THE JAPANESE WIFE NEXT DOOR (2004)

[Update 02/21/2021: need to redo this entire review and fix the screenshots.]

At a company mixer a guy meets an attractive young woman. They start seeing each other and six months later they get married and she moves in with his family...then the truth comes out: she's a raging nymphomaniac who cannot be satisfied. He tries and tries until finally he becomes impotent from the stress of all the nonstop fucking. He starts spending more hours at work and in her sexual frustration she seduces the entire family! Now his dad, the sister and grandpa have all become sex maniacs who want to do nothing more all day than stay at home and fuck his wife!

The running time for this little gem is only an hour, but it is packed to the gills with sex, nudity, insanity and funny moments.  I think the thing I like most about this movie, besides the humor, is the sex scenes are actually sexy! Yea, the idea of a woman seducing an entire family is perverse, especially when they're gang-banging, but from a clearly physical standpoint the sex scenes were fucking hot with interesting positions and spirited performances. This movie looks like it was a lot of fun to film. Also, it never delved into the lower depth's like Miike's VISITOR Q or Pasolini's TEOREMA (although the grandpa jizz scene was pretty disturbing), instead it just stayed light-hearted the entire movie.

I don't know much about the director Yutaka Ikejima, but I was very impressed with this outing.

Part 2 - The Japanese Wife Next Door Part 2 (2004)

I've never seen an audio commentary done like this before, but it's actually brilliant and I really enjoyed it.

SPANKING LOVE (1995)

I watched this years ago and I guess I'm a masochist myself cause here I am watching it again and you know what? I actually liked it alright this time around. It's still too long, there's not enough nudity and the story is kind silly, but it was entertaining in a late night cable softcore S&M kind of way.

A director of adult films is scheduled to make a whipping video, but at the last moment his female talent bails so now he desperately goes out on the street and asks a passing girl if she'd be in the video. She agrees and when the video catches the eye of a local masochist rich dude (played by Renji Ishibashi) he will stop at nothing to get her to perform at his club because he can see in her eyes that she is a "true sadist"...or something like that. It's all too confusing for it's own good. I seriously doubt anybody who rents something called SPANKING LOVE is looking for a story. They're probably looking for some kinky spanking shit to go down. Well, they're going to be disappointed cause despite the subject matter there's only a limited amount of nudity and none of the S&M shit is erotic at all. The main scene at the beginning actually had me giggling cause the dude doing the whipping gets so fucking wound up he actually misses the girl a lot and ends up just beating the crap out of an old mattress!

The main satisfaction I got out of the movie was watching Renji Ishibashi completely throw himself into the role including multiple shoe licking scenes and even making out with another dude!!! That turned my stomach a little seeing he tongue zipping in and out of the other dudes mouth but whatever.

Good for a laugh, but not a jack. Watch THE JAPANESE WIFE NEXT DOOR instead.

Renji Ishibashi kissing another dude!!!

MOSQUITO (1995)

The back of the VHS states "In the terrifying tradition of Alien and Predator comes Mosquito..."  That's a lie.  The only time anybody has ever mentioned ALIEN or PREDATOR in the same breath as MOSQUITO is if they said "I wish I was watching ALIEN or PREDATOR instead of this bullshit!"

Any horror fan who watched late-night cable regularly back around the turn of the century probably saw MOSQUITO multiple times.  I know I did.  Back then, it was mildly entertaining in a light-weight, low-budget, I'm-too-tired-to-change-the-channel sort of way, but watching it again completely awake for this review, I really had a hard time getting through it.  Boring story (large mosquitoes attack a camp site full of dorks), forgettable characters, unnatural dialogue, amateur acting, one totally limp nude scene, lame attempts at comedy, slow pace, meh camerawork that started to get on my nerves after awhile, poor lighting, unsatisfying ending.  I know (based on the surprisingly entertaining 75-minute "making of" supplement on the disc) that the filmmakers meant well and worked hard with very limited resources, but that still doesn't make it a good movie.

Maybe other fans of 1990's low-budget horror will be more forgiving than me, but I'm burned out on this movie and hope I never have to sit through it ever again.

One highlight was seeing Gunnar Hansen play a normal role with actual lines.  That was neat, but the novelty wore off quickly.  I bet Gunnar signed over 10,000 TCM posters, but less than a dozen MOSQUITO posters!

I honestly can't think of another movie where a frog just randomly jumps out of an actors pocket.

NIGHTMARES (1983)

[Update 09/06/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Most likely trying to cash in on the popularity of CREEPSHOW, NIGHTMARES showcases four completely lame supernatural horror short stories...

1. "Terror in Topanga" Nope, it's not a horror story about the chick from "Boy Meets World" being reduced to pornography then has a evil elf set up shop in her vagina. Instead, it's about a woman going to a store late at night for a carton of cigarettes while there's a serial killer on the loose. Weak. Zero gore, zero tension, zero tits, very little blood. Complete boredom.

2. "Bishop of Battle" Nope, it's not a horror story about a the workers of a chainsaw factory called Bishop Chainsaw getting into a massive fight with zombies. Instead it's the extremely weak story about a dude who listens to Black Flag who gets into a fight with a video game and eventually sucked into the game itself. Silly. Zero blood, zero gore, zero tits, zero reason to give a fuck.

3. "The Benediction" Nope, it's not a gore soaked horror story about a gay priest/serial killer stalking the area around a early 1980's NYC gay bar called "The Benediction". Instead, we have Lance Henriksen completely wasted as a priest tormented on a desert road by a truck driven by a demon. Sounds cool, but it ain't. Not even close. I was so bored I wanted to slam my dick in a car door of an orange 1986 Ford Escort.

4. "Night of the Rat" Nope, it's not a pitch black horror-noir set in the early 1940's about a innocent grocery store worker in Berlin who is mistakenly fingered to be a rat by a local mafia that has strong ties to the SS. Instead, we get a family that hears strange noises at night and it ends up being a giant rat. What a surprise. Zero tension. Completely ridiculous.

Not only were all the stories weak and instantly forgettable, but there was nothing tying them together. I don't know what the back story is on this movie is, but it looks like they just had a bunch of crap laying around so they slapped it together to get a feature film length running time and just released it. Fuck it, they thought, CREEPSHOW was popular, so we should get enough suckers to watch it to recoup the cost.

THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME (2006)

[Update 01/10/2021: Going to rewatch this and fix the review and replace the screenshots with better ones.]

Makoto is an average teenage girl until one day she accidentally gains the power to literally jump back in time. The farther she jumps, the further she goes back. At first she's very confused, but then starts to have fun and does all kinds of wacky stuff (ace the math test, sing karaoke with her friends for 10 hours, etc.) but then she realizes that all the jumping through time can mess stuff up so now it kinda gets like GROUNDHOG DAY where she has to get everything right. Things get even more complicated when...well, I ain't gonna tell you and ruin it for you, but I'll just say there's some romance shit involved and it's awesome.

Overall a very enjoyable time travel movie. Not as great as say BACK TO THE FUTURE, MY SASSY GIRL or CYBORG GIRL, but still a lot of fun to watch. I especially enjoyed the montage where she first gets her power. All the wrecking she does when she lands was hilarious: "How does somebody even fall like that?!"

In a strange turn of events I actually liked the English language audio better than the original Japanese one. Whoever did the English voice of Makoto did a amazing job. I also liked the music a lot. Very low key, but still moving.

Could have been a few minutes shorter to streamline things a bit, but still very much worth watching if you like anime or time travel.

Live-action version - Time Traveler: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2010)