Stacy

Rating:
Summary: That crazy J-Horror!!
Review: On the surface, Stacy is low-budget schlock, a film that is decidedly amateurish in many aspects. Shot on digital video on a very tight budget it has nevertheless many charms, it's a film where you can tell that the filmmakers had lots of talent and lots of really cool ideas. But oh, that budget...If you can get past the cheapness of it all, devouted fans of Asian horror will love this apocalyptic zombie tale that pays homage to past classic films of the undead.

In the beginning of the 21st century girls aged 15-17 began to die and spring back to life as zombies. People coined the term "Stacy" for them. Stacies are obviously very dangerous and must be killed but one has to abide by the "Stacies law" which says that only boyfriends and family members can kill a Stacy. If Stacies go astray and can't be killed by the ones they love then the job belongs to the Romero Repeat Kill troup, who use chainsaws called the "Bruce Campbell right hand #2" to kill the stacies. To properly kill a Stacy, it must be decapitated into 165 pieces.

One thing I particularly enjoyed was the explanations behind the Stacy phenomenon. The film goes into substantial length to describe the cause and aftereffects through a narrator, various news reports and scientific explanations from a doctor who studies the Stacies. I must say I prefer this approach (as used in the classic vamp novel "I am legend") compared to Zombie films that just throw you into a decayed world without bothering to explain how it got to be that way in the first place. As for the gore, people who choose to view the film simply for this reason will certainly not be disappointed, we're talking no-holds barred mondo splatter here. Again, the budget kind of hinders the quality of the gore in the first place but nevertheless there's something very disturbing about watching cute little Japanese girls in school outfits getting hacked to 165 bloody pieces with a chainsaw.

Stacy is quirky, funny and very bizarre. It contains a number of inventive concepts that a highly seasoned zombie film watcher as myself had never seen before. But when all is said and done, in the end "Stacy" is not about zombies, or gore, or even horror. It's a story about love. I know that might be hard to believe but the centerpiece of the story is about a guy and his girlfriend who is about to turn into a Stacy and the emotional pain that this realization does to both of them. The story is filled with heartfelt human tragedy and philosophies about love that are genuinely touching, although not everyone is going to understand this; Stacy is the epitomy of quirky, offbeat Japanese humour that novice viewers of Asian films might have troubling appreciating but I loved it.

Rating:
Summary: A movie about Love
Review: Sometimes I think other reviewers turn their brains off when they watch a movie. I thought I was buying a gore movie about zombies. When I watched my new purchase, I learned that I had actually bought a deeply intense and emotional story about Love. Girls need love, and they crave it badly.

This movie does have a lot of gore. Pretty good gore, too. But it is all just background. The Bruce Campbell brand chain saw might seem a little cheesy, but it just adds to the nice atmosphere of the movie.

There is a lot to learn from this movie, and it warrants several watchings to truely grasp the deepness of its message.

Rating:
Summary: You always kill the ones you love.
Review: STACY takes place in a world where teenaged girls everywhere are succumbing to a mysterious condition known as "near death happiness." These girls fall into a dreamlike, ecstatic state before suddenly expiring - and shortly thereafter, rising again as cannibalistic zombies. There is no cure, so parents are urged to kill their own daughters. If they can't do the job themselves, special troops can be called in to do it for them.

An insert included with the DVD package talks about a Japanese concept that describes the obsession many people have with innocence and beauty and things they can't have, and also the notion that by destroying something, you set it free. Even though this is touched on near the end of the film, it is a bit difficult to ascribe such depth to a film in which girls in bunny suits hawk chainsaws dubbed "Bruce Campbell's right hand" on TV for the purpose of using it on NDH victims, and in which a young man embraces an undead girl (who is gagged for his protection, of course) and claims she is his lover. Had the film been more serious than silly, I'd be more inclined to find meaning in it. (I can't help but think such a film could have been quite good.) In any case, you can take it or leave the critical analysis as you please; whatever works for you.

As it stands, STACY is an often funny, gory, moderately entertaining movie. It is also - strangely - occasionally sweet, although again it is hard to take it too seriously. If you are into zombies or schoolgirls or both, and you enjoy the zany Asian attitude toward horror, you will probably enjoy this movie on some level.

DVD notes: This release from Synapse is pretty basic. English subtitles are optional, and default to on which is appreciated. There is also a trailer. The film is presented in anamorphic widescreen.

