One Armed Ballistic Assault Heroine! Once again, we can count on the Japanese movie industry to offer up something quite different than what Hollywood churns out. The Machine Girl may be the first example I’ve seen of an over-the-top horror/splatter movie targeted specifically at an audience of school kids. Of course, I am fortunate/unfortunate enough not to have seen Battle Royale (which however I do plan to watch soon), Tokyo Gore Police, Samurai Princess, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, etc., which seem to be up almost exactly the same alley. The really bizarre thing is that all these movies are rated (in the West – I don’t know what the case is in Japan) as “Suitable for 18 years and over”, while based on themes and using styles and humor which are meaningful primarily to school-children, from tweeners to high schoolers. All right, and also to everyone who loves excessive gore – among which number I do however not count myself.
It should be emphasized that these movies in general, and The Machine Girl in particular, are comedies. Which is why they can probably be endured by almost any movie-goer as desensitized to movie violence as most movie buffs are today (and here I certainly do count myself among that number).
The story concerns a high school girl, Ami, and her one-year younger brother, Yu, both of whose parents have committed suicide in desperation over some unspecified false murder accusations (and by the time the movie ends, this won’t seem like such a wrong and unrealistic choice as it does at first). Yu is being bullied in school, and he and his friend Takeshi end up being thrown to their deaths from a multi-storey carpark. That leaves a distraught Ami with no other option but to take revenge.
The world this movie depicts is a world where everybody, in sharp opposition to real-life Japanese society, acts violently and desperately on their emotional frustrations. They don’t bottle it all up inside, but let it bubble to the surface with the wildest effervescence. Screw honor, appearances and respectability – these people want Revenge!! Justice!! No matter the cost!!
But Ami’s revenge does not come easy, because the leader of the bullying boys is the ruthless son of a completely crazed yakuza/ninja descendant of none other than Hanzo Hattori (for those not in the know, he was a legendary ninja who has been featured in many movies, incl. Kill Bill). Ami attacks the family, but is vanquished and only barely escapes with her life – and short of one arm! Realizing that she needs help, she recruits the distraught parents of her brother’s friend, Takeshi. They are both old gang members (but of course!), so they are quick to shed their inhibitions. The mother (played by extremely delectable porn actress Asami) is a martial arts expert, and the father is a master mechanic. He equips Ami with a home-made machine gun to fit on her stump. Plenty of ridiculous violence ensues.
It is nearly a constant blood-bath and chopped-off body-parts are flying like sparks. The comedy is fairly effective, although some of it is just silly (while Ami still has both her arms, she gets one of them deep-fried in the kitchen of a giggling mom of another of the bullying boys). Both the fight scenes and the gore scenes are actually not very well made – esp. not when you are used to the quality martial arts of Hong Kong movies. The artificiality is quite apparent, though I can’t tell if this is due to a low budget or some strange fit of responsibility, ensuring that things don’t look too convincing. I will say that it’s an admirable attitude that extreme violence can’t be comical if it looks too real, and in that sense this movie is toeing that line very competently, even if it often becomes rather too ridiculous.
The climax of the movie is waaay out there. The yakuza/ninja guy has convinced the parents of other dead children that Ami and her allies are to blame for their children’s deaths, and perish the thought that it might occur to them to talk it out – we’re long past that. These parents even have photos of their late children fastened to their chests (one has a photo tattooed to his chest!), leaving no doubt as to their motivation and misguided lust for revenge. I must admit it is utterly hilarious.
But I still find this style of “gore humor” problematic. Why is it interesting to make fun of killing, maiming and blood splatter? Isn’t it profoundly bad taste, and doesn’t it set a very morbid example of what’s supposedly cool? Not being a horror fan, my gut feeling to this question is a resounding “yes” – it’s bloody bad taste and bloody uncool. On the other hand, consider zombie movies, esp. zom coms; zombie comedies. Aren’t they exactly the same? I guess they are, though in comparison to the aforementioned Japanese movies, zombie movies are often very toned down in terms of gore (well, actually it’s the Japanese ones that are excessively “toned up”, but you get my point). To my mind, the funny thing about zombie movies – esp. Romero’s, but also a movie like the brilliant Fido – is their use of zombies as a critique of the common consumer, indeed, of the average person in the Western world today, going through life aimlessly, thoughtlessly, uncritically. The makers of these Japanese movies, however, seem to feel that the element of comedy should be in treating the violence and dismemberment itself in a comical way, esp. through sheer excess. It seems to be almost 100% pure and gratuitous shock value, done for commercial reasons.
But actually there is more to it. Just as crime is a symptom of a sick society, so are movies like these. We – incl. the Japanese – do not live in a perfect world, and hence there are a number of undercurrents of repressed frustration and inhibitions which are struggling for an outlet, and it is obvious that movies like The Machine Girl is one such outlet. It’s a way of dealing with powerlessness in the face of a society that doesn’t address people’s legitimate concerns, and does not find it acceptable, much less honorable, for individuals to react on the injustices they are subjected to in their daily lives. So the frustrations are given an outlet in the movies, where no holds need be barred.
The theme of The Machine Girl is, of course, bullying, and the theme is taken very seriously. It speaks with a roaring voice to all the victims of bullying who have ever fantastized about taking violent revenge on their perpetrators, and it expresses these fantasies with vivid vibrancy! And it probably works. Troubled school kids can most likely achieve some relief through such movies, which at the same time draw attention to an important and neglected social problem. So movies like this one do have a justifiable reason for existing – even if, like crime, they are clear symptoms of a society in which human nature is being beaten, bullied and perverted into fetishizing extreme violence. Which may be creating another kind of problems, for which other kinds of solutions must eventually be found. I can reconcile myself with no other position than that violence is, ultimately, not the answer. It can be exciting in entertainment, but there has to be a limit somewhere. A limit which The Machine Girl is definitely pushing.
My DVD is the Scandinavian release from Another World Entertainment – it’s fairly basic, but does have a trailer and a behind-the-scenes feature.
Director: Noboru Iguchi
Cast: Minase Yashiro, Asami, Kentaro Shimazu, and others
Runtime: 97 min
Country: Japan
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