The Machine Girl

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.

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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

Fight scenes featuring beautiful Asian women with machine guns are sexy, scary, and fetishistic. If you’re in San Francisco in June, you’re in luck—you can get a double dose of ass-busting Asian women at the Another Hole in the Head horror movie fest, where two crazy, ruthless Oriental beauties battle evil in a cumulative three hours of gory revenge and fantastical sci-fi crime-fighting. The Gene Generation and The Machine Girl are two completely different kinds of movies—one is American sci-fi, one is a low-budget Japanese gory B-movie. But when stripped of their decor, there are a lot of common themes and subtexts.

The Gene Generation is a cultish movie about a dark, crime-ridden future. Think Blade Runner meets Ghost in the Shell. Singaporean movie director Pearry Reginald Teo draws a scenic dystopia, and Bai Ling stars as Michelle, a hot, soulless assassin who just wants to get out of the creepy hell she and her brother live in. But her brother, Jackie, keeps gambling away her hard-earned cash. One day, Jackie buys a weird mutant glove with tentacles (”A Chinese finger trap!”) which turns out to be a unidirectional biological transcoder that reconfigures a person’s DNA and could potentially end disease—or wipe out mankind. As usual, Michelle has to slaughter many people to get her brother out of trouble. Her performance and hotness are mesmerizing, even if you’re just watching her walk around her blue-and-green-hued apartment in her black leather strappy shorts and holster. Michelle was probably born a badass; we don’t know anything about her past, and she lives in a totally fictional future world.

The director of The Machine Girl, Noboru Iguchi, is best known for making provocative porn featuring lesbians and skatology. Ami is played by Minase Yachiyo, a swim suit model, and her partner-in-crime, Asami, is played by a well-known porn star with dozens of titles. This movie was made only for a US Release; porn stars in violent B movies don’t always make it big back home, but busty Asian women fighting against ninjas and yakuza—well, there is apparently a good market for that kind of stuff here.

Ami, the teenager in The Machine Girl, starts off as an ordinary girl in present-day Japan. She plays basketball at school and, like Michelle, has dedicated her life to caring for her little brother. Even when the local yakuza boss’s son throws him off a balcony to his deathbed, she keeps her cool, and tries to solicit apologies from those responsible. But when a family she visits goes psycho on her and turns her left arm into tempura, Ami transforms into a blood-and-guts-loving, vengeance-seeking mean killing machine.

Here’s a quick point-to-point comparison of some of the similarities and contrasts between the two films.

Plot:
Gene: Badass older sister kills to pay the bills while her roguish little brother gambles it away and gets in trouble.
Machine: Badass older sister plots to kill everyone who was involved in the bullying death of her little brother.

Parents:
Gene: Murdered after owing too much gambling debt.
Machine: Committed suicide after being falsely accused of murder.

Weapons:
Gene: Handguns and sex appeal.
Machine: Pure vengeance and a machine gun arm made by her auto mechanic friends.

Outfit:
Gene: Sexy black leather everything.
Machine: Like a good Japanese schoolgirl, Ami is always in her uniform.

Nudity:
Gene: Yes, you get to see Bai Ling naked. And having sex.
Machine: Ironically, the pornstar-filled movie has no nudity. Just lots of spilled guts.

Cast and Crew:
Gene: Fight choreographer Jeff Imada (Fight Club, The Crow), producer Kim Winther (Mr. and Mrs. Smith)
Machine: Porn director Noboru Iguchi (Hot Girl on Toilet, Underage Girl on Toilet), actress Asami (Wild Thing x Asami, Let’s Virtual Fuck With Asami)

I was fortunate enough to watch both these movies in the past week. What did I think? Honestly, Machine made me want to throw up in my mouth, but I enjoyed the humor and the sheer insaneness of the innocent-looking school girl. And as much as I am not ordinarily a sci-fi movie nut (remember, I’m the io9-er who has never seen Star Wars), I enjoyed Gene Generation. But probably less for the sci-fi and more for the hot Asian girl. What can I say? I prefer dating guys, but I think women are easier on the eyes.

