Harawata Man — Harawata Man(DVD)
Harawata Man aka Intestines Man is a 2019 horror comedy from director Yu Nakamoto (Dead Cop, Phone of the Dead and Sensei! Kuchisake-onna Desu!) starring Yûko Gotô (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, and Code Geass), Marie Kai (the Kamen Rider series of movies) and Tsugumi Sakuragi (Ultraman Blazar, Momentary Lily and Hoshi no Samidare).
At only forty-six minutes Harawata Man sits somewhere between a short film and a feature film, director Nakamoto is probably most famous for the cult hit, Phone of the Dead, a hyper-gory comic spoof of Goerge A. Romero’s much-loved dead trilogy. Harawata Man was shot in the same year as that film and with similar end results. A group of university students arrive at an abandoned factory in a remote location with the intention of shooting a low-budget horror movie. Once they get to work, they discover they are not alone in the factory and another film crew are shooting a real-life snuff movie on the same location. All hell breaks loose as our heroes realise, they have woken the sleeping Harawata Man of the title, who it turns out isn’t best pleased with being awoken from his slumber and decides to take revenge on these invaders of his privacy with bloody consequences.
Harawata Man doesn’t try to hide its cheap and cheerful roots, rather it revels in them. It’s a fast-paced horror comedy that doesn’t take itself seriously. The script is tight and the cast does a pretty good job, however, it’s the gas mask-wearing titular character who steals the show. While not as gory as Nakamoto’s other film from the same year, Phone of the Dead, it remains the better of the two films, it flows really well and handles the subject matter with skill and effectiveness, and never outstays its welcome. Nakamoto is never going to receive awards for originality, however, he deserves a lot of credit for creating such a fun little film on a minuscule budget.
The new DVD release from Wild Eye Releasing features a good clean print of the movie (as it should for a film that is only six years old), two trailers for Harawata Man and a trailer reel of other titles being released by Wild Eye Releasing. Overall, this is a solid but bare-bones release for a fun, shortish movie that fans of this sort of low-budget filmmaking will find plenty to enjoy from.