Tokyo Gore Police

(2008) ***1/2

Has anyone ever shot a human eyeball at you out of a gun and hit you in the forehead, and at that exact same time you stuck your hand in a blender? If the answer's yes, then you know what it's like to watch Tokyo Gore Police. I have to state outright that this movie got a reaction out of me that no other horror movie ever has.

In the opening scene, our heroine Ruka (above) is waiting in a patrol car while uniformed police are moving on a murdering psycho cannibal several stories above. She takes a box-cutting knife out of her coat and rolls up her sleeve; her forearm is criss-crossed with scars. Upstairs, the crazy dude picks up his chainsaw and does a warm-up crazy dance before the cops arrive, and the footage of him dancing is intercut with footage of her cutting. And she cuts her wrist to fucking ribbons. It's so fake looking, but nevertheless the sheer damage of it had me cringing tighter and tighter, until the sixth shot of her wrist appeared and I quietly urged "stop!"

I'm so embarrassed.



In the world of Tokyo Gore Police, the city's police force has been privatized and turned into a high-tech samurai goon squad. Their jackboot tactics are the result of combatting Engineers, fearsome mutated humans who have the bizarre ability to turn bodily wounds into weapons. For example, the chainsaw psycho's arm gets shot off, and he forms a gross new arm that ends in a flesh chainsaw. That's right, he grows a working, gassed-up chainsaw out of his arm.

But seriously, all bets are off in this movie. Take the would-be harmless scene in which Ruka's on the subway. A guy is eating worms and grubs out of a bag. There's a super close up of him eating one and even deftly sticking it's still-moving head out between his lips. On the train's TV screens, pretty teen school girls advertise a colorful brand of knife specifically made so you and your friends can cut your wrists together for fun. Then a guy touches Ruka's ass and she hauls him outside and lops off both his hands.

My personal label for the Tentacle Rape cartoons I mentioned in my last review is "Dispatches from the Id." This movie is like Dispatches from the Id By Way of Some Bad, Bad Acid. Nothing in this movie is sympathetic, nobody is un-mutatable. I've read accounts comparing it to the sick fantasies of 14-year old boys, but I disagree. This film was made by a small group of grownup super otaku and a whooole lot of sake; it's a distinct product of the keepers of that Japanese talent of taking things all the way, and I mean all the fucking way.

But don't ask me, ask the Keyman here. He takes a sword slice to the bridge of his nose and so he yanks his whole face off, thereby earning himself this useful configuration. Now they never need to see his I.D. at the bank!

Here's some of his work:

The snail-themed exotic dancer, because snails are so sexy.

Oh my god, this woman has pointy-toothed mouths for boobs! That's totally sick!

No. You didn't see this. Just scroll down and it will go away. No, it doesn't move from side to side and fire bullets, that's just a rumor. Move along please! Move along.

In closing, if you like lots of machine guns, mutants, spraying blood, bodily mutilation, seeing people drawn and quartered, mass murder in the streets and the relentless feeling deep down that everything everywhere is terrible beyond belief, this could be the movie for you.