The Machine Girl

Noboru Iguchi, of Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police fame, is following up his phallic-faced ladies with an army of robot geishas. But don’t worry, just because she’s proper doesn’t mean her face doesn’t turn into a buzz saw.

Thanks to Twitch for the tip and scoring the first look. It’s pretty amazing to think that a director’s whole style could be mechanical arms, blood, guts, and figuring out new and creative ways to shove things in his characters eyes. I believe that was fried shrimp eyes that we get a glimpse of in this trailer. Can’t wait to see more Iguchi.

Source: (io9)

So most of us are aware of the Japanese splatter film The Machine Girl. which was one of my Top Ten Favorites for 2008. However, what many of you probably dont know is that there is already a twenty minute short film sequel to the blood filled original. This short sequel is titled Hajirai Machine Girl and has a new girl take over the mantle from the previous film. It revolves around the character Yoshie as she must overcome her shyness to become the new Machine Girl.

Yeah I know, sounds a little strange but the good news is the good folks at TwitchFilm got their hands on the trailer for this new short film sequel and it is more of the rediculousness that the first film had. However, be warned that some people may find this new follow up a little on the tasteless side as one of the weapons…..well, lets just say it comes out of the body instead of being attached to it. Intrigued? Then check out the trailer for Hajirai Machine Girl below. It’s in Japanese so dont expect captions but it’s more Machine Girl mayhem to enjoy!

The 20-minute Hajirai Machine Girl short sequel is an added bonus feature to the new Japanese DVD release of the original film. No word on any release of this short film any other way other then as a Japanese DVD bonus feature. Also, keep your eyes peeled for more information as a full lenght sequel titled The Drill Bra Sisters is set to be made sometime soon.

(Hajirai Machine Girl trailer starts at about the 40 second mark)

Source : Horror-movies.ca

We’ve been talking about it for a while now and now you can get a look for yourself: the trailer for Noboru Iguchi’s Hajirai Machine Girl has arrived. An ultra-low budget sequel to Iguchi’s already low budget cult hit The Machine Girl, this was prepared as a bonus feature for Machine Girl‘s Japanese DVD release and picks up the story with secondary character Yoshie taking up the Machine Girl mantle, though she must first overcome her shyness (hajirai) to do so. Overcome her shyness? Yeah, safe to say she does that … the weaponry in this case ends up somewhere a little more *ahem* personal than the stump of a severed arm.

source : twitch

One-armed bandit: Machine Girl’s Asami lost an arm in her battle against a shady ninja family, but that doesn’t mean you should stand in the way of her quest for vengeance (witness the poor slob in the rear).

Ho boy, are you ready for the nightmares? That’s practically guaranteed this weekend as the Another Hole in the Head fest closes out with its final mow-down. Fans of arterial spray, extreme Japanese filmmaking, random acts of unkind dismemberment, and fatal flying guillotines will be able to get their geek on one last, but hella amazing time with this last-minute double feature of Japanese shock-and-argh at Brava, showcasing the late add Tokyo Gore Police and crowd fave Machine Girl.

MACHINE GIRL

Possibly the most exuberantly bloody and cartoonish offering in the fest, which bites off/pays homage to Grindhouse AND Kill Bill. This archetypal Japanese revenge story – passionate and cruel by turns – hinges on the trials and tribulations of Ami Hyuga (Asami), a high-school basketball nut, fresh-faced daughter of an accused killer, and loyal big sister. Her younger brother becomes snared by spiralling gambling (!?) debts and ends up in hock to the local budding young hoods, including the son of a yakuza/ninja kingpin (whose devil ‘do bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Prodigy’s lead vocalist) – it doesn’t end prettily. Something snaps in Ami, and she goes after the kids responsible for her bro’s death, only to come up against a formidable array of monstrous parents driven to protect their equally rotten offspring. Losing her arm – slowly – in a nasty torture scene just sends her over the edge. Don’t even ask yourself how she can possibly operate a attachable machine gun with a stump – Rose MacGowan figured out how in Planet Terror, so can she.

You won’t soon forget the memorably ’60s-ish comicbook-like action sequence opener, evocative of both Seijun Suzuki and Sin City, or the finale, less a balletic bloodbath than a completely over-the-top showdown between the “Super Mourner Gang” of grieving parents (just because your son chose to become a ninja doesn’t mean you don’t hurt), giant holes blasted in bodies, a driller bra donned by the meanest mama ever, and a scalping scene that combines disco strobing and an almost Looney Tunes-esque dark comedy.

TOKYO GORE POLICE

Also produced by the venerable exploitation house Nikkatsu (well, they made all kinds of films, though their “roman porno” and “pink” softcore films brought them infamy) with a few of the same actors popping up, Tokyo Gore Police is the eagerly awaited, latest turn by the cruelly beauteous Audition S&M star Eihi Shiina. Here, she’s a girl cop – part of a sinister Philip K. Dick-ish privatized police squad commissioned with ridding the world of monstrous psychopaths who grow weapons out of whatever body part they lose. Sound familiar? Yes, these are the same good – or bad, depending on how you feel about this level of gore – people at Nikkatsu who gave you Machine Girl.

