by: Dylan
Posted on 12.17.09 in All Horror Films > Comedy > Cult/Erotic > Vampire
Release Date: 2008

Japanese culture, among the various oddities that have sprung from it are game shows which consist of male contestants being whacked in the genitals and animated pornography, termed “hentai”.  They even sell toilet paper with short horror stories printed on it for god knows what reason. This utterly insane culture extends into their films as well, and one doesn’t have to look any further than “Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl” for an example of how depraved, grotesque and downright “weird” their movies can get. There are very few American-produced films that can match the sheer lunacy occurring within this “versus” circus freak show. Continuing in the tradition of previous hyper-violent, excessively-sexual Japanese horrors centered on attractive school-girls (popular films like “The Machine Girl” and “Tokyo Gore Police”), “Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl” throws a whole bunch of other peculiarities into the mix, including blackface, a kabuki mad scientist who air guitars using his victims spinal cords, an oversexed nurse with eyeballs sewn onto her nipples, a wrist-cutting competition, and copious amounts of blood equal in proportion to the accumulation of ten regular horror movies. If it isn’t one of the strangest films of all time, it certainly is of this year.

Throwing up an assortment of depravity and blood-drenched insanity into a film always makes for good fun, but never makes up for a lack of plot, lazy writing, or poorly-executed filmmaking, a few key problems that permeate through many of these gory, low-budget efforts. These are all issues readily apparent in “The Machine Girl”, a prior similar undertaking which, for all its excessive gore and dismemberment, was at its core really nothing much different than most substandard Hollywood fare. Here, directors Yoshihiro Nishimura (who tread similar ground with Tokyo Gore Police) and Naoyuki Tomomatsu have crafted both an emotionally-charged teen love story and a hilarious satire of popular trends, the film elevated by the over-the-top absurdities rather than reliant on them. High-school heart throb Mizushima finds himself in the center of a vicious tug-of-war between two lovers: Keiko, his high-maintenance girlfriend whose spineless vice-principal daddy bows to her every demand, and Monami, a new student in the school who falls for Mizushima’s kind personality…and who also happens to be a vampire. Of course, when the two girls get into a feud, Keiko is no match for the supernatural Monami and is flung from the top of a building. However, Keiko’s spineless father moonlights as a mad scientist and he reanimates Keiko, upgrading her with a variety of different physical attributes swiped from certain corpses. Now, the Vampire Girl and the Frankenstein Girl find themselves facing off in a battle to the death for Mizushima’s affection.

There are a plethora of outlandish gags to please any hardened gore-fan. Among the best are the Vampire Girl tearing a hole in a girls face and unraveling her skin like the wrappings on a mummy, a reanimated foot-hand creature, blood drops with a life of their own and the Frankenstein Girl tearing off an arm, screwing it onto her head and using it as a helicopter propeller to zip around through the sky. This is the love-child of a three-way between Looney Tunes, an early Peter Jackson film and a Troma movie. Nary two minutes go by where someone’s head isn’t being crushed in or where some appendage isn’t being attached to some other ludicrous concoction. It is amazingly fun, completely original and absolutely never dull. Even those who don’t enjoy the film, possibly too much for their tastes, will likely be enthralled by the madcap display enfolding in front of them.

However, it’s when the film steps back from the lunacy that it’s at its best. The characters at their best are, particularly Monami and Mizushima, surprisingly fleshed out, likeable and quite funny; at their worst, over-the-top caricatures that usually provide some satirical laughs. There are a lot of laughs mined from the absurd notion of falling in love with a vampire, as well as the battle being waged for Mizushima, the tone always light and self-deprecating, unlike the stuck-up seriousness of another unmentionable vampire-love story; one comical part has Mizushima proclaiming, as he narrates the battle, something along the lines of “Has anyone ever asked my feelings about this”, which sums up the ridiculousness of the obvious lapses of logic that allow the fight over him, and pretty much the entire film, to occur. Perhaps the funniest scenes involve those lampooning current teenage trends. The “emo’s” are part of an after-school wrist cutting club. The trend of imitating black culture is taken to absurd limits with a trio of girls not only in black face, but with afros, oversized lips and the refusal to drink any coffee but black.

