The Machine Girl – Kataude mashin garu (2008)

Directed by: Noboru Iguchi | 96 minutes | horror, comedy, crime | Actors: Minase Yashiro, Asami, Kentaro Shimazu, Honoka, Nobuhiro Nishihara, Yûya Ishikawa, Ryôsuke Kawamura, Demo Tanaka, Nahana, Taro Suwa, Noriko Kijima, Kentaro Kishi, Ryôji Okamoto, Erika Terajima, Hiroko Yashiki

If you’re a fan of splatter movies, remember the name “The Machine Girl” because you don’t want to ask for this DVD in the store or video store based on a story description: “Hey, do you have the DVD of that Japanese splatter horror about a schoolgirl with a machine gun for an arm, who wants revenge on a family of yakuza ninjas and shoots the head and/or cut off the limbs of everyone who crosses her path? You know, the one with the blood splashing up against the camera?”

You probably won’t score points with the girl standing behind you in line. You’d be more safe by describing the film as a cross between ‘Kill Bill’, ‘Planet Terror’, ‘Braindead’ and ‘Ichi the Killer’. In any case, both descriptions are correct. Where ‘Kill Bill’ with all the blood spurting around was mainly a tribute to (among other things) violent Asian pulp films of the past, ‘The Machine Girl’ goes a step further. The result is more like a parody of Japanese gore, although the film is clearly put together with love.

Schoolgirl Ami and her little brother have to rely on each other after the suicide of their parents, who were falsely accused of murder. When her brother and a friend are killed by the son of a crazy yakuza member, she wants revenge. She almost succeeds in this, until she loses an arm in her struggle. But two auto mechanics come to her rescue and mount an impressive-looking machine gun where Ami’s arm used to be.

With this new weapon, she again enters the battle; this time – of course – with more success. Opponents are effectively eliminated; the hail of bullets and massacres are portrayed in such an exaggerated way that it makes you laugh. This was undoubtedly the intention. When a cook is forced to eat his own fingers, you can’t help but laugh when it sounds like someone taking a big bite of an apple.

The film is not exciting anywhere. Adolescent sons of yakuza members make little impression and the adult characters are – deliberately – portrayed terribly over the top. In addition, the whole looks just as flashy as a video clip, which is not immediately reminiscent of the grainy splatter films from the seventies.

‘The Machine Girl’ is a Japanese take on director Peter Jackson’s ‘Braindead’. The excess of blood and limbs make the film a bizarre comedy. You will therefore laugh more often than horror, while you wonder between the bursts of laughter how it could have come to you that you laugh at this kind of filthy practices…