There’s a gang of teenage bullies and a vengeful schoolgirl with a scythe, what could possibly go wrong?
Nothing. Nothing can go wrong. Absolutely everything is right thanks to The Machine Girl.
After Ami’s brother is killed by a pre-pubescent gang, she goes on the warpath armed with nothing but her blade, lightning-fast reflexes, and the painful memory of her dead brother. But the gang’s leader just happens to be the son of a yakuza. Our girl is marked for death.
Soon throats are slit, ninja stars are hurled, skulls are cracked, and many, many limbs are severed. No one is spared, not even the chef. In a cinematic first, there’s a panko-crusted tempura hand and dainty fingers that have been turned into grisly sushi. There’s also a pot of stew with a secret ingredient. Hint: it’s a human head. The film is an explosion of gushy, gory brawls and disembowelments, and throughout all of this mayhem, people are force-fed rice balls, which doesn’t seem like torture but this is the power of film. When Ami’s arm is severed in a fantastic fountain of blood, she gets it replaced with a machine gun. A giant machine gun.
Sure, The Machine Girl is taking a page from ye olde The Evil Dead handbook but I don’t care. It’s a gun arm, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I cannot stress enough how big her gun is. This isn’t even code for anything. Ami’s gun is gloriously, comically large and further accentuated by the fact that she’s probably 5 feet tall and weighs a buck soaking wet while holding a giant sack of flour.
The Machine Girl is a classic revenge tale with an incredible amount of special effects, both practical and digital. Admittedly the digital effects are not great and they look more appropriate for the original PlayStation (though this is part of the fun of watching). The film is certainly a reminder that practical effects will always look better than digital and will always age better. Still, even the digitally enhanced kills are absolutely entertaining and there’s plenty of latex make-up gore, savage disembowelment, and jet streams of blood to temper the digital mishaps. The blood runs like an unattended fire hose left on full blast; this is a film that gushes and explodes. It will leave your shirt stained red and your hair matted with intestines.
And of course, as the title promises, there is absolutely a shower of never-ending bullets that lay waste to yakuza ninjas wearing track suits. The weaponized body parts come nowhere near the magic of Tetsuo: The Iron Man but you know, that’s perfectly fine. I still enjoy seeing a face get shot off by a shitstorm of bullets until all that’s left is a bloody skull.
There’s plenty to love about The Machine Girl. It’s got elements of camp, zany comic book deaths, and ridiculously over-the-top villains with even more ridiculously over-the-top weapons. But it’s important to note that the female characters in this film are absolute badasses. They wield weapons, take no prisoners, and relish every second of it. Sure there are exploitive moments—it’s a genre movie after all—but I do love that women are in the front seat.
