Samurai Princess (2009)AKA Samurai purinsesu: Gedô-hime
Director: Kengo Kaji
Writers: Sôtarô Hayashi Kengo Kaji
Yû Aiba
Takeshi Ayabe
Miki Hirase
Mitsuru Karahashi
Asuka Kataoka
Aino Kishi
Mihiro
"Samurai Princess" starts off with a severed head rolling on the ground. This leads to a brief swordfight in which the Samurai Princess slices and dices an outlaw into little bits. Then his little bits end up in a boiling pot where his partners in crime unwittingly chow down on his remains. The Princess decides to kill the cretins by pulling out their brains and throwing a naked breast grenade at them. Of course she does. What else would a revenge-minded Mecha do? What's a Mecha you ask? A Mecha is some sort of Frankenstein replicant pieced together from body parts and lost souls. There is a mad artist roaming through this cheap movie looking for severed limbs that he can transform into humanoid monsters. He stumbles upon a girl who's been brutally raped and left for dead. She wants to live again so that she can thrash her attackers into oblivion. So with the convenient help of a Buddhist nun, the mad artist is able to bring his creation to life. This leads to much blood and guts as the Princess takes her revenge on humans and Mechas alike.
I had rented "Samurai Princess" because of its amazing plot summary. Allow me to quote it to you now. "When 11 of her friends are raped and murdered, leaving the Samurai Princess (adult video star Aino Kishi) the only survivor, she becomes infused with her comrades souls...". I made it as far as "adult video star" before deciding that this was the movie for me. I was excited by the exploitation movie possibilities a raped porno star turned robot assassin story could provide. Who wouldn't be?
But the actual film turns out to be a little disappointing. It would be hard to live up to its outrageous exploitative summary but I thought "Samurai Princess" would be a little more extreme than what it was. The movie turns out to be a series of randomly goofy gore scenes which make little to no sense. Mechas and Artists. Robots and Outlaws. What does it all mean?
"Samurai Princess" follows in the footsteps of another Asian action flick, "Machine Girl", in which women get their revenge on humanity by combining their body with machinery. The results can be devastating. Long live the new flesh. But "Samurai Princess" is so cheap and shoddy that they couldn't afford to waste money on anything other than blood and body parts. The mass rape scene is very tame and the porno star did not live up to the high standards I had set for her. You have to have standards. There is one sex scene but its fairly uneventful. The rest of the movie consists of Mechas, artists and outlaws doing battle for no other reason than to splash some blood on the screen.
"Samurai Princess" was made for the undiscerning gore lover. If you need to see an incoherent movie with some cut-rate gore, "Samurai Princess" might be the movie for you. As for me, "Samurai Princess" gave me some cheap thrills but it wasn't enough to satisfy me. I'm a discerning gore lover. I need a little more than Mechas throwing breast bombs at their enemies. I don't need much more mind you. Maybe a breast flame thrower. Now there's a movie. "Samurai Incinerator". Now we're talking sense.
SCORE: 2 out of 4 Mecha mayhem
Mecha girl
Mecha's love brains.
Ah yes.... I was a bit disappointed in this one as well. "Machine Girl" was a much better introduction to this sort of uniquely "Japanese" take on gore.
ReplyDeleteMuch of it has a very "rushed" feel, giving one the impression it was just sort of cranked out to cash in on those people who really liked the former film.
Still... there were a few nice ideas... and another crazy Japanese gore film is never a BAD thing....
"Cranked out" is probably the best way to describe "Samurai Princess". I think they had an abandoned factory and the surrounding forest rented for the weekend to film their movie. Throw body parts, splash blood, repeat. But another gore movie is never truly a bad thing. But it could have been better.
ReplyDeleteInteresting trivia: did you know that Aino Kishi was born the very same day that Heather "THEY`RE HERE" O`Rourke died.
ReplyDeleteI did not know that.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Heather was re-incarnated into Aino at the moment of her death and for the last 22 years shes been a gorgeous little Chink bird.
ReplyDeleteSo Aino was born over an Indian burial ground?
ReplyDeleteAnd I think she would be a gorgeous Japanese bird. You don't want to upset the spirit of Heather by getting her new body confused.
Yeah, its true that Aino was born thousands of miles away form San Diego where Heather died but it was on that fateful day February 1st 1988, i`ve always thought that day was the saddest in the history of the universe but if theres the slightest possibility that Heather lives on in Aino that certainly takes the edge off of the pain slightly.
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