Kichiku dai enkai

Those who check out director Kazuyoshi Kumakiri's ambitious student film Banquet Of The Beasts (two years in the making) expecting a non-stop gore-fest might find themselves struggling to get to the good stuff, which only arrives after an hour of extremely tedious interaction between members of a radical political group, whose leader, Aizawa, is banged up in prison. Aizawa's mentally unstable girlfriend Masami takes control of the group, but her leadership is poor, resulting in tension that finally (finally) erupts into violence.

Make it past the first hour, and things do get better (and by 'better' I mean bloodier), as the action moves to a forest where Masami deals with trouble-makers in brutal fashion. It is while two men are getting a beating that the first (and best) gore effect happens: Masami shoots upstart Yasame in the head, leaving only the lower half of his face intact. As if obliterating his cranium isn't bad enough, she then fondles the brain matter oozing out of what's left of his skull. Juicy! The other guy doesn't get let off lightly either: he has his penis cut off, although this is far less graphic.

More gore comes when the group takes shelter in an abandoned building: Masami bites a man's junk off while giving him head, so he stabs her in the crotch, takes a gun, shoves it between her legs and pulls the trigger, causing her insides to explode. Then, while that guy is messing around with her entrails, another bloke enters the room and decapitates bloke #1 with a samurai sword. If this is the kind of stuff you're hungry for, then it should satisfy your cravings, but just be prepared for a long and arduous slog to get there.

3.5/10, rounded up to 4 for IMDb.

An impressive student work, made over a period of two years by Kazuyoshi Kumakiri, also its writer and editor. The storyline is inspired by the so-called 'Asno Sanso incident', a widely televised event when members of the United Red Army took a hostage and seized a mountain lodge near Karuizawa. (The film 'A Choice of Hercules' (2002) reconstructs that crime more factually.) Kumakiri took from this the idea of radicalism in moral collapse, and group violence escalating out of control. Amplifying matters stylistically, some use is made of what looks like contemporary news footage, grounding the narrative in the radicalism and feel of the 1970s, when the Japanese student revolutionary movement was at its height.

With its peculiar combination of dialectic and dismemberment, at times Kumakiri's film resembles Nagisa Oshima doing Herschell Gordon Lewis, and certainly contains a self-awareness which, in their own different ways the two directors also share. The first half is almost entirely taken up with claustrophobic and sweaty scenes set indoors as the group stresses, then fractures, under the leadership of the newly elevated girlfriend Masami (Sumiko Mikami). In addition to subjugating her crew with her dubious charms she also sends them out robbing, before organising a limited invitation wild party where she dances and seduces wearing a ceremonial mask. Trapped thus behind the metaphorical bars of their ideologies and allegiances the radicals are, arguably, just as imprisoned (and ultimately, as doomed) as their leader Azawa proves to be in his prison cell.

Its been suggested that at the heart of the film is a demonstration of what can happen when strong leadership is removed, creating a power vacuum, thereby reducing a body of followers to nightmarish dissolution. This being so, it appears to posit a dictatorial solution to contemporary Japanese social problems. However, one can also argue that the narrative demonstrates reactionary bias in other ways, for instance by demonstrating that females are unable to control a radical agenda, even with the lowest persuasive denominator, the drastic application of sexual wiles. As critics have pointed out, a weakness of Kumakiri's story is that it fails to provide the radicals - and the audience - with a clear agenda for their actions. We never know about what they are protesting, let alone the philosophy that presumably binds them.

For many viewers, the lack of any real social dynamic means that the first part moves very slowly indeed and, while initially the too-vague motivation of those we see is intriguing, by the end of the film such lack of sympathy is telling; we are left simply with unattractive people doing bloody things to each other.

