of famed horror writer, Hideshi Hino.

Review: Some horror fans may recognize the name Hideshi Hino better from his controversial "Guinea Pig" films that, while disturbing, appear much more tame by today's standards. Mr. Hino is also a famed manga writer with a distinct style allegedly invoking inspiration from events that occurred to him in his personal life. This fact remains true even in regards to the six films featured in this series as each is opened with an introduction from Mr. Hino who served as the writer on all six; however, the intros are not individualized as the same dialogue is repeated each time. While there is a general cheesiness to the tone, it does come off more as an homage to other famous anthologies. I'm still not entirely sure how these films would have aired in Japan because they have the quality of a TV budget (or worse), but the running times are so inconsistent I can't understand why no degree of uniformity was applied; it's of note that the movies are on the short side. Each film tells an individual tale unrelated to the other which was a wasted opportunity to create some sort of bridge or recurring characters that always adds more to the enjoyment of anthologies. Well, here we go!

The Boy From Hell: Oh dear lord this sucks from beginning to end! In case you're wondering, this is the film chosen to be featured on the box of the set which is retarded because this is easily the worst of the bunch! Who honestly thought that this entry would be the selling point?! From the moment this bad boy starts you may find yourself rethinking why you even bought this set, because you immediately notice the laughable effects. I mean, the effects are so bad that it boggles the mind and some of these shots could have been pulled off easily even with no budget! I am not exaggerating when I say this, but, seriously, high school kids could have pulled these shots off better. Fuck. But hey, effects aren't everything if you have a solid story, right? Well, the plot is nonsensical, inconsistent, and plain stupid. So, some top surgeon's son is killed in the dumbest of car accidents that I believe comes off more as survival of the fittest since clearly the kid was too stupid to live. For some odd reason the surgeon, named Setsu, buries the kid in the middle of nowhere or something...I really don't know; she never even tells anyone the kid is dead either, but since she lives in a fucking castle (no, this does take place in modern times!) I guess that's okay! If that weren't dumb enough, some strange woman suddenly appears and claims that if Setsu kills another kid at the grave with a claw or whatever it will resurrect the dumbass kid, named Daio. Now, one would think the randomness of this woman would somehow connect to the overall plot but of course not! When Setsu takes some boy from her hospital to use as a sacrifice, Daio comes back to life and instantly kills the mysterious woman. Ugh. Apparently Daio is a kind of zombie now and eats people every night. This catches the attention of a detective with a pointlessly big noise; he also appears to be the only cop in Japan who even cares people are being murdered since he never has backup even when bodies are literally lying in the streets. After trying to implant organs from fresh victims into Daio, Setsu believes she can make him normal. Eventually the detective catches Setsu in the act and kills her and Daio bringing this film to a merciful ending. There are so many piss poor decisions made here it is quite shocking. The pacing is a mess, things make little sense with absolutely no explanation, characters' actions do not add up, random shots of hell or something, and even the music feels out of place. If you want to know how to fail at almost every aspect of film making, besides the acting, look no further than this piece of shit. If I could sum this entire film up in a single word it would be embarrassing!

Dead Girl Walking: This entry takes a more unorthodox approach as we definitely feel the homage vibe to classics like "The Twilight Zone." The use of black and white, the style, the music, particularly beautiful shots, and the overall story harken back to the surrealism of older anthology tales through its matter of fact presentation. What I mean by this is that the story is structured in such a way that you spend more time focusing on what is happening than why it is happening which is not always an easy thing to do given the subject matter. The premise is that a girl named Sayuri inexplicably dies from a heart attack of some sort while watering her plant. Even though she is pronounced dead, she is able to live on despite her body continuing to decompose. I'll admit, nobody questioning this fact was the weakest part of the film. Sayuri wonders what is happening to her and dwells on the similar decay to the aforementioned flower as her family seeks to burn her withering body. Amidst the family's attempt to destroy her, Sayuri escapes taking a guise through use of a tablecloth that serves as a makeshift cloak; in this escape her mother is seriously injured and her sister presumably killed. Sayuri wanders aimlessly trying to understand what is happening as she continues to fall to pieces, but no one wants to be around her obviously. She then bizarrely runs into a man who lures her into being a sideshow for weird men in business suits. What they do or don't do with her is left up to the imagination as we cut back to her being dumped where she originally was picked up by the weird guy. You don't even want to know what I think happened to her! When realizing most of her face is gone, Sayuri is discovered by her parents still desiring to burn her. She flees to an abandoned building where her feet finally tear off leaving her with no means to run. In a last ditch effort, Sayuri uses her own foot to cause her mom to light them all on fire creating an explosion with only her head surviving the blast. Seeing a dying flower not far in the distance, Sayuri manages to pull her head close enough to the flower as she putrefies into nothing but blood. In an interesting conclusion, Sayuri merges with the plant restoring it to life. While this entry borders that delicate line between insightful and pretentious it's able to leave the viewer successfully wondering about the deeper meaning behind it all. There were some intelligent choices made especially in regards to masking the low budget with creative techniques. Overall, this film was a decent and mostly compelling throwback with excellent presentation and visual style. It's actually more than likely the best of the six.

