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Released by: Synapse Films
Released on: 7/22/2003
Director: Naoyuki Tomomatsu
Writer: Chisato Ogawara
Cast: Natsuki Kato, Toshinori Omi, Chika Hayashi, Shungiku Uchida, Yasutaka Tsutsui
Year: 2001
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The Movie:
Following up their releases of Organ and Evil Dead Trap from a few years ago, Synapse Films add a third entry into their Asian Cult Cinema Collection with the legitimate North American DVD premiere of Stacy.
Sometime in the not too distant future, schoolgirls aged fifteen to seventeen begin dying all across Japan, but before they pass, they experience an odd phenomenon that becomes known as Near Death Happiness, or NDH for short. Near Death Happiness as an almost euphoric state of extreme pleasure that happens pre-death.
Well, at least the girls to have some fun before they die, because once they do, they turn into rabid zombies who, of course, come back to feast on the flesh of the living. Once the girls start returning, they're given the nickname Stacy.
As the world climate deteriorates further, the epidemic spreads and eventually, because there are no more teenage girls blossoming into womanhood and getting pregnant, zero population growth quickly becomes a big problem the world over. Add to this that the Stacys are constantly roaming around eating people, and you can see how the Earth's population is soon going to find itself between a rock and a hard place.
Eventually, the government starts urging families to kill their daughters before the reach fifteen years of age, in hopes of stopping the plague from spreading even further. They even go so far as to offer government sanctioned garbage bags, so that if you were to find yourself having to chop up your daughter with a chainsaw, you could at least clean up your mess when you were finished.
When a military scientist in Japan begins experimenting on some of the girls who are being held there, what he hopes will unlock the cure behind the plague quickly spirals into something even worse. And then a manic-depressive soldier decides to let the girls loose into the streets…
If you couldn't tell by the above plot synopsis, Stacy isn't a movie likely to deliver the intensity of a Fulci or Romero zombie film, but it does offer some pretty well done satire on Japanese culture and some of their more unusual obsessions (the liner notes make good on an explanation of this). With tongue placed firmly in cheek, Stacy is a fun and gory trip movie that is uniquely Japanese that at the same time pays very obvious homage to the American films that inspired it (one need look no further than the chainsaws used in the film for a blatant example of this).
Video/Audio/Extras:
Synapse does their usual excellent job with this anamorphic 1.78.1 transfer. The film was shot on digital video and it obviously won't have the organic feel that film brings to the table. There are no compression issues to speak of though, and colors are really sharp and bright. As far as DV transfers go, this one is top notch.
Stacy is presented in a clean Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track in Japanese with clean, easy to read, and typo free English subtitles. It's not a 'show off your system to your friends' mix here, but it's adequate for the film and dialogue comes through clearly over the sound effects and the enjoyable score by Tokusatsu.
Synapse has included the original trailer as the only extra on the disc. It's kind of funny how the trailer makes the film look more like a romance film. Also included inside the keepcase are liner notes by the author of Tokyoscope, Patrick Macias. If you've not seen the movie before, you'd do well to read the liners first as they add some interesting ideas and interpretations into the cultural oddities explored in the feature. The menus are great too.
The Final Word:
Stacy is an enjoyable and gleefully gory Japanese straight to video quickie with a good sense of humor and a whole lotta bloodshed.