Vermilion Pleasure Night (Japan 2001)

Rating: **
Review Date: 7/26/09

Perverse and inexplicably weird, even by Japanese standards. This is a mildly erotic sketch comedy show featuring a half dozen pretty Japanese girls singing, dancing, fighting, lampooning Japanese culture, and doing a variety of off-the-wall performance art. It's occasionally interesting and sometimes funny, but mostly it's just uncomfortably strange. The girls are all quite talented, but it sometimes looks like they're trying too hard to be either sexy or funny. Two of the girls are extremely attractive, and one of them is amazingly robotic and fascinating to watch. The show also features some animated shorts and claymation bits which add to the variety. However, the show's biggest claim to fame is that it introduced the world to the insanity known as "The Fuccons" and launched an entire season of incomprehensible mannequin comedy with Mikey and his mannequin family. I certainly can't recommend it, but if you have an interest in experimental pop art, singing cooking shows, J-pop go-go girls, mannequin humor, drug culture, platform shoes, and general absurdity, it might be worth checking out.