Lizard Baby: Providing a little bit of everything within the series, this entry gives us a decent comedy/horror with most of the plot coming off as tongue in cheek. This is probably the film that I'd imagine most resonates with Mr. Hino because it is about a writer and sort of mocking low budget horror films in the process. Basically, a guy was somehow hired as the script writer for a horror film even though he struggles with thinking up ideas that are frightening while simultaneously being terrified of scary movies. Now I won't claim to be an expert on Japan's film industry, but I really don't think they hire people to write scripts in this fashion. Well, anyway, the director and producer hate his first idea and tell him to try and gain inspiration from things that scare him. Although it is never discussed, it is obviously implied that what is scaring the writer so much is that his wife is pregnant and he is soon to be a first time father. Like many expecting parents, they worry about the safety of their child and will it be born normal, etc. While at a routine checkup, the writer is inspired by a poster showing the similarities between the life cycle of other animals compared to humans. They say the best inspiration comes from your own life as well as the fact that you should write what you know so he begins to write a script about a baby that turned into a lizard while in the womb and the madness that ensues for the parents. Frequently we are shown the movie within a movie concept as you see the laughable puppet "lizard baby" the writer's film is using. In a cruel twist of fate, once the film becomes a success, the writer's own baby turns out just like the one from his script. What's funny is that we are repeatedly shown parallels between the writer's real life and film except the reactions are always so different from the movie version and reality. For example, in the movie the family grows to love the baby, but in reality he wants to kill the baby. I should note that the real lizard baby looks okay and uses a combination of puppetry and I think dogs or cats in a costume. I was kind of hoping the twist would be that the guy had been so stressed out trying to write the script that he was only imagining that his script came to life, but, in actuality, he had a normal baby; there was a lot of evidence to support this possibility. Instead, the twist is that everything we've been seeing was all just another script...but...this writer does have a lizard baby and a possible second lizard baby on the way?! So, let me get this straight...I'm writing a review about a guy who wrote a movie about a guy writing a script about a guy writing a script about a guy writing a script?! AHHHH! Eh, the effects aren't that bad and this one plays out mostly as you'd expect. The ongoing gag is okay and since this film is so short you don't become too worn out on it.

The Ravaged House: Zoroku's Disease: Don't even let that deceptive title toy with your expectations. Ravaged house my ass. Such bullshit, maybe they meant household as in the family being torn apart? This may not be the worst of the six, but, it's by far, the most boring of them all. And you just knew it was going to be the longest one to boot! Mother fuckers! This pissed me off because this is also the only entry with no shitty special effects, and, in fact, looks pretty damn beautiful with some nice imagery of what rural Japan looks like these days; although, I find it hard to believe they'd be living this technologically deprived. Hell, it doesn't even seem like the kids go to school...oh come on! So anyway, the story is not even that of a horror film and plays out like a lame drama with no discernible message or purpose being presented. A family of four lives an uneventful life in a small village when their son, Zoroku, becomes stricken with some mysterious disease that is likened to leprosy but worse. Throughout the whole film I kept trying to reassure myself that the disease would have some relevance to the plot other than as a contrivance to create mindless drama...but who am I kidding, screw explanations! The disease never contributes to the plot other than as a means to make Zoroku an outcast and to burden the family. Where are the horror aspects? At least add a dash of intrigue or mystery. Why not make up some ridiculous origin for the disease in the same vein as all the other shenanigans going on in this series? Or here's an idea, how about make the point of the story ironic. The town's people could kill Zoroku out of fear the disease would spread only for his corpse or something to contaminate the water supply. Then they all have his disease. Too much like "Cabin Fever?" Who cares! There are so many better ways to add a horror route, but they felt some lame brother/sister relationship coupled with the town bully would be more compelling? This is supposed to be a fucking horror film for god's sake, Mr. Hino! I can't even take the climax seriously because the bully is wearing some kind of mawashi (I forget what the hell these things are called) the whole time! If you are suffering from a serious case of insomnia, this may be the cure you're looking for. Ugh, this is also the only film that has a coherent story as well which further emphasizes my annoyance that the other films with potential did not have their scripts better focused while this one has clarity but no substance.

