Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
Rina Akiyama, the star of director Go Ohara’s j-sploitation splatter fest ‘Gothic and Lolita Psycho’ won some award in some Maxim-esque publication as having the most outstanding behind in the year of 2007. An achievement that any young woman should be proud of. We’ve included a quick pic of Ms. Akiyama’s bootylicious claim, simply for reference purposes. I mean she’s not Serena Williams or Buffy ‘the body’ Carruth or anything, and she is Japanese so there’s only so much girth and ass can aspire too, but she will do. Admittedly this has very little to do with ‘Gothic and Lolita Psycho’, especially considering that Ohara kept what probably got the girl the job in the first place completely under wraps, just keeping the public informed. It’s what I do.
Somewhere in Tokyo, some people are at the club of some crazy chick (Miname Tsukui) having a good time, even though the occasional club member might get decapitated for perceived crimes against our host, when a Gothic-Lolita looking hottie dressed in schoolgirl black and clutching the ‘Umbrella of Death’ enters the club. We knew from the start that the guy guarding door, relentlessly scarfing spaghetti noodles, was going to play a part in this, because what good is eating a bunch of noodles in a Japanese Splatterfest if these noodles don’t tumble out your gut along with your intestines in a bloody mess of entrails? Regardless, the crazy chick sends her men after the girl, they get sliced and diced for their trouble, which eventually leads to a glorious sword fight ending in this crazy chicks death. Why did this girl kill this crazy chick?
Yuki (Akiyama) was once just a normal schoolgirl loving life until the evil people busted up in her crib, badly wounding her father (Yurei Yanagi) and crucifying her mom (Fumie Nakajima). Now Yuki needs answers. Why did these evil people do this thing? I mean Yuki’s mom seemed like the nicest, sweetest person ever. There was the weird vision, while crucified, of her mom exhibiting some demon like qualities… but surely this was her imagination considering she too was brutally beaten during this attack as well.
Now Yuki, with the help of her wheelchair bound father, is systematically tracking down these killers, one by one, to make them pay for the crimes they have committed against
her family, with each killer being tougher than the one that came before. But the question she can’t get an answer to… Why did they kill her mother? Eventually Yuki will get her answers, not that they are going to make her any less miserable than she already is.
Admittedly I do have a soft spot for these J-sploitation splatterfests, ‘The Machine Girl’ being a personal favorite as it successfully straddled that shaky line between over the top nonsense and storytelling, but Ohara’s ‘Gothic and Lolita Psycho’ comes close to ‘The Machine Girl’ in those same terms. It’s not quite the entertainer that ‘The Machine Girl’ was, probably because this one was a little more subdued than most of the splatterfests we’re used to seeing, but it was still pretty darned entertaining.
We already know that these movies are completely irreverent, not taking themselves the least bit serious with the odd Japanese humor that fills up these movies. Sometimes I’m guessing it would help to actually be Japanese to truly appreciate a lot of this humor, but not all the time. Yuki’s battle with the Kamikaze Kung Fu Dance Troupe, for one was particularly irreverent, or Yuki’s death battle with the dual pistoled, cell phone addicted, j-girl One Eyed Assassin was also pretty amusing.
One of the elements that sets this movie apart from a lot in the genre, since the irreverent humor is par for the course, are the fight sequences which are really slick, fast paced and expertly executed. This one had fight scenes to rival a Hong Kong based action flick, it’s just too bad there weren’t more of them.
True enough these J-Sploitation splatterfests are definitely an acquired taste, since not everybody won’t be all that comfortable with watching severed limbs gush out gallon after gallon of fake blood, nor should everybody be cool with this, but if it’s your thing… and apparently it is one my things… ‘Gothic and Lolita Psycho’ is a fine entry into this burgeoning genre.
