Welcome back to Horror 101, a series of articles where we explain horror movie legends and their lore. For beginners, the confused, or just those who need a refresher, these articles are for you. You know, for someone who is constantly calling horror movies camp, I really didn’t realize how important campiness was to the horror movies I watched growing up. I gravitate towards the silly, and the J-horror subgenre of J-splatter is where some of the silliest and bloodiest visuals in all of horror are. For me, this article is a walk down memory lane alongside Horror Press readers, returning to the first J-horror I was ever introduced to and learning more about its creation and history from the late 90’s into the 2010’s.
And hopefully for those of you who are uninitiated in the madness that Japanese splatter films have to offer you, this is a crash course on an untapped wellspring of horror entertainment. So, sharpen your swords and make sure your heart rate is bumping, as we dive into the first question…
WHAT ARE J-SPLATTER FILMS?
Like all genres, setting hard boundaries for what J-Splatter is might be a futile task. But I will try to define its most important aspects. J-Splatter is a subgenre of J-horror defined by its special effects-driven spectacles, with an emphasis on blood, guts, body horror, and incredibly stylized violence, released between the late 90s and the present day. The spectacle of it all is vital, as tonally J-Splatter is very rarely about being emotionally heavy or horribly disturbing. J-Splatter films are a fun grindhouse affair, more often than not veering into horror comedy with splashes of melodrama in between.
WHAT ARE THE GENRE TROPES OF J-SPLATTER FILMS?
The protagonists are rarely everyday people, ranging from rock stars to hotshot cops to cybernetically enhanced yakuza and schoolgirls. The leads are typically superhuman and face mutants, zombies, and robots as their main opposition; when the muscle meets the monsters, machine gun arms rev up, and heads roll. And we win because we get to see it all!
Despite how many people might count the Guinea Pig films or some of the more violent 1970s J-horror films as splatter horror, they just don’t fit into the subgenre tonally and miss the rough window of time in which these films got popular. They’re too cruel and offer little levity compared to films like Wild Zero, and even more story-heavy affairs like Tokyo Gore Police, which are first and foremost fun.
In short, if the execution and kills are more Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead, but the sensibility and tone are more like dark comedy Looney Tunes, you’ve got yourself a Japanese splatter film.
HOW DID THESE FILMS BEGIN?
Before we get into what splatter films are, we should probably explain how and when they emerged. With the cultural exchange of American exploitation films influencing Japanese filmmakers from the mid-60s into the 70s, Japanese cinema became more daring as it left its hushed post-war period: between more violent action and crime films, and the erotic thriller “Pink Film” boom leading to a financial arms race between studios, pushing the envelope of visual scintillation became the name of the game in Japan as much as it was abroad.
And by the 80s, all of the filmmakers who had grown up on these boundary-pushing films ended up being cut loose into the independent film market. Dubbed “The V-Cinema era,” the 80s and 90s Japan saw the growth of a healthy ecosystem of direct-to-video films that resulted from the proliferation of VHS distribution; a lack of regulation for these films allowed them to be as weird and wild as their creators would let them. Many early J-Horror films emerged, starting a craze of supernatural and tokusatsu horror movies.
While it wasn’t proper J-Splatter due to its experimental nature and oppressive tone, Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) and its follow-up Tetsuo: The Body Hammer (1992) codified a lot of the splatter film visuals in terms of body horror and weird cybernetics. The idea of body parts being transfigured into machines in a really nasty manner was popularized by Tetsuo and became a mainstay of the subgenre.
Along with increasingly popular original video animations like Wicked City and Lily C.A.T., gruesome cinema began to shine and push itself into the Internet age. And so, the escalation of making films even weirder and wilder birthed a new subgenre of film: J-Splatter.
WHAT WERE THE FIRST J-SPLATTER FILMS?
Because J-Splatter popped off during the V-Cinema era (where there are just too many effects-driven action and horror movies to count), it’s really hard to pin down one film as the first. However, the most notable of J-Splatter’s early entries is legendary Japanese director Takashi Miike’s Full Metal Yakuza (1997). This is Japan’s real steel answer to Robocop, which summons the tropes of Yakuza mobster movies; it features a cybernetically enhanced Yakuza member who is brought back from the dead by fusing machine parts and the pieces of his dead friend into his body.
