[HUGE DISCLAIMERING AND CLARIFYING NOTE: I initially started working on this review YEARS ago – literally-- back in 2008! It was to be a rare joint movie review on my blog, suggested by horror blogger and internet pal, Mermaid Heather, we started exchanging e-mails, but for one reason or another, I never finished putting the post together. Well, a few weeks ago (we’re now talking 2013), Heather celebrated her birthday, and I took that as an incentive to get off my fat hairy butt and try to finally wrap this joint review up and post it as a sort of “present” to her. So, my effusive THANKS to Heather for her initial idea to tag-team this post, plus her assistance in doing so, and my effusive and inadequate APOLOGIES for taking this freakin’ long to finally put it all together. Happy belated (2013) birthday, Heather! After 4-5 years, let’s see if you remember writing any of this, hahaha! And now, let’s go back to 2008, shall we..? ]
Well, while I'm still wrestling away with my goofy 30 DAYS OF NIGHT review, the lovely, chlorine-scented Mermaid Heather—er, at least, I ASSUME she smells that way during swimming season… hell-- I haven’t the foggiest HOW Heather actually smells… My nose and her entire body have never been in the same room together let alone the same state! So, I'm just guessing, man!
Um... but I digress...
Anyway, when she is not swimming up a storm, Heather is watching and reviewing horror films like an escaped maniac! Then, my friends... THEN, she smells like FEAR!! She is like a… like a… potpourri of TERROR!!!! Wait, screw that!
She reeks of SCARE FRESHENER!!!! HAHAHA!
Um... I'm not sure if that comes across as complimentary or not, but let's say it DOES... really, because it's supposed to.
Alright. Whatever. Let's stop sniffing Heather [NOTE to my WIFE: that's hypothetical sniffing] and get on with this...
Cattleworks: Knowing how psychologically impaired I am when it comes to posting reviews (or anything on my blog), Heather invited me to tag-team a review with her on the Japanese film, THE MACHINE GIRL, since we both, coincidentally, happened to have recently watched it. So, I agreed to her offer, because I figured, what the hell! Whatever it takes to get to post SOMETHING on my blog! Also, and more importantly, this sounded like fun!
Now, I posted a trailer for this film on my blog several months ago. If you haven't seen it yet, take a minute or so to check this insanity out:
So, the basic premise is this: Ami (played by Minase Yashiro), a high school student (well, I thought she was in high school because of her uniform, but according to one brief synopsis on IMDb.com, she’s a college student), who, despite being attractive and athletic, she also seems destined to suffer. Years ago, her parents committed suicide out of shame after being wrongfully accused of murder. Since then, Ami watches over her younger brother, Yu. Unfortunately, a pack of bullies are tormenting Yu and his friend, Takeshi, shaking them down for money. One day, to gang leader Sho Kimura’s surprise, Yu tries to fight back… unsuccessfully. This leads to Yu’s and Takeshi’s deaths, which are both dismissed as suicides.
When Ami learns of this, she freaks.
She can’t believe her brother would kill himself, especially after what happened to her parents. Finding his diary soon after, she learns who the thugs are that were tormenting him and she proceeds to make these hoods pay for Yu’s death.
If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ll know immediately that this film is irreverent, over-the-top, and ridiculously gory as all get-out/heck!
From the trailer, I knew the film had yakuzas and ninjas, and that Ami, who looks cute and hot in a school uniform, is subjected to a bunch of guys assaulting her and then cutting off one of her arms. She survives and is outfitted with a portable contraption that looks like a gatling gun that plugs onto her severed limb. There’s also chainsaws, flying guillotines, a drill bra, more excessive bloodletting, and to top it off, gruesome tempura AND sushi!And this is all crammed into just the trailer. (Really, you should check it out if you still haven’t! What are you waiting for??)
So, I was anticipating a basic revenge plotline when I popped in the DVD (girl-meets-tragedy, girl-recovers-from-tragedy, girl-kicks-ass-of-those-who-caused-tragedy), but to my surprise, we actually start off sooner than that.
Our hot heroine enters the film already lethally accessorized. Writer/director Noboru Iguchi starts the film sprinting with an opening credit prologue sequence that shows Ami as a vengeful angel interrupting a knife-wielding gang of hoods as they terrorize some poor school kid. They’re in the process of forcing the kid to participate in a pseudo-homage to William Tell (and, unfortunately, William S. Burroughs, too), but they never get the chance because of Machine Girl, who’s already one-armed AND armed (hee hee hee, see what I did there??). Thus, the film proper is actually a flashback.
