Becca S
Some crazy low budget cyberpunk experimentation and I love it!
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
01/06/23
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Audience Member
Great film---what it lacks in plot (or, clarity of plot?) it makes up for in memorable imagery and thematic concepts.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/18/23
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A staple in Japanese cyberpunk cinema, this interesting update to Frankenstein comes with a hyperkinetic assault to the senses.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/14/23
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<b><a href="http://www.flixster.com/photos/rubbers-lover-14030830" target="_blank" > <font size="2" color="red" face="courier"><CENTER><B><U>STILLS ARE HERE</U></B></CENTER></font></a></b><center>download and enlarge for better resolution</center>
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<B><I>RUBBER'S LOVER</I> (1996)</B> Japan; English subtitles
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY: Shozin Fukui
FEATURING: Norimizu Ameya, Yôta Kawase, Mika Kunihiro, and Sosuke Saito
GENRE: <B>SCI-FI SHOCKER / HORROR / BLACK COMEDY</B>
TAGS: sex, rape, gore, cannibalism and general bad craziness
PLOT: In the midst of bizarre and intricate top secret drug research, four mad scientists run low on test subjects and use one another as guinea pigs. Their equipment malfunctions as the team succumbs to the drug's psychotic effects. The entire experiment spirals horribly out of control, turning the final test subject into a modern-day Frankenstein's monster -with a unique twist.
COMMENTS: Kinetic editing and dark, shocking images define this unusual, experimental Japanese horror film. In a modern update to the Frankenstein plot, a team of rogue scientists conduct experimental drug, sensory, and mind control research on unwilling, abducted human subjects in a secret government torture lab. The results are promising, but they can't seem to get the dose right; the subjects keep dying. (Who might have predicted that?) Worse, they are running out of hard-to-obtain "patients" and time is running out to conclude experimentation. Their horrifying lab is full of eerie black iron and steam-punk devices and electronics, all maddeningly grotesque in appearance.
Threatened with impending shut-down and grant loss if they don't achieve viable results soon, the crazy quartet decides to give their last living human guinea pig a mega dose of their weird drug cocktail. His brain explodes, dosing an assistant with the drug via blood spray contact. Now the assistant is instantly addicted, semi-psychotic, and useless for being anything but, you guessed it, the next test subject.
The researchers fight over which of their two drugs they should test on him, as both have developed competing formulas. One decides to test his drug on his partner, turning the hapless associate into a mad sex offender who then marathon-rapes a female executive sent to shut down their lab. To prevent her leaving and making a bad report (why would she want to do that?) she becomes, yes, yet another unwilling test subject.
A comely lab assistant, (a Lolita Goth, wearing a crotch length doll dress, who keeps her lunch in the specimen cooler and rapes male subjects between experiments), runs around with a giant pneumatic syringe full of the test formula, injecting hapless subjects in the rectum. The mind altering synthetic dope has a synergistic effect with certain audio frequency modulations, and subjects wear a full-head media stimulation hood during the tests. The sound patterns and the drug combo drive them insane. It is a form of experimental torture, yet they beg for more because the procedure makes them higher than they've ever been.
When the scientists accidentally ingest the drugs, they become deranged and experiment on each other. The complex equipment which both controls and catalyzes the research breaks down, and the entire project goes haywire, rapidly escalating to pure bedlam (as if things were "normal" up to this point.) As the participants undergo abominable mental and physical changes, it becomes clear that the drug formula is creating nouveau Frankenstein monsters. When the two addled researches struggle to regain control over their hi-tech disaster, the final batch of test serum breaks through a dimensional barrier in a unique way that nobody could have predicted.
Rubber's Lover is not for everybody. It's an assault on the senses, and watching it is akin to being caught in a white water rapids in which one cannot wear oneself out by trying to fight the current. Instead the viewer must go limp and let the foaming torrents roll him, twist him, shock him and hopefully deliver him out the bottom of the roaring maelstrom in one piece, exhausted, flabbergasted, but with luck, unharmed.
Rubber's Lover audiences will be wowed with successions of images and impressions, alternately clever and repellant, which at once surprise, stun, astound, stupefy, and disgust. Director Shozin Fukui maximizes the rich tonal range of his black and white film stock to cultivate upon the screen an abundant bouquet of textures, lights and shadows. The result is simultaneously visually mood-altering, staggering, and industrial, but never boring.
Rubber's Lover is an arty, gruesome endurance contest of psychedelic imagery, torture, rape, and general craziness, yet while wildly over the top, it is not campy, goofy, or insulting to one's intelligence. (Well, not too much anyway.) Given the outrageousness of the plot, this is a difficult balance to achieve, and it's surprising that the filmmaker pulled it off as well as he did. Rubber's Lover is a cross between Eraserhead, Men Behind The Sun, Philosophy Of A Knife and Videodrome. Fans of weird cinema may already be familiar with director Shozin Fukui, who brought us the equally bizarre cult films, Pinocchio, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, and Tetsuo: The Bullet Man, which are also available from amazon.com.
I am only giving Rubber's Lover six pints of blood because it deviates so far from the norm, and I don't want to mislead viewers with more conventional tastes. This is not a conventional movie! For fans of this unusual Japanese horror genre however, Rubber's Lover is a ten pint movie all the way, and the blood bags are fairly swollen to the overflow point like sun ripened cherry tomatoes bursting with ripeness.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
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Audience Member
Too much screaming for my liking. Welcome to Japanese Cyberpunk! Weird.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/16/23
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Audience Member
Fukui draws more similarities with Tetsuo than last time with his cyborg sex slave. Whatever happened to the director after this, we will never know, but he left a tremendous "shock" legacy, saying "cyberpunk ain't dead!". Heavier in style and easier on screams, puss and gore, Rubber's Lover (could be confused with a porn title) is mindblowing greatness, only developed with a less convincing execution. But how can I complain? This was good. It has been called "Etherhead".
83/100
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/22/23
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