Battle Heater review

In the late 80s, first-time director George Iida was given the go-ahead to film his ultra bizarre debut, Battle Heater, by production company Amuse on the condition that he cast lots of people from their in-house talent pool—especially up-and-coming rock band Bakufu-Slump. As luck would have it, Bakufu-Slump broke through just before the movie came out, netting it an avalanche of free PR. This was a bit of a double-edged sword at the time, because people saw the entire thing as a promotional project made for the band (it wasn’t). Nevertheless, what started out as a silly idea about a demonic space heater actually became a moderate success and launched the careers of quite a few of the cast and crew involved.

We get our first clue about the overall tone and self-deprecating style of the movie within the first minute. Electronics repairman Hama (Akira Emoto) is driving down a dark road in his truck when he’s suddenly startled by what appears to be a psychotic zombie in the cab with him. As it turns out, it’s just his assistant Furuchi (Pappara Kawai, guitarist of Bakufu-Slump), whose eyes tend to get zombie-like when he falls asleep. Hama veers off the road and we get a close-up view of a truck rolling around and around before finally coming to a stop. To the viewer, it’s obviously a miniature model being used in the scene and couldn’t possibly look more fake. But instead of just letting the utter lameness of the sequence settle in, the miniature truck is suddenly crushed by the tire of the real truck before the camera pans up to the front grill.

Hama and Furuchi then calmly continue on to the local junkyard where they load up on old, broken electronics that Hama believes he can repair (he can’t). Furuchi mentions that he could use a kotatsu—basically a table with a heating element under it so you can keep your legs warm—and suddenly one appears on the ground near them. Ominous!

When Furuchi returns to his building at Kirin Apartments (a play on “killing”) we’re introduced to some of his eclectic neighbors. There’s the kindly elderly couple that want to end their lives without causing anyone any trouble, the woman and her new boyfriend who are desperately trying to dispose of her husband’s murdered corpse—now just a torso—by any means necessary, and the intrusive punk rock band that will do anything for a record deal.

There’s really not much to the main story; basically the kotsatsu slowly drains electric power from the building until it’s strong enough to start killing and it’s up to Furuchi (with a memorable assist from Hama) to put a stop to it. The real humor comes from Furuchi’s wacky neighbors. Goro Kishitani steals the show in his debut role as “Bloody Savie” front-man, Sabii—a punk rocker with a proclivity for surprisingly graceful twirls at the oddest moments and an absolute insistence that “chan” always be added when anyone mentions the girl he’s interested in.

With the rate at which silly horror comedies are churned out nowadays, it would be pretty easy to lump a movie like this in with similarly veined, budgetless V-cinema fodder. Sure it’s pretty simplistic and the plot is nothing short of ridiculous, but one has to appreciate the thought and care that obviously went into each and every scene—from the goofy sight gags to the surprisingly ambitious special effects that were accomplished without the benefit of CGI. In fact while watching it I couldn’t help but contrast it to some of the movies we get today in which cheesy looking computer-generated elements are used for everything from intro titles to simple blood splatter. Now 19-years old, “Battle Heater” is a reminder of what can be accomplished on the cheap without the crutch of computer-rendered polygons and textures.

This was one of those rare projects that managed to bring a whole slew of really talented people together before anyone knew any of them were talented. The end result is a sharp-witted dose of cinematic absurdity that’s way, way more entertaining than a film about a man-eating kotatsu has any right to be.

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Availability:

US distributor BCI Eclipse released “Battle Heater” on November 4, 2008. Picture is sufficiently clear but the main audio track is a bit on the tinny, shrill side. Although it’s probably safe to assume this is just a carryover from the original audio recording process. George Iida and effects assistant Ken Hamashima team up for an exclusive commentary track for this release and cover everything from details about the casting process to how the special effects were accomplished. Lot’s of interesting stuff. For full specs, see this link.

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