EXTE (HAIR EXTENSIONS). 2007. A JAPANESE HORROR FILM BY SION SONO. STARRING CHIAKI KURIYAMA FROM 'KILL BILL' AND 'BATTLE ROYALE.' REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
This is a disturbing little offering, I must say. I enjoyed the hell out of it, though, despite its being hard to watch at times. The title in English means 'HAIR EXTENSIONS,' the strands of hair that chicks put in their crowning glory to make it look longer. I don't know if any guys do that, but it's certainly very much a female thing in this film. It's a film all about hair, as if you haven't guessed. All about hair.
The body of a young woman is discovered in a container full of human hair down at the shipping docks. Her head has been shaved and her organs have been illegally harvested. The morgue night-watchman steals the body and brings it to his home, where he's thrilled to discover that beautiful long black hair has begun to grow from her head again, but not just from her head...
This poor dead girl has hair sprouting from her empty eye sockets, her tongue and the open wounds on her body. It's gross to look at it grow from her poor ravaged corpse. The morgue attendant, however, a chap called Yamazaki, is orgasmic to watch the hair do its thing.
He loves hair, see? He has a hair fetish, which means his official label is a tricophile. He is a hair pervert. He's also one of the creepiest, maddest characters I've come across in the world of J-horror, and that's saying something, haha. This is the genre that brought you THE GRUDGE and RING, after all. It can be messed-up at times.
Yamazaki doesn't care what the corpse has been through to end up like this. He sells her hair as extensions to local hair salons and privately exults over his great good fortune in having gorgeous feminine hair on tap. Eugh. He makes my skin crawl, the way he talks to the corpse without any regard for what she's suffered in life.
Anyway, the other main character is called Yuko, a young woman whom you might recognise from such films as LEPER IN THE BACKFIELD and ANDRE THE GIANT, WE HARDLY KNEW YE. No, wait, those are Troy McClure's old films, heh-heh-heh. Chiaki Kuriyami is well-known from starring in smash hit films KILL BILL and BATTLE ROYALE.
In this film, she plays a trainee hairdresser who has to cope with caring for her horrible sister's abused little daughter, Mami. Also, the hairdressing business in her picturesque seaside home town is about to become very challenging indeed. Why is that? You may well ask...
The hair extensions made of the dead girl's hair that the sicko Yamazaki is flogging to the local salons have malevolent intentions towards anyone who ends up wearing them. They also give the wearer horrible insights into the dead girl's final hours. It's quite upsetting to see what she went through just so a bunch of brutal black marketeers could harvest her poor organs.
The scenes of child physical and emotional abuse are hard to watch. Little Mami's mother, who incidentally looks like a Japanese Tracy Barlow from CORONATION STREET, is a nightmare of a parent and her bar-owner lover isn't much better.
Yamazaki too is quite a sick and disturbing character, as I've already mentioned, and it's also kind of stomach-turning to see hair growing out of eyes and open wounds and places where hair has no business growing.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline.You can contact her at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
As a Fellow "Tricophile" [ at least as far as the current Trend of Women Shaving where they Shouldn't ] I Love this Review by Sandra Harris !!!
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