It’s no secret that the Asian extreme cinema wave of the late 90s/early 00s has slowed down quite a bit in recent years. Directors like Takashii Miike and Ryuhei Kitamura have been working on very different projects than the ones they were churning out back then and as a whole the trend seems to be more toward comedy and drama. The recent collapse of Tartan USA can probably be attributed to this, having made its bones in the Asian horror heyday. So one has to wonder how a label geared around these movies can possibly stay afloat when there’s only a tiny pool of appropriate new titles coming out each year and plenty of bigger companies overbidding for distribution rights. The answer, at least for Tokyo Shock/Media Blasters, is to fund some of your own. I have to admit I’ve been pretty ambivalent about the process, but I did enjoy Yuji Shimomura’s Death Trance in a “mindless fun” sort of way. 2008 brings us two of these US-funded corkers - Yoshihiro Nishimura’s Tokyo Gore Police which comes out later this year, and Noboru Iguchi’s The Machine Girl which I’m reviewing here.
To anyone fearful that US funding will stifle the creative process of Japanese directors and force them to pander to what they think an American audience wants to see Noboru Iguchi is either the worst or best choice as a director. Worst because The Machine Girl perpetuates stereotypes that many casual fans pin to Japanese movies, and best because it’s exactly the kind of movie he would have done either way. As a former and occasional adult video director Iguchi isn’t exactly concerned about the boundaries of good taste. He’ll do absolutely anything for a laugh, and just when it seems like he’s gone a step too far he’ll take 5 or 6 more steps. That’s just how he rolls, and The Machine Girl is a shining example of that philosophy.
The story in the movie is fairly simple, albeit completely insane. A girl named Ami (Minase Yashiro) lives with her younger brother Yu and has taken care of him ever since their parents committed suicide for being accused of murder. When Yu and his friend Takeshi are murdered by Sho - the evil son of a Yakuza family directly descended from the legendary ninja Hattori Hanzo, Ami investigates what happened. A “People I want to kill” list in Yu’s school notebook leads her to one of Sho’s henchmen, Ryota. She calmly speaks to Ryota’s parents, who in turn try to murder her. Ryota’s mother (Nahana) dips Ami’s arm in tempura batter and fries it, but she’s able to escape with only minor burns.
From this point one Ami decides that a murderous rampage is her only option. However, things go badly when she confronts the Yakuza alone and she winds up having her arm chopped off by Sho’s dad. Again, she’s able to escape and she eventually finds refuge with Takeshi’s parents. His grieving mother Miki, inexplicably played by 22-year-old AV actress Asami, is hesitant to trust Ami at first but that’s nothing a nice arm-wrestling match can’t fix. Now best buds, Miki’s mechanically-inclined husband builds Ami a machine gun arm and the two women face off against ninjas, yakuza, and a group of grieving parents-turned-super soldiers in their insatiable quest for vengeance.
If all that seems like overkill, it is. Clocking in at 97 minutes, the repetitive scenes of severed limbs and arterial spray did eventually start to grow tiresome. Minase Yashiro quells that pain a bit though. Not only because she’s not too shabby to look at, but also because she plays Ami with 100% conviction - and that really helps sell some of the funny lines she has to deliver with a snarl. There’s no false advertising with this one though. The Machine Girl is an absolute bloodbath from start to finish and never pretends to be anything else but that.
Availability: US distributor Tokyo Shock released "The Machine Girl" on region 1, NTSC DVD on June 3, 2008. Check here for full specs.
10 Comments
Posted by kevin at 1:33pm EDT on Monday, June 2, 2008
Posted by logboy at 4:33pm EDT on Monday, June 2, 2008
Posted by kevin at 4:47pm EDT on Monday, June 2, 2008
it needs to become more film-by-film, not genre-by-genre.
if anyone needs an obvious example : j-horror...
decent films that start the trend by crossovers are better than crappy films that crossover, so i accept it comes from odd places, but i think bloggers and site contributors need to be aware of supporting specific or individual films (or genres) too frequently that aren't representative of a variety or not being able to provide enough coverage to give a context as to where a film comes from. it's all about balances and consideration for how things seem to have worked, how they could end up panning out, i think.
but, we had two obvious (recent incarnation) j-horror hits in the west - ring, audition - and then one or two subsequent decent films initially, followed by the dross, then one or two later decent films which didn't get accepted because people's focus was on how disappointing and misrepresentative the majority of stuff came across as. or they were just generally elsewhere.
reincarnation, marebito - two good films that didn't hit home that large in the west, but which were perhaps an awful lot better than stuff in other genres being picked up on. i'd have certainly missed them if i had taken much notice of how completely dismissive of the genre people became, or if i'd not taken the time to try and pick over the possibility that dismissing a genre may leave me avoiding lots of crap but can also leave me missing out on hidden gems. thankfully, these two were both by great directors too, which helps, so they're perhaps a little more obviously of interest than they could have been, but they're still taken as bad despite their pedigree, because the genre's so easy to wholeheartedly dismiss when both companies and fans have allowed themselves to lead others down the garden path.
Posted by logboy at 4:57am EDT on Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Posted by Chris at 10:51am EDT on Thursday, June 5, 2008
Posted by kevin at 11:33am EDT on Thursday, June 5, 2008
I actually just posted my own review for the festival. I sent in your review to the festival press handlers as well, just in case your review helps the ticket sales, and to hopefully give your site a couple extra hits. :)
Posted by Chris at 6:17pm EDT on Saturday, June 7, 2008
Eesh...
Posted by kevin at 1:05am EDT on Sunday, June 8, 2008
Posted by Tim Chuma at 7:38pm EDT on Monday, June 16, 2008
![Fine, Totally Fine [Standard Edition] (Pony Canyon)](/images/releases/fine_totally_fine_standard_edition_pony_canyon_57.jpg)
![Gachi Boy: Wrestling With a Memory [Standard Edition] (Pony Canyon)](/images/releases/gachi_boy_standard_edition_pony_canyon_57.jpg)
![Cyborg She [Standard Edition] (Gaga Communications)](/images/releases/cyborg_she_standard_edition_gaga_57.jpg)
i personally think these two films, despite how much fun they can be even without any discussion of the politics surrounding it needing to happen with those particularly interested in japanese film, are a step in the wrong direction not because they're laden with gore (after all, like i say, iguchi already existed, as do other such films - perhaps a little more underground) but because it seems constructed of moments that couple with the gore that will be somewhat familiar to a casual or newer audience.
a sudden blip in interest for any particular part of any countries cinema, when usually minor in success, takes us places we'll likely be complaining about for years. it'll have us suffering, not because people will want to fund projects with dollars specifically aimed at the USA market, but because marketing is very generalised, manipulative, and because what works in one film is not in any way guaranteed to continue to work in even one subsequent film.
Posted by logboy at 4:11am EDT on Monday, June 2, 2008