Tuesday, January 13, 2009

5.30am - Tokyo Gore Police

Tokyo Gore Police (2008)
Starring: Eihi Shiina, Yukihide Benny, Ikuko Sawada
Genre: Horror/action

Random observations:
- Well, the gore part of the title is right, and I'm saying that less than two minutes into the movie. Already I've seen a head explode like a watermelon, a chainsaw-mutilated corpse and a chick hacking her own arm to shreds. 
- Okay, so it seems an "engineer" is someone who can merge a weapon into their flesh, and the main character, Ruka, works for a division of the police that hunt down these engineers.
- I recognise the main chick (Shiina) from Takeshi Miike's Audition. She's in one of the most memorable (for all the wrong reasons) scenes of all time, from that movie. Three words - foot, piano wire. Three more words - pins in eyeballs. *shudders*
- The gore and violence so far in Tokyo Gore Police is so over the top and unrealistic that it's easy to stomach.
- A quick look at imdb.com shows that director Yoshihiro Nishimura's only other directing gig so far has been for the even more outrageously named "Speakerman: The Boo". The mind boggles.
- It's 6am and I'm still wide awake. 24-hour movie marathon... piece of cake baby!
- So much blood, so much gore.
- What's with the weird TV commercials advertising different ways of committing suicide?
- Alright, this is getting freakin' weird.
- Goddammit! That's two movies I've seen in the past 24 hours that have involved manjunk getting chopped or bitten off!
- I'm not even going to try to continue describing this stuff, because I don't know that I could even if I wanted to.

Overall comments: Odds are you've never seen anything like Tokyo Gore Police before. Even if you're well versed in Japanese horror, it's probably creepy suspense stuff like The Ring or The Grudge or Dark Waters. This is nothing like those movies - for a start there's nothing scary about Tokyo Gore Police. Instead it's just insane and gory. The best I can describe it is Peter Jackson's Brain Dead (Dead Alive in the US) meets Ryuhei Kitamura's zombie martial arts opus Versus meets Evil Dead. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but adventurous movie fans should give it a look.

Up next: Breakfast, then sleep! Glorious sleep! I made it! 24 hours non-stop watching movies!

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