Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Right off the heels of Media Blaster’s film ‘The Machine Girl’, a movie that was a classic in the making if ever there was one, comes Tokyo Gore Police. ‘The Machine Girl’ was a special film to me, one that featured the tell tale story of female empowerment. It was almost like that movie ‘Steel Magnolias’, that is if Julia Roberts had strapped a machine gun to her arm and was straight mowing down suckas. Being the feminist type of guy that I am, I just love to see bitches taking control of a situation and empowering themselves and those around them. Now we have ‘Tokyo Gore Police’ starring the somewhat legendary Eihi Shiina who has some experience playing a bitch who takes control of a situation. Is this film as magical as ‘The Machine Girl’ turned to be? No.

Our rather stylistic film begins in a futuristic version of Tokyo. The privatized police have been called to collar some blood crazed maniac who has just gutted some woman with a chain saw and armed to the teeth, the cops storm the complex and let this dude have it with all barrels ablaze. Sitting outside the festivities in a squad car is Police Officer Ruka (Shina) who seems to be awaiting some specific orders. While she waits she self mutilates herself with a straight razor. Something to do I guess.

Anyway, the cops mow this cat down with extreme prejudice severing his limbs in the process but damn if he doesn’t get up, grow some new limbs which somehow reattach his chainsaw to his right arm and subsequently proceeds to murderize some privatized cops in a hail of bloody goo. Now Ruka jumps into action for we have just encountered what we will learn is an Engineer, a mutated something or another that are damn near impossible to kill, except by Ruka, our most glorious Engineer Hunter.

So Ruka dispatches with this cat in the only way they can be dealt with. We will learn that Ruka is the daughter of a police officer, one that was slain right before her eyes which has led to her current state of self mutilation and overall miserableness. Since

her father’s death Ruka has been raised by her father’s former boss (Yukihide Benny) who has personally trained Ruka to be the Engineer hunter that she is today. Yes she’s miserable, and beautiful in a very dangerous ‘slit your throat’ kind of way, but she does love her job, a job which is about to get a lot more interesting. Ruka soon encounters the King of the Engineers, the man who is responsible for all of this nonsense in the first place known as the Key Man (Itsuji Itao). This Key Man character has some stories to tell Ruka about why he’s doing what he’s doing and in particular what really happened to Ruka’s father. Dude even gave the girl a little gift so to speak. We just hope this cat knows that Ruka doesn’t care what his motivation might be and that her plan is for this cat to taste the steel of her blade just like anybody else who stands in the way of her job of protecting the people, even if it means killing every single cop on the force.

What in the world have I just seen here people? I can’t really tell you because I’m not too sure. This movie here was directed by one Yoshihiro Nishimura who was the special effects supervisor for ‘The Machine Girl’ in addition to a load of other movies and I’m guessing my man was of the mind that those movies were for punks and sissies because you will have to search long and hard to find a movie as manically bloody and gory as ‘Tokyo Gore Police’. It is campy gore we should mention, I mean any movie with a scene in which a dude gets his legs cuts off and uses his flow of arterial spray as blood jet propulsion to motor around a room is a movie that’s not taking itself too terribly serious. Nonetheless, whatever they use to make fake blood for movies in Japan there is definite shortage of it around after ‘Tokyo Gore Police’ wrapped.

We also can’t argue that Nishimura has a definite visual flair in his filmmaking as the images that come out his brain and transfer to the screen are stark to say the least. I’m no psychologist, but I’m thinking it’s a damn good thing for that eastern island nation that this dude has discovered filmmaking otherwise he’d have to find another outlet for his obvious pathologies which wouldn’t be good for anyone. The little cutie pie with the severed lower half that turns into a giant snapping vagina in particular I’m thinking was a definite cry for help.

But the question would be is ‘Tokyo Gore Police’ a good movie? Well that kind of depends on what you’re looking for. As over the top and ridiculous as ‘The Machine Girl’ was, the narrative supporting the arterial spray was fairly tight and it tried to exist on the edge of reality. Not this movie baby. The narrative here, as it were, is simple enough but basically serves to bridge together the vats of fake blood, the three foot gunk shooting prosthetic penises, the quartering, beheadings, severings, and enough brutal mayhem to completely overload the senses. While none of this makes for much of a movie in the classic sense it does make for quite the spectacle.

So I guess if you want to see the lovely Eihi Shiina front and center once again and see a tech demo on 1001+ uses for fake blood, then ‘Tokyo Gore Police’ might just float your boat.