Sukeban Boy (2006) is not your average schoolgirl-fetish-japanese-gore film. Well, yes it is. But that’s a good thing. Take a look at the trailer below. Just look at it.

It stars the lovely JAV actress Asami, also of The Machine Girl.

I’d like to quote part of a review on IMDB, which I think sums it up:

“I have just bought the DVD of Sukeban Boy and after watching it i couldn’t decide if it deserved 10/10 or 1/10 so i watched it again and gave it 10.”

I’m not sure how far this crosses the line between Japanese gore movie and nude-schoolgirl-fetish movie, but either way, it’s all good – right?

                    

I haven’t seen Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009), but the trailer very much reminds me of Tokyo Gore Police (it shares production credits). From the (mostly positive) reviews I’ve read, it seems to completely up the ante, with even more blood and very, very bizarre fights and weapons. Here’s the trailer:

                    

I dare ANYONE to watch the trailer for RoboGeisha (2009) and not want to watch it immediately. OK, so maybe a few stick-in-the-muds won’t care for it; that’s fine, they can go watch their films about seventeenth century pianists trying to marry their sister. Or whatever.

But. Oh. My. God. Geisha Chainsaw is the best thing ever! Well, apart from Robo Geisha Transformer. A geisha that transforms into a caterpillar-tracked vehicle? Whoever thought of that deserves a medal. And I don’t even want to talk about the, um, rear-end things. And the shrimp! And the robot building! What a frickin’ brilliant bonkers movie.

It’s from the same team as The Machine Girl, so you know the intensity of gore and humour to expect.

It currently gets a 6.4 on IMDB.

                    

Alien vs Ninja (2010) was released in selected North American movie theaters earlier this month (July 2010). It’s the first release from Sushi Typhoon (check their website for screenings near you), and it looks bloody brilliant – as do other upcoming releases from them.

As the slogan says on their website:

“In Medieval Japan, evil aliens have come to Earth. They want to hunt humans. But they made one mistake: they’re not ninja-proof.”

I’m currently in Mexico, so haven’t had a chance to see it yet, but the reviews so far say that it’s non-stop action, and good action at that. I’m heading to Vancouver next week, and will be hunting it out. If nobody is showing it, I’ll petition the local art-house cinema – I suggest you do the same.

The trailer follows:

                    

Rika: The Zombie Killer (2008), to give it one of its many names, is loosely the next in the series after Attack Girls’ Swim Team. Thankfully, it corrects most of its predecessors flaws: better production, better blood, less nudity (ok, maybe not such a good thing), and importantly better fight scenes.

As usual, an event occurs early on that triggers the zombie uprising, and some school girls need to fight them off. Yes, there are some personal sub-plots, but we just care about schoolgirls fighting zombies! Schoolgirls! Zombies! The movie also makes use of the familiar Japanese gore device of replacing the protagonist’s arm with a weapon – in this case, a zombie hunter’s arm! Golly.

Just as a bonus, the film also features the lovely Japanese bikini model Risa Kudo. Well, why not?

Recommended – not perfect, but fun and better than many.

                    

Attack Girls’ Swim Team Versus the Undead (2007) really does have only two things going for it:

1. The name. In fact, it has been released under a number of equally brilliant names:
   1. “Attack Girls Swim Team vs the Unliving Dead” (Sorry? ‘Unliving Dead’? So… they’re still dead, then?)
   2. “The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers” (I like how they have to point out that they’re competitive swimmers. Because that matters.)
   3. “Undead Pool” (Which just doesn’t make sense, because a pool can’t be living or dead, surely?)
2. The very lovely (though very poor) JAV ‘actress’ Sasa Handa.

The very thin premise is described fairly comprehensively in the movie title: everyone in school turns into a zombie except for the swim team (and a couple of others). That’s about it.

It really is just an excuse to show lots of nakedness, quite a lot more than other films of the genre.

Unfortunately, as nice as the nakedness is, the production values are some of the poorest seen in any of these films. They’re not bad in a funny kind of way, but bad in a bad way. Bad effects. Bad direction. Awful acting. Bad camerawork.

It’s a strange mix of a film that won’t please the people looking for blood or titillation. The gore isn’t particularly funny or gruesome, and you can easily get more interesting naked scenes in Sasa’s other films (Um… I guess. Probably).

The film currently has a score of 4.4 out of 10 on IMDB.

                    

The entire film of Samurai Princess (2009) is currently available on YouTube (embedded above). It shares writing and special effects credits with Tokyo Gore Police, which means it has slightly higher production values than many films of the genre.

The film stars JAV adult actress Aino Kishi as a cyborg with the infused souls of her friends, on some kind of vengeance trip (nothing new there). Yes, there’s a little nudity, but much less than a Google Image Search for her name displays (not that I’ve just checked… ahem).

It takes a little while to get into a rhythm, but all the usual weird/fetish-type weapons are included, so the blood does eventually come (fairly regularly) thin-and-fast.

It currently gets a 4.8/10 on IMDB, which feels fair. Nothing you haven’t seen before, but plenty of fun in the gory scenes.

                    

Let’s face it, the standard “zombies rise from the ground and a few survivors hole-up in a building” thing is a bit too traditional for Japanese gore films, so in Zombie Self-Defense Force (2006) they decided to also add a crash-landing UFO at the start, with the subsequent green radiation kicking it all off.

Be warned, this is ultra-low budget stuff, and currently only gets a 4.5/10 rating on IMDB and a 2/5 on Amazon. This film is either very, very bad or very, very good. I suspect the former.

Here’s the trailer.

                    

Here’s the one-sentence plot: alien parasites infect humans, turn them (not very nicely) into bio-mechanical weapons for fighting fun, and there are two would-be lovers caught up in it all.

The special effects for 2005′s Meatball Machine were created by Yoshihiro Nishimura, who would later go on to do the same for Tokyo Gore Police and The Machine Girl – so if you know anything about those films, you know what you’re getting with this (on even less of a budget).

Low on plot, production value, direction and comprehensibility – but high on blood and nastiness.

                    

To be honest, I don’t think the film Onechanbara will appeal to anyone. Who on earth would want to watch an attractive young Japanese girl with a sword, dressed in a bikini, cutting up zombies? I mean, that sounds totally dull to me – give me a romantic comedy with Reese Witherspoon instead.

The film (also know as Chanbara Beauty) is based on the successful video game series of the same name. I was going to try to explain the plot (if you could call it that), but then remembered it was a movie featuring a girl in a bikini and zombies, so the plot is not really important, is it?

If you think that you’ll like this film (who am I kidding? Are you male? Then yes, you’ll like this film), then you might be interested to know that the lovely lead Japanese actress Eri Otoguro also features in the more recent bonkers-ness of Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, although it seems that US readers will have to import it from the UK.

Anyway, this is what you’ve been looking for: the trailer. Give it a few seconds to get past the ‘video game’ start, then you’ll get to the good stuff.

And here’s Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl:

On a final note, Onechanbara has a great DVD cover too (though with subject-matter like bikinis and zombies, it’s hard to go wrong, really):