Review: Tokyo Gore Police

 It’s really tough to find something to watch while the economic world burns around you. So I was pleasantly surprised by Tokyo Gore Police, a film Dali would have loved. The short plot – this time, Japan as we know it  (by implication) has been destroyed by a huge volcano, and the world that springs up is a Tokyo that has a privatized police force ( the “Tokyo Police Corporation”) instead of one paid for by taxes (I guess – this wasn’t explored because it would interfere with the gooshing blood). Privatization, we are told, will lead to “more plentiful lives”.

Our hero Ruka (Eihi Shiina) is the best at what she does – an “engineer hunter” inside the police force.  See, engineers are “criminals, vicious killing machines” that turn their recent wounds into weapons of either mechanical or organic material.  Every engineer has a key-shaped tumor inside them, and the only way you can kill an engineer is by destroying the place where the tumor is.

Ruka is a cutter as well, due to some messed up stuff she witnessed as a kid (her mom being a cutter, her father being assassinated in front of her because he’s against privatization, that kind of thing). Ruka gets involved in hunting down an engineer that, instead of killing like a berserker, kills with some sort of sinister purpose…

“Hi – may I speak to you about Ron Paul and the Campaign For Liberty?”

I liked the Starship Trooper vibe I was getting from much of the production – but I have to wonder if much of the wackness of this movie is simply a commentary on body mdification. Take for example the pics below – these are screen captures of some of the commercials in the movie, talking about cutting or suicide almost like a fashion trend…

The two pics above are from a commercial in the film advertising fashion wrist cutters (in 3 great colors, too!)

The body modification on display is quite surreal as well (snail girls, a chair made out of a still living  human). Being Japan, though – this surely can’t be a new thing over there?

And of course, this is one of those Japanese films that have blood or goosh splashing over everything like the wave in those Long John Silver’s commercials. I did like the makeup FX a lot, like the sharpened kinfe quadriplegic that Ruka’s boss keeps as a pet of some sort.  I enjoyed it, being silly, but unless you’re unfazed by body modification,fetishism, mutilation, and Japanese cinema in general, I can’t really recommend it to anyone else.

I’m not sure how they did this – is this actress an amputee? Or holes through the floor? Makeup sure is cool though.

 

Look for a creature like this in a future Robert Rodriguez film.

But how does she get a cheek weld with those?

In the future, you’ll be so poor that all you can afford is a DRAWING of a hit of Horse.

Stay in school, kids.