Samurai purinsesu: Gedô-hime

I'm unashamedly fond of this genre of over-the-top, ultra-gory, and often hilarious Japanese movies. When done right, they're endlessly entertaining. Samurai Princess is not one of the finer examples that I've seen. 

The story is a revenge tale about a girl who becomes a Mecha (super-powered humans modified with the body parts and souls of the dead). She's searching for a group of men and two other Mechas who are responsible for the assault and dismemberment of a group of her friends. The plot is not presented in such a straightforward way, though, and there's a revolving door of random characters that pop up spout some back-story, get in a fight or two, and then die or disappear. 

The action scenes are weak, the attempts at humor come off as just weird, and not much of anything really makes sense. Samurai Princess is definitely a low-budget affair, with most of the money seemingly going renting the various warehouses it was filmed in. 

The only real entertainment to be found is from wondering what inexplicable thing is going to happen next. Watch if for that, or don't bother with it, at all. 

9/10 on the WTF scale, 4/10 as a movie. 

And please don't ask what the title has to do with the actual movie, because I've yet to figure that out.

If you liked Tokyo Gore Police, which was written by Kengo Kaji, the writer and director of this film, then you will probably enjoy this blend of sci-fi and horror.

There is more gore in the opening than most movies have in their entirety. It doesn't quit, but keeps getting stronger. Stacks of bloody body parts appear throughout.

You just have to give up trying to make sense of this movie, and enjoy the ride. It will amaze you with special effects, weird weapons, and buckets of gore.

Don;t know about that ending.

There's something about this new, ultra-violent, insanity laced, splatter genre from Asia. I've seen a few of these types of flicks now, and with each passing one, I keep asking myself why I'm not going ga-ga over them. I like them, sure. They're the most creatively violent flicks coming out these days. But movies as a whole, they're just bloody messes. I feel like I should be persuaded to just scream joy from the roof-tops because of the ridiculousness of the ideas and blood, but I guess I've seen enough films, enough bloody weird films, to form this opinion.

Based on this lil blurb, I don't think I have to explain myself for the reason why I'm not telling you about the intricacies of the story. But just to help a tad, it revolves around "mecha's" (sp?), revenge, and absurdity. Which are all cool aspects to a film in my book. But again, when intertwined in such a bizarre way, any type of emotional aspect to the film is lost. And that's where these films go awry. There are slow parts where it seems you're supposed to give a flying sh!t about the story. But the thing is after that scene where the dude is literally turned into a 'fountain of blood', my mind is totally checked out, and I'm only looking for more grue and of course, nudity.

Which brings me to another aspect to this crazy genre; the lack of sleaze and nudity is disappointing. Fortunately for Samurai Princess, the lead actress is/was (?) an A/V actress, so lucky for us, there's a sex scene with nudity. But besides one other nip scene, and of course the boob-weapon, there's nothing. You would think with all the amputated limbs, geysers of blood, brains, alligator legs etc. etc. the sub-genre would exploit other areas than just the red stuff. But again, good job to this flick for delivering a nice 'n cutesy sex scene.

I feel like I have to repeat myself when I say, I like these films. But not really as films, but as a kind of gore highlight reel, with hot Asian babes prancing around doing high-kicks. I'd love to see a film with this type of gore done in a more traditional way. Maybe a werewolf flick, that just showers the viewers with blood during scenes of attack. Something more simple that's still enormously violent, could be something that really works. I feel that's just useless wishing, as it seems these films are slowly beginning to reach a wider audience, so we'll probably continue to watch this sub-genre of film for a wee bit longer. Not that I really have a problem with that. It's just feeling a tad played out already. Also, moar bewbs, plz.

In case you didn't know, Japanese Horror has changed since the earlier parts of the last decade. Sure, there were films like "Ichi The Killer" and the ongoing wave of Japanese Zombie flicks, but in much of the last decade, the country was largely known for it's supernatural creepfests with long haired ghost girls and mounting dread. While that was fun for a while, it eventually went the way of many fads/sub-genres of horror-yesterday's news. You can only see a pale supernatural force so much until you get bored.

So what's the new-wave of Japanese Horror at the moment? Splatter Comedy flicks. Movies that owe largely to the likes of old Troma movies, Paul Verhoeven's "Starship Troopers" and the like than they do old Japanese Urban Legends and haunted TV's or whatever. Flicks such as "The Machine Girl", "Tokyo Gore Police" and the upcoming "Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl" have defined this new era, and Kengo Kaji's "Samurai Princess" is one of the latest in this new trend.

The plot takes place in an alternate universe Japan, in which a our titular heroine (adult film actress Aino Kishi) was one a normal girl. That is, until a group of rapists had their way with her friends and left her for dead. Oh, and a mad scientist has fused the souls of her dead friends, implanted them into her, and turned her into a vengeful cyborg. Wackiness and arterial spray ensues.

From the get go, "Samurai Princess" is utterly bug-f#@k insane. It has chainsaw legs, wacky villainous sidekicks (the mad scientist has a gaggle of fan girl types following him wherever he goes-it's actually a lot funnier than it sounds), evil monsters, a pair of breasts that double as grenades (yes, you read that right), a man wielding a guitar that doubles as a sword and a chainsaw, and so much more. It's also shockingly funny as times, with some amusing gags thrown in, as well as the non-stop insanity making sure that you never grow bored. It also helps that the gore never wears out it's welcome-quite the contrary in fact, as each set piece is bonkers and all around entertaining.

Yet, the whole thing ends up feeling kind of like the sum of it's parts. One major flaw is the production values. While I normally don't complain about poor production values in genre fair, the Shot on Video style left me feeling a little let down, as it would have benefited from better editing, camera work and whatnot. Also, the performances are really hit and miss, with Aino Kishi being a bit bland as our heroine (though the fact that she's willing to disrobe doesn't hurt the least). The biggest flaw though, is the poor fight choreography. Films like this need fight scenes that can hold up with the movie, and here they just can't.

In the end, it's a flawed movie, but for rainy weekend fair, "Samurai Princess" makes for a fun time. If Troma made a "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" episode, it would probably resemble this.

No one wears a 2-piece bathing type suit mainly because the film was shot in freezing cold weather. The breath coming from the actor mouths was distracting. Hollywood and Hong Kong is so much better weather wise. There is no real samurai or any type of fighting. It's just a special effects gore fest, where a sword is swung and blood and body parts go flying. And it goes on and on. The story, whatever it was was, is background clutter and doesn't matter as the film makers only want to gross you out. A one trick pony. The specials efforts are gross, not clever. I guess if you are watching the film with a bunch of friends, then the film might work better, as you can laugh at and comment on the gory special effects. I am avoiding anything done by this Director in the future.

I have seen and love Machine Girl. A movie with a real story and clever special effects spaced properly throughout the film and it is just as gross.