Junk

Junk (2000)

JUNK

Everybody fights

Four crooks rob a jewelery shop, then head for an abandoned factory where they plan to fence the goods to the Yakuza. Unfortunately, their chosen location happens to be the same place where American scientists had previously experimented on resurrecting the dead.

Date of release
2000-01-22
TMDB
4.7 / 10 (23)
Runtime
1h 23m
Genres
Horror, Science Fiction
Director
Atsushi Muroga

Casting

Interesting facts

Junk is a 2000 Japanese horror film written and directed by Atsushi Muroga. A blend of the yakuza and zombie film genres, Junk stars Kaori Shimamura as Saki, a member of a group of jewel thieves. While attempting to deliver stolen goods from a heist to another criminal gang, the thieves must fight to survive against a horde of zombies resulting from secret experiments by the United States military.

Production

Muroga is primarily known for his action and yakuza films, such as Score (1995) and the Gun Crazy series. Following the success of the 1998 film Ring, a friend of Muroga's suggested that he create a horror film. In the Fangoria interview, Muroga stated, "Since I make gun films with lots of shootouts, I felt that the zombie theme would best fit my style."

In preparation for writing the film's screenplay, Muroga rented zombie films from local video stores and watched them, including the first three films of George A. Romero's Dead series, as well as a number of Lucio Fulci films. He later stated that, "If it had a zombie in it, I watched it." Muroga also cited the 1996 film From Dusk till Dawn as an influence on Junk.

For the role of Saki, Muroga wanted an actress reminiscent of Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley in the Alien films. While writing the film's script, Muroga decided he wanted Kaori Shimamura, a friend who had expressed an interest in working with him, to play Saki. Actress Miwa was cast as the intelligent zombie Kyoko, with Muroga stating: "I wanted someone who could be believable as both a loving wife and as the leader of all zombies.

According to Muroga, the American characters depicted in the film were actual soldiers stationed on a base in Okinawa. Author Jim Harper wrote that the US soldiers in the film were locals from Thailand with no known prior acting experience.

Junk was shot in 2000, with filming taking place in Okinawa, Japan. Many of the gore effects were accomplished by using meat bought from a local market. Muroga said that he "was geared to make the most extreme zombie film I could", a philosophy that included asking the film's art director to increase the amount of blood used in scenes, and instructing actors to shove large amounts of meat in their mouths when needed.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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