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Bio-Zombie

"I always told you I would kill one day."
Starring: Sam Lee, Jordan Chan, Angela Tong, Emotion Cheung
Rating: 7.5/10
Directed By: Wilson Yip
Runtime: 90 minutes

I've had this on my to-watch list ever since my current roommate acquired Gen-X Cops (1999) and Gen-Y Cops (2000) on the hot new video cd format from Hong Kong. Produced by Jackie Chan, their intention was to push the new generation of Japanese actor/pop star/model (kinda like Indiana Jones 4 hopes to push Shia LeBeouf) but they happened to turn out two above average action epics along the way. One of the main reasons was Sam Lee, a wisecracking slacker who proved endlessly entertaining. We had read about Bio-Zombie (1998) existing and Sam Lee vs. zombies seemed like a great idea so on the list it went. Five years later I held Bio-Zombie on dvd in my hands; a no-frills import for $23.95. Sigh. Well, it's three years later than that and I now unveil the magic and undead spectacle of Bio-Zombie.

The first thing I found interesting was the setup screen. It specifies "Engrish subtitles" even though "English" is spelled correctly twice on the same page. After watching Bio-Zombie I know this was intentional. This movie is Mallrats with the undead. The movie is not a typical gorefest ala Dawn of the Dead; instead, director Wilson Yip effectively blends the stereotypical zombie invasion with the same contemporary sensibility that makes Kevin Smith's work so appealing. Now, Smith's screenplays are far wittier than Bio-Zombie but this movie is no slouch, providing plenty of laughs as well as genuine moments between people with enough zombie mayhem and general running about one expects of the genre.

The story centers around Woody Invincible (Jordan Chan) and Crazy Bee (Sam Lee), two tough-talking delinquents with too much time on their hands. They run a DVD shop in the mall and stride around the place like Brodie in the aforementioned Mallrats. I'm not kidding, either. Their bopping saunter cracked me up every time. Bio-Zombie is actually the film the boys are at when the movie opens, though Bee lets it be known he'd rather have seen Titanic (what?). Woody and Bee are pretty simple guys who both expound their worldviews in a manner that sums them up best.

Woody: "I go to work late, I get laid any time I want, I smoke grass whenever. Yeah, I do have it good."

Bee: "Woody, send a knife and a paper man to the afterlife for me. I've always wanted to kill somebody. I haven't been able to do it in real life so I'll do it in the afterlife."

Wow! One revels in his slacker existence, the other makes provisions to kill after his own demise! That sells this flick right there.

The Japanese government has its own worldview. They attempt to buy an Iraqi biological weapon cleverly disguised as a soft drink; the rub is it has the ability to turn the subject into a rampaging zombie. The transaction, of course, goes sour and the government official is killed. His aid, though wounded, narrowly escapes only to be run over by Woody and Crazy Bee. He asks for the soda and gulps it down before he expires. Woody and Bee, quick thinkers, throw him in the trunk and head to the mall (?) so they can play House of the Dead (wait, what?). After a while they remember the guy who's no longer in the trunk and ladies and gentlemen we have a movie! The zombie does what zombies do and kills a parking attendant and the infection spreads. Bee again raises the subject of Titanic. The mall closes and the zombie breaks shit.

The next day Woody and Bee are set up for a break in at Kui's cell phone kiosk and apparently a sushi-chef was attacked by the zombie in the men's room and the boys are tagged with that too! Now, they've already mugged a cosmetic girl named Rollo (Angela Tong) in the women's room but they are taking the rap for the zombie whether they like it or not. A cop finds a joint on Woody and accuses him, "Is your dream to become a drug dealer when you grow up?" "Drugs? That's drugs?" Asks a stunned Woody. The boys are handcuffed to fixtures, which sucks for them when the guy they put in the trunk busts in and kills the cops before being put down, with an assist by Bee, who has a House of the Dead flashback and remembers to "shoot them in the head." (Should be a mantra by now.) Now the race for freedom is on. Will the handcuffs come off before the cops re-animate? Yes, because there's a bunch of movie left but Woody does have to cart around the monitor he's cuffed to in order to escape. Now you've got panic in the mall. Woody, Bee, the two cosmetics girls, sushi-boy, the cellphone guy and his wife are trapped against the rampaging undead! Will Bee ever see Titanic?

I find it tremendously interesting as well that Wilson Yip criticizes the Mtv-style jump-cuts through a conversation Woody, Bee and a customer have over porn but Yip himself utilizes very stylized angles and unexpected camera movements throughout the picture to achieve his cool and sometimes unsettling effects. Sam Lee's chemistry with Jordan Chan is great and the comedy flows naturally. There are several zombie-related survival gags, such as Bee and Kui the cellphone guy's (Lai Yiu Cheung) impassioned argument about not leaving their place of safety. Bee has a tense scene where he's attempting to retrieve a handcuff key from a dead cop you know is going to re-animate on him but hasn't yet. Cellphone guy's wife startles him and he drops the key in the cop's mouth. For the gorehounds, Woody and Bee stick a faucet pipe through the back of a zombie's head and Bee turns it on with predictable, yet funny, results. The dialog, though often crass, is uniformly humorous in tone, the soundtrack is dope and the characters strangely deeper than most wooden protagonists.

The Japanese take on Romero-esque zombies continues to be entertaining and wildly different. Like Junk (2000) and Wild Zero (check it here) , Bio-Zombie provides a look at one of the cinema classics through the eyes of a culture that admires the achievement but reveres the films in a completely different manner. Reminiscent of the Italian zombie boom of the 1960s, Romero's influential invention as seen through the kaleidoscopic vision of a culture already known for it's cinematic expressionism provides at once a well-meaning homage as well as a breath of fresh air to a much maligned genre. Bio-Zombie is certainly worth a view.