The Machine Girl

Variety Review of the machine girl

Kataude mashin garu (Japan)
A Fever Dreams presentation of a Tokyo Shock Original, Nikkatsu, Fever Dreams production. (International sales: Nikkatsu, Tokyo.) Produced by Yoko Hayama, Yoshinori Chiba, Satoshi Nakamura. Executive producer, John Sirabella. Directed, written by Noboru Iguchi.

With: Minase Yashiro, Asami, Kentaro Shimazu, Honoha, Taro Suwa.

By RUSSELL EDWARDS
Shameless gore, gallows humor and guilty pleasures are the byproducts of a mechanical plot and impressive helming in the schlocky Japanese low-budgeter “The Machine Girl.” Already revered for outrageous efforts like “Sukeban Boy,” director Noboru Iguchi meets all the Nipponese extremist standards with this revenge yarn about a machine gun-limbed schoolgirl who takes on the yakuza. Designed for a gaijin crossover audience (complete with English credits), pic has a long future in ancillary for Nipponese and international auds with a grindhouse sensibility.

When bullies kill her younger brother, schoolgirl Ami (Minase Yashiro) seeks revenge on the perps and their parents. She loses an arm during a yakuza torture session; fortunately, sympathetic motor mechanics help with a machine-gun prosthesis, and Ami turns the bloody tide. Pic shows evidence of cultural recycling, with Japanese influences on Robert Rodriguez being reconditioned for this much cheaper model. Perfs are as gaudy as the bloody special effects, though artful framing belies the idea that Iguchi has knocked out this film carelessly. Adequate tech credits show little finesse, but the target aud won’t care.

Camera (color), Yasutaka Nagano; editor, Kenji Tanabe; music, Koh Nakagawa; production designer, Yasuo Kurosu; Special Effects & Gore Effects, Yoshihiro Nishimura. Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (market), Feb. 8, 2008. Running time: 96 MIN.

NY Post The machine girl Review
ID you hear the one about the schoolgirl who loses her left arm in a fight with mobsters and has it replaced by an eight-barrel machine gun (shades of Rose McGowan in “Grindhouse”), which she uses to exact vengeance on the bullies who killed her brother and his best pal?

So goes “The Machine Girl,” by Japanese schlockmeister Noboru Iguchi.

But there’s more: Nonstop violence, gallons of spurting blood, outrageous humor (a kitchen scene is a hoot), extreme vomiting, a drill bra, human sushi and tempura, and other perversity.

Iguchi, who has a well-deserved reputation for outrageousness, never allows this low-budgeter to take itself seriously. Viewers who take the same approach will have a kick-ass time – if they have a strong stomach, that is.

In Japanese, with English subtitles. Running time: 96 minutes. Not rated (violence)
V.A. MUSETTO