Directed by first-time auteur Yoshihiro Nishimura (who crafted special effects makeup for Machine GIrl, the also memorable Hole in the Head features Exte and Meatball Machine), Tokyo Gore Police is chock-full of disturbing scenes: point-blank exploding heads (recurring like a child’s bad dreams), exposed brains, intimations of limbless sexual servitude, and natch the Snail Girl, above. But the movie’s blend of Ultraman live-action monster brouhahas and a Burner-y, nouveau goth-steampunk aesthetic that, personally, pulls me out of the narrative. I felt a little less invested in Tokyo Gore Police than the more, ahem, classically B-minded Machine Girl. But, hey, this isn’t a competition – unless you want to see how far I can throw a severed hand – so stick around for both flicks. Shock fiends won’t be disappointed.

by Peter Martin

Forget about a blood bath, this movie features enough red syrup for a blood flood. Maybe you saw Rose McGowan in Grindhouse and thought, ‘Pretty good, but not enough severed limbs and geysers of blood. And wouldn’t it be cooler if she had a machine gun arm instead of a leg, and it had a chainsaw attachment?’ Well, have I got a movie for you!

Noburu Iguchi’s The Machine Girl, which was released on DVD last Tuesday, features copious spraying fountains of blood and dozens of detached body parts. Add ninjas, yakuza, a flying guillotine and a drill bra to your basic ‘revenge for the murder of an innocent loved one’ formula, and I think you already know if this movie is up your alley.

Scott W. pointed to the trailer over at Twitch last year and, truthfully, nearly all of the movie’s best bits are highlighted in that two-minute blast of gore. But, really, if you’re a fan of this kind of stuff, you’ll want to see all the action sequences in their complete, unrated, unadulterated, possibly nauseating glory. Watching the entire movie also makes it abundantly clear that the filmmakers did indeed have their tongues planted firmly in cheek. After all, you can’t slice up this much latex and spill this much blood without having a demented sense of humor, can you?

The Machine Girl starts by showing Japanese schoolgirl Ami (Minase Yashiro, making her acting debut) in spectacular action, annihilating a gang of schoolboy thugs, and then rewinds six months to tell her origin story. Ami and her brother Yu are teen orphans; their parents were accused of murder before killing themselves. Yu and his best friend Takashi are killed by arrogant teen gang leader Sho Kimura (Nobuhiro Nishihara); his parents (Kentaro Shimazu and Honoka) are maniacally protective yakuza. Ami swears revenge, loses her arm to the yakuza, and teams up with Takashi’s mom Miki (Asami), whose husband builds Ami a new machine gun arm.

The pace rarely flags, and if you get bored you can just fast forward to the gore, but the dramatic scenes are well-designed to establish the right tone and provide context for the explosions of viscera.

Tokyo Shock’s DVD looks good for a movie that was probably shot on video. If you have an irrational fear of subtitles, you could wuss out and listen to the English dub, but the Japanese-language version is much stronger. Both Japanese and English tracks are available in DD 5.1 and DD 2.0. The English subtitles are well-timed and easy to read.

“Behind the Scenes of Machine Girl” is a decent 10-minute promo piece with sound bite interviews and production footage, but no details on any of the gore effects. Neither do we get to hear anything extensive from writer/director Noburu Iguchi. The original trailer is included, as well as trailers for Heroes Two, Death Trance, Lone Wolf and Cub (TV series) and Zebraman.

The Machine Girl is one of those movies that is successful only because it tries to be bad. (Remember Snakes on a Plane?) Of course, that doesn’t make it good. Ninjas, flying guillotines, drill bras, a girl with a machine gun for an arm — how could you not want to watch this movie after viewing the trailer? Unfortunately, Girl i s also one of those movies with a trailer that shows all the best parts, rendering everything in between underwhelming by comparison.

Want to have a good time? Don’t watch the trailer, gather a bunch of friends, and sneak some forties into this movie. The trailer spoiled all the best parts for me, but I can certainly imagine how outrageous this movie would’ve been had I walked into it blindly. The conundrum here is that most people probably would have no interest in watching this movie without seeing the trailer. And if you have seen the trailer, well, I guess the movie is still worth watching, but I’d either try to sneak in through the fire exit or wait for it to come out on DVD.

Whew. With that said and done, Girl is a Japanese revenge fantasy that revolves around Ami Hyuga (Asami), whose brother is brutally murdered by bullies for lunch money. In a Kill Bill-like fashion, Hyuga starts hunting down his killers one by one. But when she confronts the ninja/Yakuza family responsible for her brother’s death, she’s outnumbered and captured. Rather than killing her, the family chooses to torture her, first slicing off her fingers and then her left arm. She manages to escape and seeks refuge with a friend who engineers a machine-gun arm for her to aid her in her revenge quest.

