EFM: Naoyuki Tomomatsu's ZOMBIE SELF-DEFENSE FORCE (ZONBI JIEITAI) - a.k.a. "Zombie Jieitai"

Distribution rights for Naoyuki Tomomatsu's Zombie Self-Defense Force (Zonbi jieitai) - a.k.a. "Zombie Jieitai" - are to be offered for sale by Gold View Co. Ltd. (Y.K. Gôrudo Byû) at this year's European Film Market (EFM) in Berlin, Germany. The movie had what appears to have been its world première at Dead by Dawn 2006 in Edinburgh, Scotland on April 23rd of last year. It had its North American première at the 2006 Fantasia Festival in Montréal, Canada on July 24th of last year. GP Museum Soft K.K. (K.K. GP Myûjiamu Sofuto) released it on sale DVD (DMSM-6652; NTSC, region 2, no subtitles) in Japan on April 25th of last year.

The screenplay for Zombie Self-Defense Force was written by Tomomatsu and Chisato Ôgawara. The movie's cast includes Miyû Watase, Hisakatsu Ôya, Jun Yamasaki, Shun Saeki, Mihiro, Kenji Arai, Yûya Takayama, Masayuki Hase, Kiyo Yoshizawa, Eriko Nagamine, and Yû Machimura.

Here's a description of Zombie Self-Defense Force from the Fantasia Festival website: "It's an ordinary day in the Japanese countryside - a day of sightseeing for tourists, photo shoots for a pop-star model and her crew, routing training for a squad of JSDF soldiers, treachery for an adulterous couple and sudden murder for gangsters. Everything changes, though, when a UFO crashes and releases some form of strange radiation. Confusion turns to sheer terror and the grim, blood-soaked will to survive when the dead rise and attack the living in a mindless cannibalistic frenzy! Soon, the soldiers and a handful of civilians are holed up in a secluded hotel, surrounded by the zombie hordes. There are other dark secrets at work, though. One soldier, Yuri, has been having sudden, painful flashbacks to a mysterious operating room, and there's that spooky legend about the ghostly, ultra-patriotic Japanese soldier from WWII lurking in a local cave... ¶ ZOMBIE SELF-DEFENSE FORCE opens with a sarcastic, faux-fascist voiceover dismissing heinous wartime history, demanding the reinstatement of a true Japanese military and vilifying the USA. Or American militarism, at least - the Yanks, after all, gave the worl[d] hamburgers, rock 'n' roll and, of course, the beloved filmography of George A. Romero! Consider this a companion piece to TOKYO ZOMBIE, also screening at Fantasia this year. But where TOKYO ZOMBIE is a wry farce toying cleverly with zombie-movie traditions, ZOMBIE SELF-DEFENSE FORCE is a gleeful, lo-fi leap into lurid lore of the living dead, now unquestionably a global pop-culture phenomenon. And don't tell us that flying, cackling undead fetus isn't just the most adorable little thing you ever saw!"

For more information on Zombie Self-Defense Force, see ScreenAnarchy's fifth, fourth, third, second, and first articles on it.

Zombie Self-Defense Force Japanese rental DVD cover (192 KB JPEG)
Gold View: Zombie Self-Defense Force
ScreenAnarchy: Zombie Self-Defense Force review