Review: Gallons of blood, hermaphroditic schoolgirl and Riki Takeuchi oh my! I think Fudoh was the first Miike film to reach American shores, legally, and that preset everyone's expectations for his other projects. When I first saw the film I could not believe how a wildly eccentric trashy film left quite an impact on me. Despite the fact that it was (like most of Miike films) made straight to video the film is 100% enjoyable trash. Who cares about the goofs like how a character was just brutally blown away, supposed to be dead, and you can see them breath; dammit this film is gross fun.

Shosuke Tanihara comes off insanely believable as Riki Fudoh, a young yakuza/high school student hell-bent on revenge and the eradication of the old yakuza generation. His most memorable and convincing line that summed up his character was "A body becomes stiff unless you change the old blood with new". Riki Takeuchi has quite a limited screen time, as the rival gang leader Daigen Nohma, but fills his presence with his own brand of wickedness. Marie Jinno, as replacement English teacher with a criminal past, portrays her character with a seductive edge (which means most of the times she own screen she's nude). Takashi Caesar played Gondo, Riki Fudoh's half brother whom his father employs of to take out Riki along with his crew, and for some reason I admired his character the most. Maybe it was for the savage beating he dealt on the chef for making kimchi "wrong" or the head butting of a schoolgirl; here's a character to aspire to.

The film, like most of Miike's projects, borderlines between bad taste and over the top fun. The sequences in which Riki and his gang(comprised of lethal schoolgirls, a malevolent giant, and a hit squad with children) take out the other Yakuzas are brutally brilliant yet at the same time incredibly silly (being mowed down by a schoolgirl with an Uzi, drinking poisoned coffee that causes your body to squirt out copious amounts of blood, etc). Surprisingly enough the scene in which the afore mentioned school"girl" making love to another woman is quite tame and watch able, not that way though you sick perverts, since most of what's shown happens luckily to be implied. Nevertheless Fudoh entertains us by being this sick "avant-garde" movie. The only fault is the film ends right when the real conflict begins (much like in the big screen adaptation of Sanctuary) only to be continued in to rather atrocious and pointless sequels.

Takashi Miike : "Many films are made with the image of what a Japanese film should be like. Some films venture outside those expectations a little bit, but I feel we should break them." Interview with Takashi Miike conducted by Midnight Eye.