Well if you want gore you came to the right place!
Samurai Princess (2009)
Directed By: Kengo Kaji
The Prologue
Kengo Kaji, the writer of Tokyo Gore Police, writes and directs this film called, Samurai Princess. A film that I don’t think is on the same level as Tokyo Gore Police, but seems to be doing just fine and dandy with the gore department. And I think at the end of the day that plus the fact you get a cute Asian girl slashing and dashing their way through the bad guys might make you want to check this out, even if honestly, the plot is a bit of none-sense.
The Movie
So after being the sole survivor of a group of young women who are raped and murdered, our Samurai Princess becomes a Mecca (android in normal people terms) to avenge their deaths. Along the way she’ll encounter people also after her kind, regardless if they are bad or not, and a dude with a messed up hand that can do gnarly things with a guitar! While that may not make a ton of sense to you, you at least get blood and guts!!
Well I have never seen someone have their whole skeleton knocked out of their body before, but thanks to this movie now I have. I’ve said it once before with other films like this, if we just rated the gore it would be near perfect. Body parts are torn and cut off, bodies are chopped up and stacked up, and much much more gruesome things that I can’t even start to get into here. If I had to complain about the gore here it would be the same small complaint I always have with these types of film, and that’s the fact that at times they still take shortcuts and use CGI…Bad CGI. Now of course some of the body parts flying around look a little fake anyway, but what can you do?
I also think the plot is a little “too out there” for it’s own good. It may be a little hard for some to follow no matter what language you are watching it in. There’s a weird guy who makes these “mecca” being with the parts of dead people. These meccas usually go crazy and kill, kill, kill. They also enlist the help of the areas scum and pay them by letting them rape the women! This is of course where we lead into the thick of things here and get a pretty hot chick that accepts her fate to become one of these things for revenge and thanks to the help of a nun, ends up with the souls of all her dead friends inside her to help. Yeah, a little weird, but you get tons of gore remember?
One thing I did really like about this was unlike most movies these days the Princess doesn’t just have an easy time cutting through the bad guys. This movie, more or less, does allow her to struggle at different times and add some tension to what you are seeing. Sometimes, especially these days, it just seems like people get too caught up in letting the good guy just run right through the bad guys with soo much ease that there’s really no question how things will turn out. At least the Asians are still into the whole “you can’t ever be too sure” thing, and it helps. Which to be honest, at times, this movie needs help to hold you in.
To be 100% honest with you, I didn’t care for the plot that much. And to spite having the finger prints of Kengo Kaji’s other stuff all over it, this movie comes across very indie when compared to the other film he wrote, Tokyo Gore Police. Maybe that’s cause it was indie? I’m not sure, but at least you could tell by the gore if nothing else who wrote it. So if you want to see a blood bath, then by all means check this out because we all love those from time to time, but if you are looking for a good, solid, and none confusing plot, you may want to look somewhere else.
The Conclusion
I’m pretty much torn on this one. I looooved the gore..cause well, I’m weird. But the rest didn’t do a whole lot for me. We got swords, chainsaw legs, boob grenades, and other odd things that are hard to put into words, but the logic and plot is a bit of a head scratchier. So I’ll just give this the score I’m giving and allow you to decide if you think it’s your cup of tea or not.
The Rating (5.5/10)
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