The only shortcomings are the occasional limitations of the low-budget paired with the wide scope of the film’s imaginative dismemberment. Some of the effects, although most often not, are poorly executed. As well, the arterial spray of blood throughout the film is less than satisfying due to the reliance on CGI effects, which look both incredibly cheap and silly (in a bad way). The entire film carries a somewhat cheap vibe to it, which leads me to believe it was either digital video or inefficiency behind the camera. Regardless, these are small prices to pay for the amount of imaginative fun and hilarious splatter that “Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl” delivers, making it one of the better exercises in this type of frenetic insanity that so often falls on the wayside.

• ★★★★★

  Acting:

• ★★★★★

  Blood:

• ★★★★★

  Violence:

• ★★★★★

  Partying:

• ★★★★★

  Language:

• ★★★★★

  Humor:

• ★★★★★

  Predictable:

• ★★★★★

  Girls:

• ★★★★★

  Gore:

• ★★★★★

  Sexuality:

• ★★★★★

  Torture:

• ★★★★★

  Overall:

The problem is of course, is that people whose only experience of Japanese culture is as you say eating sushi, still make comments and evaluations about Japanese culture. I'm not getting at you here Dylan, but this is more a general point about the limitations, and they are obvious from this discussion, of western writing on Japanese cinema. I'm not sure how you get around this. Personally when I write on Japanese cinema, I try and stick solely to what is expressed in the film itself, because its very hard to make connections between Japanese cinematic representations and wider Japanese culture from an outsider perspective. I think my way into a film like this is through a discussion of genre - nevertheless its a good piece of criticism.

Well, I really do see their culture as quite crazy and bizarre. I don't say "insane" as an insult of any sort, only in that their culture has so many practices that are so uniquely outraegeous compared to our - and most others - culture. Of course, my reviews are from a Western perspective - I'm sure to someone who lives in Japan, they would be accustomed to Japanese culture and probably find North American culture strange in many ways. But, I can only write my review from an outsiders/Western perspective, as I have never lived in Japan or experienced their culture beyond eating sushi, so I do find a lot of their practices outright crazy in comparison to ours.

Hmmm. And when i view these films I think to myself how incredibly insane the actual films are. They have an incredible energy to them that seems to hyper-extend the senses. The violence makes my pulse pound, the sex is powerful and dominating, and ways in which the films progress suggests you're watching something in fast forward. The culture is not insane because the films, in this particular genre, are on speed. If anything, these films are real in terms of giving life to the types of fantasies we live; the sex, the violence, and the emotion. I’d say it's insane, until I realize how true it really is. At that time, I can welcome further films such as Versus and this title. As for the game shows and other viewer friendly entertainment, Ummmm, i'll pass on it. Game shows that involve women stripping men by their teeth might sound sexy, but...when turned into an activity that is the soul premise behind a game show, again, i'll pass.

There is a remake on the way for Battle Royal. Not too much is known about it and it's not likely to see a 2010 release. I think J-Horror remakes are a thing of the past at this point. Not much else too remake, but I'm sure we'll see The Grudge 4 and 5 on direct to video shelves at some time or another. Mirrors was alright. The original was alright too. I didn't mind the story so much but I was just disappointed that Aja was attached to it. He's known for taking the everyday things we take for granted and giving us a scenario where love and family are literally torn too shreds. Two things we all take for granted at some point of our lives. I just didn't see the same emotion in mirrors. Not at all.

The remakes of J-horror are getting terrible. The exception is Mirrors, but I'm in the minority on that one. I vaguely remember hearing about a Battle Royale remake some time back; lets hope I'm getting it mixed up with something else.

An interesting review, I have one or two points if I may. I think there is always a problem when Western critics deal with East Asian cinema. Its very difficul to assess the films from perspectives we can easily do so with Hollywood or European output - approaches such as sociological, political, gender and even genre...Japan has its own systems of meaning within these spheres - to suggest that Japanese culture is "utterly insane" simply because its representations of violence and sexuality are different to our own seems a fairly narrow way of viewing cultural difference. A certain type of Japanese cinematic output is hyper-real, hyper-violent and hyper-sexualised - this Manga inspired material is a unique Japanese cultural expression - perfectly understandable and acceptable to the culture that produced it.

I tend to stay away from these films. I liked Suicide Club, Battle Royal, and Iron Man, but this might go a little too far from reality for me. I miss the good old days back when I was first discovering J-Horror. Now, I'm just left with their remakes. I just watched Mirrors again. It's kind of...almost terrible. Blah! BLAH!