Buckets of Blood Pouring Out of People’s Heads
The Machine Girl (Kataude mashin gâru) (2008): 7 out of 10: People in Japan must have very high blood pressure. They don’t bleed in Machine Girl, as much as they outright gush gallons of the red stuff. The effect is so over the top it adds a sense of outrageous humor to what could have been a fairly grim affair. After all, the story concerns a college girl who gets a prosthetic weapon attached to her elbow after a member of the Yakuza amputates her lower arm to disused her from investigating the suiciding of her younger brother.
This quick synopsis actually understates the depravity that our heroine undergoes before she gets all Death Wish on anyone with a shiny business suit.
Our Rick Allenesqe heroine is played by the delightful and delicious Japanese model/actress Minase Yashiro. In fact, one of the movie’s strong points is the attractive cast wearing schoolgirl outfits and camo like some cosplayers wet dream. Mono-named Asami and Honoka join Yashiro to round out the attractive female cast.
Machine Girl, however, never really hooks the viewer emotionally. It is all so over the top and cartoonish. Exploitation films often benefit from allowing the audience to get emotionally involved with the characters (Think Mad Max or Savage Streets). I don’t blame the actresses in this case; I think the script could have taken a breather from the silliness to add some much-needed poignancy.
The entire film plays like an overlong Monty Python skit. It has brilliant set pieces, decent special effects and enough fetish material to keep a Chaku-ero fan in his basement for a week. It doesn’t tell an interesting story however, nor does it allow one to become attached to any of the characters involved.
That said, however, I cannot dislike a film that features a bra made out of industrial drills. So turn your mind off, send the misses out shopping and enjoy.