"No one knows how long it's existed. They say there's a graveyard where only unloved yakuza are buried. Ryuji Naruo... That's a name every post World War yakuza remembers and loathes. Naruo belonged to a small yakuza family in Tokyo after the war. As an assassin he killed a large number of people, both yakuza and straight."

"Mr. A", age 75, former executive of the Akashi family in Shinjuku, has this to say. "He wasn't human. He wasn't human. He was like everybody else, except when it's time to kill... he turned into a demon. Everybody, both friend and foe, was scared of him. He was a monster, really. But his life ended in a tragic way. His brother began to order him to murder solely for his personal gains. Eventually Naruo became addicted to heroin."

To be honest, I'm not sure what Ryuji Naruo has to do with this film. He does nothing, beyond being involved in the resurrection of a completely different yakuza. (The resulting zombie has two people in his head, but the film mostly ignores this. He might occasionally mention wartime kamikaze pilots, though, because Naruo was one.) Anyway, this film is just what it sounds like. Gangsters murder, betray, rape, etc. Trashy or damaged idiots have sex with them. (If you want to end up working in the red light district, fall in love with a yakuza.) At their worst, these gangsters reminded me of toddlers. Head-bangingly stupid and utterly lacking self-control or empathy? That's a two-year-old, except with guns.

The first half-hour is zombie-less and just involves boring yakuza. I only liked Kaori, who's deaf, pregnant and in love with Hitoshi Ozawa. Even though he hits her. She's got terrible taste in men, but she was the only person I didn't hate.

There's a gang war. People are sent on suicide missions. The boss orders a burial in the "yakuza graveyard", even though one assumes everyone else who dies here just got dumped on the street. Why not build a lime pit? Anyway, the gravedigger is warned by a mysterious witch woman not to dig in a certain spot, so he has a Yakuza Brain Failure. I wanted him dead so much. The result... YAKUZA ZOMBIE!!!

I quite liked the zombie himself. Ozawa's staggering, twitchy performance is unusual, as if playing someone who's brain-damaged but with enough intelligence to control occasional movements. He doesn't bite anyone. Instead, he strangles, breaks necks, stabs, shoots, etc. He retains his memories and motivations, to some extent. He knows he wants to kill yakuza, yet he'll also carry out hits for his boss. To all intents and purposes, he's just another gangster except hard to control, unpredictable, smelly and struggling with his speech and physical coordination.

Also, "no biting" means no zombie infection. Our hero is the only undead.

I still couldn't stand the film, though. I hated almost everyone in it and regarded the final death toll as a happy ending. That said, though, it's not as trashy as you'd think. It's far classier than Junk, Versus and Wild Zero, for instance, three silly Japanese yakuza-and-zombies films from the year before. (It's less entertaining than them, though.) This is a well-constructed tragedy of betrayal, power struggles and broken promises in the Japanese underworld, with actors who take their roles seriously even when on-screen with a zombie. Or indeed when playing one. Hitoshi Ozawa is the best thing about this film.

Personally, though, I had no time for them. Tossers, one and all.