Japanese pop culture has never had much in common with Western standards of good taste, wholesomeness, or decency. And thank God for that! No one could make a film as outrageous or over the top as Keko Mask if she or he had an ounce of self-consciousness. But if you grew up in a culture in which strange violence and sexual fetishism are part of the manga (comic books) everyone reads, Keko Mask makes perfect sense.
The film is set at a girls' boarding school where a jester-attired, lunatic headmaster (given to such lines as "Screaming girls and Wagner music go well together") tortures and humiliates his students in the belief that extreme discipline is the basis of education. When things go too far as in the opening scene, when the headmaster has a couple of bullies chainsaw a bad student's clothes off Keko Mask appears! She's the girls' secret savior, a "costumed" crime-fighter whose outfit consists of nothing more than a mask, boots, and a cape. If this sounds peculiar, there's a bizarre Japanese popcult reason for her dearth of clothes. Lacking any kind of superpowers, Keko Mask stuns her enemies male and female with a flash of her vagina: the most beautiful in the world, we're told by an unlucky villain. Unlucky because while the villains are frozen in admiration, Keko jumps onto their shoulders and snaps their necks with ninja leg locks!
You'd have to work hard to find a movie with a more absurd point of view than Keko Mask. It simply isn't on Western radar screens, and yet it has enough insane glee and energy to leap across cultural bad-taste zones like all great exploitation cinema, from Russ Meyer to Roger Corman. A basic knowledge of Japanese censorship laws and pop tropes will make this movie funnier, but it's not necessary to enjoy it. If unbridled lunacy and a glimpse into the reptilian fantasies of another culture sounds like a good time to you, take Keko Mask home. But treat her right. The dorms are littered with the bloated corpses of punks like you....
Keko Mask: US$25. Video Search of Miami: +1 (305) 279 9773, email: vsom@aol.com.
STREET CRED
Striking a NerveThe End of Science
Let Your Fingers Do the Web Walking
Keko Mask
