Tokyo Gore Police

>With the release of 2008’s The Machine Girl, the United States became acquainted with the special effects gore work of Yoshihiro Nishimura. After that he was given the chance to go out on his own with Tokyo Gore Police, an equally bizarre and ridiculous film.

Tokyo Gore Police takes place in the future where a privatized police system is left to run rampant though there target is mostly engineers, a group of serial killers that can regenerate lost limbs with weapons. These range the gamut from a chainsaw to a massive penis gun and a girl that gets an alligator mouth for legs. Similar to The Machine Girl, the gore effects here are pretty terrific and often hilarious. Though there are some pretty weird moments that might make you uncomfortable, all the gore is meant to look really cheesy similar to Dead Alive. I really appreciate how the film keeps throwing out new weird kills like a man’s face getting gutted by a wine bottle and then the woman blowing into the bottle causing part of the guy’s face to fall out of the bottom.

What struck me especially the second time around is how complex the story was and besides that the rather odd juxtaposition of serious and comedic elements. This might be more commonplace in Japanese film but for an American it’s rather hard to process. For instance, when the bartender’s limbs are tied to the car it’s played almost entirely straight and is only seen as a horrific, brutal act. At another part we have the bad guy explaining his motives which are based on tragic circumstances but then get some pretty hilarious flashback footage. This might seem to be problematic, that the film does not know what to be however with this type of movie I thought it just made it more absurd and entertaining.

However, one thing that is problematic is the radical shift in film that gets used. The movie starts with some really awful digital video scenes, or what I thought was DV, where there is a fight on the roof top and it looks awful. The rest of its better, switching to a cheap film that gives the movie a visual style similar to the Power Rangers, which helped with the goofy feel of the movie but then there would sometimes be these yellow/green tinted really hi-def scenes that looked amazing that made you really want more of those. I don’t know why this was maybe they tried filming it one way first but my guess is budgetary issues.

Many will be interested in seeing this for the lead Eihi Shiina who also played the lead girl in Audition. Her character kicks ass and all but there’s zero emotion or characterization and in a movie that actually tries to have a plot amongst all the gore craziness this was a problem. Fortunately, everyone else in this movie are playing total weirdoes so it all gets balanced out. Also the running time is close to two hours, which is a bit much. While I appreciate that Nishimura was trying to do a lot more by creating a “sophisticated” splatter comedy, two hours of this stuff is too much. If trimmed down to ninety minutes this would be as good as The Machine Girl. I’m glad that Nishimura is trying to go out on his own but it might be better if he has Noboru Iguchi with him or someone else to help edit.

8/10