Behold the Japanese Super Female! This is a CRAZY new category of film – young women who overcome extreme adversity to turn the tables on their male oppressors – usually with lots and lots of blood!
Here is an unnecessary warning: these films are over-the-top – but know this: they are all about female empowerment – just in ways you could NEVER have imagined!
CLASSIC ASIAN CINEMA!
In the last decade we have seen a huge number of terrific foreign films showing up in the US: masterpieces like “Battle Royale”, “Oldboy”, along with earlier classics like John Wood’s “Hard-Boiled” and “The Killer”, and other films such as “A Bittersweet Life” and “A Better Tomorrow”.
Most of these films had a male protagonist, like Chow Yun-Fat. Now, however, we are seeing women take center stage. Some of the most original, inventive, and outrageous movies being made today are coming from Japan, with women exacting revenge in ways you cannot imagine! Here are some examples of the best of them!
HOORAY FOR WOMEN – CULT JAPANESE EXPLOITATION CINEMA!
RoboGeisha! – 2009. Yes, a robotic Geisha. If you want to jump right into the deep end of the “crazy pool”, this is the movie to start you off!
Here is the plot: Yoshie, the younger and ill-treated sister of a renowned Geisha, is discovered to have natural strength and fighting ability. She’s recruited into an army of Geisha assassins by the rich and powerful owner of a steel-works, Kageno. During training large (and interesting) parts of their bodies are altered into weaponry directly linked to their brains.
Let’s stop for a second and repeat one line: parts of their bodies are altered into weaponry. So what you see above you is a “buttsword”. Yes, it is. She has a sword that comes out of her butt. And that is just the beginning….they also have breast machine guns!
Yoshie soon realizes that Kageno’s real plan is to have his robotic castle throw a new and very powerful nuclear bomb into the center of Fuji-san, destroying Japan entirely. With the help of other ‘Kageno defectors’, she sets out to stop him and his Tengu warriors.
Did I mention that those Tengu Warriors wear red penis noses?
Did I mention that one girl plunges fried shrimp into the eyes of her enemy?
That’s right: FRIED SHRIMP!
And yes, she has a rotating buzzsaw face…but did you expect less? This movie is CRAZY!
Samurai Princess
From the creator of “Tokyo Gore Police” and “Machine Girl” (more on those later!), Yoshihiro Nishimura joins director/writer Kengo Kaji (Ultra-Seven X) as action director in this latest GORE-RIFFIC Japanese spectacle “SAMURAI PRINCESS” (aka. Devil Princess).
Here is what the DVD box says: What makes “Samurai Princess” succeed is the extreme excesses of BLOOD and GORE. Body parts are quickly dismembered, brains are turned into gooey matter in an interrogation scene, heads are sliced, chainsaws are used extensively, there are “flying guillotine breasts”, torso buzz saws, rocket boots and much more; they are all accompanied by the excessive bloody arterial spray that is the trademark of Japanese cinema.
The samurai princess is played by 21-year-old Aino Kishi, who debuted in 2007 as a gravure idol. According to Japanese Wikipedia she only released two photo books before becoming a full-fledged pornstar in December of that year.
Amazon has most of these films, and their other options always toss up a few more. There is also a website called “Asian Cult Cinema” – they have some of the latest stuff – and stuff that is never released in the US…for those of you who want to keep digging into this stuff, that is the website to check out…
Helldriver. 2010. Here is one of the latest movies in the genre, and of course, one of the wildest!
Here is a write up I found online, as crazy as the movie sounds! “First, the main character is a smoking hot zombie killer who has been sexually abused by her uncle who is also her mothers lover. The zombies grow horns that are like explosive crack and are hunted by a drug syndicate. The zombies are able to meld together after being hacked apart.” Well, you cannot argue with THAT.
This is a run down of some of the stuff in Helldriver: baby zombie nunchucks, spider zombie with M-16 legs, a japanese hitler, baby arms growing out of a zombies face that hold knife and fork to cut up flesh to eat, zombie head hail storm, lesbian zombies with action…you get the idea. This movie has it ALL. But this is what you expect when you put this DVD into the machine, isn’t it?
As you can read, Helldriver is going all out to win the crown of CRAZIEST JAPANESE MOVIE EVER! But it has some really tough competition, as you are about to see…
Tokyo Gore Police. 2008. This was my introduction to the genre – and I have never looked back.
Here is the IMDB write up: Set in a future-world vision of Tokyo where the police have been privatized and bitter self-mutilation is so casual that advertising is often specially geared to the “cutter” demographic, this is the story of samurai-sword-wielding Ruka and her mission to avenge her father’s assassination.
The opening ten minutes are designed to fry your brain and suck your eyeballs out of your head – and that’s just for starters!
There are some iconic images associated with this film that I purposefully didn’t show – you need to experience them as they are revealed in the movie…once you see the film you will know exactly what I mean!
Vampire Girl Vs. Frankenstein Girl
The deranged genius behind “Tokyo Gore Police” is back with a chilling new flick that’s re-writing the hallowed history of the horror genre. “Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl” is the terrifying story of two classic monsters re-imagined as super hot – and extremely lethal – Japanese school girls.
Gore reigns supreme in this “blood-cake cavalcade of carnage” – which was chosen as the winner of the Audience Award at the 2009 NY Asian Film Festival.
Fan boys and movie blogs are already buzzing over this bloodbath du jour, and aficionados of psychedelic blood-filled chocolates, mad scientist principals, sumo wrestlers from hell, and sex-crazed school nurses are guaranteed to lose their heads over this old school splatter-fest.
This film isn’t quite as cohesive to me as some of the others, but once again you see a Director who is going to throw everything he has into making this an over-the-top gore fest, and for that you should be thankful.
Attack Girls Swim Team Vs. The Undead – AKA “The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers”. 2008
I have seen this movie, and I like it a lot, but I wanted to share an online write up I found as well, as this voice captures the essence of the film well: “Ok, every now and then we see a movie so outrageously silly, so sleazy, full of exploitative scenes and so trashy that you wonder as to why you would waste your time watching it and how you managed to sit through the whole thing. I saw “The Girls REBEL FORCE of Competitive Swimmers” (aka. Joshikyoei hanrangun, Attack Girls’ Swim Team vs. The Undead) earlier this year, and honestly, I feel so guilty that I managed to sit through the film. Well, I have a weakness for zombies and I have to prove that I am no snob. Hey, The film does feature hot Japanese girls in swimsuits and they’re often seen in their birthday suits.”
Aki (Sasa Handa) is a student with a troubled past. She was kept prisoner and abused by an enigmatic professor and trained to be an assassin. She had just transferred to a school at the worst possible time. There’s a mysterious virus in the school and students and teachers are being rounded up to receive a vaccine to counter the virus. However, the very same vaccine supposed to protect them from infection is actually a drug that turns everyone to flesh-eating zombies.
Luckily, Aki skipped on the vaccine, and the swim team is immune to the virus because of the chemicals present in the school’s swimming pool–chlorine. Aki finds out that the man responsible for the injections is the same man who sexually abused and kept her prisoner.
You will see more nudity in this movie than in most of the others, as well as plenty of bloodshed. Who could ask for more?
The Machine Girl. 2008. Here it is: The “Citizen Kane” of Japanese Female Revenge Exploitation!
Ami is a typical college girl. She’s bright, friendly, popular and athletic, with nothing to set her apart from other girls her age other than the fact that she is an orphan, left to care for her younger brother after her father committed suicide after being falsely accused of murder. But while there is tragedy in their past, the siblings’ future looks good, except for one thing. Ami’s brother has racked up a considerable debt to another boy at school, and that boy just happens to be the heir to a clan of vicious ninja-yakuza. Ami’s brother can’t pay, violence breaks out and in the course of trying to avenge her brother, Ami is captured by the clan. They torture her and hack her arm right off.
Ami escapes, barely alive, and is taken in by the owners of a machine shop who build her a customized, bullet-spewing arm. From that point, the quest for revenge is on in earnest.
Don’t worry, “The Machine Girl” delivers on every single thing you want: bloodshed, exploitation, and REVENGE!
As you can now see, these films begin and end in a similar way: young Japanese women are treated horribly by men, and they find a way, usually with scientific modifications, to exact revenge…bloody bloody revenge!
Since there isn’t a single guy in these films worth rooting for, you can’t wait for the next act of revenge to occur, and trust me, they occur PLENTY. Enjoy!
Categories: 70's Cinema, Action Films, Exploitation films, Extreme Asian Cinema, Foreign Films, Grindhouse, Horror films, Japanese Sexploitation Movies, Movies, Obscure Movies, Revenge Movies, Sexploitation Movies, Talent/Celebrities, Tokyo!, Travel, Uncategorized
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