Meatball Machine

Danger After Dark

TLA Releasing

R1 DVD

Director Junichi Yamamoto takes a rather strange and bizarre turn in this film exploring the battle between aliens and humans. It seems that these creatures come from space and the depth of the ocean and use humans in war games against each other. They take over opportune bodies (people who are prone to excessive and negative emotions) using them as hosts and combine the physical organism with various mechanical parts to create literally “flesh machines”. These creatures battle against each other for supremacy and when one is killed, it eats the other as a display of strength.

Through this rather violent and extreme alien tale we also gain unlikely access to a love story ! We have a rather shy and nerdish guy, Muraishi, who is in love with Misawa. Misawa has been abused in childhood and is alienated and disturbed. Muraishi finds what he believes to be a dead alien and brings its shell back to his home for examination.

By a twist of fate, Misawa, his objection of affection, is with a date who becomes drunk and aggressive. Muraishi tries to intervene but is soundly beaten, she takes him home to treat his wounds and becomes attacked by the creature which has fed on the emotions of the event. Misawa now becomes a vicious alien caught up in the alien war games.

This is just the beginning, as Muraishi also ends up as an alien and we have love and hate battling against each other in every possible manner. The creatures mutate the bodies they use and these “meatball machines” to produce everything from flesh flame throwers to a chainsaw !

This is an outrageous film with great special effects. It is very graphic, violent and in many places quite extreme. At the same time the excess of blood and gore matched with the Sci Fi storyline gives it a certain dark humour and comic book character which makes it less confronting that it would be, depending on the audience.

For a unique cyberpunk experience you cannot go past this film, it is such a mixture of B grade Sci Fi themes, nerd love and robotics that it is quite a one off experience.

The quality of this release cannot be faulted. The 1.77:1 anamorphic widescreen image is superb, the colours are vibrant and clean, a pretty amazing job for what was obviously a film with a relatively limited budget. The sound is solid with easy to read sub titles.

What really impresses me is the range of extras. There is a comprehensive making-of feature, a copy of the original 10 minute short from which the film was developed, a short film called “Reject or Death” and a slideshow of the artwork which went into the development of the film. There is also a selection of Danger After Dark trailers which are nearly as bloody as the film itself !