It's the violence of Kichiku that has made it so notorious. Tagged a 'political gore' film, the film has divided viewers into those who have dismissed it as alternating confusingly between boring and violent, and those others who see between these extremes a pertinent political allegory. For the latter camp at least, as one of the characters says, it is a case of having to "face the reality and get the message." As part of the special features to the Artsmagic edition (it has formerly appeared in a far less grand single disc release on the continent) critic Tom Mes does a good job of special pleading for a narrative scheme to which some credence at least can be given, and some of the film's obscurities can certainly be ascribed to the first-time nature of the project. Mes is too kind though to mention the weak performance by lead actress Mikami, whose manic laughter is especially unconvincing in her central, if underwritten part, even while he allows for doubts as the film's occasional obscure play on the theme of chickens (sic). But at the very least Kumakiri is to be congratulated in producing a work that at least raises the discussion of gore films above the techniques of grisly special effects, while his film has been widely exhibited around the world, including the festival circuit.

The problem with the last part of Kichiku is that much of the bloodletting is so gratuitous and occurs after such unfocused interaction that, if it intends to make a point, then it is a very blunt one indeed, and hammered home insistently. Some have theorised that the student rebels are a microcosmic version of Japan's ultra-conformist society at large, and that ultimately all they have done is recapitulate all of its worst tendencies. Conversely it might also just as easily be argued that the final internecine devastation ironically reflects the only violent 'revolution' of which they are really capable, while Azawa's former cell mate (the independent witness to the group's last days) samurai sword and all, reflects the mute judgement of traditional values.

The newly enlightened BBFC clearly believes it all has some merit too, as the new Artsmagic two-disc DVD set apparently reaches UK viewers uncut, despite the inclusion of what one fansite has gushingly described as "the greatest head explosion of all time!" - not to mention one notorious scene involving a shotgun barrel's penetration, and discharge, into a very delicate female anatomical area. It has even been suggested that the 'boredom' of the first part is a deliberate attempt to balance and contextualise the extended mayhem that follows. It's an idea which has been applied, but in reverse (and to my mind more successfully), to Takashi Miike's Dead Or Alive where the kinetic editing of the opening and extreme comic climax bookend a more leisurely main section. Certainly for a more robust 'political gore film' one may look no further than the scenes of consumer zombiedom which make up Romero's Dawn Of The Dead.

Whatever the case, gorehounds have been, and will be, content to fast-forward through the first parts onto where the body count begins to mount, while those who are content extracting a more thoughtful framework from Kumakiri's broken backed scenario will hesitate at calling his scheme a complete success.

This is a very weird flick. Were as the first part is extremely boring the second part is full of gore. The thing that makes it almost not watchable is the fact that it was filmed badly and the translation in the subtitles came too late or wasn't done for some parts.

It's easy to spot that it's all about politics and that one crazy girl has the lead. She bangs everyone that she come across and she even give head with a chickens head. Further she does that again with a man but unlucky for him she bites his weener off. And that's were the gore comes in. She's as mad as hell and shoots one in the head in a gory way to perform some kind of necrophilia with the corps.

I wasn't really into it because the first part is as stated rather boring. But I was told about the extreme gore and I must admit that that was done in a pure old school way. But still, even as I like gore this isn't one of my favourites due the way it was shot and the bad acting. If one is ready to be killed you just don't care or the girl being opened in different ways, who cares.

But gorehounds will adore it but please skip to the 40 minute to see it slowly come in all the glory gore.

Gore 4/5 Nudity 1,5/5 Effects 4/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

i enjoyed this film. A lot of people give this movie a lot of flack due to the fact it can get kind of pretentious at moments and about the first 75% of the film moves VERY slowly. The end in my opinion was very gratifying, the gore was well done....the whole thing is shot well, yes it is quite hoke....but everyone downing this movie fails to realize that it's a STUDENT FILM made on absolutely no budget whatsoever. The term student film gets overused quite often, no, kumakiri made this film as his thesis in film school, he actually was in an extra year and a half trying to scrounge the money to finish. So, it's nothing earth shattering...but it is quite impressive considering the context, situation, and budget, and it is quite brutal in the end. If you are a fan of underground/indie cinema chances are you'll at the least enjoy this little nasty.

this movie is as violent as it will get. if you really want to get rid of somebody, show it to them. except if they like watching people eating other people's brain out after having them tortured to death. but, IF you can stand it, its a great movie. it was first shown on a film festival with a good reputation, and like everybody walked out. afterwards, the director of the festival apologized in public and said that they had not seen the film before.

among other things, kichiku shows some aspects of japan that maybe you did not realize before.