Tokyo Gore Police

Tokyo Gore Police, possibly winning the best title in 2008 award, is not for the faint of heart. Any film with “gore” in its name better come with the goods and Tokyo Gore Police delivers an unending blast of carnage from grisly start to gruesome end.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much arterial spray in a film as Tokyo Gore Police unleashes plumes of blood from severed hands, feet, legs, chopped off heads, split in two heads, eye sockets, torn off limbs, midsections and a body part I’d prefer not to mention—I’m telling you, it’s wall to wall bloodbath and mayhem. By the end, I was getting a bit sick to my stomach it is so unrelenting. If you like over the top gore—Tokyo Gore Police might be your dream (or should it be nightmare) film.

Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura, responsible for the effects in another gonzo Japanese splatterfest called Machine Girl (in my queue to see), the film combines a love for the sci-fi futurism (lots of Tokyo neon ala the neon in Blade Runner), extreme satire of Japanese culture, S & M imagery and lurid horror. It’s an odd mix with the sci-fi and satire kind of losing out due to the bloodletting. It’s hard to compete with blood shooting in the air and covering the camera lens repeatedly.

The story is set in the future where the Tokyo police force has been privatized and is run by the Tokyo Police Corporation. Criminals have implants that allow them to be more evil, more deadly and when wounded, the wound becomes an even more destructive weapon than they had before thanks to the mutant implant. For example, a wound in the eye might turn your eye socket into a gun to shoot out lethal bullets made up of unneeded body parts. The criminals, dubbed “engineers,” are unstoppable by normal cops with normal weapons.

Luckily, there are an elite group of killers who work for the TPC can hunt down the “engineers” and properly dispose of them—often involves hacking them up real good with a sword. Eihi Shiina (from another infamous Japanese film Audition) plays the best of these cops. Dolled up in leather, short skirts and wielding a huge sword—she heads out to face a motley group of psychotic killers and “engineers.”

I wish the film were shorter as it’s draining to see so much butchery. Ninety minutes (ten minutes cut out) would have been a perfect running time, as the film would have been an onslaught of your senses and then left you stunned at what you just saw. Still, Tokyo Gore Police is the most unhinged, deranged film I’ve seen in a long, long time and if you want gore—this one has plenty of it to offer.