NYAFF Report: Oh! My Zombie Mermaid Review
It should be noted before proceeding any further that Oh! My Zombie Mermaid boasts a remarkably misleading title. While the film does include both a zombie and a mermaid they are not the same character and the film is not primarily about either. The Japanese title translates to Ah! The House Collapses! which actually makes a good bit more sense, but what you really need to know is that this film is cast largely with real life Japanese professional wrestlers who put their skills to good use.
Shinya Hashimoto - who died suddenly in 2005 - is Shishio, a popular pro wrestler with a tragic past who has just built a dream home for his wife and family. For all his burly frame and violent profession may indicate otherwise Shishio is a gentle man, someone who just wants to care for his family the best he can. But disaster strikes when Shishio's arch rival Ichijoh crashes his housewarming party triggering a full on brawl that trashes the place real good before a mysteriously placed bomb finishes the job for good. Shishio's just completed home is a wreck and his wife - who was caught in the blast - is rushed to hospital where it is soon discovered that not only is she in a coma but she seems to be slowly transforming into a mermaid, scales and all. Desperate to prove his worth as a husband Shishio takes on a crushing debt to rebuild his family home, a debt that soon destroys his wrestling group and threatens to destroy him personally until a sleazy television producer offers to build the house himself on condition that Shishio enter into a televised wrestling competition in his own home against an international group of homicidal wrestlers, a zombie included among their number. Seeing no other option Shishio agrees ...
That Oh! My Zombie Mermaid is a bad film is beyond dispute. The question is whether or not it is the right sort of bad film and the answer to that is very definitely yes. The film takes a while to get going, hitting a major lull following the housewarming brawl, but once it goes it really goes. Once Shishio agrees to the producer's deal and heads in to do battle all bets are off. It is big, dumb, trashy fun, a film that is to wrestling what Battlefield Baseball would have been to that sport had director Yamaguchi not opted to turn it into a surreal musical instead. There is a wrestling match in a bathroom. A wrestling match that ends in an electrified pool. A tag team match involving zombie entrails and booby trapped chandeliers. A levitating Chinese wrestler with a fondness for tickling hearts. A pile driver that propels it's victim through three storeys of the home before arriving in the basement.
While I would never go so far as to call this a smart film it is certainly a clever one, a film that understands precisely what it is and plays on b-movie conventions to great effect. Though virtually none of the cast would ever be mistaken for legitimate actors they know how to play to the camera and obviously have no egos whatsoever, happily going wherever the story leads in the name of a good gag. This is also very likely one of the best parodies of reality television I have ever come across, it is certainly one of the most entertaining.
Through much of the first half of the film Oh! My Zombie Mermaid commits the cardinal sin of taking itself seriously. Hashimoto should never have been allowed to try to emote and the pacing drags badly. Happily around the half way mark the director suddenly seems to recall that what wrestlers do best is wrestle and he lets them have at it. From that point on it's pure, ridiculous, campy joy to watch.
