The Machine Girl
Director: Noboru Iguchi
Year: 2008
Rating: 7.0
Get ready for your screen to turn red.
Blood red. Gobs of it. Gallons of it. Gore galore. A never ending gush of
it spraying everything in sight. From all parts and crevices of the human
body. From various cuts and weapons. A head sliced off. An arm dispatched.
A hole that you can look through and shoot through in someone's stomach.
A knife inserted into the back of the skull that comes out of the mouth and
cuts the tongue off into a soup. A body that literally has the skin slide
off of it like a piece of sliced fruit. And the blood. Like a jet stream.
A hydrant left open. People just aren't killed, they are mutilated beyond
recognition. Pulp. Swords, knives, Gatling gun, ninja stars, nails, rotating
slicing brassieres, the flying guillotine and that old reliable, chain saws.
Much of it done at the hands of a pissed off teenage school girl. But not
a lick of this is to be taken seriously. The special effects are totally
cheesy but they are meant to be.
It is basically an over the top splatter
comedy in which the director Noboru Iguchi's intent is to entertain with
gore. To be inventive with the killings and take it as far as you can go.
But in such a ridiculous way that you have to laugh constantly and gasp a
few times - but mainly laugh. It was Iguchi's trademark at one time to shock
- first doing porno films and then films with differing degrees of outrage
and bad taste such as Zombie Ass - Toilet of the Dead, Mutant Girl's Squad,
Robo-Geisha and Sukeban Boy. There was a lot of crazy bizarre over the top
weirdness going on in Japanese film at the time led by the master Takashi
Miike. Looking at Iguchi's filmography he has directed some TV over the past
few years which might indicate toning down his work but then there is The
Flowers of Evil (2019) which the blurb says is about a boy stealing a girl's
panties setting off a series of events. Good to know there is still cinema
like this out there! Japan film and panties!
It begins in a gentle enough way. A group
of boys are bullying a young student in a deserted half-constructed building.
Ami (Minase Yashiro) in her school uniform shows up and politely asks them
to stop. This not surprisingly is received with taunts and threats
- so what is a girl to do other than showing her stump of an arm - getting
a few laughs - and then attaching a Gatling gun to it and blowing them away.
Into pieces. Smithereens. Her brother was bullied to death with his friend
and she is looking for revenge. She just got a piece of it. But it didn't
have to be this way as we have a flashback in which she goes to the parents
of the bully boys and pleads with them to go to the police, Instead a couple
turn on her and try and kill her. Their boy is their treasure. Later that
night when his head turns up in the soup it is the beginning of a death spiral.
As Ami walks away she calls herself a demon.
But that was easy compared to the parents
of the bully ringleader. They are Yakuza - descended proudly from the line
of Hattori Hanzo - Ninja supreme - and they are bonkers. When
the cook spills something on the boy, they cut off his fingers, put them
on sushi and make him eat them. Yummy. Like I said. Funny. Maybe you had
to be there. Ami teams up with the parents of the other boy killed by the
bullies - the father is a mechanical genius and attaches the Gatling gun
- it also works conveniently with a chain saw. You can buy them at Sears.
One might recall Brigitte Lin doing something similar in Pink Force Commandos
- a film she would rather forget - but she was a pioneer in the machine gun
arm technique. So if I have not made it clear - this is not for most people
- with any level of good taste - but if you can laugh at stuff like this
it is a hoot.
