The October Zombie-Thon! - Day 27: Stacy
Posted by Trevor Snyder on 10.27.2006
Near Death Happiness, Butterfly Twinkle Powder, and Bruce Campbell's Right Hand. Yep, this is a weird one, folks.
STACY (2001)
Directed by: Naoyuki Tomomatsu Written by: Chisato Oogawara Based on a novel by: Kenji Otsuki Country: Japan
In the world of Stacy, a strange phenomenon is sweeping the globe, as girls aged between 15-17 years old are inexplicably dying and immediately reanimating as flesh-hungry zombies. As if this isn't odd enough, shortly before death the girls begin to exhibit bizarre behavior known as "Near Death Happiness," or NDH for short. The name says it all – the girls suddenly become manically happy, wandering around with huge grins on their faces and acting like they don't have a care in the world.
Surely, any other film would consider this a weird enough premise, but not Stacy, which employs a "let's keeping piling up the strangeness till they just cant take it anymore" sort of strategy to it proceedings. So not only do these girls first become blissful morons and then turn into zombies, but once they have become the living dead their skin becomes covered in a mysterious glowing blue powder dubbed "Butterfly Twinkle Powder."
Hold on, there's more. It turns out these girls cannot be re-killed with just a simple shot to the head, as in most zombie films. No, these "Stacies," as they come to be called (a reference to the first girl the disease affected) must be dismembered. And this can't just be your usual, everyday, run-of-the-mill dismemberment, either. No, "Stacies" must be cut into exactly 165 pieces in order to get the job done.
Now, cutting a murderous zombie into 165 pieces might seem like laborious work, but luckily it can be made a little easier with a brand new product introduced into the marketplace as a result of the Stacy crisis: a special chainsaw known as the "Bruce Campbell Right Hand #2," the commercial for which features a cute Japanese girl in a bunny costume brandishing the weapon and explaining its features. Why a bunny suit, you ask? Why not, Stacy answers.
And don't think for a second that just anyone can run out, grab a chainsaw, and start hacking away at the undead. In the wake of all this the Japanese government has passed the Stacy Law, which makes it illegal for anyone to "repeat kill" a Stacy unless they fall into one of 3 categories: a family member of the girl, the girl's boyfriend, or members of the government sponsored "Romero Repeat Kill Squad," who are called in whenever the girl's loved ones are too wimpy to do the job themselves.
Unfortunately, the Romero Repeat Kill Squad is not the most reliable organization around, for a couple different reasons. For one, the majority of its soldiers are simply young, scared kids – forced into action by a draft – who can barely destroy a Stacy without beginning to weep uncontrollably. And even if they were the bad-ass killing unit you would hope for, there are simply too many Stacies running around for them to handle.
That's why numerous groups of illegal vigilantes have sprung up to fill the void, including a trio of Drew Barrymore obsessed, Charlie's Angels-wannabe girls who call themselves the "Drew Illegal Repeat Kill Troops," who are clearly in it for the money and potential fame.
While the government certainly doesn't approve of these illegal groups, they have their hands full trying to discover the cause of the Stacy phenomenon, for which they've enlisted the aid of a mad scientist-type doctor who conducts experiments on the Stacies in his laboratory, in hopes of finding a way to stop the plague.
Meanwhile, in the midst of all this madness, a lonely puppeteer named Shibukawa befriends a young girl named Eiko, who is in the first stages of NDH. The constantly giggling (and I mean constantly…prepare to be annoyed) Eiko informs Shibukawa that she would like him to be the one to dispatch her once she returns from the dead, even presenting with the gift of a chainsaw to carry out the deed. But as Shibukawa falls more and more in love with the blissful girl, he questions whether or not he will be able to fulfill her wish when the time comes.
Got all that? Good. Now, consider that Stacy is only 80 minutes in length, and you should get a pretty good inkling of what a mess this film is. But it's an entertaining mess, and that's what's important.
Even with its obviously low budget, Stacy manages to look pretty slick and stylish, despite the somewhat underwhelming direction of Naoyuki Tomomatsu. Tomomatsu's action-direction, in particular, leaves a lot to be desired, which means the films numerous sequences of soldiers battling the Stacies are far less exciting than they should be.
Also, the films pacing seems to be a bit off, although not in the way you might expect. You would think such a short film with that much going on in it might be too fast-paced, almost to the point of incomprehension. Instead, Stacy can actually be rather dull at times, particularly when it comes to the love-story between Shibukawa and Eiko. I realize their relationship was supposed to be the heart of the film, but you can only watch their puppy-dog cute flirting, and listen to Eiko's annoyingly incessant giggling, for so long before you'll start to wish you had NDH, if only to make the scenes more tolerable.
Thankfully, there's plenty to make up for the boring love-story, including the wacky antics of the Drew Illegal Repeat Kill Troops, and the somewhat underdeveloped story of a Romero Squad member in love with one of the Stacies. Also, it certainly doesn't let down those fans looking for their fix of gore – not surprising since we're talking about a movie that requires its monsters cut into triple-digits. And while the ample gore is a little uneven – I'm sorry, I don't care who rapidly you edit, there's no mistaking a mannequin when you see one – the majority of the gore effects are pretty phenomenal for a low-budget film.
And, if nothing else, you can always just enjoy Stacy for its truly bizarre zombie behavior. It's bad enough the girls first succumb to NDH, but then once they return they are forced to stagger around and wildly gyrate, as if in the midst of an epileptic fit. And, man, are they sloooow. I couldn't help but wonder how these girls would pose any kind of threat at all; Stephen Hawking could out-maneuver these things…without his wheelchair.
Where Stacy does unfortunately start to fall apart is in the final act, when it attempts to throw in some pretentious, weighty pseudo-philosophical nonsense about the power of love. Blah. Hey, I have nothing against zombie films having a little meaning or social commentary to them, as long as the filmmaker knows how to pull it off. But you can't just suddenly throw in some sort of deep, poignant message after an hour spent teenage girls eating flesh and getting sawed to pieces. It doesn't work like that, and only serves to leave to Stacy with an unsatisfying conclusion. Luckily, viewers should be so swept up in the film's outrageousness by that point that they'll forgive the lackluster ending.
The 411: For better or worse, Stacy is almost certainly unlike any other low-budget zombie film you will have seen. It's not a perfect movie – far from it. It can be quite tedious, despite its short running time, and it builds to an incredibly disappointing and unnecessarily sappy climax. Still, zombie fans looking for a quick blast of mindless fun should enjoy the film's heavy gore and oh-so-ridiculous plot, not to mention its references to other well-known horror flicks. And I guarantee that, after watching Stacy, you'll wish you had your very own "Bruce Campbell Right Hand #2." What kind of zombie fan would you be if you didn't?
