10 Outrageous Japanese Films Hollywood Wouldn't Dare Remake

Schoolgirls, drill bras, ninjas and gore galore.

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Ever since John Sturges westernized Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Hollywood has never been afraid to look to Japan for inspiration, but for every blockbuster like The Magnificent Seven there’s a misstep like Godzilla (1998), One Missed Call (2008) or Pulse (2006).

Ghost In The Shell is the latest property to get the Hollywood treatment, the casting of Scarlett Johansson provoking allegations of “whitewashing”, but viewers should be more concerned that the live-action version retains the ideas and stays true to the spirit of the manga.

Hollywood’s record of remaking Japanese films is mixed: on the one hand, even Bruce Willis couldn’t bring Yojimbo to life as Last Man Standing, but on the other the remakes of Ringu and Ju-On: The Grudge helped expand the J-horror cycle of the early 2000s.

Some films are just just too outrageous for Hollywood, however: tales of flesh-eating alien parasites, genetically enhanced gangsters and chainsaw-wielding mad scientists generally give major studios cold feet. These films have redefined Japanese cinema, with directors like Takashi Miike and Yoshihiro Nishimura becoming poster boys for fans of violence-heavy splatter films.

They make the kind of extreme cinema that won’t be coming to a multiplex near you anytime soon, so if you’re looking for something different, read on.

10. Junk

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Japan Home Video

Reservoir Dogs meets From Dusk Till Dawn in this outrageous (and outrageously bloody) heist/zombie film, surely the most fun you’ll ever have reading subtitles.

The gory mayhem kicks off when a group of jewel thieves rendezvous with their colleagues at what they think is an abandoned army base. It isn’t – it’s home to a mad doctor’s experiments with DNX, a drug that reanimates the dead. As the gangsters start falling victim to zombies the doctor leads an attack on the base, little realizing that the zombie horde is being commanded by his late fiancée, the prototype recipient of DNX.

To give you some idea of what’s in store, the Japanese pressbook promised “Torn up flesh, gouged entrails and splashing blood,” giving a fair idea of director Atsushi Moroga’s intent. Like Robert Rodriguez, he can stage a gun battle and loves comic book violence, but the ‘acting’ of the English-speaking players, whose scenes appear to have been tacked-on to expand the running time, are mostly good for laughs. If you can put that aside, then Junk is everything a zombies versus gangsters movie ought to be – loads of fun.

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Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'