VAMPIRE GIRL Vs. FRANKENSTEIN GIRL review

I first heard about Yoshihiro Nishimura and his unique brand of lo-fi splatter effects from these very pages, and when I got my hands on a copy of Noboru Iguchi's THE MACHINE GIRL and saw his work in context, I was overjoyed to discover that it followed through on everything promised in its trailer. The hot chicks in school uniform, the never ending geysers of blood, the ever-inventive dismemberment and mutation effects, but more importantly a gleeful enthusiasm not to let budget constraints have any dampening effect whatsoever on the boundless imagination and enthusiasm that these guys obviously had for making damn entertaining little movies. For me, THE MACHINE GIRL epitomised everything I loved about "those wacky Japanese" and it quickly replaced films such as BATTLE ROYALE and ICHI THE KILLER as my WTF movie to show the uninitiated.

At the tail end of last year I was gutted to miss a theatrical double bill of Nishimura's own directorial outing, TOKYO GORE POLICE, coupled with Naoyuki Tomomatsu's ZOMBIE DEFENSE FORCE, thanks to my inconsiderate sister choosing to get married the same bloody weekend. Since then I have managed to catch up with the former, a film more deranged than even I had expected, delving even further into the dark recesses of its creator's mind, and in my opinion a little too far. I love the film, but it somehow doesn't share the same sense of humour or frivolity that made THE MACHINE GIRL so special. I have yet to see Tomomatsu's movie, but I was certainly not going to miss his follow up, a film that had me sold on its title, let alone its directorial pairing of Tomomtsu and Nishimura.

Monami (Yukie Kawamura) is the gorgeous yet reclusive transfer student. Keiko (Eri Otoguro) is queen bitch of the class, if not the entire school. Her father is the down-trodden deputy principal and she commands a clique of ever-obedient lolitas. Keiko bullies class hunk, but fairly wimpish Jyongo (Takumi Saito) into being her boyfriend, but Monami also has her sights set on him and feeds him a Valentine's chocolate laced with her own blood. Monami confesses her love to Jyongo, but also that she is a vampire and now he has tasted her blood, he is beginning to change too. Monami's blood quite literally has a life of its own and when a drop of it is discovered by the sexy school nurse, she hands it over to Keiko's father, who is secretly a mad scientist, searching for the secret of reanimation. Monami's blood might just be the missing piece in the puzzle he has been searching for to bring the dead back to life! Suffice to say, Keiko doesn't take too kindly to the new girl muscling in on her beau, but when push comes to shove and she ends up eating tarmac, only daddy can put her back together again.

From its opening skull-stacking skirmish to its tower toppling finale, VAMPIRE GIRL Vs. FRANKENSTEIN GIRL is just pure unadulterated fun. Ok, well it's fairly adulterated. It features a supporting cast including a championship wrist-cutting team, a ganguro gang of latex sporting afro-wannabes, lecherous teachers, oversexed nurses and a hunchback janitor named Igor.

To say that the film is daft almost beyond measure is to miss the point entirely. To say that the film is living beyond its means is entirely why it works as well as it does. It's the film's blissful disregard for plausibility, but the wholehearted earnestness with which it attacks its subject matter that makes it so admirable, never losing sight of its goal to tell a simple romantic tale abut two girls fighting over one guy. To the death, and then some.

Suffice to say, I absolutely loved VAMPIRE GIRL Vs. FRANKENSTEIN GIRL and I'm teetering on the brink of saying it is better than THE MACHINE GIRL. The image of Monami, dancing to a retro pop classic as her depraved teacher's blood rains down on her from his torn jugular is the moment I had unwittingly been waiting to see from these guys. It is the perfect marriage of sexy Japanese girls, kooky humour and free-flowing ultra-violence that this collective body of work has been building towards and days later I still can't wipe the grin off my face.