If you’ve seen any Japanese film, you’re likely to know the country’s taste in story and style is usually a tad bit crazier and messier than the west’s more straightforward ways of storytelling. You’d also be likely to know of the country’s soft spot for excessive violence, with severed limbs shooting out geyser fountains of fake blood in countless martial art films, with renowned director Quentin Tarentino even taking an admiration to this gory hyperbole in his Kill Bill films to add a colourful, almost poetic energy to the angry bladed fight scenes.
But dig deep enough and you’ll soon find the obscure Japanese gem of the splatter-horror genre, which is only so mortifyingly batshit insane you’d likely never crave another rewatch of Enter The Dragon upon seeing a young girl with a massive crocodile’s head for legs chew a man’s limbs apart in Tokyo Gore Police. This genre’s Olympic-swimming-pool-level of bloodshed itself is initially little more than humorously shocking but it usually has just as much marvellous creativity with body horror (a mutant growing a fleshy chainsaw arm after having its hand amputated etc.), unpredictable colourful characters and its little satires of mainstream media formulas to tighten the engagement factors. Bloody classics like Ichi the Killer use their overabundance of fake gore to add a unique colour to their narratives and staple themselves as classics through their normalisation of such extremes.
But there’s one splatter-horror film I’ve admired for several years, which has such dumfounding levels and usage of red paint violence and such random, ingenious creativity to go with it that I have to say it’s one of my favourite films of all time: Yoshihiro Nishimura’s Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl.
What a stupid title for a stupid concept. Combining two cliché horror tropes but with that extra oomph of high-school girls to try and stay original? What a dull, pointlessly-messy bore this will be.
Hold on sonny, you’ve no idea what magic you’re about to behold. A joyfully sadistic magic that murders the rabbit after pulling it out the hat.
What’s instantly noticeable about Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is its high school narrative, which puts a lot of that nonsensical teenage drama at front than something more serious like a corrupt political regime, which lets Vamp vs Frank be completely unserious and whack in a laid-back, relatable environment that gives it an initially charming focus. And what a smart move, because the malleable school motif lets the leash extend to annual cutting contests, sumo warriors with cannons on their head, and a kabuki-themed surgeon that dances to pop while cutting up body parts without losing track for too long. And we’ve barely even scratched the surface.
The film starts on a normal Tokyo high school Valentine’s Day, with our awkward protagonist Mizushima being in an unwilling relationship with a bratty popular girl whilst unknowingly also being admired by a shady girl who rarely shows for class because ‘the weather is too nice’. Yeah, this film doesn’t even pretend to be serious with foreshadowing its main tropes if you didn’t already know. What we also immediately get from this hilarious scene is how not-so-ordinary most of the class is, which’s rabbit-hole to their offensive absurdity reaches unforeseen lows. Allow me to address the two rather notable school clubs/gangs before delving into the main plot, as they’re undoubtably some of the film’s most memorable aspects and the film mostly just explores their absurdly controversial characters in their own random scenes by, again, using the connective high school format.
The first is essentially a self-aware spin on splatter-horror’s indulgence in violence. If you’ve seen Tokyo Gore Police, you’d likely remember someone watching an ad of ‘kawaii’ coloured wrist-cutter blades given by smiley young girls with disturbingly gleeful selling lines like ‘It doesn’t hurt as much!’. This film takes that trope a bit further: it has a wrist-cutting club. All the girls hilariously act like they’re possessed by demons while chanting ‘Cut! Wrist cut!’ while the captain gives strict ritual lectures on avoiding the artery before madly swiping at her wrist, claiming she’ll be a ‘Christ in the wrist-cutting world’ when she wins the annual school wrist-cut rally. One of the most mortifyingly-hilarious comedy skits I’ve ever beheld and is only more stupidly brilliant with how eager the members’ performances are, the captain’s satirical grim energy being particularly fantastically portrayed by Sayako Nakoshi. But what makes the group’s explicit comedy so effective is the sheer attention to detail on building the horrifically unique concept.
After the sheer shock value of the joke, the wrist cutting club ends up packed with subtle little details added to make the mortifying skit even funnier. Little things such as the bored-looking judges in the cutting rally wearing facemasks for the spraying blood and the captain hilariously tiredly stating ‘it’s unhealthy to begin cutting without prior warmup’ before a ritual of wrist-cutting, again, all build an organised normality to these humorous things and makes the what-would-be one-hit-shock gag tie well into the school’s atmosphere and make the film’s world immersive out of built-on hilarity.
