Karaoke Terror — also called The Complete Japanese Showa Songbook — is a sharp social satire that chronicles the rivalry between a gang of teenaged punks and a clan of well-to-do thirty-something women. Adapted from a novel by Ryu Murakami (whose writing credits include the Takashi Miike thriller Audition), Tetsuo Shinohara's film takes an unusually even-keeled approach to its black comedy sensibilities that, while novel, deadens much of its intended bite.

After a chance encounter with the adolescent Shugioka leaves the eldest of the "Midories" dead, the clan of "old" women bans together to plot revenge on the killer. Once the boy is lying in a pool of his own blood, his friends regroup to search for clues that lead them onto the trail of these suddenly blood-thirsty females. Soon they are thinning each others' ranks at an alarming rate, and not even their mutual fondness for Karaoke (the only reference to the films' title) can keep them from blowing themselves apart with rocket launchers and atomic bombs.

Entertaining in short bursts, Karaoke Terror is at its strongest when examining the frank discussions of murder and revenge within both groups of johnny-come-lately killers. The extraordinary lengths they go to in order to acquire new weapons is quite amusing, and it is here that Shinohara's deadpan approach pays dividends. These bonding scenes tend to drag on unnecessarily long however, and become a far too frequent part of the films' monotone texture. Even the Dead or Alive-esque climax fails to elicit a change in pulse rate due to its unbearably protracted lead-in scenes.

Though its premise screams "camp", Karaoke Terror is shockingly mundane in its treatment of such off-kilter themes. Shinohara is always content to keep his film firmly rooted in reality, even when the Midories (clad in black SWAT gear) infiltrate the boys' cross-dressing Karaoke session and blast them into fish-sized chunks with a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. This might have been hilarious in the hands of more outlandish filmmaker (Miike, I'm looking at you), but Shinohara's lackluster style makes it seem like an ordinary everyday occurrence.

Rudimentary character development only serves to further deepen the chasm between the films promising thematic material and its sleepwalking cinematography, as boys and women alike are dispatched without any emotional impact whatsoever. While competently composed, Shinohara's restrained approach makes the film feel like a waking coma, especially as it nears the two hour mark. Serviceable as a comment on contemporary generational relations in Japan, Karaoke Terror is a thoroughly ineffectual film that will likely turn off all but the most intrepid of genre film enthusiasts.

Thumbs Sideways. Though clever at times, Karaoke Terror is far too mundane for its sadistic subject matter.