Zeiram review

Director Keita Amemiya has a long history of making sci-fi flicks in which fun and excitement take priority over everything else, including the story or any sort of emotional depth. 1991’s Zeiram is no exception, and basically amounts to nothing more than a beautiful female bounty hunter with lots of fancy gadgets and armor whooping up on a gruesome monster within the confines of a computer-constructed alternate dimension. Throw in a couple of hapless power company employees for comic relief and you have the recipe for a movie that may not completely capture one’s imagination with its use of simplistic sci-fi conventions, but still qualifies as a guilty pleasure for those that are into this sort of thing.

The movie begins with a blood-splattery prison break as Zeiram: a sentient, bio-engineered weapon with a built-in sedge hat, slices and dices its way through armed guards to the exit. With that, word is sent out to all bounty hunters throughout the galaxy that this beast is wanted dead or alive. A skilled female bounty hunter, Iria (Yuko Moriyama), quickly accepts the mission with the help of her computer companion, Bob, and the two of them make a beeline for Zeiram’s projected planetary target of escape: Earth.

Earth being a populated and technologically infantile place, Iria and Bob begin setting a trap that should exclude any earthlings from being impacted by the upcoming battle. They create a “zone” which basically teleports the target to an alternate computer-generated dimension where collateral damage doesn’t matter. Iria can then teleport in, kill the chump, and collect her handsome reward. Unfortunately, before she’s able to complete the teleportation process, a pair of power company workers barge into the warehouse where she had set up shop and one of them, Teppei (Kunihiro Ida), accidentally gets teleported in her place. As Iria scrambles to engage another teleport before Teppei becomes Zeiram kibble, his friend Kamiya (Yukijiro Hotaru) accidentally hitches a ride with her.

Any human casualties would mean a complete revocation of Iria’s bounty hunting license, so she has to keep these two stammering doofuses safe at all costs. Unfortunately, Zeiram is unlike any creature she’s faced before, and she can’t even seem to make a dent—let alone capture it.

The battle scenes between Zeiram and Iria are clearly the coolest part about this movie, complete with cheesy Tron-like armor and fancy futuristic gadgetry, but to avoid reaching the saturation point too early there’s an extended sequence in which Teppei and Kamiya are cut off from Iria and left to fend for themselves. Their constant panting, clumsiness, and inappropriate fits of laughter are quite obnoxious and almost succeed in torpedoing any joy that could be gleaned from watching the movie. Fortunately though, Iria comes back in the nick of time and continues the battle as Zeiram goes through a few disgusting bio-mutations (the real Zeiram is only the creepy little woman’s face on its forehead). These transformations are accomplished with zero CGI, mind you—only good, old fashioned rubber, wires, and slime. At one point Amemiya even resorts to stop-motion animation. That particular sequence looks pretty bad, but one has to respect the effort.

Obviously I would have preferred this movie be filled with more action scenes involving the hot bounty hunter and less with two goofballs catching their breath, but the vast majority is still highly entertaining in a schlocky sort of way.

Watch trailer

Availability:

US distributor Tokyo Shock released “Zeiram” on region 1 DVD on November 7, 2006 but it will also be included in the priced-down double feature, “The Zeiram Duology”, due out on November 25, 2008. The anamorphic transfer is much nicer than I would have expected and they’ve included an old interview with Keita Amemiya and Yuko Moriyama from a previous laserdisc release with some behind the scenes footage. For full specs of “The Zeiram Duology”, see this link.

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