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.