So, let me ask my guest reviewer: Heather, did this surprise you? That the movie begins telling the story this way?
Mermaid Heather: *Sprays some chlorine in the general direction of Terry, so he can stop sniffing me.*
Actually, it did surprise me that it started off this way. That was probably a good thing though, since the opening sequence gives us a preview of things to come. I am talking mostly about the effects, of course. If anyone has read my own blog, you will know how much I love effects at times. After watching the trailer that Terry so kindly provided, which really got me wanting to see this film, I knew that things were going to be over the top. I wasn't disappointed in the slightest. Almost from the opening bell, so to speak, we get our first taste of what the effects will be offering. The effects offer a wide range of things. From losing limbs, spraying blood, and even CGI effects. Most of the time, I don't like the spray effect of blood. I can see blood maybe doing that at first, or even in spurts as the heart beats, but not in a constant spray. Even though this happens a lot in THE MACHINE GIRL, I took it for what it is since the whole film has an over the top feel to it.I thought that some of the effects, while over the top, were still very good. There are also some that weren't good at all. THE MACHINE GIRL was a frustrating film to me at times. For every effect that made me say wow, there was another effect that was just so bad. I am mainly talking about the CGI effects for the bad ones. I know that
Cattleworks: Ha ha ha!
Mermaid Heather: The one effect that I didn't understand at all is when Ami gets her arm deep fried. I thought for sure this is how she would lose her arm, but no, it just looked weird is all. So, do you agree with me, Terry?
Cattleworks: No, I agree with you.
In fact, you point out two sequences that I was most critical of myself: the tempura sequence (the so-called deep frying sequence), and the drill bra sequence.The tempura scene was the first scene where I felt the broad humor and caricature-like approach to creating villains was too much.
Ami has come to the house of one of the boys Yu mentions in his diary. Seeking to confront the young punk and also inform his parents, Ami soon learns that things won’t be that easy, or at least straight-forward.
The parents will have none of her accusations. In fact, the father, a former cop, is familiar with Ami’s parents’ tarnished reputation and looks down upon her with disdain and outrage. His reaction is so extreme I’m like, “uh, hey now, dude!” I mean, he starts attacking her with a golf club. But then it’s compounded by the mother, who’s equally deranged, and in fact, is responsible for forcibly introducing Ami’s arm to the hot oil.
So, I didn’t quite buy the believability of the parents’ actions, the literally violent part of it. Although, on paper, I can understand the directorial strategy to make the parents’ reactions extreme in order to motivate Ami’s equally extreme response. I was just disappointed as to how the scene with the parents played out. For instance, the mother is not just attacking Ami to protect her son, which makes sense, but then she is also demonstrably gleeful as she plunges Ami’s arm into the hot oil, a look of sadistic pleasure on the mother’s face.
Ami’s screaming helped sell the whole burning ordeal and seemed convincing, but when we see her arm afterwards, I thought it actually looked funny in an absurdly, goofy way and I’m figuring it appealed to the filmmakers for that reason. I mean, I don’t eat tempura so I don’t know how accurately the SFX guys got her arm to look “tempura-fied,” but to me, it looked like her one arm was covered in yellow feathers. I mean, ACTUAL feathers. It made me think of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor on the poster for STIR CRAZY.
If the filmmakers had chosen, let’s say, shish kebab-ing as a form of physical abuse (while still keeping the culinary theme), that would have worked better, I think: it looks brutal during the application (skewering the flesh) and, also, in the end result (uh, skewered flesh).
Don’t you think?
Mermaid Heather: I just remember thinking something like, "Wtf is that??" And yes, I did think it was feathers as well.
Cattleworks: Although, I’m betting this is just a personal comic taste issue. I think the look of tempura is common enough culturally in Japan
Anyway, the bloody massacre that ensues afterwards when Ami visits the family again is both gross and, also, goofy.
It not only features a decapitated body as a super plasma soaker as Heather brought up earlier, but there’s also a weird scene of regurgitated intestines that makes no sense.True, I think it’s tough to maintain a “proper tone” consistency-wise when a film’s main energy comes from its creative philosophy of excess, because we start getting into personal tastes as to what excess is enough and “cool!” and what excess is just, well, excessive and “aw, you gotta be friggin’ friggin’ me!”
In this case (for me), the puked guts made no sense and was too much. The initial violence perpetrated on the victim was fine, but then they grossly gilded the grotesque lily with the Fulci-esque antics.
