The Machine Girl

The near future. Tokyo’s police force has been privatized, the new private force authorized to execute justice on the spot. The officers are both hated and feared but are a necessity in a world plagued by ‘engineers’, mutant creatures that generate powerful weapons from any significant wound on their body meaning that they become more dangerous the more that you fight against them. The only way to stop an engineer is to cut out a strange key-shaped tumor that exists somewhere within each one of them, a task that falls to specialized sword wielding hunters within the police force. And the leading hunter on the force is Ruka - played by Audition‘s Eihi Shiina - a beautiful, self destructive woman plagued by memories of her suicidal mother and slain father who has brought down fifty engineers to date.

From the same team that created The Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police is quite likely the most aptly titled film ever made. The thing is positively saturated with blood, massive sprays of the stuff filling frame after frame of the film. With its over the top effects and massive levels of splatter this thing is destined to become a classic among fans of the genre. Like Machine Girl the effects are pleasingly squishy, based on real world latex prosthetics rather than CGI, and wildly inventive. Where the two films part ways, however, is in the basic approach to the material. While Machine Girl plays out largely tongue in cheek, Tokyo Gore Police takes its world very seriously. There is no nodding and winking here, instead director Yoshihiro Nishimura sets out to create a sort of alternate future where these events, bizarre as they may be, actually make some sort of sense. The end result is a sort of nightmare fugue, a swirling hallucination that just plunges farther and farther into depravity as it proceeds.

No doubt about it, Nishimura’s effects are what will draw most to the film but what holds it all together is Shiina’s performance. A strange, otherworldly sort of presence, Shiina is one of the more distinctive and compelling actors working in Japan today and doesn’t appear on screen nearly often enough. With a lesser performer at its heart Tokyo Gore Police would descend into camp but Shiina makes perfect sense here and gives the whole thing a strange sort of legitimacy. She works well as an action heroine - fight scenes are well choreographed by Versus‘ Tak Sakaguchi - but more important are the self destructive urges that run throughout her character, her own life mirroring the tone of the Japan of the film.

Laced with sly social commentary - the television ads selling ‘cute’ wrist slicing knives and anti-hari kiri PSA’s are brilliant - and a surprisingly good cast Tokyo Gore Police has goals far beyond being a simple splatter picture. Nishimura clearly has something to say and, low budget or no, his fusion of extreme violence of political satire can’t help but bring to mind Verhoeven’s Robocop and Starship Troopers. The extreme visuals alone make Tokyo Gore Police a must for splatter fans, the added depth makes it a classic of the type. Definitely recommended.

Tokyo Gore Police
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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.