Undead Pool aka Attack Girls’ Swim Team vs. The Undead (original title: Joshikyôei hanrangun) is a 2007 Japanese erotic comedy horror film directed by Kôji Kawano from a screenplay by Satoshi Owada (Cruel Restaurant). It stars Sasa Handa, Yuria Hidaka, Ayumu Tokitô, Mizuka Arai, Hiromitsu Kiba, Hidetomo Nishida, Sakae Yamazaki, Tôshi Yanagi and Kiyo Yoshizawa.
A laboratory mix-up means that a vaccine is accidentally swapped with a virus causing a high school full of students and teachers to turn into flesh-eating zombies. But all is not lost: New student Aki discovers that the swim team is immune to the plague. With the school rampaged by ravenous monsters, the girls engage in an over-the-top orgy of gory violence to save the day…
In the cumbersomely titled Attack Girls’ Swim Team Versus The Undead, Aki, brainwashed and trained (in that order) to become an assassin, is transferred to an all-girl school, just as a virus that turns the young ladies into entrail-twirling zombies has been making the rounds. Everyone – teachers included – are made into gleeful zombies, tearing into necks, chopping off limbs, and decapitating students with metal rulers. Everyone, that is, except the swim team. Turns out the school pool’s chlorine makes them immune to the zomb-virus.
The cartoonish gore is straight grindhouse stuff and is amusingly entertaining. One female teacher uses stringy guts pulled out of a chainsawed stomach to accessorize her fresh-stained wardrobe. The evil scientist turns out to be doubly so, and faces off with Aki in the end, who’s not too happy about that whole “brainwashing through rape” Japanese technique. Aki, without any clothes worth mentioning, has a secret retribution weapon up her, uh, sleeve.
Just so you know, this fine film is in Japanese and the version available does not have sub-titles. As if that’s gonna stop you watching it.
Jeff Gilbert, Drinkin’ & Drive-In
