Three budding idols in some kind of idol training establishment – aerobics are clearly a particularly important part of this – are offered the chance to level up to actual idol status by the not at all suspicious boss of their school.
Soon, the three are stumbling through dark, dry ice fogged streets and are hunted by a gutmunching hardcore band, Halloween masked versions of Freddy and Jason(!), and a full-grown man who can somehow disguise himself as a baby in a baby cart, and doesn’t who doesn’t need Tomisaburo Wakayama to do some damage. Also appearing is some kind of clown troupe and various wearers of lesser monster rubber masks.
In the end, the idol industry literally eats its children.
If you know director Teruyoshi Ishii predominantly as the director of POV horror V-cinema hidden gem Jaganrei (made a couple of years after this one), you’re going to be in for a surprise, for where the later film is really rather clever and formally inventive, Daikanyama is gloriously dumb and silly. Though, to be fair, both films show a healthy scepticism about what the idol industry does with/to very young women.
For its first third, this is a pure time capsule of 80s Tokyo, obviously shot guerrilla style, that culminates in the epic aerobics sequence other 80s films have only dreamed of. Once the plot gets started, Ishii throws all of his favourite things at you: punk, guts, and rubber masks of famous film monsters, adds rather a lot of gloriously improbable – and therefore awesome - home-made gore, and more dry-ice fog than any 80s music video you care to name.
Since its runs a mere forty-five minutes, there’s no time for this outbreak of youthful enthusiasm to get boring, or really, to ever slow down once we’re through the aerobics bit. I found myself hit by a true cinematic (videographic?) sugar rush – and what else could I ask of a movie?
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