Tuesday, September 29, 2015

THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS (2001)

Say whaaat?  A Takashi Miike musical!  How strange is that?

Four generations of the Katakuri family have opened a bed and breakfast out in the countryside with expectations that a major road will be built nearby.  Until then, they're pretty low on customers...and for some reason quite a few of the customers that they do get end up dead!  Scared that all of these deaths will ruin their new business the Katakuri family simply bury them out back.  Yeah, this is not your normal musical.

THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS definitely gets points for imagination, but it should have been trimmed down some to speed up the pace.  Slow pace aside I did enjoy the film.  Tetsuro Tanba's yelling and Kiyoshiro Imawano's performance were the highlights of the movie for me.  Dancing zombies, great camerawork, wonderful direction by Miike, good acting, crazy claymation skillfully used to cover up the low budget.  THOTK might not be up everybody's alley, but in the right state of mind it can be very enjoyable.