You’ll get everything you want out of a movie with this premise. It’s a 90-minute splatterfest with enough blood spraying to fill a swimming pool. The bad guys are so bad they’re not just senseless killers; they’re also necrophiliacs. It’s always fun to see how far the Japanese will go with the bizarre and the grotesque, and clearly in this movie there’s no limit line.

Director Noboru Iguchi made a wise decision by not taking the movie seriously. The over-the-top visuals and cheesy lines like “What would Mom and Dad say, before they killed themselves over murder allegations?” make it clear this movie is a big joke aimed to amuse in the cheapest ways possible. Takashi Miike made the mistake of trying to make a serious movie out of Ichi the Killer, which was about a sexually repressed man who fights with blades that come out of his shoes. That movie is as repugnant as Gi rl but is lacking the laughs, which makes it feel more like you’re watching a snuff film. Awkward.

Aka Kataude mashin gâru.

Reviewed at the 2008 Hole in the Head Film Festival.

Reviewer: Brian Chen

So anybody viewing this product already knows what they should expect. I mean, look at the DVD art… you’re not going to get oscar-winning cinema here, but what you will get is some of the more violent, gory, gruesome and action-filled movies i have ever seen. We all know about Ichi the Killer (Unrated Edition) and Riki-Oh – The Story of Ricky and i think this could be lumped into the same category. Totally over the top action and violence to see how far the creators can go. So down to MACHINE GIRL specifically. Acting and overall plot were pretty god considering… A young girl’s brother and his friend are killed by a gang of high-school aged yakuza and she seeks revenge, only to get her arm chopped off in the process. She finds herself at the parent’s house of the other kid who was killed and they nurse her back to health. They also make her a gigantic machine gun arm just in time to have ninjas show up to make use of it. The father is killed and “Machine Girl” and the mother of the other dead boy basically go out to seek revenge on the rest of the family. EXTREME violence ensues throughout – holes blown in people’s head, chests; decapitations; drill-bras; limbs chopped off; bodies cut into pieces, Kill Bill, Volume 1 style blood-sprays – the works. I was surprised to see that the special effects were for the most part top notch in the old-school manner. Most were all practical effects and all worked – even if they were a lil cheesy, i think it worked for the movie considering it was all that way. This will be a great movie to add to a gore-hound’s collection, or those who are fond of grindhouse-revival cinema. I’m proud to add it to my collection (of over 850 titles) and can’t wait to show it off to my friends who could stomach it… lol

The Machine Girl is available right now on Amazon

Above is a sales poster for Noboru Iguchi’s The Machine Girl (Kataude mashin gâru). Distribution rights for the movie – a Fever Dreams LLC (U.S.) production – are to be offered for sale by Nikkatsu Corporation (Nikkatsu K.K.) at this year’s American Film Market (AFM) in Santa Monica, California.

The screenplay for The Machine Girl was written by Iguchi. The movie stars Minase Yashiro and Asami. Yoshihiro Nishimura and his company Nishimura Motion Picture Model Makers Group (Y.K. Nishimura Eizô) – “NMPMMG” for short – were responsible for the movie’s special effects, special make-up effects, and molds. Yûji Shimomura was its action choreographer. (Shimomura himself directed Death Trance.)

Here’s a synopsis for The Machine Girl from the Fangoria article “Fever Dreams returns to Japan for MACHINE GIRL”: “[The Machine Girl] is about a teenager named Ami who sets out for revenge on a gang of bullies who tortured her little brother to death. She winds up losing an arm along the way, and replaces it with a high-powered gun, à la Rose McGowan in Grindhouse. But she doesn’t stop at one limb; Ami continues to lose body parts and replac[e] them with more weapons [apparently including a drill bra (doriru bura)].”

Iguchi’s previous directing credits include Cat-Eyed Boy (Nekome kozô), Manji, Sukeban Boy (Oira sukeban), Snake Girl (Madara no shôjo), Saishû seiki! Natsume Nana – kyûkyoku no erosu, Impolite Education (18-kin – abunai kankei: the kinshinsôkan), and A Larva to Love (Koi suru yôchû).

NMPMMG: The Machine Girl (w/ stills)
AFM: The Machine Girl
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GOMORRAHY.com: Cat-Eyed Boy (w/ trailer, etc.)
GOMORRAHY.com: Manji (w/ trailer, etc.)
Sukeban Boy flyer (432 KB JPEG)
Sukeban Boy Japanese rental DVD cover (188 KB JPEG – viewer discretion is advised)
Snake Girl trailer (downloadable 5.6 MB MOV file)
Saishû seiki! Natsume Nana – kyûkyoku no erosu stills set (64 KB JPEG – viewer discretion is advised)
Saishû seiki! Natsume Nana – kyûkyoku no erosu Japanese sale DVD cover (128 KB JPEG – viewer discretion is advised)
GOMORRAHY.com: Trailer Park subsite (w/ trailer for A Larva to Love, etc.)