This film is far better than the hideous Tokyo Gore Police (2008) with its terribly poor production values. Besides the camera work, the sound, and the screenplay being so much better, there is even a bit of acting in Mutant Girls Squad. There were some borrowed pieces from the earlier film: breasts spewing acid, samurai style police garb, dismembered forearms used as intelligent projectiles.Cinematography: 9/10 Sufficient light, clear focus, reasonable framing. Occasional jumpy camera work, and some fits of 90% of the screen being overexposed badly.Sound: 8/10 Good enough. I can hear the actors, and the incidental music is not too irritating. The Foley for combat seems only a little exaggerated.Acting: 5/10 Has its ups and downs.Screenplay: 7/10 The plot progresses in a fairly connected fashion: shock to revenge to realization to rebellion to resolution.Special Effects: 7/10 Lots of bright red blood splatter. Curious choices in CGI for dismembering bodies and slicing heads into layers. Bizarre tentacle rape, female mutant violating male soldier. Of course, the long sword up the reverse direction of the GI track is just as shocking. The nose guns on the anti-mutant soldiers were somewhat amusing, but not convincing.
... View MoreThis film was strange, and honestly, whenever something from Japan appears in my mailbox thanks to what is left of Blockbuster, I find myself scratching my head.The plot is that a schoolgirl discovers she has the strange power to turn part of her body into a weapon. After slaughtering the residents of a local shopping mall, she is taken in by others of her her kind, called HILKO, who are apparently a subspecies of humanity with strange "treasures" including having odd things pop out of parts of your body you wouldn't expect them to.The movie's climax involves the HILKO destroying most of their members (isn't it hard to reproduce as a species if you kill all your young females?) in largely pointless attacks on regular Japanese folks before the few surviving ones get into a pointless, over the top battle.I'm not sure if this is supposed to be an action film or a comedy film.
... View MoreFor a movie of this particular extreme genre, then "Mutant Girls Squad" (or "Sentô shôjo: Chi no tekkamen densetsu") actually was somewhat more enjoyable than others in the same weird genre.First of all, these movie was drenched in blood and outrageous gore, and it is done to an absurd extreme, so you should know that in advance, that this genre is splatter extreme! But what made "Mutant Girls Squad" more enjoyable than many others was that the movie was focusing heavily on the story and the characters and not the blood, gore and mayhem itself.The storyline was actually really nice and it was easy to follow and immerse yourself into. Just keep in mind that most things here will be over-the-top-extreme. And the characters were well fleshed out and given great personalities.I assume that having 3 splatter/gore directors coming together on one project was bound to be something great in the end.There was a lot of action in "Mutant Girls Squad", which was nice, making it a nice mixture of action and splatter. And I must say that the action scenes were nicely executed, especially the entire scene where Rin was chased through parts of town. Of course, what you will see in this movie is not action on the level that you would see in other Asian movies, such as those by Donnie Yen, Jackie Chan, Tony Jaa, etc. But still, it worked out well enough, and the action complimented the extremity of the mutants nicely.I found the acting in the movie to be quite good as well, and people did good jobs with their given roles.There is a lot of really strange things in the movie, and it makes you wonder how they just comes up with that kind of stuff. I could mention things like the armed forces having machine guns mounted over their noses, or a mutant girl with a chainsaw coming out of her rectum, or a mutant girl with katana-blades extruding from her nipples. Yeah, it is quite extreme, but this is what this particular genre is all about; being extreme and doing things that haven't been done before, and to top out the other movies in the same market.I enjoyed "Mutant Girls Squad", as it was a grat mixture of splatter, gore, action and pure fun. It might not be suitable for everyone, just a friendly word of warning.
... View MoreLet's start with test to see if you should even bother with this film.Ask yourself do you want to see a bloody riff on the X-men about human mutants who band together to fight humanity where they have super powers like a chainsaw that shoots out their bottom or swords for breasts? Will you find your self offended by very low brow but very very funny humor at the expense of everyone and everything? And about the blood, does oceans of it spraying out in a way over the top manner bother you? If you answered yest to the first question and no to the second two then this movie is for you.This is a very wrong (in a very right sort of way) film about a 16 year old girl who is hunted down by the government for being a mutant and ends up with a band of mutants who are fighting humans. Its a wild over the top film that makes fun of so many things its hard to say what they all are- and besides why tell you since you'll want to see this for yourself.I'm not a huge fan of the Japanese gore films like this but some how the this film works in spades. The plot moves, the effects are great and nothing is way too serious, everything has a silly edge. Granted seeing this in a room full of cranked up people at the international premiere at the New York Asian Film Festival added to the enjoyment, but even so this is still a perfect blend of comedy, gore and horror.I loved it. To me this is the best of the genre and a must see. If you like films like Tokyo Gore Police or Machine Girls this film is for you. If not stay away.
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