Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl is the blood-soaked adaptation of a popular manga. Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police, Helldriver) helms this masterpiece of Japanese new-wave ultra-violent splatter, a genre most notable for its juxtaposition of cute actresses and extreme violence. In typical Nishimura fashion, the insanity meter is cranked up to 11. Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl stars gravure idol (and full-time goddess) Yukie Kawamura and Eri Otoguro (Onechanbara: the Movie) in the respective title roles as they battle for the affection of their classmate Jugon (Takumi Saito). It also features a great cameo by the queen of Japanese horror, Eihi Shiina (Audition, Tokyo Gore Police).

When Monami (Kawamura), our Vampire Girl, transfers to a new high school in Tokyo, she soon attracts the ire of the resident lolligirl clique, and their bratty leader Keiko (Otoguro), by giving Jyugon a blood-filled chocolate for Valentine's Day. It isn't long before the school nurse becomes aware that something isn't quite right with a sample of Monami's blood and passes it along to Keiko's father, who also happens to be the vice-principal and a (very!) mad scientist, the self-proclaimed successor to Dr. Frankenstein. Upon confronting Monami, Keiko ends up dead and (you guessed it) is rebuilt by her father as Frankenstein Girl and an epic battle ensues that is truly mind-blowing in both its violence and its creativity.

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl boasts the traditional gore effects for which Nishimura is best known: gallons of blood-spray, uncomfortable wrist-cutting scenes, and disturbingly distorted human bodies. It also contains a lot of fairly well-executed CGI that doesn't really detract from overall immersion in the film.Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl never takes itself too seriously and it's in this frame of mind that the film is best enjoyed. It incorporates comedic elements, including the catchy J-Pop soundtrack, and a healthy dose of social satire which anyone familiar with Japanese pop-culture is sure to enjoy. There are several memorable scenes, my personal favorite being when Monami dances in a rain of blood as it sprays from the neck of a recent victim, a scene which, in my mind, captures the essence of what this genre is all about.

In fairness, Nishimura's films, and pink violence in general, is definitely not everyone's cup of tea. If you are a fan of other films in the genre, such as Machine Girl, Meatball Machine, and Tokyo Gore Police, you will love this film. If you are a gorehound with a penchant for old-school special effects and horror-comedies like Re-Animator, Dead Alive and Evil Dead 2, you will love this film. If, however, you happen to be a close-minded film elitist who insists on little things like continuity, realism, and unquestionable plot structures, you will probably spontaneously combust within the first five minutes (probably around the time that Monami rips the skin from the face of a Gothic-lolita zombie with her teeth, exposing an animated skull).

When it's all said and done, Nishimura provides us with a fresh and exciting take on these two iconic, but worn-out and often predictable, monster stereotypes. The true beauty of films like Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl lies in their unpredictability and refusal to be constrained within the existent boundaries of film logic, physics, or even political correctness. Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl epitomizes what this genre is all about and, while not quite as good as Tokyo Gore Police (but, then again, what is?), it is definitely one hell of a awesome movie.

This movie grew on me as it progressed. A lot of the characters and their sub stories seems manic and disjointed. The wrist cutters, the ganguro girls (sorta like whiggers) etc. I have to admit I nearly gave up on the movie part way through.

The way the director ties the sub characters together actually works though...basically Frankenstein girl - body parts. The action is badly done as usual with fountains and fountains of blood. The comedic elements so-so.

The acting was actually OK, Vampire girl (Yukie Kawamura) does seem alittle old to be playing a high school girl but she has a certain cuteness and charm in her scenes. She also looks good splattered with blood.

This movie isn't as dark and gruesome as some of the gore movies out there. It also isn't as fun as some of the "comedic" gore movies as well. I give this movie a marginal pass 'cos I found Yukie Kawamura to be cute and it was a slightly different slant to the usual gore plots.

Japanese culture is as bizarre as it gets, 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", whose various sub genres involving bestiality and lactation have become widely popular amongst the population. Hell, they even sell toilet paper with short horror stories printed on it for god knows what reason. This utterly insane culture extends into their film 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 film-making, 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 killed. However, Keiko's father moonlights as a mad scientist and he reanimates Keiko, upgrading her with a variety of different physical attributes swiped from 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, particularly Monami and Mizushima, are surprisingly fleshed out, likable and quite funny; at their worst, over-the-top caricatures that are usually funny and always interesting. 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; 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, 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, over-sized lips and the refusal to drink any coffee but black. Not only isn't there a boring minute, but there isn't one that's not either laugh-out-loud hilarious or just plain crazy.

The only shortcomings are the occasional limitations of the low-budget paired with the wide scope of the films 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 also 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.

• Dylan, allhorrorfilms.com

And then some. This movie is definitely not something for the faint hearted. It also is not politically correct and some might call it on some racism issues (especially how Africans are depicted in this movie). But that wouldn't be what this movie is about. It makes fun of everything it gets it's hands on (even suicide gets a "stab", no pun intended).

