Well it’s time to dive head first into another horror showcase, and do I have a twisted one for you today. We’re going to be Talking about Tokyo Gore Police.
Let me just preface this entire thing by telling you that you have never seen anything like this. I’ve tried countless times to explain this movie to a lot of different people and I usually get about half-way through before I get “the look”. You know the look I’m talking about, the “what the fuck is he on” look. I’ve talked a lot lately about older horror films and looking back on my blog as a whole, they are all pretty tame by today’s standards. (Obviously not including Cannibal Holocaust on that one)
I’ve lectured a lot of people on horror movies over the years and what I’ve learned is that most people just aren’t aware of the stuff that comes out of other countries. Italy, Japan, Brazil, and Mexico, for instance, all push the limits of gore.
Oh, but we aren’t talking about just any gory movie. We are talking about Tokyo -GORE- Police. It’s right in the title, so buckle up. Just a word of warning: the trailer I’m linking you is -not- safe for work.
It’s hard for me to even know where to start. Tokyo Gore Police was released in 2008 by the good people at Media Blaster. They were so impressed by Yoshihiro Nishimura’s special effects work on their previous hit, Machine Girl, that they asked him to hold the reins of this one. Media Blasters has a reputation of pulling out the stops of their films before. The really crazy stuff gets released through their Tokyo Shock label, and “Shock” is putting it mildly.
Alright so I bet you’re just dying to know what this movie is about, so I will try my very best to make it as simple as possible. It’s the not-too-distant future and the Tokyo Police have become privatized. There is a single mandate to all crime, and that is to kill the criminal as quickly and brutally as possible. Of course nothing is as simple as that. Among the people that have been targeted as criminals are what are known as “engineers.” These are people that have strange key-shaped tumours in their bodies, tumors that allow –any- injury to be reformed into a weapon. That’s right. Did you lose your arm? No problem, you now have a meat-like sword arm. Did you lose the top of your head? No problem, you now have an exposed brain with eye-ball guns. There is absolutely one scene I have to mention. A guy gets his dick bit off and yes, he gets a giant dick gun. No I am not kidding!
The main character is, as usual, a sexy katana-wielding cop named Ruka (Eihi Shiina). The actress has been in a couple of Media Blasters pictures that I can think of, but nothing major and performs well in her role. Her character has a dark past and a nasty habit of cutting herself that she seems to have gotten from her mother. Her father was killed by an unknown assassin and the movie shows her battling these engineers and piecing together who killed her father and why. It has a surprisingly solid story for this kind of movie that is easy to get into.
The actions scenes are intense. The first five minutes alone set the tone and, I promise you, they have things you’ve never seen before. Girls with blades for arms and legs, acid breast milk, flying chainsaw arms… I could go on and on. It is also important to note that, despite being a dark movie, it contains a lot of comedy. I find that the gore effects are so over the top that they end up being funny. You laugh just because it’s to so bizarre! They also have a lot of propaganda commercials and other ads throughout the film that are pretty funny.
One thing I really like about this film is that, for the most part, it uses traditional special effects. A lot of these Japanese grindhouse movies over the last few years have relied heavily on CGI and, while I get that some CGI is required to produce images that would be otherwise difficult, I would like them to return to the visual style of this movie. They have some CGI sure, but only in scenes where it would be nearly impossible without it.
Tokyo Gore Police has enough blood and guts to satisfy –any- gore hound (the last killing montage is just insane), and also has a good mix of story and comedy. Of all the Toyo Shock Films, it’s probably one of my favourites. Check it out if you think you have the stomach.
