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- Blu-ray: The Machine Girl
- Rating: R
- Starring: Minase Yashiro, Asami, Honoka
- Written By: Noboru Iguchi
- Directed By: Noboru Iguchi
- Distributor: Tokyo Shock
- Original Year of Release: 2011
- Extras: See Below
- Series:
The Machine Girl Blu-Ray Review
A good Kind of Bad By
Tim Janson
May 28, 2011
Minase yashiro is The Machine Girl(2011)
© Tokyo Shock
What’s a cute high school girl to do when her younger brother is murdered by gang members and she has her left arm cut off at the elbow by the Yakuza? Well…you find a mechanic to fashion a machine gun that can attach to your arm and you hunt down all those responsible. And that, in a nutshell is the basic premise of Machine Girl, an outrageously violent orgy of blood and gore. The film was directed by Noboru Iguchi, a former director of porn movies in Japan who has turned to another genre to both thrill and shock viewers.
Ami Hyuga (Minase Yashiro) and her brother Yu , live alone since their parents took their own lives after being accused of murder. Yu and his friend Takeshi are constantly bullied at school by a gang of boys led by Sho Kimura, whose father is a Yakuza boss. One day the bullying goes to far and the boys are tossed off a building to their deaths. Ami seeks revenge against the Sho and his family but ends up getting part of her left arm cut off by Sho’s father. She stumbles bloody and near death into the auto repair shop run by Takeshi’s parents, Miki and Shuguru, who nurse Ami back to health. They create a machine gun that can fit on Ami’s arm and together the trio goes after the Yakuza clan who murdered their loved ones.
Machine Girl features so many beheadings, dismemberments, and spraying blood that it makes the Saw film series look like Disney Cartoons. Heads are blasted with the machine fun leaving only a gaping hole where a face once was; hot oil is thrown into faces; kitchen knives are rammed down throats; bodies are sliced in half with chainsaws…and that’s all before the climatic battle which features, among other things, the Yakuza boss’s wife Violet (Honoka)who wears a metal bra with a drill on each cup! The extreme amount of blood borders on the absurd and at time the film definitely feels tongue-in-cheek unintentionally. Noboru Iguchi displays a gallows sense of humor with the sheer variety of kills. It has Mortal Kombat-style fatalities that both give you shivers and make you laugh out loud at the same time. He also uses his adult film experience to capture some of these kills with intense close-ups and, frankly, an orgasmic slant to them. All of the female roles are played by actresses who are former swimsuit models or, in the case of Honoka, a former adult film star so its not only supremely violent but there’s also a great deal of eye candy.
Machine Girl isn’t going to blow anyone away with its performances. There’s no pretense here about trying to make great drama but that doesn’t mean that Iguchi gets off the hook completely. He introduces the sub-plot about Ami and Yu’s parents killing themselves after being accused of murder and yet that plot goes nowhere. Were they murderers? Were they wrongfully accused and ostracized leading to them taking their own lives? This remains unanswered and for a film woefully short on plot it would have been nice to have something to tone down the non-stop mayhem. He also fails to commit to making it a series action film or a tongue-in-cheek parody which leaves you a little unsure if you’re supposed to cheer or laugh.
Blu-Ray Extras
Behind the Scenes of Machine Girl (10:00) – Standard behind the scenes feature with interviews with the cast and a look at their training, stunts, and special effects.
Machine Girl Light (22:00) a short film sequel to Machine Girl with most of the bad guys returning to life to battle Ami’s friend who now has possession of the machine gun.
Theatrical Trailer
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Sounds like fun. I think I'll check it out.