The Doll Cemetery: This was another instance of the story feeling like two separate scripts that were merged at some point. While "Dead Girl Walking" is probably the best of the films, it mostly accomplished what it set out to do without a lot more room to expand. This entry, on the other hand, had significantly more potential that was miserably wasted due to a multitude of reasons. In fact, the scope of the film that I think Mr. Hino had probably envisioned was much grander than they could feasibly create on this meager budget. It's a shame too because this plot could have worked into a decent film franchise or TV show. The premise is that two kids want to join their high school's club called the "Occult Detective Club." To be honest, I can't see a Japanese school supporting such a club and allowing them to have their own office, but hey let's roll with it! As it stands, the club only has four members (6 with the newbies) as they claim to investigate paranormal phenomenon with the aid of their president who is a powerful psychic (this is another case where, by psychic, they actually mean a wannabe spiritual warrior). I wish they spent more time dealing with the club in general and giving us a backstory and lowdown on some of the things they've been up to. Unfortunately, things become a bit convoluted as we don't learn much about this club, how it was established, or pretty much any explanations at all. The last case, I'm assuming given the opening scene, the club was investigating was an alleged suicide by a girl that had something to do with a haunted doll. After one of the new recruits is attacked by another doll spirit, the psychic decides the club must fight back. This scene with the doll attacking was surprisingly well done and could have been memorable with better lighting, makeup, and buildup. The club then opens some portal to a hellish world with doll spirits that, once again, looks beyond embarrassing. I really don't know what the club was planning on accomplishing by this nor does the movie give you any indication that they did either. Since we have no clue why anything is happening, it is hard to follow what the end goal of each action is! From here we had another kind of clever idea with a clown doll proclaiming himself to be the "clown of hell." I guess he was meant to be some kind of main villain, but, after personally killing two club members, he gets his ass beat easily by the psychic. There is this sense that the film is unsure if it wants to be an action or horror while not quite pulling off either. So the psychic basically says the one girl needs to make peace with her little fucking dolly to end it just as they realize one of the members must get left behind because one of the doll spirits fucked with the portal. After a major transition that should have been integral to the story, the one girl basically wraps everything up saying they got rid of the dumb doll. Then we cut to the psychic girl going back to dolly-world to kill that clown of hell for good. Just thinking about the sheer zany antics that went on makes me laugh. I will give this film a little credit for being so over the top while working in some cool and interesting ideas. I wish they'd go back to this, clean up the mess of a script, and work this into either a decent full length film or as a pilot for a TV show. This really could have been the best entry if it forgot the dolls and focused on the club and its formation.

Death Train: Closing things out, you'd think they saved the best for last, right? Of course not! This entry felt so much like "The Doll Cemetery" in the fact that it tried to tackle much more than the budget could handle with lots of good ideas wasted. For the most part the special effects are kept in check with only a few embarrassing moments; I'd actually say they probably used a larger portion of the budget on bringing this one to life or the director had a better idea on how to present the effects. The story is that three girls take a train to some amusement park when the train abruptly crashes. Far too early on is it revealed that everything we are seeing is some sort of limbo world as the girls are, in reality, in critical condition from the crash; everyone who barely survived the crash is in this dreamworld too. We've seen this kind of plotline hundreds of times before except other films try to keep the audience guessing until the end; I'm not quite sure why they chose to remove the mystery right out the gate. The girls find themselves seeing strange visions, forgetting things, aspects of their lives being altered, and the emergence of strange injuries as each draws closer to death in the real world. A lot of these ideas were interesting and provided a bit of intrigue in what direction the story would go since we already know none of it's real. I did like the merging memories and the reliving moments, because this made me think that they were going to throw in a real twist that would somehow connect the story to the events mentioned as taking place before the opening scene--that things would somehow come full circle. Eventually the girls are hunted by zombie-like creatures that try to kill them in this dreamworld which serves as another means of reflecting death in reality or that these creatures capturing them represents that they lost the fight to survive the injuries. The zombie idea was not fleshed out properly at all and they look like the leftovers from "The Doll Cemetery," or they were used here first, whichever. Things sort of stop making sense at some point, and it felt like the production crew gave up or something and decided to merely throw out nonsensical scenes. By the end, we aren't even sure what became of two of the girls since one was still on the run from the zombies and the other sort of passes out back at the train. Maybe we are to believe she emerged alive in the real world? Whatever, that's no way to end the damn movie without any kind of resolution. When you remove any kind of imagination like this, you can't also leave the audience hanging since then everything was for naught! I had high hopes for this one since it had the scariest sounding description on the back cover, but it did not live up to its potential whatsoever. I will say this, however, it left me with the most horrific of images of some old lady eating her own troll bogies!

Ugh, what can I say, you need to majorly lower your expectations to enjoy these films. I mean, other than "Dead Girl Walking" none of the entries were able to accomplish what they were going for. Some could have been impressive if the stories were more cohesive, kept on target, and didn't drift off into oblivion. Mr. Hino, sorry, but you are to blame for most of this. At the same time, I suppose you get what you pay for with a collection like this. I only paid $7 (I feel bad if you paid more than $15!) for this set so that wasn't too bad with all things considered, but, at the end of the day, these are mostly just mediocre to bad films with only hints of creativity and potential. On top of that, you don't know how fucking tired I am of writing "wasted potential" when I'd love nothing more than to see more films live up to their utmost promise. Well, on the bright side, at least there were plenty of alum from other Japanese horror films and TV sprinkled about if you have a keen eye; there was even Narumi Konno that I recently mentioned in another review (although looking far too young back in 2004).

Notable Moment: From "Dead Girl Walking" when Sayuri is roaming the streets while wearing her makeshift cloak. The look was reminiscent of Victorian England and the shots were aesthetically pleasing.

Final Rating: 5/10 (overall)