And this will define, how much you dis/like the movie. Can you handle all that craziness or do you want your movies more straight forward? If you are one of the latter kind, you shouldn't really watch this movie or at least not expect too much from it. Some crazy ideas and almost entirely over the top, this is made for fans of Machine Girl and other recent Japanese Horror fare/thrillers (or those who are on the verge of becoming one)

Not knowing anything about the manga or this adaptation, the only thing I could say about the flick as I sat to watch was that the name and fundamental premise sounded like fun. For better or for worse, this also kindly informs just what we're getting into with the opening scene alone: abject low-grade cartoonishness that technically fulfills the promise of a splatter "horror-comedy" while not specifically being either horrifying or funny, and practical effects including proliferate blood and gore that are shamelessly augmented with the mid-2000s computer-generated imagery that has emphatically aged poorly. Brought to bear within even just the next couple scenes, there is also a significant parodying element here that would probably be more meaningful to someone who lives in Japan rather than anyone who lives anywhere outside the archipelago - not least as the notions being parodied include youth fashion that is questionable (Lolita) or outright objectionable (the ganguro style that at its most extreme is simply blackface taken to a deeply offensive new level). Moreover, between the bare-faced production values, the obvious CGI, Nishimura Yoshihiro and Tomomatsu Naoyuki's brashly forthright and immoderate direction, and in turn the pointedly unsubtle acting, cinematography, and editing, the nearest comparisons one may drum up are the Z-grade dreck of The Asylum, or the most outrageous, "devil may care" flippancy of the far reaches of amateur horror. 'Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl' sure is a thing.

None of this definitively precludes the possibility of the film being enjoyable. After all, as Nishimura adapts the source material, there are plenty of good, ridiculous ideas in the narrative itself. The core characters of Monami, Keiko, and Mizushima are all minor joys, not to mention Keiko's "vice principal but also mad scientist" father. The sheer irreverent ludicrousness of the characters, and of the scene writing and plot they feed into, are ripe for absurdist or even surrealist entertainment in line with exploitation flicks of the 70s and the "video nasties" of the 80s. I appreciate the absolute gusto that everyone contributed in their individual capacities, whether that means that blood and gore, the overwrought and ham-handed music, the downright garish costume design, hair, makeup, and production design and art direction - and, sure, even the editing, the cinematography, the acting, the direction, and maybe even that CGI. I don't believe all such inclusions, guided to the ends that they were, represented the best choices, but all involved clearly knew what the assignment was and they unreservedly embraced the preposterous tenor. With that said, I do think some aspects are perfectly unnecessary. Chiefly, those cultural tidbits that get parodied serve no purpose whatsoever in the storytelling, least of all the racist ganguro club. They are present with no importance to speak of, and the gratuitous inclusion instead does nothing more than to diminish the potential of whatever it is that this feature could have ideally been.

And, well, as to the rest - the reality of the utmost boorishness, juvenility, kitsch, chutzpah, bombast, and intemperance? The oversexed school nurse and her secret role, the pure bluster of that mad scientist, the buckets of blood and gore that are sometimes plainly senseless even relative to the likes of Peter Jackson's 'Dead-alive,' the very tongue-in-cheek and over the top music, the almost pointless fragments of more distinctly earnest and careful storytelling, and so on? There really are great ideas in these eighty-five minutes. And ultimately, if Nishimura and Tomomatsu had reined in the excess and self-indulgence just a smidgen, and had approached the concept and its realization with more genuine, mindful care, then maybe 'Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl' would have earnestly been better. For all the possibilities of the premise, for all the good cheer of the splatter flick ideations, for as much as all involved were very apparently enjoying themselves, and for what wild, wacky fun the picture does have to offer, there would be more lasting value here if equal skill and intelligence had been applied uniformly throughout the runtime. As it is, the result comes off far too much not as the wholly frivolous but merry B-grade romp that it could and should have been, but as a dodgy, dubious, low-born creation that wasn't shaped with enough of the discerning eye that would have allowed its best imagination, creativity, and hard work to flourish. I actually do like this, but because its profligacy wasn't modulated, my favor is.

For what the title does well, I want to like it more than I do. For what the title declined to have conjured or executed with more thought or judicious consideration, maybe I'm being too generous in my assessment. We get what we came for and 'Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl' never pretends to be anything that it's not. I just also see how it could have been readily improved: probably by more fully leaning into the unmistakable inspiration and predilection for tangible creations that we see from Jackson (in his early years), Brian Yuzna, or especially Stuart Gordon; possibly by giving it treatment not as a "live-action" movie, but instead as a gnarly anime in which anything and everything would have been more feasible; but almost certainly not by mixing the bottom-dollar CGI, green screen artificiality, and production values with the extravagant practical effects and special makeup, and with the unfettered cartoonishness that so much of the endeavor represents. It's okay, when all is said and done, but overbearing, and the problem is that it could have been fantastic. Alas. Don't go out of your way for this, and be well aware of the nature of what you're getting into, but if nothing I've noted has set off your alarm bells, then maybe 'Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl' is just the lark you want for a lazy day.