Also, blood spraying like a water sprinkler is a stylistic choice (and a retro one, as well, I believe; for instance, Tarantino’s use of arterial blood spray in KILL BILL is a direct reference to 70s kung-fu films) clinically unbelievable but acceptable, but then blood gushing ON CUE from a corpse is distractingly preposterous. Oh, and when I say a “water sprinkler,” I only mean the steady arterial stream effect—it doesn’t actually rotate or stutter spray, although, now that I say that, that’s a funny and preposterous idea for doing bleeding… but I digress!
So, yeah, I agree with you on that point, Heather.
Oh, and before I forget… I just wanted to point out: THE HOST was a Korean film. But, YES, it did have awesome SFX.
Mermaid Heather: Korea , Japan
Cattleworks: Ha ha ha!
And the drill bra scene that Heather points out IS curious because they make such a point of how much damage this bra is doing during a fight, that you can’t help but expect to see something awful in terms of the damage that the deadly breast support wreaks. Like, are we going to see mutilated lungs hanging out of the victim? But, the results are disappointing because they don’t exist—there are NO results, no wounds major OR minor, just lots of blood. So, that was a puzzling choice. I don’t even think the clothes were that damaged, except for the amount of blood (so, yes, there’s some significant laundry issues implied, but, uh…). Maybe they ran out of time or money?
Mermaid Heather: I rather enjoyed the acting. It may well have been the best part about MACHINE GIRL. Almost all of the actors did a very good job with each of their roles.
Cattleworks: I liked the acting, too. There were a couple performances in particular that I really liked.
I thought Miki, the mother of Takeshi, did a great job. Her character is also a mechanic and she runs a garage with her husband. They eventually create the gatling gun prosthetic for Ami.
But Miki and Ami don’t get along at first. Miki, too, is wary of Ami because of the scandal of her parents. And when her son Takeshi dies, Miki blames Ami for it.
Miki was played by Asami, and I thought she and actress Minase Yashiro (who plays the Machine Girl) did really well as the two main female protagonists. In fact, there were moments that I thought Asami stole the film from Yashiro, performance-wise.If I understand my slim internet research correctly, the actress Asami has a background in porn. I don’t know if it’s an extensive history or how explicit her adult roles were, but if she’s trying to move into more legitimate roles—at least by comparison to porn—she acquits herself nicely in this goofy flick. I actually felt for her as a grieving mother at times.
Meanwhile. this is Yashiro’s first real acting gig. I think her background is modeling. And, having said that, I thought she did pretty well, too.
Mermaid Heather: I would never have guessed that this was the first film for Minase Yashiro. Maybe the acting was a little over the top at times, but what wasn't in this film?
If anyone happens to watch this film with English dubbing, I think they will be impressed by it. I have to give some credit to those that worked on the voiceovers. It sounded to me like they put some real effort into their work. It wasn't just phoned in, in other words.
The only exception I can think with the acting would have been Ami's girlfriend.
God how I hated her. I hope that not all Japanese people play basketball that way. I don't recall being annoyed by a character so much in a long time. "Oh, you are so good, Ami!" Ya think? Honey, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you would make a dog look good playing basketball. I was glad, for once, that a character was killed off. Although, I do admit that what was hinted at after her death did shock me some. Did I say how much I hated that character?
Cattleworks: I totally agree. I’m glad those scenes with her were short.
I’m wondering if this kind of “comic relief character” is typical of some Japanese films, or at least, Japanese genre films. The Japanese “pinky violence” film, SEX AND FURY - which is pretty great for the most part - has some elements of really broad humor from a comic relief, minor male character who is somewhat more insufferable than Ami’s friend. So, in the case of MACHINE GIRL, I’m not sure if it’s a reflection of the actress’s (in)abilities or she’s just fulfilling a comic type that these films are expected to have. But, even so, I also didn’t have any patience for her in those scenes she had, being all girly and ditzy while envying/complimenting Ami on her athletic abilities. Blech!
I think some moments of the caricatured depiction of villainy is also debatable.
When we first see Sho’s father, Ryuji Kimura (played by Kentaro Shimazu), I was reminded of the late John Belushi doing his samurai character on Saturday Night Live back during the 70s, especially at his most intense brow-furrowing. The level of acting intensity of both the father and son is comical because of its extreme degree. But ultimately I felt it was alright, because the father was not only a badass yakuza, he had ninja blood as well. In contrast, the over-the-top behavior of the mother with the tempura seems to come out of nowhere. Again, I think the basic directorial approach to be exaggerated and extremely melodramatic makes sense because so much unbelievable stuff is packed into the story, you have to make sure the audience’s capacity to accept ANYTHING is primed. Like, the yakuza father ritually bonding with his son by opening a paternal vein and having the kid drink his blood! You know, stuff like that.
