Over the rainbow, precariously above Southern California or Japan, hovers movie heaven. Immense, it needs parceling just for orientation: one lot exclusively for those whose reasons for conception and mega-financing are shrouded in mist, where, unmourned, rest Cleopatra, At Long Last Love, Heaven’s Gate and kin; another, for great successes that defy all reason and art (among the nominees are Titanic and Gladiator); in yet a third, sad monuments house rotting celluloid that died too young of distribution insufficiency.

By no means last, another section merits a visit, too. Here are found movies with no claim to coherence or craft, films that from birth aspired to no more than breaking even. Many in this hallowed ground are of recent interment and never entertained thoughts of survival into theatrical adolescence. In a word, here lie v-cinema productions, made for direct release to video markets. The wonder is at their release at all and about who buys these mostly tawdry affairs.

But such is the work of, among countless practitioners, amazingly prolific and still young Takashi Miike, who can already boast of a New York City retrospective and is now releasing Dead or Alive:Final, the culmination of a trilogy of that name.

In fairness, it must be said that Miike admits he knows little about cinema history. Aiming at not winding up in the red, he churns out TV shows, straight-to-video productions and commercial films, all reputedly filled with taboo images, sex and violence in spades and self-asserted manic incoherence. "Too many logical things will destroy my films," Miike declares.

Compared with Hollywood’s recent excesses, however, this latest effort is not offensive in the slightest. If not particularly original, its futuristic thought-and-sex-control theme is at least not terribly bad. The martial-arts bits are restrained and without ridiculous sounds of sonic-booming fists and feet, and Dictator Mayor Wu’s (Richard Chen II) modelly, hermaphroditic saxophone boy is a nice touch, as is the final two-faced H.R. Giger figure by way of Alien.

Unusual nowadays, there are no sex scenes, for, through an obligatory tin-can drug, 2346 A.D. Yokohama City Hall does away with  heterosexual, i.e., procreative, relations. In contrast, with homosexuality "true love is eternal."

In the cloud-covered dreary city, aided by a few dimwit gangsters who think mostly of money, a mere two or three live as hippie outlaws plotting to rescue society and restore children and family. By chance, they are joined by drifter Ryo (Sho Aikawa), the child-saving, self-admitted "battle replicant" programmed to "take out the enemy."

Opposed to this life-affirming group is official agent Honda (Riki Takeuchi), a super-policeman whose noisy on-screen ineffectuality belies his fearsome reputation. Complicating matters -- although innocuously played -- is the brief, accidental kidnapping of the cop’s only son and an incipient friendship between that son and the pregnant rebel Jyun’s (Josie Ho) much younger brother.

Actually, not an atrocious plot -- a couple more robots are thrown in, as well, who only think they’re flesh-and-blood people -- but, despite some threats here and there and a mild machine-gunning, it goes nowhere. Menace lowers at all points, but nothing develops, little is followed through on, and one finally does not care at all.

Potential symbols abound but are ignored. A handful of lush green mountain- and lakesides contrasts with grimy warehouse interiors, but this seems accidental and meaningless. Colors are washed and the print grainy, but these merely result from blowing up inexpensive 1.85:1 DV caught on a "Sony VX 1000 that you can buy in any camera shop."

Such mindless and careless v-cinema works are aimed squarely at an MTV generation. Somewhere -- perhaps also moldering in a cinema cemetery -- there must exist standards of plot and characterization, development and coherence. For communication and coexistence, a modicum of accepted values and quality is essential. In this final climax of the "DEAD OR ALIVE" series, however, the future (and present) is depicted as unalloyed bleakness: all things merge, there are neither reasons nor connections, and the scary thing is, no one minds.

(Released by Kino International; not rated by MPAA.)