Meadhall of the Comitatus

It was my duty to bring to you at least one H.P. Lovecraft-inspired movie review this Halloween, and what better film to show than one that’s found in the adult room of my local video store. That’s right, kids, this is a Lovecraft knockoff straight out of the Land of the Rising Sun, complete with gratuitous gore and explicit sex.

Oh no! The fat man taped me getting off! Now I'm in for it!

Mystery of the Necronomicon is not for people who like Lovecraft, anime, horror, or even sex. It’s for people with no time on their hands and a steady supply of alcohol. Sadly, I was out of both, but I perservered…for all your sakes.

Premise: 1/5

Well, I can’t say it isn’t a first, so I suppose they get a point for originality. As far as I know, nobody else has succeeded in merging Lovecraftian mythos with gratuitous cartoon sex and gore. However, I have no choice but to dock them for the sheer stupidity of the idea. I can’t really be scared when I know that there’s cartoon sex coming up in five minutes, and I can’t be aroused by the cartoon sex when it comes fresh off of seeing skinless faces with no eyes. Furthermore, the whole thing feels like it was written on the fly rather than plotted out from the beginning.

To summarize, Satoshi Suzuzaki is a Japanese private detective who lived in Maine. Hired to investigate a Japanese professor and his wife, he stumbles upon the crazy immortality ritual of Dr. Herbert West, who kills Satoshi’s girlfriend and the Japanese couple. Using the dark magic of the Necronomicon, he steals Satoshi’s memories of the event.

Asuka and Satoshi. It's all very innocent, I swear.

Okay. So the guy has no memory of what happened, only that he woke up with some corpses and was investigated. The silly American legal system let him go after they accepted his amnesia plea and put him in a mental hospital. After he got out, he adopted the daughter of the slain couple, Asuka, apparently through some glaring Children’s Services oversight. About ten minutes in you realize that the whole point of this movie is a buildup to Satoshi mounting Asuka.

By the end of chapter two, you hear some bullshit about Herbert West (who’s current alias is Nezu) hating Satoshi and wanting his whole family dead. Considering he had no memory of the ritual, and it’s six years later, and the fact that it’s pretty easy to follow the detective’s trail of newspaper appearances, you’d think Nezu could have walked right up to him and killed him by now. Instead, he decides to start killing people at a ski resort and kidnap the “ward” of a lesbian tutor. Makes sense.

See, the goofy information broker that Satoshi knocks boots with in exchange for help on his cases was an unwilling recipient of an experimental growth inhibiting drug that rendered her immortal. She hooks up with Nezu to kill her obese attacker. In exchange for Nezu carving the fat man’s face off, she lures Satoshi to the ski resort so that Nezu can apparently kill him. Or at least make him say “Noooo!” a lot.

Did I mention that Nezu really likes removing faces and eyeballs? Frankly, there’s never any real explanation given for this, except that he is the devil. Hey, that’s not the Herbert West I know and love….

Cast: 1/5

Rrrrrrr! Reanimate me already!

If I was forced to guess the names of the voice actors of this movie on, say, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and I was given a lifeline, it would go something like this:

“I’d like to place a call to the offices of Anime18 please. …. Hi, there, I’m on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and in order to move up to 100,000 dollars, I need to know: what are the names of everyone on your janitorial staff?”

This voice acting makes The Smurfs sound like high drama. That’s not even docking them for prouncing Asuka “ah-sue-kah.” Silent u, dude.

Cinematography & Design: 3/5

Can’t complain too much here. The art ranged from impressive to passable. I got the feeling I was watching television-grade anime rather than movie-grade, if you know what I mean. If I were going to be getting a job drawing dead people with their eyes dangling from a nerve through their cavernous eye socket, I guess I’d want this on my resumé.

Here's looking at me, me.

Have to admit to getting a chuckle out of Satoshi waking up with two eyeballs sitting in his open palms. Oh no! Where did these come from? Hahahaha. Hahaha. Ha. Whew. You had to be there.

Special Features

I’m not giving a rating to the special features, since that might add points to the movie that is under review, but I simply had to comment on the Anime Artform featurette that is included on the DVD. This was perhaps the most entertaining material on the disc.

Anime Artform is a poor rationalization for the near-pedophilic themes in this and other anime titles. Coupled with the huge disclaimer at the beginning that ALL CARTOON CHARACTERS HEREIN ARE AT LEAST 18, I found it all rather comical.

The narrator explains that “Since many women in Japan wear [pigtails, pony tails, ribbons in their hair, etc.] including many singers and actresses in their twenties and thirties, such styles are commonplace in culture.”

Yes, yes, but don’t forget the pubes!

This AND boobs? What more could a future sociapthic killer ask for in a movie?

See, since the Japanese government banned the display of pubic hair a while back, groins have been conspicuously bare. The great anime cabal apparently got together after the laws were lifted and decided that, for tradition’s sake, no hair would ever be drawn on the genitals.

So when Sakimizu Haruka tells us she’s in love with her *cough* 18 year old student whose parents asked Sakimizu to watch over, well, you know it’s legal. And when Herbert West ties the young waif to a table and does naughty naughty things to her, well, it’s only partially illegal, since she’s of age.

Closing Thoughts

As I explained earlier, you have to be drunk to really enjoy the crappiness of this movie, and since I watched it sober, I can’t give it a fair popcorn factor rating. If I had a mind-altering substance compatibility rating, Mystery of the Necronomicon may have scored higher.

If you would like to donate alcohol or other legal stimulants, please keep an eye out for a future posting of the Necronomicon Watchers Wellness Foundation’s contact information.

Related

If you liked Mystery of the Necronomicon, odds are good that you’ll enjoy:

• wallowing in muck
• hooking live wires to your teeth
• dumping fire ants down your pants
• and eating weapons grade uranium