Finally, there’s a neat scene involving Ami, the Machine Girl (after the problematic tempura and gut puking set-pieces), where she seems to be losing her mental stability. Her bloodletting is going against everything she was brought up to try and be, and she runs through the city crying out and laughing maniacally, screaming that she’s “a demon! A demon!” I thought that was a somewhat beautiful and poetic moment. The movie touches briefly on the notion of Ami’s spiritual corruption because of her need for vengeance, and that objective observers seem to view her violent efforts as not a form of justice but her being purely homicidal; even the kid she saves at the beginning of the film looks upon her this way, and she doesn’t disagree with him. It seems like an interesting and actually sophisticated subtext that the filmmakers wants to explore, but depending on your tastes, it’s either:
- A crock of hooey, something to make the film SEEM more sophisticated than pure exploitation fodder, OR
- Barely a hooey-filled crock. Instead, just an afterthought and they shot a couple scenes to throw it into the mix, OR
- A real thematic consideration but just never fully developed.
Oh, and backtracking a bit: did you notice that they screwed up in the prologue? I didn't realize this the first time, but I just watched it again a few days ago (to refresh my memory for this review).
[NOTE from 2013: When I say that, we’re still back in 2008, though. Are these “clarifying” notes properly confusing you, dear reader?]
When Ami makes her entrance, she has her left arm behind her back. She proceeds to unarm the head gang member (almost literally) by un-handing him via a sickle. What I didn't remember was that when she jumps acrobatically into the air to attack him, they have a shot of her from underneath, and as she soars over us, she has BOTH arms extended. In the next shot and through the rest of the sequence, she either has her left arm behind her or she reveals it to be amputated below the elbow or she has her funky machine gun attachment on.
But, in hindsight, that's probably why I was shocked to see she was already armless. Not only because it was the first time we meet her in the film, but I just saw her arm all attached and un-amputated less than a minute earlier in botched continuity, the heck!. Okay, I didn't specifically remember seeing that at first, but I'm sure that added to my confusion and shock!
Mermaid Heather: Actually I didn't notice that.
I DID happen to notice, though, that the claw-like thing the main bad guy was using, to rip body parts off with, was sometimes looking like it was nothing more than cardboard. The way he was holding it sometimes, you could see it moving. It was like he was trying very hard not to squish it under his hands...
Oh! And that’s it!
That was all Heather and I wrote in our back and forth. Yeah, somewhere, I must have gotten distracted by something and just never followed through on wrapping this review up… and as time passed, well, we just never completed it.
Now, in 2013, Heather is still writing in her blog, but she’s graduated from college and now works in a forensics lab. Yeah, she not only digs horror movies, she’s also a real life CSI lab tech! How cool is that!
So, instead of my pestering her 5 years after the fact to see if she remembers enough of the movie still to offer her final thoughts, I thought I’d just post what we wrote so far and leave it at that.
Because, I myself would have to re-watch the movie in part to remind myself of how it ends. Ultimately, I did enjoy the film, while occasionally tolerating some of its artistic choices.
So, in an attempt to sum up: I thought THE MACHINE GIRL was a fast paced, sensation ride, and full of crazy characters, and excessive violence done in outlandish ways. For the most part, I think it works, with occasionally clunky ideas or inconsistent effects, but always done with exuberance and a gleeful embracing of bad taste.
The same filmmakers also made TOKYO GORE POLICE, another excessive gore and SFX film, this time set in a nightmarish future and even more surreal and absurd than MACHINE GIRL.
I think it was the filmmakers’ follow-up film. Like most films, I own the DVD of TOKYO
Meanwhile, I think Heather liked THE MACHINE GIRL as well. I don't know what she'd rate it out of 5 (her usual method of rating films on her blog). Based on her comments, I'm guessing a solid 3, but I'll have to ask her.
Many, MANY thanks again to Mermaid Heather for her suggesting we do this review together and taking the time to e-mail me several times in the process. On her own blog, she posts MUCH more frequently and still covers a lot of independent, low-budget horror fare as well, so definitely check out her blog and leave a comment!
Finally, I also have an issue of Rue Morgue magazine that sported a MACHINE GIRL cover article. I thought it would be cool to post some additional material based on that article to complement this review, ut I never got around to it (THAT'S a startling disclosure!). Maybe some day... maybe some day in five years...
And holy cats, I think this is my FIRST blog post for 2013! I guess I’m finally following through on that New Year’s resolution I made "to post more often…"