He then of course goes to literally punch off his enemy’s heads. I highly recommend it.
The first J-Splatter to adopt its iconic horror comedy overtones might be Wild Zero (1999). Starring real-life Japanese rock band Guitar Wolf, it follows punk fan Ace, who accidentally becomes bonded to Guitar Wolf just before aliens incur a zombie apocalypse. He ends up fighting alongside them, learning about love and honor along the way. This one is very over the top and was an instant success because of its lighthearted, pulpy take on zombie horror. It’s still a well-loved film, and it even has a sequel in the works 25 years later.
Versus and Junk Zombie Hunter doubled down on the increasing popularity of zombies at the turn of the millennium. They were both popular for their high-impact and high-intensity action sequences. Between their cost effectiveness, and the fact you could squeeze out a comedically high and aesthetically messy body count, zombies were a ceaselessly popular choice for J-Splatter cannon fodder.
WHO ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT DIRECTORS FOR THIS GENRE?
The 2000s saw another J-splatter hit from Takashi Miike with the very controversial and nauseatingly violent Ichi the Killer (2001), about a man being brainwashed into serving as a hitman for the Yakuza at the behest of a super-sadist. The same year brought the puzzling thriller Suicide Club, and the international hit Battle Royale, which while not J-splatter, still showed a demand for ultraviolent fiction by Japanese audiences in the early aughts.
Around this time, the screenwriter of Versus, Yudai Yamaguchi, began to work on more and more films focused on crazy effects. Battlefield Baseball (2003) became the appetizer for his much more popular work Meatball Machine (2005). Whereas Baseball is a cartoonish venture that turns a baseball diamond into a warzone against undead punks, Meatball Machine was a streamlined homage to the Tetsuo films, this time embracing full-color splatter and intense body horror. It follows an epidemic involving mysterious giant bugs that latch onto humans, subsequently turning them into cannibalistic cyborgs, called Necroborgs.
It is a pretty dark film outside of its insane visuals and campy directing, with a very low-budget veneer. It’s a lot like The Evil Dead, and the film feels aware of it, given it makes some obvious references to the Raimi classic. What makes Meatball Machine important is that its production brought a key figure of the movement onto the scene: director Yudai Yamaguchi brought on Yoshihiro Nishimura, a special effects wizard and veteran of the industry whose makeup here would define the genre.
Meatball Machine allowed Nishimura a chance to make some very chunky designs for the film’s villains. Part television tokusatsu and part endgame Resident Evil monstrosity, Nishimura cut his teeth on the Necroborgs, making bizarre man and machine fusions that would become a signature of his many future films.
HOW DID YOSHIHIRO NISHIMURA BECOME THE MASTER OF J-SPLATTER?
Truly, if anyone was the icon of the J-Splatter craze, it was Nishimura. And when I say craze, what I’m actually referring to is his crazy work ethic. He went on to direct a sequel to his film with Yamaguchi, the more polished Meatball Machine: Reject of Death (2007). This set off a hot streak for the SFX maven, where he began working on more and more J-Splatter films throughout the following decade.
As a matter of fact, it’s nearly impossible to find films in the subgenre that he wasn’t involved in. Even the movies he didn’t direct firsthand he had a part in, often as a makeup designer or an overall special effects supervisor. Working with a team of talented makeup artists, he was the driving spirit of the film’s creature designs and most insane set pieces; and by extension, he became the driving spirit of J-Splatter at large.
WHEN DID J-SPLATTER BECOME POPULAR IN AMERICA?
2008 was Nishimura’s year as it saw the release of three more iconic J-Splatter: The Machine Girl, Yoroi Samurai Zombie, and the instant cult classic Tokyo Gore Police. Tokyo Gore Police follows the war between biopunk monstrosities called Engineers and the human monsters of the brutal Tokyo Police Force. Caught in the middle of it all is the skilled T.P.F. officer Ruka, who hunts for the man who killed her father. When she crosses paths with the Engineers maker, Key Man, she ends up learning the truth behind his death is stranger than any mutant she could have run into.
Tokyo Gore Police was undoubtedly the feature that had the most crossover with American audiences, primarily due to its run in North American film festivals like Fantasia Fest where it wowed audiences with its off-the-wall visuals like people jettisoning around on blood jets, and women’s lower halves turning into alligators.
