The Machine Girl

I was lucky enough to be given this film for a birthday present by BGR’s very own Sideswipe. I have just finished watching it, and I feel that I must immediately blog about it.

Now I love B-movies, I can enjoy a good gore film (if it has a purpose), I relish in a totally surreal adventure. But when you read on the front of the box “A film so incredibly outrageous that it couldn’t possibly exist…” I start to get a little worried. I have the distinct feeling there is so little content for the marketing guys to talk about they have to resort to making claims.

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Lets not beat about the bush, lets put the statement out and just go from there. This is not a good film.. not by a long way. If you take a look at Rotten Tomatoes, they give this film 63%. With a score like that it would be fair to assume that I must be wrong, how could it get that sort of score and just not be good? Maybe I am missing something?

I get the feeling the director had just finished watching “Kill Bill” and thought “I need to do something like that, but with a pretty school girl”. OK I can go with that, but it seems he did not stop there “and I’m going to need a massive machine gun, and some Yakuza, and gore, and blood… lots of blood”. I think it was at this point he must have called his FX department and told them to start making fake blood because he must have had a good six month lead up to this film where all he was doing was stock piling fake blood (he was not working on the script, thats for sure).

The premise is simple

There might be a few spoilers in here, I will try keep them to a bare minimum. So our heroin is just an average basket ball playing teen, with the stereotypical girl-friend who obviously fancies her (that plot line is dropped immediately.. not enough gore). He brother is being bullied, and eventually killed by the local Yakuza bosses son.

Our heroin swears revenge and the hunt is on!

After some initial problems, having your arm battered and deep fried is a bit of a set back (but thats not the thing that causes her to have a machine gun for an arm??) she tracks down the family and does a great job of getting to her target only to be captured, tortured, and involved in a nasty sword vs arm accident (I think you can work out at some point during the film something has to do that.. it was given away on the cover really.. I’m not taking the spoiler blame for it).

She gains some allies, fights some ninjas, before meeting back up with the family for the final show down.

Laugh out loud ridicules

Now you can see this is following a fairly standard plot, nothing you have not seen done a hundred times before. So the director adds his own twist on the precedings to make his tale stand out. Insanely over the top gore. We are not talking blood splattering and limb loss like in “Kill Bill”, we are talking simply the most insane (and implausible) things I think I have ever seen committed to film. I really can not explain it, watch the trailer and see that I mean.

Now with a little luck you will have watched that and just had to laugh at the awesome insanity of it, the bad props (notice how the gun does not rotate, the bulliets are fired around the chambers), the over-the-top violence, and the blood spurting. Rivers of blood are the theme here, if there was any way to have blood spray the director has used it.

Something the trailer does not show you is the bad acting.. and it really is bad in places.

Obvious “Kill Bill” rip offs

As I said the director had just watched “Kill Bill” and decided he wanted to make his own version, but really did not want to come up with all his ideas.

Limb slicing. Having seen this in “Kill Bill” the director has just taken it and thought “I want that in every scene.. but 10 times more.. and not just arms”.

Once she is on her quest for revenge she goes crazy and her manor reminded me very much of Gogo (minus the ball.. shame!).

Gogo uses her ball to great effect, see in the trailer how the guy has a very similar style of weapon.

Last, and the most shameless. The family is the Hatori Hanzo clan. Thats just not right.

Quality

There are some major quality problems here. I am not talking about the film itself, that was obviously cheap to make. I am talking about the Blu-Ray. To be honest you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between watching this on DVD and Blu-Ray. If you are going to buy it, save your money and buy the DVD, you won’t be missing much.

Conclusion

Did I enjoy this film… yes I did. This is a gloriously over the top film, where the most bloody scenes will make you laugh out loud. Mostly through a combination of terrible script, bas acting, and cheap special effects.

Would I reccomend some ones sees it… yes and no, watch this if you have seen the other possible offerings and feel like you have to see this one.

• If you want to see a school girl out for revenge, in a hack and slash adventure watch “Azumi”
• If you want to see intense and grizzly visuals that will make you cringe watch “Audition” (last 15 minutes are worth the wait)
• If you want just a brilliant, and just plain crazy film watch “Verses”
• If you want to see action, blood, great acting, amazing story watch “Battle Royale”

If you have exhausted all these options check out this film, it will bring a smile to your face, probably for the wrong reasons.