The Machine Girl (Review)

The Machine Girl

The Machine Girl (2008) (Kataude mashin gâru)

Directed by Noburu Iguchi

It's sad that the YouTube millenials made the Machine Girl's trailer go viral. Why? Because it just seems that a movie like this was condensed into 2-3 minutes. It should be viewed as 90 minutes of fun, splatter and gore that catches you surprised and shocked and LOLing. Because you watched the trailer, those parts are now not as much fun.

Damn millenials.

Tokyo Shock funded this little endeavor of Noburu Iguchi, and the Japanese creativity spews chunks of sly humor, CGI lunacy and more arterial spraying than all of Kill Bill combined.

It's as fun as advertised depsite the leak of prime slices in the trailer. The cheesiness comes out in full effect, the violence is manga-ish and the dialogue (subtitled as is) is ready for Mike Nelson and Tom Servo to go nuts on.

What the millenials don't understand is that Japanese filmmakers have been making these flicks for a while now. Stacy, Wild Zero and Junk are zombie flicks with vicious arterial carnage but campy. Miike's Ichi the Killer is the male equivelant of a flick like this. His Dead or Alive is classic in this genre as well. But don't tell this to Generation Y. To them this is the best thing since sliced Pzones.
Boring Plot-O-Matic

Ami (Minase Yashiro) is a basketball loving school girl. When her brother Yu gets killed by the local Ninja Yakuza "Hattori Hanzo" yumi (aka family), she gets revenged. Obviously from the trailer, her hand gets cut off and is replaced with an uber machine girl. Fuck it. She wants revenge and carnage ensues.


Awesome Review-O-Matic

Minase Yashiro is fuckin hot. And in her Sailor Moon uniform and a chainsaw arm thats ripping apart a poor Yakuza, you've just put sex and violence together which is every boy's wet dream. And that's just the opening scene.

I love when social problems evident in Japanese culture (in this case bullying) are made into a manga and then go live action. That's been happening alot. Basically Machine Girl is a revenge flick, pure and simple. But its a horror-omedy and it's that opposite approach from say a Kill Bill that makes it glorious fun.

Ami's search to kill all who wronged her brother (especially Sho Kimura, the mobster's son) takes us to scene after scene of pure arterial spraying set on insane. From an unfortunate family's dinner demise to her own torture at the hands of the evil Yakuza boss, its non stop splatter at its best.

Some of the best parts of the movie are not Ami in action but the Yakuza "Hattori Hanzo" clan (a wink to Sonny Chiba) and their utter disregard for life. A poor chef has to eat some special sushi, a maid is discarded and henchman become disposable. In one scene, a poor girl's death is not the end of her torture.

It's the Hanzo ninja yakuza clan that makes this movie work. The dad is ruthless, the son cowardly but sly but the wife is outright brutal. They are sooooooooo evil, your hoping Ami goes medieval on them.

After Ami's escape, she meets Yu's friend's parents who are mourning as well. They are the ones who can rebuild her. They have the technology. The husband is a tech genius who invents the machine gun and the wife is a survivalist gone awry. A gratuitous montage scene later, they're ready to do battle

And that's when the most ridiculous battle scene takes place between our heroes and the Junior High Shuriken Gang, one of the most splatterific scenes in the movie.

As the trailer suggests, there is a flying guillotine and the ending is so over the top, you can't help but cheer.

Machine Girl accomplishes what it sets out to do. Be funny, be gore-tacular and totally be something that makes you laugh and wince at the same time.

I've seen movies like this before, but Machine Girl is packaged perfectly, you're going to have an awesome time YouTubing your favorite clips afterwards.

Influences

Anything from Takashi Miike, Stacey, Junk, etc.

Gore-ipedia (if you want to be shocked don't read)

Machine girl bullet arterial spraying

Machine girl bullet carnage

Tempura oil scarring

Throat slicing

Massive beheadings

Knife mouth trauma

Finger slicing (with added finger sushi yum yum!)

Shuriken slicing

Nails in the head

Chainsaw splatter

Executioner's Blade carnage

Drill Bra brutality

Yada Yada Yada

WTF moment

The Bra. Nuff said.

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

You're going to like this film.

Trust me.

It's got a hot schoolgirl amputee, a kickass evil Yakuza boss and more blood and guts than a slaughterhouse.

Yes the trailer does seem to give away a couple of good scenes. Watching the trailer is equivelant to having only eaten the appetizer and dessert. Now go enjoy the main course.

Rating:

The Trailer:



Tags:
the machine girl, the machine girl review , Minase Yashiro , Kataude mashin gâru, gore splatter drill bra, ninja yakuza hattori hanzo, top horror movies of 2008, bloody violence,