The US premiere of is on June 5, followed by the West Coast premiere of The Machine Girl on June 6, both at the Another Hole in the Head film fest. Images by Another Hole in the Head

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By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Published: May 23, 2008

The Japanese obsession with cavorting ninjas, cunning hardware and comely young avengers in abbreviated plaid skirts reaches some kind of climax with “The Machine Girl,” a riotous blend of arterial spray and grindhouse glee.

Playing Ami, a basketball-loving high schooler whose beloved brother is killed by bullies, the soft-core starlet Minase Yashiro blazes through the movie like a vengeful hall monitor. Seeking justice, Ami confronts the parents of the lead bully, who respond by pan-frying her forearm — an extremity that will later be replaced by a machine-gun prosthesis. Like Rose McGowan’s character in “Planet Terror,” Ami is retrofitted for revenge.

Written and directed by Noboru Iguchi, “The Machine Girl” plays to the balcony with schlocky effects (the camera lens frequently suffers collateral splatter) and visible roots (a terrifically cheesy 1970s title sequence). As Ami tackles a bewildering array of adversaries — including a bunch of bereaved parents known as the Super Mourner Gang — faces are flayed and eyeballs impaled in an escalating rush of inventive mortifications.

Offering her fans only a teasing glimpse of pristine white panties, Ms. Yashiro remains aloof from the screenplay’s sleazier moments. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the movie’s scariest villain, a yakuza mom only Tarantino could love. What she does with her bra is worth the price of admission alone.

THE MACHINE GIRL

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Written (in Japanese, with English subtitles) and directed by Noboru Iguchi; director of photography, Yasutaka Nagano; edited by Kenji Tanabe; music by Koh Nakagawa; production designer, Yasuo Kurosu; visual effects supervisor, Tsuyoshi Kazuno; produced by Yoko Hayama, Yoshinori Chiba and Satoshi Nakamura; released by Media Blasters Releasing, Fever Dreams and Tokyo Shock. At the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, 155 East Third Street, at Avenue A, East Village. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Minase Yashiro (Ami Hyuga), Asami (Miki Sugihara), Ryosuke Kawamura (Yu Hyuga), Nobuhiro Nishihara (Sho Kimura), Kentaro Shimazu (Mr. Kimura) and Honoka (Mrs. Kimura).

By: Joris Westerdaal

Thanks to Joris for sending in this review from the Amsterdam Film Festival

There’s nothing more liberating than watching a revenge movie. I just love the way these movies work. The story is simple, yet very engaging most of the times. Somebody gets treated inhumanely or gets pushed over the edge and starts taking right into their own hands by exacting cold blooded revenge on who ever has put them in these dire situations. THE MACHINE GIRL, by japanese director Noboru Iguchi, is no exception.

Ami and her younger brother Yu have no parents. They commited suicide from shame after falsely being accused of murder. Living alone now, Ami and Yu have sworn to never lose another loved one ever again so they never resort to violence and try to solve all their problems in a peacefull way, like their parents allways told them. Sho is the son of a Yakuza-clan leader and the leader of a gang of bullies who constantly terrorize poor Yu and his friend Takeshi. After Yu and Takeshi are murdered by the bullies Ami tries to investigate but gets attacked by the gang members’ parents who turn out to be even more sadistic than their offspring. Ami freaks out completely and swears to kill all of Yu’s enemies. This wont be easy because these Yakuza are members of the Hattori Hanzo ninja dynasty. Ami even loses one of her arms when she tries to attack the Yakuza home base. Barely alive she is taken in by Takeshi’s parents who happen to be mechanics. They fix her up with the perfect tool for pissed off, one armed school girls: an eight barreled machine gun prosthetic.