Rating:
Summary: Schoolgirl zombies, roar.
Review: Stacy: Attack Of The Schoolgirl Zombies
directed by Naoyuki Tomomatsu
2001, 80 mins.

Stacy is a movie about, you guessed it, Stacy. Or well, Stacies, actually. Teenage girls, aged 15-17, somehow just die after experiencing some kind of Near Death Happiness. After dying, they turn into, yup, zombies. (the title didn't really give that one away, did it?) They demand to be chopped up into 165 pieces to be 're-killed'. This is what the 'story' revolves around, although the story is not really of any importance, or so it seems.

We see a girl who (unconvincingly) experiences the earlier mentioned Near Death Happiness and then goes on the look for someone to chop her up when she dies and turns into a zombie (uh). She finds a puppet-maker, Shibu, who agrees to kill her. Another (sub?)plot revolves around a guy whose sister has become a Stacy (he had to kill her after that) and therefore joins Romero, the special unit that kills the Stacies. It's quite confusing, and too pretentious by far, but besides all that, the movie provides a whole lot of fun. Tongue-in-cheek scenes (one involving some kind of TelSell advertisement where a 'Blues Campbell's Right Hand #2' is sold) help to keep your attention to it.

The movie isn't really scary (read: not at all), but the gore and fun make up for it. A strong stomach is advised for some scenes, such as the one where a Stacy gets decapitated, and some others where people get devoured quite gruesomely (guts ripped out and such). Watch it if you like zombies, Japanese schoolgirls, or both.

mos says:

Scares? 0/10
Gore? 7/10
Japanese schoolgirl zombies? 10/10
Fun factor? 7/10
Hundred-n-sixty-five-pieces? Many pieces, but not 165/10

Rating:
Summary: B Movie with some laughs
Review: The description is real good, but when you start to watch the movie, you realize it's a B-Movie with some American influence (Bruce Campbell and Drew Barrymore). If it was a serious movie, it could have been really good, but it's just a cheezy movie with some good laughs and no nudity. I would watch it on the Sci-Fi channel but never again in my DVD Player.
Rent-No
Buy-No
Cable-Yes

Rating:
Summary: B Movie with some laughs
Review: The description is real good, but when you start to watch the movie, you realize it's a B-Movie with some American influence (Bruce Campbell and Drew Barrymore). If it was a serious movie, it could have been really good, but it's just a cheezy movie with some good laughs and no nudity. I would watch it on the Sci-Fi channel but never again in my DVD Player.
Rent-No
Buy-No
Cable-Yes

Rating:
Summary: Thank you. Forgive me. I love you
Review: There is a whole lotta love in "Stacy." It oozes from every open wound, gushes with every decapitated head, and every chainsaw bite is a kiss. You just know that all the people involved in making this B-Grade schoolgirl zombie flick, from the special effects gang to the director to the screaming ravenous schoolgirls, are fans first and film professionals second, if at all. After all, with "Romero Repeat Kill Squads" running around armed with "Bruce Campbell's Right Hand #2" chainsaws, it is pretty easy to see the influences.

Unfortunately, while a film made by a bunch of fans has its charms, the quality isn't really up to snuff in most areas. Chainsaws rip through puppets with all the realism of an episode of "South Park." It looks to have been shot on digital video rather than film, which doesn't help the amateur look. The acting, with a few exceptions such as the lovely Natsuki Kato as Eiko, is pretty much what you would expect.

If you can forgive all that, however, "Stacy" is a surprisingly charming and incredibly quirky love story mixed into a messy zombie flick. Much like Miike Takeshi's "Happiness of the Katakuris," which is also a zombie film, director Naoyuki Tomomatsu combined innocence and sweetness with splatter-horror in a winsome combination. There is a perverse sensibility in the story of all girls dying by age 17, after which they are reanimated as flesh-eating monsters. Like Peter Pan, these girls never have to age, never have to grow up. Of course, they are chainsawed into 165 pieces rather than fly around Neverland. But like all such stories, in the end, love conquers all.

This is definitely not a film for hard-core zombie buffs, who are looking for some cruel carnage or nudity (of which there is none.) However, anyone who can appreciate something with this much love in it, both in the making and the story, will come away with a whole unexpected and sweet ending.

