billcr12
Another Japanese action film with a female avenger, The Machine Girl stars Minase Yashiro as Ami, a girl whose brother is killed by a gang of boys associated with the yakuza. She tries to fight back, but is beaten and has her left arm cut off. A couple of garage mechanics make a machine gun prosthetic arm which provides endless bloody entertainment, as Ami makes her villains into Swiss cheese with her weapon. This ain't Shakespeare, but it is fun.Ami and her best friend, Miki, who helps her gal pal with a chainsaw, track down the yakuza at their hideout, and this leads to a vicious battle with limbs flying everywhere. It's Kill Bill without Tarantino's wit. The girls are cute and the action frequent, so just sit back and watch the pair of Asian beauties who will surely give you a happy ending.
Dave from Ottawa
Chopped off limbs, arterial spray, fist-sized holes shot through torsos and heads... The Japanese ultra-violence action genre is not for the squeamish, but jaded thrill seekers looking for a true grind house experience should find much to enjoy here. The violence is so over-the-top that it becomes cartoonish and is actually quite funny to watch, and the gore effects are often inventive and clever. The plot is a familiar vehicle for this sort of exercise - two boys die at the hands of a Yakuza brat and their surviving relatives go on a revenge kick. But nobody watches these movies for the stories or character drama, right? The insane fight scenes are everything here along with the mayhem that results, and it's a pretty entertaining 90-min. ride. Enjoy.
lost-in-limbo
Insanity from Japan. "The Machine Girl" is a modern blood-soak tale of revenge. A simple, candid payback story (which is a running theme with many characters getting onto the act as blood ties are important), however there's nothing restrained about its macabre humour and over-the-top visuals. Campy make-up and cheesy gore effects on CGI overload, but there's a gleeful sense to all of the spurting mayhem that it's hard to take seriously or to be disturbed by. Comic-book pulp with a typical grindhouse edge, sees many characters (some quite colourful or cornball) come and go and plenty of outlandish instances formulate into deliriously unholy madness --- but these gratuitously choreographed sequences were delivered with plenty of ticker and style by writer / director Noboru Iguchi. Crisp cinematography and a sprightly cued score added to the exuberance, although I did find the mid-section to somewhat drag a bit.High-school girl Ami sets out to avenge her younger brother's death at the hands of some school bullies who have ties in the Yakuza family. But her first encounter sees her losing half of her left arm and barely escaping to find shelter in a garage that's owned by her brother's dead friend's parents. There they heal her, arm her up with a high-powered machine gun and she teams up with the chainsaw-wielding mother Miki for revenge of their loved ones. A cute Minase Yashiro brings a strong and determined presence to her Ami character and Asami along side her has a forceful stability as Miki. The bad guy roles are colourfully done with venom by Kentarô Shimazu, Honokaa (wearing a bra that you won't forget) and Nobuhiro Nishihara. Overcooked, but ludicrously ruthless bloodbath fun.
julian kennedy
Machine Girl (Kataude mashin gâru): 7 out of 10: People in Japan must have very high blood pressure. They don’t bleed in Machine Girl, as much as they outright gush gallons of the red stuff. The effect is so over the top it adds a sense of outrageous humor to what could have been a fairly grim affair. After all the story concerns a college girl who gets a prosthetic weapon attached to her elbow after a member of the Yakuza amputates her lower arm to disused her from investigating the suiciding of her younger brother.This quick synopsis actually understates the depravity our heroine undergoes before she gets all Death Wish on anyone with a shiny business suit.Our Rick Allenesqe heroine is played by the delightful and delicious Japanese model/actress Minase Yashiro. In fact one of the movies strong points is a quite attractive cast wearing schoolgirl outfits and cameo like some cosplayers wet dream. Mono-named Asami and Honoka join Yashiro to round out the attractive female cast.Machine Girl however never really hooks the viewer emotionally. It is all so over the top and cartoonish. Exploitation films often benefit from allowing the audience to get emotionally involved with the characters (Think Mad Max or Savage Streets). I don’t blame the actresses in this case; I simply think the script could have taken a breather from the silliness to add some much needed poignancy.The entire film plays like an overlong Monty Python skit. It has great set pieces, decent special effects and enough fetish material to keep a Chaku-ero fan in his basement for a week. It simply doesn’t tell a compelling story, nor does it allow one to become attached to any of the characters involved.That said however, I simply cannot dislike a film that features a bra made out of industrial drills. So turn you mind off, send the misses out shopping and enjoy.
AD
