Junk (2000)

A team of jewel-thieves fight for their lives in a zombie-infested factory.

Director:

Atsushi Muroga

Writer:

Atsushi Muroga

Stars:

Nobuyuki Asano, Shû Ehara, Tate Gouta

Cast

Credited cast:
Nobuyuki Asano	...	Jun
Shû Ehara	...	Akira
Tate Gouta	...	Ramon
Anthony Grow	...	Knife Zombie, head shot zombie
Yûji Kishimoto	...	Nakada
Miwa	...	Kyôko / Zombie Queen
Natsuki Ozawa
Kaori Shimamura	...	Saki
Koutarou Tanaka	...	Toraji
Kôtarô Tanaka	...	Toraji
Deborah Joy Vinall	...	Sharon (as 'Debolar Joy Vinall')

Storyline

Four crooks rob a jewelery shop, then head for an abandoned factory where they plan to fence the goods to the Yakuza. Unfortunately, their chosen location happens to be the same place where American scientists had previously experimented on resurrecting the dead.

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Plot Keywords:

yakuza | scientist | abandoned factory | zombie violence | wrapped in a bedsheet | 

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Taglines:

Everybody fights

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Genres:

Horror

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for strong sci-fi violence/gore, language and nudity

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese English

Release Date:

22 January 2000 (Japan)

Also Known As:

Junk

Company Credits

Production Co:

Japan Home Video (JHV)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

83 min (uncut)

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

The American soldiers featured in the film are real soldiers stationed in Japan at the time.

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Alternate Versions

Uncut version running 91 minutes also available on DVD.

User Reviews

Not too bad, actually...

"Junk" is actually a good enough Japanese zombie movie, compared to many of the other Japanese zombie movies that have way too much comedy in them. That being said, then "Junk" isn't really up to standards with what you'd expect from a Western zombie movie.

The storyline is about a group of jewelry thieves meeting up with the Yakuza at an old seemingly-abandoned military laboratory site for the trade. However, the military base is not entirely abandoned; it was used to conduct experiments with the DNX drug. A drug that brought life back to the dead, although they were brought back as zombies. The trade goes awry in more than one way, and it becomes a race against time to make it out of the laboratory before it blows up.

It is a fairly average storyline, though there is a good amount of blood, gore and mayhem in it, which I personally found to be one of the better aspects of the movie. But again, sadly, it wasn't up to date with Western zombie movies, but they were doing a good enough job as it were.

The concept of a smarter zombie (that was able to operate a computer) was a little bit too out of the ordinary for my personal taste. And I didn't fully understand the idea behind the sudden change of hair color (from black to paper-white) on the 'smart' zombie twice or thrice throughout the movie. That was just stupid.

Another thing that made me wonder was the DNX drug had to be injected into the vein by a syringe in order for it to take its course. But for some reason it became sufficient for the DNX material to be splashed or come into contact with a corpse for it to be reanimated. What was up with that? There was a couple of continuation errors throughout the movie, but in overall "Junk" proved to be adequate entertainment. Also, I have never grasped the concept why Japanese turn a strange shade of concrete-gray when they are dead and have recently returned as the living dead.

For a Japanese zombie movie, then "Junk" is actually in the better end of the scale. If you enjoy zombie movies and haven't already seen "Junk", it is well worth a watch and it is a good 83 minutes of entertainment.