The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers

Title: The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers
Rating: 3/5
Genre: Exploitation, Horror, Comedy
Starring: Sasa Handa, Yuria Hidaka, Ayumu Tokitô
Director: Kôji Kawano
Language: Japanese

Its always seemed that the Japanese have taken the art of cheap low budget schlock gore porn and made it their own, taking over from the rapidly diminishing quality and number of American offerings. Its little wonder they're finding their target audience either, for whilst the name is something of a mouthful, its the combination of new ideas and the knowledge of what's wanted from such a film that quickly elevates them to that must-see status, and here is no different; Japanese high school chicks – dressed in skin-tight swimsuits no less – getting it on with one another whilst being hunted by sadistic zombies and a “final boss” to make that big dude from Resident Evil seem plausible.

An epidemic is sweeping the school, quickly causing the decision to make everyone take a vaccine. A vaccine that as it turns out, was supplied by an evil doctor trying to hunt down his darling beloved who escaped for reasons that quickly become apparent. How turning everyone into a zombie really helps is beyond me, but that's what his vaccine really does and in a glorious oversight, is neutralised by unnamed disinfectants in the swimming pool. I'm assuming chlorine, which would have made him a pretty lousy doctor if he didn't give a different vaccine to the teachers which doesn't have this issue. Therefore, I call him a bit of a moron instead, but moron or not it's up to the school swim team to push the school kids over, slap their teachers with sticks and kill the evil doctor who did this to them.

A beautiful premise that allows for plenty of fun, and lets not forget the cast who have large quantities of porn under their belts so hardly the kind to get shy about their bodies (unlike “Big Tits Zombie, now that I think of it), but as always there is a silver lining. And no, I'm not referring to the lead stars fake breasts, though that was certainly a disappointment. It's the actual violence itself; too often the sex and violence is segregated from one another, and its only in the end that the two seem to come together at all. It 'shies away' from most of the gore, though I get the distinct impression that was more for budget reasons (any effects they could have mustered would have looked awful) so there can be some concessions here, but a lot of it doesn't feel original either. A brick to the face here, a chainsaw there. Yawn.

Instead it tries to compensate by having a never ending stream of groan-worthy twists, essentially consisting of some mad cackling and a short speech of “but I'm not really dead” or the occasional point that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever; the horrendous CGI on a mobile phone bomb – which as far as I can tell, had no purpose in the story, – self playing flutes that charm women like snakes or an exploding laser cannon tampon. Whilst these occasionally allow for a chuckle, more often than not it simply seems too pointless and ridiculous to even be taken seriously as a B-Movie. Despite an awesome premise, you'd have thought the film would have written itself but they haven't got the basics right. For a “team” only two members actually have anything to do apart from sit around looking cute,*and whilst there's a plethora of fake blood, there's nothing new to be seen here.

*Sadly, most of them failed at this.