Machine Girl

I finally watched this movie after the dvd has been sitting in my bedroom in various places for the last few years. I wrote down some thoughts, a review of sorts of the bloody violent movie. There are a lot of scenes of faces with holes; come to think of it, there are a lot of holes, and missing bits and pieces, plentiful mutilation from the likes of throwing stars, swords, and a home made machine gun. There's this scene that I couldn't help but laugh at where the Yakuza boss "recruits" the mourning parents of their talented ninja children who serviced the heroine as machine gun chow. Here was a collection of things that formulated watching the film.

To kind of get the plot out of the way (since, this is more about over the top sadism and bloodshed than hitting you in the gut with a potent story, although the frame work of revenge due to the loss of the only person you have left in the world is presented as a means to understand why our heroine (well, we cheer her since the alternative is so reprehensible and despicable) is so fueled with anger, exacting a wave of violence so extreme, I couldn’t help but giggle), a Yakuza gangster’s son (and son’s brood of heathens) inflicts harm and terror on the brother of a high school teen girl, bullying the innocent kid just because he enjoys it. So the girl loses her innocence as a result of her brother’s unfortunate demise, leading a rage-filled guerilla assault on the Yakuza, with lots of blood geysers and hacked limbs, not to mention faces and heads eviscerated by a particular multi-barreled machine gun.

The formula is what it is. There is a reason for why the heroine is so unrelenting in meting out her brand of justice for the slain brother who didn’t deserve his fate. The villains should be absurdly cold blooded, to the point that there’s no conscience or feeling, so irredeemable and guilt-less, they can slit the throat of a maid for only doing her job (she inadvertently enters the prayer room while her master is “having a moment” with his equally repellent son (he opens a cut on his arm while son drinks his blood in a ceremonial type occasion!) or bury our heroine’s hand in cooking grease after trying to pummel her with a golf club.

Of course our “machine girl” loses not only her innocence, but her parents committed suicide because of their defamation of character (labeled murderers by the community) and now her brother is dropped off a balcony by Yakuza boy and his scumbucket gang. Thus, what does she have left but her revenge? She has nothing else to lose except her life and what is it without a family? Be damned those that stand in her way.

There were times, like with Ichi the Killer, where I could do nothing but take the sadistic cruelty and unhinged (but with a straight-faced efficiency) behavior but sit there, letting it all pass before my eyes without putting too much stock into it all. I mean, seriously, the Yakuza family (pop, son, and especially the mother who is the most warped-in-the-head of the trio) capture the heroine before she almost seals the deal on the little nihilistic bastard  (his form of gloating is the psychopathic stare and blank expression, like mother like son), handcuff her in a dungeon, slice off her fingers and one arm almost at the elbow with a sword, her cries of agony overshadowed by the gallons of blood spray that literally drowns out the camera lens.