The Beast's Movie Cave-Tokyo Gore Police

With a title like 'Tokyo Gore Police', you can kind of tell what kind of viewing experience you're in for. Well, This one delivers in spades, not only in the red stuff, but the overall weirdness factor as well.

The police force in Japan has been privatized. Wearing outfits that resemble a cross between riot gear and samurai armor, the new police take a hard stand against crime...in their TV commercials, we see the police execute a serial rapist. This tough law enforcement group has worse things to deal with, however. Killers known as 'Engineers' are running rampant in Tokyo. These crazed killers are even more dangerous when wounded...their wounds become strange body weapons(like chainsaws), and they are extremely hard to kill, unless you destroy the key-shaped tumor that lies within their bodies, put there by the mysterious Keyman( Itsuji Itao). Policewoman Ruka ( Eihi Shina, who was also in 'Audition'), the toughest cop on the force, and an ace swordswoman, is the best Engineer Hunter on the squad. What is her connection to the Keyman, and can she stop the rising number of Engineers in the city? What will happen when the police start executing anyone they even slightly suspect of being an Engineer? And what other dark secrets from her past will surface?

Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura, 'Toyo Gore Police' is a crazed, blood-soaked adventure that combines action, ridiculously violent setpieces, S&M, film artistry, and a bit of social commentary to make one wild cinematic stew. There are mutations and perversions galore, not to mention blood by the gallon. The blood and gore rises to cartoonish levels, like in Peter Jackson's Dead Alive (see my October entry on this film). One scene in particular combines the cinematic and the silly, when Ruka, diguised as a prostitute, is groped on a train. She grabs the groper and drags him off the train. While he is pleading for mercy, she pulls her sword out of her parasol and amputates his grabby hands. While he holds his stumps up and screams, blood spraying like a sprinkler system in the background, Ruka, parasol opened to keep the sanguinal spray from hitting her, calmly walks toward the foreground, all in slow motion.

There's a lot of crazed visual special effetcs going on here, with the mutations of the Engineers, such as a woman with a venus-flytrap/alligator mouth for a bottom half, a snail-girl, and an amputee sex slave fitted with samurai sword blades on her stumps, running about like a deadly spider. Oh, let's not forget the Engineer that sprays acid from her nipples, burning the skin off a policewoman's face, leaving a steaming skull. There's also a living chair with some important female parts, and a policeman turned Engineer , who after having his , uh, member violently removed( definately a hard-to-watch-moment for the male audience members...well, it was for me, anyway), is equipped with a large replacement that acts as a gun. OK, I'm not making this up, really.

On the downside, some of the effects are not the best, but given the budget, I'm OK with that. The movie doesn't seem to take itself completely seriously anyway, except for when the police start killing whoever they damn well feel like , which has echoes of real-life events as of late( especially in Greece and California...see the blog Inexorable in my bloglist for a post on this, if you're not up to speed) . But aside from this bit of social commentary, this film is one crazy, gory, twisted ride. If you are easily offended, or are put off by cinematic weirdness, this is definately not the film for you. But if you like wild action, blood , strangeness, and offbeat humor, then check out 'Tokyo Gore Police'. The Beast gives it 4 clawmarks out of 5. See it if you can.