The Machine Girl

Year: 2008
Director: Noboru Iguchi
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1050160/

Rating:

Review:
The Machine Girl is an “ultragore” Japanese film by the makers on Tokyo Gore Police.  It’s a pretty simple revenge story: a young girl’s brother is bullied to death by the son of a local Yakuza and she goes on a rampage of revenge.  About half way through the movie, she loses her left arm from the elbow down, and its eventually replaced with a machine gun.

The movie is absurd, and you have to be aware of just how over-the-top it is before you sit down to watch it.  Fountains of blood, faces blown off by bullets, dismemberments and decapitations are par for the course.  You just have to roll with how silly most of it is.  The plot is flimsy, barely there to patch together scenes of battle.  The production values are lacking, the actors are only a half-step above porn stars in terms of believability,  and none of the “heroes” are in any way sympathetic.  And none of that matters, because this is a live-action cartoon of a movie.  It’s popcorn and bubblegum and not much else.

There’s some sort of subplot about the parents of the hero being murderers, but it’s never resolved, and the “mother” of another victim of the Yakuza looks to be about the same age as the hero, who is meant to be in college.  The machine gun arm never runs out of ammo except when the plot demands it, and a punch of angry parents are able to be turned into ninjas overnight via Yakuza magic.  It’s just plain silly, but fun to watch if you like the absurd.

Watching this movie is similar to looking at modern art, you’re not exactly sure what it’s supposed to be, but it can still be somewhat pleasing if you’re in the mood for it.  If you have an hour and a half to spare and want to watch something that will make you laugh at just how bad it is, The Machine Girl is for you.