She was a fast machine. She kept her motor clean. She was the best damn woman that I etcetera, etcetera, you get the picture.

Machine Girl

Where does one start with a movie in which the heroine has a bloody great gatling gun for an arm? Let’s just say that if you like violence, Japanese junior high school girls, the yakuza and gatling guns this might be the movie for you. The movie is pretty fast moving. It is funny and confusing and fantastic simultaneously. It is at the very least a must rent.

The star of the film is a first time actress. Minase Yashiro is pretty darn cute and for newcomer she does a pretty good job of playing a sweet normal junior high school girl turned homicidal “demon”. As Ami Hyuga she is both vulnerable and invulnerable. Her characterization is the basis of the film.

Her transformation is triggered by her brother’s death at the hands of a local gang of bullies. After her attempts to seek out justice through socially acceptable channels fails she goes on a mother-effing rampage killing everyone who is connected with the demise of her only brother. The revenge is meted viciously and one might say cruelly, but I say go, machine girl, go!

Surely, you may be thinking, a junior high school girl’s ability to create madness and mayhem would be somewhat limited. Allow me to tell you, dear reader, that the character of Ami is violent on a mansonian scale. Her bloodlust equal to that of any four or five Vikings one might name. When Ami uses her machine gun to sever limbs, eviscerate torsos, flay skulls and just generally cuisinart denizens of the local underworld, it is not shit which hits the fan, it is blood, and I mean gallons of it. The blood in Machine Girl does not flow. It does not run. It geysers forth as if pumped by high pressure jets. It is glorious.

Did I mention she goes effing berserk?

The violence, however, is not the only thing which draws me to this movie like a fat man to a convention of fat men where that particular man might be the keynote speaker. In addition to all the over the top kills we have a finely developed sense of camp lunacy that permeates the film’s characters. The gang names are super wacky, their motivations and methods of attack are as funny as they are implausible and the fashions kill. Leopard prints and feather boas abound.

In short, this movie begins with people being slaughter housed by a bionic gatling gun girl and ends with a full on yakuza/ninja battle royal. There are gatling gun arms, chainsaw feet and head chopping hats. Blood is everywhere. People are suffering in this movie. Shit is biblical.

You should rent this movie if:

1. You have low self esteem and can’t give yourself permission to have nice things.

You should buy this movie if:

1. Happiness is at all important to you.
2. Gatling gun + Japanese junior high school girl = all that is true and good in this world.

If you are interested in buying this DVD here is a link to Amazon where you can get it at a reasonable price: