Asian Horror Week: Tokyo Gore Police (2008, Japan)

Guess I should have expected nothing less from a movie called Tokyo Gore Police. It was crazy bloody, campy, not too well made, and had some freak-ass special effects. Therefore, it ruled.

The air-quote "plot": In some kind of nutso future, Ruka is a police officer whose speciality is killing engineers. Engineers are mutants who can turn any wound they receive into a deadly weapon (think James Woods' gun-hand thing from Videodrome). Ruka is out for revenge against whoever killed her police officer father, while the creator of the engineers seeks to make his mutants the master race of the world.

Ruka is one of those really hot skinny chicks who never smiles and knows every kung-fu and samurai move, and looks totally bad ass while doing it. She doesn't talk that much and she's got some issues because her father was assassinated right in front of her, and was raised by the chief of police who taught her how to become the strongest engineer hunter. This guy has some kind of megaphone device attached to his police uniform (which looks like something the Vikings wore) to amplify his voice. Why? Who cares.

Anyway, this movie has an insane amount of blood. I mean, INSANE. Whenever anybody gets wounded even a little bit, about five gallons of blood literally squirt, spit, and spurt out of them while they yell as loud as they can. Think about when Lucy Liu cuts that dude's head off in Kill Bill and that is what this entire movie is about. Peoples' limbs are sliced off, certain parts are bitten off, and people just die in the most crazy ways. And of course this is all in good awesome fun, and the only problem I had with it was that the blood mostly just looked like red water or a very light-colored cherry Kool-Aid. If that was the case, then I'm guessing everyone on set must have stained the crap out of their clothes. Indeed, I have never seen a movie with a more appropriate title than Tokyo Gore Police.

You see, the only way, naturally, to kill these engineers is to mutilate the fuck out of their bodies so that you destroy this key-shaped tumor inside them that makes them what they are. This is wonderfully presented to us in the first fight scene where Ruka kills an engineer on a rooftop. After a freaking DUELING CHAIN SAW fight, Ruka takes her new chain saw toy and just slices this guy all to hell, then takes out her shiny samurai sword and slices him down the middle. Niiiiiice. Then she gets a medal for it. I'm guessing that police brutality claims are not all that common in this engineer-infested Tokyo.

When one girl is literally shot in half, the lower half of her body mutates into the mouth of an alligator. The guy that gets his junk bitten off (ironically, by Alligator Girl) grows a huge tumor-junk that shoots out... well, I don't know what it was but it looked nasty. There's a great scene where a guy grabs Ruka's ass on the subway and she pulls him outside and cuts his hands off, popping up a pretty umbrella against the shower of blood. There are so many crazy gore effects all throughout this movie that it's impossible to talk about them all here or pick a favorite. They are in the same fashion of movies like Dead Alive where the gore is the gag, and you'll be laughing your butt off the whole time.

The special effects other than the gore include lots of really messed up looking mutations and costumes for all our crazy characters. The chief guy has this S&M reminiscent "pet" guy with no arms or legs, but who at one point walks around spider-like on samurai swords that replace the missing limbs. Note to self: Stay away from Japan if the future ever gets to be anything like this.

The main score for Tokyo Gore Police is actually pretty awesome. It sounded vaguely familiar to me, although I can't place where I might have heard something similar. Nevertheless, it is quite fabulous, very dramatic and over-the-top. Loved it.

There's also a definite humor throughout the film and not just in the wacky kills. Those freaky commercials that the Japanese are known for make a few appearances - advertising how effective the police force is (after they blow away one dude with four machine guns) and even one that advertises a stylish looking box cutter for girls so they can look cool while they cut their wrists. Yea! It's so fun. I'm not sure if this one was supposed to be a real commercial or not, though, since it is established at the beginning that Ruka is a cutter.

If your looking for a fun movie with not a lot of substance (really no substance at all), you could do a lot worse than Tokyo Gore Police. I'll just leave you with some images from the film for hilarity's sake. Snail Girl, I believe, is quite provocative. Hehe.

You really want to see it now, don't you? DON'T YOU??!!