Meatball Machine (2005)

Review by Sean Patterson



"If you really love her...kill her as soon as possible."

Yoji is a shy Japanese factory worker. When the woman he pines after is infected with an alien parasite, he must overcome his passive nature and save her. That's the story, anyway. It doesn't matter, though, as Meat Ball Machine is more about gore and epic battles.
The alien parasites, or "necroborgs" don't just live inside their hosts a-la the Alien movies. They attach themselves to their hosts' chest and sprout tendrils before drilling eyepieces into their skull. The completed transformation is bizarre and fantastic, combining Star Trek-like borg and zombies into some kind of bio-mechanical power armor capable of sprouting various weapons.
The costuming and makeup is obviously low-budget (as is all of the movie) rubbery, but it's so meticulously crafted and over-the-top that it ends up looking amazingly bad-ass. The puppetry of the alien parasites is similarly well done.
The movie isn't perfect, though. The first half of the movie is mostly wandering around with Yoji, getting a sense of his angst. These slow-moving and poorly-acted segments are interspersed with mysterious and gory battle scenes, though, which helps keep the pace up and the movie interesting. All this ennui pays off in the end though: the last half of the flick is a long and rfantastical, but epic, battle. It goes on so long that it almost becomes silly - and then it becomes totally ridiculous in a glorious way. Swords, saws, missiles, and cannons are just a few of the weapons conjured and used as flesh rains from the sky.
Did I mention the gore? The movie is, at one point, literally showered in blood. The transformation scenes are disgusting and wonderfully perverse. The mix of tech, metal and squishy flesh-rending sounds creates a disgusting symphony. I wholeheartedly recommend Meat Ball Machine to any fan of scifi-horror.