Yet, is it just censor-baiting trash, or is there more to this bizarre movie? Hit the jump to find out:
Few films can compete with the sheer insanity of this low-budget Japanese action horror; most hentai films make more sense and are less perverse. Still, Tokyo Gore Police manages to pull off that vital hook that turns a video nasty into a beloved cult classic: charm.
In a near-future Tokyo, the police have been privatised and the ultra-violent, corporation-funded cops are facing a new problem. Seemingly randomly, citizens are going berserk and attacking strangers. When the police intervene, they find these "Engineers" are unstoppable; every time they injure them, the Engineer's wounds turn into new weapons; gun barrels replace eye sockets, arms regrow into chainsaws, lower torsos become crocodile-like jaws and nipples become acid-squirting pustules. The only way to kill the Engineers is to destroy a strange, key-shaped tumour that is present somewhere in each of their bodies. Our heroine is the cops' top Engineer killer, but are the Engineers the real enemy?
Make no mistake, the point here is gore and sickness. This is a film where blood doesn't spill from wounds, it squirts more than a human body could possibly contain... for ten minutes... This is a film where no-one would simply shoot an opponent when they could cut them into a modern art sculpture with a blood water-feature using a katana. Worse, the infamous brothel scene features a collection of table-dancing prostitutes who have all been mutated into horrendous living works of art. This is a movie where the good guys have a pet quadriplegic girl who gets led around by a dog collar while crawling on her stumps and wearing a gimp mask.
Nevertheless, this isn't pointless exploitation that leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. The gore is a point in itself, but knowingly so, and the film clearly has a detached mutant tongue in someone else's cheek throughout. Furthermore, there is an air of vague intelligence here. There is a genuine plot, if a slight one, and also subtext. The film repeatedly features objectified women being vindicated in a shower of blood, while the central plot is shaded with anti-fascist and anti-capitalist sentiments. Elsewhere, the film copies liberally from Robocop's over-the-top adverts and uses them to make a point of satirising anyone who might find the heroine's self-harming tendencies something worth emulating.
The creature effects are imaginative and often aspire to be deviant art pieces, while some abstract scenes serve to fill out the plot indirectly, overcoming the occasional random moment of bad storytelling. For example, our policewoman heroine decides to dress up as a weird impression of a prostitute, gets molested by a random pervert and cuts his arms off at one point. Yet, even while you're trying to grasp exactly why this happens without consequences or purpose, you can't help but admire the artful way she flips open an umbrella to dodge the gushing blood and purposefully walks towards the camera to a Japrock soundtrack.
Overall, this is a bizarre little movie with heaps of blood, but one that only the squeamish will find more than mildly offensive. It's great to see a movie that understands the difference between gory and horrific and just plain offensive and sadistic. Tokyo Gore Police is well worth tracking down if you're intrigued by extreme horror, but still want to be entertained by the experience.
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