This screening was part of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesday series. For upcoming shows, click here.

Deep chants undergird the clatter of boots and heavy machine guns. A hulking silhouette saunters forward with unflinching leaden steps. Men and their tools have come to challenge something no mere mortal should contend with: Zeiram. The opening sequence, a black-and-white comic-book montage of our monster sneering in psychopathic delight as it disposes of the weak, is an unquestionable highlight of this film for me. Released in 1991, Keita Amemiya’s second film follows the deadly mutant (Zeiram) to Earth, where a pair of bounty hunters unpack a laundry list of tools and toys to try to capture it and pay off their debts.

After the carnage outside some unnamed space prison, Zeiram jets off into deep space and we’re brought to Earth where we meet a pair of everyday men; Kamiya (Yukijiro Hotaru), middle-aged but eternally immature and Teppei (Kunihiro Ida), younger and better looking, sporting a healthy dose of naivety. I love these two together. Electricians for the local power company, their lives are charmingly mundane and perfectly human. Kamiya’s excitable, brash demeanor earns him side-eyes from people that would call themselves cultured. Teppei’s not that posh, but his skepticism for Kamiya’s big talk seems well-placed.

We also meet Iria (Yuko Moriyama) and Bob (Masakazu Handa), interstellar bounty hunters visiting Earth to lay a trap for Zeiram. Another great pair of characters, Bob’s nervous dream of order and planning foils Iria’s inclination towards improvisational destruction. Despite the obvious tension in their relationship, it’s clear these two have been back-to-back in some wild situations, and their mutual respect extends well beyond any surface-level disagreements. Fans of Japanese sci-fi will be no stranger to the scrappy, “we need this job to pay off our debts” conversation between them. Though I initially assumed that Zeiram had riffed this from Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star, cursory research led me to the opposite conclusion: Zeiram’s 1991 debut precedes both these iconic stories. Cool.

Zeiram is unapologetically a Tokusatsu, aka “What if we gave the costume and SFX crew half the budget?” What they came up with is a beautifully bizarre creature. The opening silhouette of a cowboy (or Ronin, or whatever mystery-outcast you most prefer) is truly just the beginning.

We’ll start with the face. A stark contrast to the futuristic body or the contemporary setting, Zeiram’s face conjures up images of Noh theater. I did some basic research and found one recurring mask, Manbi, that bore striking similarities to Zeiram relative to other masks, representing “a demon that has transformed into a beautiful woman” with distinct eyes and red lips.

One of the stories involving Manbi is Momijigari, about a hunter who is lulled into a trap by a demon in disguise. In the hunter’s dream, a bodhisattva brings him a divine sword, which, after a long battle, he uses to slay the demon. Zeiram has some role-reversal with the hunter trapping the demon, but the parallels seem more than coincidence, particularly the divine sword aka “Metis Cannon” being sent from the heavens (or in this case, Iria’s teleporter) to Teppei for the final fight.

Also the face is just a teeny tiny part of the hat? Cute.

Close-up of Zeiram’s face, head, and shoulders

The movie keeps us guessing about what (or why) Zeiram actually is. We hear that it’s a “forbidden bioweapon”, though we never learn anything about the backstory. One thing is for sure; I would forbid anyone from making more of the misshapen lumps Zeiram uses as minions. Super ugly, super awkward.

I also love Zeiram’s display of the concept that biology is always changing, evolving new forms. The monster “onions”, peeling back layers of itself as the context changes; this idea is at the heart of what I want a bioweapon (or a good Dark Souls boss) to be. The monster design is evocative—why does it pick one form over another? What led it to come up with these different forms? Was the final form always that way? Or has it also changed over time? And what kind of experiments were they trying to perform to make this thing?

It’s to the film’s credit that the producers chose to open with some artistic grit, because the half hour following the comic-book intro mostly consists of rambling B-roll: Kamiya and Teppei driving around the city; Iria pressing buttons; worldbuilding via dialogue. Their job for the city is to fix things, but Kamiya and Teppei immediately become the wrench in Iria’s plans when they trip into the teleporter to the Zone (an alternate dimension Bob set up for fighting Zeiram) while investigating a strange building leeching electricity. This leads into the core of the film: Iria and Bob trying to take down Zeiram while Kamiya and Teppei do their best to survive, and occasionally help.

Cue campy everything.

Iria has some cool gadgets; the Zone, the teleporter, the stasis-field. She also can’t aim a gun to save her life—most bullets land 5 or 10 feet away from Zeiram, which would maybe be fine if she wasn’t standing 5 or 10 feet away when firing. That’s okay though, because Zeiram would also miss the whole damn barrel, let alone the fish. Why even choose guns if y’all are that inaccurate.

Things get more interesting when Iria leaves the Zone, accidentally abandoning Teppei and Kamiya. Reluctant and squishy, our humans have a much deeper fear of Zeiram and its unfortunate minions than the ever-stoic Iria. They show their fear, relief, and humor readily, turning a fairly boring sequence of “nothing works against the monster” into “oh shit, run!”

Not that I could do better, but Yūko Moriyama’s performance is probably one of the weakest links. It never feels like she’s really afraid, or angry, or excited, she’s calm even when she says “I need to calm down, I’m being too impatient.” There can be value in characters who don't reveal a lot of emotion (I’m as much of a sucker for Clint Eastwood as anyone else) but there’s something about Iria that didn’t -bite- for me, or convey the same intensity.

This isn’t helped by the shots of the monster literally within arms distance of her during the fights. Our protagonists use their small size and nimbleness to escape from the creature, which should be eminently achievable given how slow and heavy it is, only for an over-the-shoulder of the monster will reveal that it is, in fact, within arms reach of them. This is never a shock, an “oh fuck it’s literally right there” moment; it’s always, “Ah, exactly how far away I thought it was, just enough space to throw this grenade at it.” ???

It doesn’t take long to understand that our characters are here for the long haul; they aren’t going to die, they’re going to kill the monster eventually, and real danger doesn’t exist. This certainly takes the edge off, and not in a good way.

The tension is further eroded by some sequences that just take longer than they should. Several montages at the beginning spend a lot of time saying nothing; when Iria fights with Zeiram, it’s usually a loop of her shooting and missing, Zeiram shooting and missing, rinse lather repeat for 3 minutes.

I don’t want to be too scathing about this—it feels more like a miss in the editing room (maybe a desire to not waste footage?) than a real faux pas. The action rises, the climax is climactic and not through cheap music swells—I care about the characters and want them to win. And the theme comes through loud and clear: despite the banality of human kind on an interstellar scale, we’re not totally useless. Hell, some of us might even be worth saving.

Iria’s ineffectiveness (and early scorn) creates opportunities for Kamiya and Teppei to display their cleverness, devotion, and bravery in the face of terror. These qualities are bolstered by the everyday-ness of their characters; they aren’t Avatar Aang or Gandalf, they’re Sokka and Samwise Gamgee, and I love that. “The chosen one” is hard to get right and chronically overused.

What Zeiram lacks in cinematic polish it makes up for in creative spirit. The chemistry between the characters and the imaginative creature design add up to a film that’s fun to watch, even if it’s not exactly thrilling.

Is it campy? For sure. Is that a problem? It’s an aesthetic. Personally, I love a film that comes up with interesting ideas, takes risks, and has fun trying to put it all together. I’ll take that any day over a movie with perfect blocking, lighting, and pacing but no style to speak of. So, thanks Weird Wednesdays, it was a pleasure.

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Zeiram: Truly Tokusatsu