Rating:
Summary: rent it for the gore
Review: There's plenty. However don't try to make much sense of the story. Like a lot of Japanese horror films it goes off on a weird nonsensical tangent towards the end and I found myself saying over and over again "It's not over yet? It's not over yet?" as I fast forwarded through it. Outside of the buckets and buckets of dismembered body parts, zombies chomping on intestines and a mad scientist's experiments the film, whose last half resembles Day of the Dead, isn't really that good. What promises to be a fun, roller coaster ride of a horror film falls flat on its face focusing on one guy's quest to find his zombie girlfriend and another guy's last days with his soon-to-be zombie girlfriend who has possibly the most annoying laugh ever. Not to mention the irritating, glass bell she carries everywhere she goes. Also, the soundtrack is so inappropriately corny that it detracts from the movie. Instead of some eerie atmospheric music, we get cheesy soft jazz. Whatever! Fast forward to the gory scenes but nevermind the story, it's really not worth the effort.


Rating:
Summary: In all honesty...
Review: This film is a guilty pleasure if there ever was one. It ranks right up there with ABBA Gold in terms of guilty pleasures. While not the best movie ever made it does have some strong points. Frankly it could have been an honestly moving and heart-wrenching film had it not been so badly acted and silly. From what I understand the movie "Stacy" has nothing to do with the book on which it is based except that girls are dying and returning from the dead to consume human flesh. Go ahead and lay down some bucks for this film and try to be open minded while watching it. Hey, its better than that crap from French film maker Jean Rollin.

Rating:
Summary: I Sat There With My Jaw On The Floor..................
Review: Well... being a fan of Zombie flicks, this looked like fun. And... as much as I would like to sit here and pick out the positives & negatives in this flick, like I'm some uber-cool B-Flick Aficionado, I must confess, "Stacy" had me slack-jawed & stunned, complete with sights of cartoon question-marks and explanation-points flashing above my head. This is not the goriest movie I have ever seen, nor the sickest, nor the cheesiest. However, this is probably one of the most bizarre movies I have ever seen in my life.

I'm writing this immediately after checking out the flick, without doing any research in re who wrote it, who directed it, etc; which is fun, because it leaves me here, typing & wondering with astonishment, WHO THOUGHT UP THIS STORY, AND WHAT DREAM OR HALLUCINATION DID THEY JUST WAKE UP FROM?

The plot involves an epidemic of NDH: Near Death Happiness, afflicting girls between the ages of 15-17. The NDH-stricken girls go through approximately one week of sheer emotional bliss, elated yet fully aware of what's going on. After the elation phase, they drop dead, then become reanimated, devouring any human within their grasp. Unable to find a cure for the reanimated schoolgirls, which become nicknamed "Stacys," the government has produced "Romero Squads," (Too cool! For those of you who have delved into Zombie movies, The Romero Squads are a tribute to "Night of the Living Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead" creator George Romero) who are responsible for the "Rekill," the offing of the dead girl brought back to life.

It gets weird...even considering it's a flick about hungry walking dead folk. Rather than mass despair and suicides by adolescent girls fearing of NDH infection, the girls dream about the knight-in-shining-armour, the sweetheart who will love them, and then valiantly rekill them, once their corpses rise to nibble on the living! See, in this story, aside from Romero Squad members, the only folk allowed to rekill a Stacy are family members or boyfriends.

Which brings us to the black-market Stacy killers, comprised of three stunningly beautiful warrior-girls in the NDH age range, resigned to becoming Stacys one of these days, but idealistic on who will rekill them. They illegally rekill Stacys, hired by Stacy family members who can't find it in them to slaughter their dead loved-ones. The girls are saving their bounty profits to hire a specific dream-boy to rekill them, a sexy young pop-star they are ga-ga over.

This is one original living dead flick that I highly recommend. I've seen bloodier, I've seen higher-budget, but I can't recall seeing one this weird. Despite the storyline of gorgeous schoolgirls, the focus is not on the kinky, but on schoolgirl crushes, true love, and bizarre sentimental twists from start to finish. There are many living-dead films that spotlight the gory (1980's Zombie, various other Euro-Zombie flicks), others that spotlight the campiness (Return of the Living Dead series), and those that run on the suspense and terror (the original "Night of the Living Dead"). This flick combines all three: blood & body parts flying right and left, B-Star Bruce Campbell hawking his own brand of chainsaw on infomercials, and the public despairing over the only grim solutions to the Stacy epidemic. Give this DVD a try, it's worth the time and dough!