Samurai Princess (2009)

First off, if you're looking for a movie with a serious plot avoid this one at all costs.The plot revolves around a young girl who's eleven friends, who just happened to be hanging out in the woods for some reason, are all raped and murdered. So the young girl is turned into some sort of android called a "Mecca", possessed by her friends souls, and now she wants to avenge her friends deaths. This movie was actually pretty fun to watch because it was so bad that it was funny. The English dubbing was terrible, the amount of gore was ridiculous, and it looked like it was filmed on a budget of fifteen dollars. The characters in the movie are pretty funny. So all in all this movie is good for a laugh.

In case you didn't know, Japanese Horror has changed since the earlier parts of the last decade. Sure, there were films like "Ichi The Killer" and the ongoing wave of Japanese Zombie flicks, but in much of the last decade, the country was largely known for it's supernatural creepfests with long haired ghost girls and mounting dread. While that was fun for a while, it eventually went the way of many fads/sub-genres of horror-yesterday's news. You can only see a pale supernatural force so much until you get bored.So what's the new-wave of Japanese Horror at the moment? Splatter Comedy flicks. Movies that owe largely to the likes of old Troma movies, Paul Verhoeven's "Starship Troopers" and the like than they do old Japanese Urban Legends and haunted TV's or whatever. Flicks such as "The Machine Girl", "Tokyo Gore Police" and the upcoming "Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl" have defined this new era, and Kengo Kaji's "Samurai Princess" is one of the latest in this new trend.The plot takes place in an alternate universe Japan, in which a our titular heroine (adult film actress Aino Kishi) was one a normal girl. That is, until a group of rapists had their way with her friends and left her for dead. Oh, and a mad scientist has fused the souls of her dead friends, implanted them into her, and turned her into a vengeful cyborg. Wackiness and arterial spray ensues.From the get go, "Samurai Princess" is utterly bug-f#@k insane. It has chainsaw legs, wacky villainous sidekicks (the mad scientist has a gaggle of fan girl types following him wherever he goes-it's actually a lot funnier than it sounds), evil monsters, a pair of breasts that double as grenades (yes, you read that right), a man wielding a guitar that doubles as a sword and a chainsaw, and so much more. It's also shockingly funny as times, with some amusing gags thrown in, as well as the non-stop insanity making sure that you never grow bored. It also helps that the gore never wears out it's welcome-quite the contrary in fact, as each set piece is bonkers and all around entertaining.Yet, the whole thing ends up feeling kind of like the sum of it's parts. One major flaw is the production values. While I normally don't complain about poor production values in genre fair, the Shot on Video style left me feeling a little let down, as it would have benefited from better editing, camera work and whatnot. Also, the performances are really hit and miss, with Aino Kishi being a bit bland as our heroine (though the fact that she's willing to disrobe doesn't hurt the least). The biggest flaw though, is the poor fight choreography. Films like this need fight scenes that can hold up with the movie, and here they just can't.In the end, it's a flawed movie, but for rainy weekend fair, "Samurai Princess" makes for a fun time. If Troma made a "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" episode, it would probably resemble this.

The video-shot feature was remarkably like Tokyo Gore Police. Both relied heavily upon gore-related effects and bionic horrors. Both look like they were shot in vacant areas and not studios. Both had coherent plots and sincere acting...This movie, however, had more of a nightmare feel to it. Although the madness of the two villains was horribly over-emoted, the madness of one of the minor characters had a morbid feel to it. The collection of body parts for resurrection was almost like watching Alice in Wonderland. They were definitely trying to make a movie out of this.Unfortunately, as with many Japanese movies, the writers felt the need to give their audience a healthy dose of rape and gore. Although the gore does explain where all of the body parts come from, eventually it lost its impact from overuse.The female lead, who apparently has fourteen souls residing in her, is a decent actress. Her martial arts ability seems a bit suspect when she cannot even make a silhouette training sequence look convincing. This wasn't a bad movie.But, it didn't seem to have much respect for itself...

No one wears a 2-piece bathing type suit mainly because the film was shot in freezing cold weather. The breath coming from the actor mouths was distracting. Hollywood and Hong Kong is so much better weather wise. There is no real samurai or any type of fighting. It's just a special effects gore fest, where a sword is swung and blood and body parts go flying. And it goes on and on. The story, whatever it was was, is background clutter and doesn't matter as the film makers only want to gross you out. A one trick pony. The specials efforts are gross, not clever. I guess if you are watching the film with a bunch of friends, then the film might work better, as you can laugh at and comment on the gory special effects. I am avoiding anything done by this Director in the future.I have seen and love Machine Girl. A movie with a real story and clever special effects spaced properly throughout the film and it is just as gross.