TOKYO GORE POLICE

It all started simply enough: in 2007 a trailer turned up on Youtube for something called the Machine Girl. It made its rounds on the internet, and people were wondering if this was for real or just a really awesome fake trailer ala Grindhouse. The truth was revealed that yes, this over-the-top ultraviolent film about a schoolgirl with a gatling gun attached to her arm fighting the yakuza WAS real, and when it was released on DVD, I bought it the week it came out, along with popcorn and Mountain Dew, sat myself down, and watched one of the wildest Japanese movies ever.

Fast forward to early 2008 and I was browsing the internet late one night when I stumbled upon another bizarre trailer for this little film called Tokyo Gore Police, made by the same madmen behind the Machine Girl. The trailer is 5 minutes of ultraviolent insanity, and has to be one of the maddest trailers ever:



You may have just watched that, thinking, “oh dear, that’s probably every gory scene in the movie spoiled and there‘s really no reason to watch this thing.” Actually, I doubt that’s what you’re really thinking, but if it was, then I can assure you, it’s not. I would be lying if I said every minute of the 109-minute-long movie is soaked in blood and gore, but it wouldn’t be much of a lie, because, well, things get pretty crazy. Tokyo Gore Police is a film which includes, but is not limited to:

- A commercial for cutesy wrist-cutting blades that “don’t hurt as much” and “make the blood taste better.”
- A man flying around in the air propelled only by the blood spraying out of the stumps where his legs used to be.
- A naked woman-chair-thing spraying (what I think is) urine all over a club full of people who seem to enjoy it.
- Key-shaped tumors being inserted into body parts which then split open when the key is turned.
- A very strangely animated(?) sequence showing a number of heads exploding.
- A schoolgirl spraying acid from her nipples and bellybutton. Er, well, if she had nipples and a bellybutton after all that mess…
- Several other laws of science, physics, and biology blatantly ignored with a lunatic’s glee.
- Several instances of blood getting all over the damn camera.

You may be getting the idea now.

The plot? Actually yes, there is one, and it IS rather interesting. See, the Tokyo Police Force has now been privatized, they’re running around in elaborate, pseudo-futuristic samurai armor, and they’re fighting a new, deadly threat: engineers. Engineers, yes, as in, freaks of nature who grow weapons from their wounds. Meaning if you cut that guy’s arm off, chances are a blade or gun of some sort is probably going to grow back, after spraying a few gallons of blood of course, and then he will proceed to maim and/or kill you with that new weapon. Almost like Tetsuo the Iron Man, another Japanese depravity I love so much! Enter Ruka, played by Eihi Shiina, which those of you who are into bizarre, horrific, utterly fucked up Asian cinema will recognize as the girl from the (also bizarre, horrific, and utterly fucked up) film Audition, directed by Takashi Miike. Ruka is the force’s top engineer hunter, but she also has some suicidal tendencies and nightmares of the time she watched her father’s head explode when she was a child. A super-intelligent engineer is going around killing prostitutes in a strange, elaborate fashion that involves the draining of their blood and stuffing their body parts into a cardboard box, and it’s up to Ruka to stop this madman.

It only gets bloodier and more depraved from there. There’s a bit of socio-political commentary going on in there too with the random commercials and the backstory to the privatization of the police force, but uh, I’m not an expert on that kind of thing so I don’t know what to tell you.

And, well, I enjoyed every bloody minute of the thing. As you can tell from the trailer, all of the special effects are good old fashioned red fluids and lots of prosthetics, with only some CG used in a fight scene towards the end that is fairly obvious, but given the circumstances, awesome nevertheless. This is not a movie with a gigantic budget, and it shows, but it does not hinder the film in any way. It outdoes the Machine Girl in every possibly way, being a better-looking, better-sounding, more depraved and violent film with a much better story. While the Machine Girl was pretty straightforward, Tokyo Gore Police is more involved, and especially a hell of a lot more surreal.

It’s positively astonishing. I love it. Would I recommend it to friends of mine? Well, considering who I hang out with, yes, but it’s certainly far from being a date movie or anything of that sort. I mean c’mon, look at the title: TOKYO GORE POLICE. Watch that trailer again. Ask yourself if you’d like to see more. If so, then by all means go out there and get this damn movie!

And hey, they’ve got another new movie coming up now, known as Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl! Judging from the trailer, it won’t be quite like Tokyo Gore Police, but it still looks promising. And by promising, I mean hilariously violent, of course.

[Brett]