View Larger Image

Versus (Special Edition) Director: Ryuhei Kitamura Number of Items: 2 Format: Color, DTS Surround Sound Audience Rating: Unrated Studio: Media Blasters, Inc Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2003-08-19 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 93 Average rating: 3.5 "Ha! Ha! All your base are belong to us!" Yeah, I know. This meme from "Zero Wing" has been overdone. But I couldn't resist. The English dubbing in this movie is to die. Ed Wood is not dead, he has been reincarnated as Ryuhei Kitamura through the 666th portal (or is it the 444th?) who directs this ramped-up version of Plan 9 From Outer Space. Gangsters packing hardware fight off zombies in a gorefest, and chase a soft-spoken escapee from prison who fights the other warrior through time, over the hand of the mysterious woman who can See Things. "It's hecka fun" crowed my teenager as zombies get limbs and torsos blasted by all manner of small arms weapons. And it is. The entire movie is more or less filmed in some backlot forest as new characters appear and are dusted off seemingly randomly. You can choose to watch the movie in Japanese, in which event we noted that the surround-sound kicked in where the English-language sound was two-dimensional. This may have been a fluke of our system. God knows what they were really saying. Any hoo, for a teen-age Camp exercise, the movie works, without the unnecessary misogeny that clogs so many American horror flicks these days. This one is mostly about blood, and lots of it. "Stupid make up versus horrid acting!!" this is movie is so overblown and ridiculous( especially the bad acting supreme tree crawling mobster frog man) that is almost deserves more stars for sheer stupidity. the acting is horrendous, the blood and gore-although frequent and splatterfilled- looks like corn syrup with food coloring. I mean . . .hell, i've wasted enough time writing this! Don't bother. Complete and utter suckfest. "Evil Dead with guns & swords!" Simple review: 1. Takes place in well-shot woods 2. Gore, gore, gore 3. Guns 4. Inventive camera work 5. Kung-Fu Why 4 stars & not 5? Evil Dead worked because of likeable Ash (he made us laugh, and therefore care for him). No one in this film does that. Pity. Let's keep our eyes open for Versus 2! "Suckfest!!" This must be the most horrendus movie Ive ever seen. The acting, the blood and the sfx could all have canged roles in this suckfest of a movie. Asian movies like this gets to much attension - rather buy Ong-Bak, KungFu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer, Drunken Master 2... VERSUS - U GOT ME DEPRESSED!!! "This is the greatest movie ever made." Actually, describing this as the best movie ever made is not enough. This is not mere cinema, but a true life changing event. Forget descriptions of the plot - it is pointless. But that is the true Nietzschean beauty of "Versus": it is the visual expression of creating meaning out of the meaninglessness void of existence through the artistic creation of personal style. And what style! Actually, everything Nietzsche wrote about is in here. Rejection of rules put in place by slave mentality? It's in here! The überman overcoming regular man? It's in here! The pleasure and humor of the savage hero expressing his skill? It's in here! Eternal return? No one knows what the heck eternal return is, but it's in here anyway! After watching this epiphany on aluminized plastic disk, the sky will look a little bluer and every blade of grass will be in sharp focus. You will look for a mountain to climb, and when you reach the peak you will scream to the world that you are alive! Alive!! Yes, it is that good.