As for the (even) more controversial group, and one of the most controversial things ever I’ve beheld in entertainment, the Ganguro Girls are initially quite offensive and I cannot comprehend the reactions should this have been released in American theatres: a group of girls who wallow over being born Japanese and eccentrically embrace a rather distasteful form of ‘black’ culture. The head girl Afro Rika (sigh, yes) not only wears blackface like the rest but has massive fake lips, an even bigger afro and an obsession of running with a red tracksuit and gold chains. She loudly yells only black gum and coffee are allowed in the group and shrieks ‘Black power!’ before ordering a disciple to stab another girl with a tribal spear when she comments on how ridiculous they’re getting. Another girl dresses up as Ethipoean tribal member, wearing a lip plate and carries a shield and spear. What. A. Rush.
While I can undoubtably tell many would instantly start ramming on their keyboards to any contact of the film’s director upon seeing this dumbfoundingly racist material, this little skit isn’t as bluntly offensive as it initially might seem if you know of the culture it’s parodying. Ganguro was a raving movement in Japan of young women attempting individuality and self-expression in defiance of school standards and regulations by embracing their take on black culture, as well as it also being speculated on its start-up being wrought by groups of girls indulging in pop icons like Janet Jackson. They started to wear very deep tans, black eyeliner, lots of rings and bright outfits, going so far out of their way to try and match up to a different race. This film’s much more eccentric and offensive recreation of black culture can then be seen as simply satirising the ridiculousness of Ganguro culture and how misplaced the girls seem out of Japanese traditions with their laughable stressing on the fake colour of their skin above everything else. But…..still this is quite a discouraged filmmaking move…
The film’s main plot involves a girl called Monami, who’s secretly a centuries-old vampire, politely death-threatening poor Mizushima into an eternal relationship after turning him into a half-vampire by giving him a chocolate filled with her blood. One thing worth noting (out of thousands of other things) is how the film’s low budget immediately comes into view when Mizushima starts craving blood after becoming half vampire and he starts envisioning people’s naked circulatory systems in place of normal people, which’s poor CGI and batshit insane editing making it quite unsettling to watch and shows just how little the film cares about realism even beyond the practical-effects department. If there’s any idea in Nishimura’s mind that’s ridiculous and unnerving, you bet your teeth he’s putting it on screen with every cent.
Vamp vs Frank not only seems to be fully aware of its explicit bizarreness (obviously) but its action/horror film clichés which it chooses to amplify on top of everything else rather than steer around them. For the first-impressions action scene, we’re thrown from a weighty lone-survivors opening into the most ludicrous out-of-nowhere practical bloodbath which has a concerning imagination for the art-project potential of the human body. For the flashback backstory trope, we have a heavy mother-daughter last-stand battle that transitions into a demon sumo with a forehead cannon fighting a woman with flesh roller-blades on her shins. And last and certainly not least, the final fight trope, which has a revived stitched-up Mizushima’s girlfriend fighting Monami on top of the Tokyo Tower with a spinning arm drilled into her head for a helicopter top. In all seriousness, this final fight is built up quite well and, despite having incredibly dated green-screen, has a wide variety of cinematography and almost fetishistic violent creativity to make it very entertaining in a low-budget way. VGvFG lets no narrative structure tie it down and if it ever begins to feel trapped in a cliché corner, it retaliates with streams of blood and a shower of colourful lighting and effects.
While there are such films that have random scripts, action and eccentrically-acted roles, few can reach such an Everest peak of randomness and somehow come together in an ingeniously hilarious and mortifyingly bloody film. If you thought Sweeney Todd was a tad bit eccentric with its lawn-sprayer throat slit effects, wait til you see a girl’s whole dangling arm spraying seven tubes of fake blood after getting disqualified on the annual wrist-cutting rally. It embraces every low-budget green screen and paint blood effect, knowing full-well its aimed audience are very likely the only ones watching past the ten minute mark.
But what ultimately saves the movie from boredom, alongside its practicality and colourful editing, is the screenplay and dialogue resulting in the cast having the absolute time of their lives and play their characters flawlessly. Everything you’d expect from each character is thrown in full energy, particularly Yukie Kawamura as Monami, who adopts a full-fledged energy to acting a dark vengeful monster that adds the odd dumbfounding moment of seriousness in a film that has a wrist-cutting club and a kabuki surgeon. Such immersed energy from these actors in such an unimaginable film is a unique treat, hell, even the ganguro girls give it their all in what-would-be the most offensive characters in film history. The actors form the ying to the yang of the effects and scripts that combine to ignite a nuclear spark of absurdity.
Ultimately, it’s not too easy to colourfully write about a film that is already colouring the walls with scarlet blood and sporting the most explicitly-mad characters and performances one could drop their jaw at. Watch this film. Immediately. Need say no more.