31 Horror Films To Watch This October

Remember when Peter Jackson made zombie films that were heavy on the red stuff as well as the bad taste gags? Director Naoyuki Tomamatsu does, so here’s a movie that packs flying saucers, mutant babies, cyborgs and samurai zombies into its 76 minutes.

The plot is best described as “uncomplicated.” When a flying saucer crashes in rural Japan, it brings the dead back to life (“How unscientific,” remarks one character), causing a disparate group that includes a pop star, a soldier and a gangster to seek shelter at a nearby hotel, unaware that the owner has just killed his pregnant mistress. You can probably guess what happens next.

You don’t watch this sort of thing expecting to see finely nuanced characters delivering Shakespearean soliloquies but to see a zombie baby using its umbilical cord as a lasso while a cyborg soldier, the prototype for a proposed invasion of America, shoots up the place. As such movies go, Zombie Self-Defense Force is top of the list.