When I first heard of this movie I couldn’t help but immediately think of other films that use the same kind of gimmick (a body part thats transformed into a weapon) - like TETSUO or PLANET TERROR. Now that I have actually seen MACHINE GIRL it’s easy to say that this one is way different from those afforementioned two. The story is as simple as it gets and is only used as an excuse to get down to some serious blood-shedding. Most of the characters are totally over the top and unbelievable but still fun to watch. What really helps is that THE MACHINE GIRL herself (portrayed by Asami who is a popstar in her native country) is enjoyable and she looks great in that Japanese school uniform as well.

After a very bloody and disgusting opening sequence, which is a great introduction for the carnage that awaits, it took a bit too long for our leading lady to actually lose her arm and get her machine gun in my opinion. But as soon as Ami gains her machine gun arm the movie turns into the gorefest everybody expects it to be. And though the effects work at display never looks authentic it suits the cartoonish style of this movie just fine. Fountains of blood everywhere, people getting cut in two, decapitations, drillbra mayhem… it’s all in there. The only problem here is that the trailer spoiled a bit too much of the gory set pieces we get here, so if you haven’t seen it yet, I advise you to avoid it and let the movie surprise you.

There are some other minor flaws like some bad acting and poor dialogues, but the movie easilly overcomes its own flaws by never taking itself too serious. And though terribly sadistic things happen in this movie everything is so over the top insane that it had me laughing out loud many times over these atrocities like the raping of a dead school girl. MACHINE GIRL isn’t a revenge flick like KILL BILL, which leaves plenty of room for character development, this one can easilly go without any character development… just tell the story and let the mayhem begin.

This really is a perfect midnight movie; it’s simple, fast paced, funny and gory as hell. Invite some friends over, get drunk (or whatever) and let THE MACHINE GIRL lead you into a world of exploitation and bloody madness. I never saw any of Noboru Iguchi’s previous works but this weird little movie certainly made me curious. His next feature film “Tokyo Gore Police” is rumoured to be even more insane than this one so that certainly is something to look forward to.
Score: 8 / 10

If you only see ONE outrageously absurd and ridiculously over-the-top Asian splatter yarn this year - or even this lifetime, for that matter – you better make damn sure it’s Noboru Iguchi’s “The Machine Girl”! This stupendously demented piece of Japanese “Revengeploitaton” features king-size portions of all the regular and crowd-pleasing ingredients, like crazed stereotypical characters (Yakuzas, Ninjas, schoolgirls in uniform, …) and simplistic story lines, but it particularly specializes in extreme Magna-esquire gore and kitschy comedy. Beautiful and multi-talented schoolgirl Ami lives alone with her nerdy brother Yu since their parents committed suicide for falsely being accused of homicide. Ami protects her brother where she can, but she doesn’t know he and his friend Takashi are the main targets of youthful bullies with prominent Yakuza-parents. The boys get killed, but nobody wants to help Ami because of her notorious family history and her sole attempts to get revenge literally cost the poor girl an arm. She finally gets help from Takashi’s mourning parents, who also provide Ami with a machine-gun prosthesis. “Machine Girl” offers a wide selection of decapitations, dismemberment, close-up gunfire, stabbings, split-open skulls, chainsaw murders, fried limbs, slit throats, electrocutions, impalement and Samurai swashbuckling. Seen all of that before in other schlocky splatter fodder already? Well, yeah … but what about flying guillotines and drill bras? Most of the running time, the screen is literally colored red with gallons of fake blood and removed intestines, but the tone of the film continuously remains blackly comical and light-headed. The phenomenally berserk make-up effects, courtesy of Yoshihiro Nishimura, are often nauseating, but never truly offensive. “Machine Girl” definitely also stars a couple of ravishing and incredibly sexy Japanese actresses, like Ami, her partner in crime Miki and even the supremely bitchy Yakuza’s wife. The battle sequences at the beginning and in the garage, as well as the entire final showdown of course, simply have to be seen to be believed. This outrageously grotesque movie is well-made, well-acted and directed and indescribably entertaining.

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