Review of Crazy Lips (2000) by Brian S — 01 Oct 2010

Crazy? Yes, completely nuts, in fact. A mother and two sisters are trying to clear a son of charges that he's a serial killer who murdered three women. They enlist the help of the Mamiya Psychic Research Institute, which consists of a spooky psychic woman and her husband, Touma. The family home is constantly surrounded by reporters who carry continuous live broadcasts of everything that happens in the house. And then... reality takes a turn for the surreal.

The psychics are really a cult dedicated to bringing a god of some sort to earth, and they're going to accomplish it through a regimen of sex, humiliation, and resurrecting the spirits of the headless murder victims. They come to dominate the family, but they also find out that the main character has her own psychic powers when the headless ghosts start killing for her. And then the woman does a bad musical number shortly after a detective has his head twisted at her behalf. Meanwhile, the psychic reveals that the brother is innocent and the killer is a woman... or maybe more than one woman. Soon, a secret task force is watching the family through their television set. The woman in the task force speaks English (more or less), likes large guns and sings "The Star Spangled Banner." It all culminates in a running karate battle that includes axes, baseball bats and a scalping when the brother shows up, and that monster-god is coming...

"Crazy Lips" is played for black humor as much as shock value. It's very much in the vein of Takashi Miike's "Visitor Q," and people who couldn't stomach that notorious flick should probably avoid "Crazy Lips" as well. The narrative style is bizarre, twisting and turning like some kind of half-lucid nightmare. There's a good deal of graphic violence, though much is left to the viewer's imagination via the strategic use of red flashes at key moments of potential gore (which is in limited supply in this film). There's also a lot of sexual innuendo and somewhat graphic sex scenes, so this is definitely not one for those who are shocked senseless by things like a mother and daughter holding their second daughter in place while forcing her to have sex with a dead man hanging by a noose. You have been warned!

If you can tolerate that sort of thing, though, "Crazy Lips" is a very good reality-gone-mad flick. It's not quite as well-done, nor as graphic, as "Visitor Q," but definitely worth a watch by those who enjoy watching things melt in a hallucinatory fashion.