The Yakuza part is a lot easier to understand than the Apocalypse part. Kamiura (Lily Frankie) is the Yakuza for a small town, acting as a benevolent godfather. He used to be part of a larger syndicate. He is also a vampire. The syndicate comes after him with a Japanese version of Van Helsing and succeed in killing him, but he is able to pass on his vampire powers to Kagayama (Hayato Ichihara) a compassionate understudy. Kagayama doesn't know how to control himself and starts a chain reaction where everyone in the town gets bit. The people in the town decide they are all Yakuza and don't need to pay protection money to the real Yakuza. There is a theme that develops that the Yakuza are the real blood suckers who need to feed off of civilians to survive. There was a goblin in the film that used an ET finger touch while they played a riff from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Go Figure.Now I was okay up with the film at this point and then we entered the head scratch phase where Japan's idea of a plague of frogs is different than the acceptable western thought. This was apparently the "apocalypse" aspect of the film which was silly. Now I would not have minded the silly ending if the film had started out that way.Guide: F-bomb. Near male nudity. Brief rape scene.

One thing you can't accuse director Takashi Miike of is predictability: I was surprised enough to learn that some of the Yakuza in this film are vampires, but I would never have guessed that Yakuza Apocalypse would feature a man in a frog costume doing karate. Or that the 'man' inside the costume actually has a frog head (complete with Kermit style neck frill). Or that pulling a plaster off the frog/man's belly button would result in a giant man in a frog costume emerging from beneath the Earth's crust — a fire-breathing Frogzilla that stomps on buildings.On the Miike scale of Asian weirdness, Yakuza Apocalypse is right at the top, up there with The Happiness of the Katakuris and Gozu, but in terms of entertainment value I would put it somewhere between those two films: not as joyously absurd as Katakuris but nowhere near as tedious as Gozu. For those who decide to give this one a whirl, be prepared for such weird and wondrous sights as a Kappa goblin, a woman whose brain melts (and leaks out of her ears), a shiny truck armed with mini-guns, a garden of animated children, and one of the strangest (and drawn out) final fight scenes I've ever seen as Hayato Ichihara and The Raid's Yayan Ruhian proceed to repeatedly punch each other squarely in the face until one of them falls over.5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

Oh my god! This is either a work of genius on the part of the director (seeing what he could put his actors through) or the work of a lunatic! He has made some truly amazing films in the past (Audition and 13 Assassins immediately spring to mind) and if you haven't seen these then you must.I know that with a Mikke movie, you are going to get a little weirdness but this was off the charts.I would put this next to 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' as a film you need to watch.So bad, it's good.But if you watch this and understand completely what it's about, could you let me know.

Miike produced a myriad of dull, forgettable movies in the last 10 years, but Yakuza Apocalypse could be one of his last epic classics for a while. This movie is a mad, funny, dark, unpredictable, unconventional and violent Miike classic and has everything we came to expect from the director's brilliant movie-directing.Don't let the whole "vampire" elements put you off. Yakuza Apocalypse doesn't intent to take itself too seriously, but you can't watch 30 min in the movie without noticing Miike's genius all over it. It's outrageously funny.I won't dwell into the movie's plot, and Ichihara's brilliant performance, but Yakuza Apocalypse is really worth a watch, especially for Miike fans. In all modesty, this could well be his best movie since Gozu, and that's saying a lot. A must-watch!