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Furuchi (Kawai Pappara) one day discovers a Kotatsu-heater (kind of a
combination of small heater & coffee table, which is virtually
unknown outside of Japan) on a scrapyard & takes it home for
improved comfort during the winter months. The heater though proves to
soon mutate into a lifeform of its own with a predilection for killing
people. This, however, is not Furuchi's most pressing problem, since on
one hand the imprint of the heaters ring on his forehead protects him
from the heater's evil, on the other hand, the rock band from next door
(Bakufu Slump, of which actor Kawai Pappara - in real life - was the
lead guitarist) not only keep him awake with their noise at all hours
but also bully him & want to get at his girlfriend Kurumi (Kaoru
Okunuki). The only one who seems to be really worried about the evil
heater is Furuchi's boss Hama (Akira Emoto), who soon decides to take
the heater with him to disassemble it & find out about its abnormal
powers. Unfortunately though, the heater has foreseen this & put
another similar but harmless heater in its place, leaving Hama with no
clue at all while it happily goes on killing people. It all ends with
a rockconcert by Furuchi's neighbours, which they hold in their own
appartment, where they (& their audience) are attacked by the heater
on a large scale, but in steps Hama, who has built himself an armour out
of another heater (that looks incredibly cool & incredibly stupid at
the same time), & he fights & almost beats the evil heater. In
the end though, it's up to Furuchi to stop0 the heater again by
re-placing the heater's ring (when it fell off, all the evil started in
the first place. As the movie does not take itself serious at
all, it manages to stay entertaining, it is however trying way too hard
to be over-the-top to qualify as a really great comedy. Instead of
taking the great premise of a heater - representiong conservative
Japanese values - gone mad in an average appartment building, the film
portrays all the building's inhabitants as eccentric in their own way -
from the evil rock band to the couple (Hisanori Ogura, Shigeru Muroi)
who desperately but clumsily wants to get rid of a corpse, to an elderly
couple that commits suicide but tries to not bother their neighbours
with it - thus robbing the basic idea of much of its impact, thus making
Battle Heater a rather pointless if macabre comedy.
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