What makes a bad movie good?
I had the opportunity to ponder this question recently while watching two movies at Anime Expo.
When you go to see a movie entitled Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack!, first of all, you're not expecting Shakespeare. What you're ideally looking for is a stupidly entertaining movie that has fish attacking people (it's in the title after all) as much as possible. What you're not looking for is a serious story.
Tokyo Fish Attack! opens with Kaori and her girlfriends Aki and Erika vacationing at Kaori's boyfriend Tadashi's cottage in Okinawa. Kaori phones Tadashi, who is in Tokyo working with his scientist uncle Sazuku Koyanagi.
Kaori tells Tadashi she misses him. The next thing you know, fish with metal legs come ashore at Okinawa and the island is soon under attack.
(Nice touch with the schoolgirls taking photos of the salaryman as he's about to get eaten...)
When she hears the fish have invaded Tokyo, Kaori gets on a train to be with Tadashi. She meets a journalist, Shirokawa, who has his own agenda in going with her to Tadashi's uncle's house.
The fish attack now and again as Kaori and Shirokawa fight their way across Tokyo. Eventually, everyone in the cast starts sporting expressions like the following:
The problem with Tokyo Fish Attack! is that it actually tries to tell a story. You don't want this with a film called "Tokyo Fish Attack!" What you want from a film with a title that nuts is for crazy things to happen every minute.
It's the same problem that Snakes On a Plane had a number of years ago. Crazy things happened in that movie, but not nearly enough. I've always said Snakes On a Plane would've been better if it had been worse - in other words, if there had been insane things happening more often - like you'd expect in a movie called "Snakes On a Plane" - it would have been really bad then and therefore really entertaining and funny.
What you wanted Tokyo Fish Attack! to be, in other words, was Fish On a Plane. What you really wanted it to be was the movie I saw at AX the next night, which was...
Dead Sushi, written and directed by Noboru Iguchi, proud maker of RoboGeisha and Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead. Iguchi stated that he was inspired by Attack of the Killer Tomatoes when he conceived of Dead Sushi. Now that's what you want in a bad movie.
Rina Takeda plays a sushi-chef-in-training and martial arts expert who leaves her father's overbearing tutelage to work at a small inn in the countryside.
Not that the plot matters, but an evil pharmaceutical company's CEO comes to the inn, and a deranged former employee of the company starts infecting the inn's sushi with a serum that makes them come alive (and sport vicious teeth).
What happens next? The sushi begin to attack, of course.
The thing is - Dead Sushi has something crazy or effed up happening in almost every moment of the movie - nonstop. Pieces of sushi come alive and start attacking people. But that's not all. First, two fish sushi beat up the tamago (egg) sushi - because they sense he's not like them. A sushi boat flies through the air and launches missiles at humans. People get naked suddenly for no apparent reason (and then are attacked by the sushi). The deranged former employee eats the infected sushi and grows a tuna head. Instead of being upset about this, he throws his tuna head back and screams, "I HAVE BEEN REBORN AS TUNA!!" It's a free-for-all!
This is what you want in a bad movie. You don't want to be bored by a linearly-told story, and certainly not by a serious one. The audience watching Tokyo Fish Attack! left the room bored, whereas Dead Sushi had people laughing or groaning (and sometimes laughing and groaning) throughout.
That's how you do bad - the right way. =D
