9th New York Asian Film Festival

Jun 25 - Jul 8, 2010

Photo:

International Premiere

Mutant GIrls Squad

戦闘少女 血の鉄仮面伝説

At 2009's New York Asian Film Festival, action choreographer and director Tak Sakaguchi (Be a Man! Samurai School), director and special effects genius, Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police) and cherubic pervert, Noboru Iguchi (Robogeisha), got drunk and vowed to make a movie together. One year later, here it is. For better or worse, this splatter-ific, fetishy, hyperactive take on the X-Men is going to shock, horrify and delight you. It comes at you fast and furious and if something crosses the line between good and bad taste, don't worry: five minutes later you'll see something that makes that previous transgression seem downright quaint.

Rin is a normal high school girl, but on her super sweet sixteen her body starts changing and the special forces (armed with nose-mounted machine guns) bust up her birthday party and kill her guests with booger bullets. It turns out that Rin is one of the reviled mutants, known as Hiruko's, who are the latest inferior race slated for extinction. But Rin runs, and discovers a resistance movement made up of other mutants. Not only are they dangerous, but they're also armed, only their arms stick out from the sides of their heads. Swords shoot out their nipples, chainsaws project from their butts, deformed faces grow on their bellies and metal claws erupt from their wrists. But these deformities are the weapons they'll use to tear down straight society.

Closer in tone to Tokyo Gore Police's Cronenberg's liberation anthems than _Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girls's mutated high school comedy, Mutant Girls Squad is cheap, tacky and weird. But it's also clear that for all its awkward moments and low budget restrictions, it's a successful melding of these three directors into one giant, bloody robot: the SakaMuChi. And SakaMuChi is here to crush the normals and to gleefully transgress all the boundaries of good taste.

Directors: Tak Sakaguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Noboru Iguchi
Cast: Kentaro Shimazu, Asami, Tak Sakaguchi, Suzuka Morita, Yuko Takayama, Yumi Sugimoto
Languages: Japanese with English subtitles
2010; 90 min.; DCP

SCHEDULE:

Saturday July 3, 8:30pm
Japan Society

Directors Noboru Iguchi & Yoshihiro Nishimura will be at the screening.

Monday July 5, 6:00pm
Film Society of Lincoln Center

Directors Noboru Iguchi & Yoshihiro Nishimura will be at the screening.

Noboru Iguchi
井口昇
Yoshihiro Nishimura
西村喜廣