Tuesday, March 31, 2009

A REALLY Bad Hair Day - Exte: Hair Extensions

Okay, we all know that most Japanese horror movies involve scary white-faced ghosts with super-long black hair, right?


Exte: Hair Extensions operates in the pared-down mode: remove the "scary white-faced ghosts" part and just concentrate on the hair.



Yes, kids, this is a movie about....killer hair.



You know when people say "The premise really isn't as stupid as it sounds?"



Well, you can forget that, because this is pretty darn stupid.


Plot, such as it is: the corpse of a brutally tortured and murdered girl has hair that keeps growing and growing and GROWING, its follicles saturated with vengeful malevolent intent.



Creepy psycho morgue attendant harvests said hair and makes hair extensions and wigs out of it and sells it to salons. People wear the extensions. Mayhem ensues.



Plucky heroine hairdresser apprentice, played by Chiaki Kuriyama, who was Takako Chigusa in Battle Royale and GoGo Yubari in Kill Bill Vol. 1, eventually overcomes crazy psycho guy and out-of-control killer weave and lives happily ever after with cute little niece of abusive (and dead) drug addict sister, and with fabulous hair.



If I had directed this movie I would have had amazing samurai battles with combs and scissors and hairspray cans made into flamethrowers. Sadly, this movie makes the colossal mistake of playing it straight.



They don't even go for the awesome idea, which is harnessing the power of the hair, because lord knows there are people I would like to strangle with my hair.




Except for the morgue attendant guy, who IS played for laughs - I think. He comes across like a crazed Sixties hippie version of Mickey Mouse, wearing a floppy fisherman's hat, wacky comic overalls with a heart sewn on the bib, hi-top sneakers, and smiley face buttons.





I mean, how can you possibly make a movie where the murderer is an out-of-control WIG and expect anyone to be scared by it? Cousin Itt was scarier.





Maybe if everyone in the movie had a fauxhawk. THEN I'd be scared.






Mainly at the terrible fashion choice.



5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome! New plan! KWD enemies using my hair. Great review.

Anonymous said...

I have totally had nightmares about choking on my own hair! (Back when it was long.) Eep!

The Vicar of VHS said...

FOLLICLES--SATURATED WITH VENGEFUL, MALEVOLENT INTENT! should *totally* have been the tag line!

>>amazing samurai battles with combs and scissors and hairspray cans made into flamethrowers

If *you* had directed the movie, my friend, it would have pride of place on the Vicar's DVD shelf, b/c that sounds *awesome.* In fact, just the mental image conjured by that sentence is better than the last two George Romero films I watched.

Get the Costuminatrix a studio exec to pitch to, STAT! ;)

The Duke of DVD said...

Of all of those, the first and the last fill me with the most revulsion. I can never see a shot of The Ring without feeling like a goose walked over my grave, or perhaps a gypsy.

Fantastic rundown of horrific hair, bravo!

The Costuminatrix said...

Lady Mishegas: Gives a whole new meaning to "killer hair," doesn't it?

Joan Arkham: The idea is to choke OTHER PEOPLE with you hair! But yes, there is plenty of nightmare fodder featuring hair-choking here.

Vicar: The idea of "hairdresser ninja battles" is sorely untapped in the movie market! SOMEONE out there must want to pay us a lot of money to make that film. Incidentally I hear there is yet ANOTHER murderous hair movie out there, also Japanese....entitled "The Wig." Its cover box is really REALLY grisly.

THe Duke: What an honor to have my humble blog visited by the best-dressed nobleman since Helmut Berger in "Dorian Gray!" Yes, I have friends who do not care for films such as "Ringu" but I do get the shivers seeing that shot of Sadako emerging from the TV. Of course, Richard Blaise from Top Chef also gives me chills, but they are of the "douche-chill" variety.