Last Supper (DVD)

Dr. Yuji Kotorida is hungry. Instead of going to the supermarket and buying some toaster-tarts, he decides to fry up some fat from a lipo surgery he's just completed. Sounds delicious, doesn't it? No? OK, then how about some nice, gooey sausage made from the sun-ripened corpse of a suicide you just happened to stumble upon? Tummy still not growling? Then be sure and try the lightly buttered cheeks from a chain-smoking old man.

In case you haven't guessed, The Last Supper is a real smorgasbord of gross-out horror about a cannibalistic cosmetic surgeon who can only get his jollies by eating the ladies up… literally. It's a Japanese import, based on The Shonan Flesh-Eating Doctor, a controversial work by hit horror- writer Kei Ohishi (he of The Grudge movies novelization fame). Shot cheaply on video (and looking it), the torrid tale is directed in stark, vulgar, voyeuristic fashion by Osamu Fukutani.

Even though the story is nothing new (see: fictional characters Patrick Bateman and Hannibal Lecter, or real-life flesh mongers Ed Gein or Armin Meiwes), it's still just compelling enough to keep on watching. The lead actor, Masaya Kato, does a good job as the so-called "Hand of God" (nicknamed so, for his skill with a scalpel — he transformes even the plainest Janes into picture-perfect babes).

There are definitely some drawbacks here. The Last Supper does have a cheap look about it, and the script is pretty presumptive — the doctor's sudden appetite is never really explained, and he gets away with so much it devolves into high comedy in some instances.

The DVD is supposed to have a choice between subtitles and dubbing; I prefer subtitles, but no matter what I did I could not get them to work, so I had to go for the dubbed version. The dubbed version not only doesn't offer any translation for the Japanese characters often shown in newspapers and on the doctor's computer monitor, the voice acting isn't very good.

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