It managed to secure a pretty significant home release in the U.S. the following year due to its festival victory lap, and I very vividly remember seeing a review of the DVD on G4TV as a kid and being enchanted by the hype of it all. I immediately struggled to look through F.Y.E. and my local dying Blockbuster to find a copy the following week. It’s a really great movie and quintessential viewing for fans of the genre, so definitely check this one out.
WHY ARE THESE FILMS LESS POPULAR TODAY?
Moving into the 2010s, Nishimura went on to direct Mutant Girl Squad and the highly underrated Helldriver (2010), which follows a woman using a chainsword powered by her own artificial heart to fight against demonic zombies taking over Japan. If you weren’t hooked by chainsword powered by her own artificial heart, this might not be the subgenre for you. Even when he wasn’t directing, his special effects mastery was used on a dozen other films in the 2010s with evocative titles like Gothic Lolita (2010), Psycho (2010), and Dead Sushi (2012); he even reunited with Yudai Yamaguchi for the film Yakuza Weapon (2011).
However, as the decade went on, the trend of J-Splatter became less popular with critics and audiences, and other horror subgenres in Japan (like the resurgence of films about ghosts and hauntings) rose in popularity. Of course, there were other factors; studio horror movies were becoming less common, and what horror was coming out was usually not being exported with the frequency it was years prior. And so, the steady stream of protagonists whose bodies had been turned into living weapons began to decline, as remakes and adaptations hit their stride in Japan, as is the eternal ebb and flow of popular cinema.
As of the late 2010s and into the 2020s, the head of the subgenre has taken a big step back; Yoshihiro Nishimura has worked on mostly non-splatter films, lending his makeup talents to dramas and more strait-laced action and sci-fi. From what I can tell, his last venture into J-splatter was another sequel in 2017, the follow-up to where it all started with Meatball Machine: Kodoku. I would usually be worried, but, I have faith that one day the master of blood geysers will return, and a whole bunch of other inspired filmmakers who grew up on his work with him.
WHAT J-SPLATTER FILMS SHOULD I WATCH?
So, now that you’ve learned a little about the history of J-Splatter, you’re undoubtedly going to want to watch some. But where to start? You might also be wondering why some movie titles throughout this article are bold while others aren’t. The bolded titles in this article are all personal favorites of mine, and ones I think most people just jumping into the subgenre will really enjoy. The recommendation was there the whole time, what a twist!
Full Metal Yakuza, Wild Zero, Battlefield Baseball, Meatball Machine, Tokyo Gore Police, and Helldriver are my selections not just for their individual quality, but because they are what I would consider a perfect assortment of J-Splatter for a marathon. I didn’t expect most of these to hold up as well as they did on rewatch, thinking my nostalgia goggles had blinded me. But Tokyo Gore Police is just that good, and Battlefield Baseball is just that incredibly funny. (I do have to say, maybe skip Ichi the Killer for a marathon and watch it on its own. I highly recommend it, but it’s heavy despite the absurdity of some of its deaths.)
One that I didn’t get to touch on above is Red Tears, which is a J-Splatter take on a vampire film; it buries the lead by presenting itself as a slasher with a police procedural slant at first, but as with all of these films, goes absolutely insane. Sion Sono’s Tag is also another that feels more splatter adjacent with some very dark humor and a surreal plot, but it is well worth watching for how strange it gets. And Yudai Yamaguchi’s Deadball is effectively a spiritual successor to Battlefield Baseball, with a modern film’s visual clarity and some newer effects.
And really, you can’t go wrong with most Nishimura selections. And I think it’s because of his philosophy approaching these films. In an interview with Asian Movie Pulse, he gives a great insight into the spirit of his filmmaking: “I want to create a ‘wave’ to the audience. I want to show something gross but at the same time, I want to make them chuckle. I would like to show something nobody has ever seen before. What I create is entertainment.”
And entertaining they are. You can’t really go wrong with any of his films, so your homework for today’s lecture? Go forth and find the one that speaks most to you. For its blood, for its metal, and for its love. Happy watching horror fans!
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And that will be it for today’s Horror 101 lesson. See you in the next class, and stay tuned to Horror Press’s social media feeds (@HorrorPressLLC on Twitter and Instagram) for more content on horror movies, television, and everything in between!