Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

Episode 118, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, Craig, we decided to do something a little wacky, today. Of course, we did, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 2 last week, and that that qualified as wacky, but I I sort of feel like this might be a little wackier. What do you think?

Craig:  Yeah. I would say so.

Todd:  We, are going all the way to the other side of the world for Tokyo Gore Police, 2008 title starring Eihi Shina, who starred in Audition as well. So if you’re familiar with Audition, which is a 1999 film, you might have recognized her from that. Craig, had you even heard of this film before I proposed it to you?

Clip:  Nope. Yeah. I had not well, I guess that’s not really fair to say because though I didn’t recall having heard it, I had seen some of the images, some stills, from the movie, when I looked it up online. So no, I didn’t really know what those stills were that I was looking at, but I had seen some of the weird imagery from the movie.

Todd:  Okay. Yeah. It’s, directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura, and, he is an effects guy as becomes patently obvious when you’re watching this film. If you go to his IMDB page, you’ll see, like, 89 or a 100 special effects credits Todd his name and about 20 or so director credits. I think this is, like, the second film that he did, the second big budget film. And, or big budget. I don’t know how big the budget was. But, it was filmed in 2 weeks, and it’s kinda surprising, although, I mean, it was filmed in 2 weeks, but there’s clearly a ton of preparation involved.

Clip:  Oh, yeah.

Todd:  It’s not like beginning to end. They, hey. Hey. Let’s make a movie. And 2 weeks later, they had a film. I don’t know. I mean, you can call it a horror film. I call it a horror film because it’s pretty gory and gross and violent, but, it’s also more of a sci fi and a little bit of comedy too.

Clip:  Yeah. And action. Action. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s crazy. I was I was trying to describe it last night, to my partner who who had only, like, you know, as always, you know, was just kinda walking by and saw what I was watching on the screen. I was like, what are you watching? And I was like, I know.  Right? You know, I have we done Japanese films before? I I I know we’ve done hausu. We have hausu.

Todd:  I think I think hausu is the only Japanese

Craig:  film we’ve done outside of this one. Yeah.

Clip:  Well, I guess my point is they just have very different sensibilities than we Westerners have. I mean, it’s it’s got a very distinctive Asian feel to it. You know, it feels kind of like manga or like, anime or, even, like, video game or or, you know, like, even there’s some old school, like, kung fu action going on, here too. For sure. It’s I don’t even know. Like like, I don’t even know where to begin because it’s so out of the realm of what we usually talk about, in so many ways. I mean, yeah, there are, like, monsters and blood and and all kinds of things going on, but it’s just it’s so out of my zone. I don’t really even know where to begin.

Todd:  You know, if you think of it like a cartoon, we we talked a lot about, Haozu, and it it is, I think, wackier than this movie. This movie has has a logic to it. I mean, it it’s a pretty straightforward plot. It has an internal logic to it. Hausu was got got extremely bizarre at points. And when we say bizarre, we mean, like, a guy turns into bananas for no apparent reason. You know? And, like, there was such a surreal quality to that film that this film definitely doesn’t have. It’s it’s bizarre, but in a different way.  You know what I mean?

Clip:  Yeah. In a different way, but I would still say surreal and bizarre. Like, I mean, when when I’m writing down things like vagina crocodile girl and, like, the the the the pet dog lady now has sword legs, Like like like, that’s pretty surreal.

Todd:  Yeah. That’s a good point. You do have a you do have a fair point there. But but, if if you look at it as sci fi, it’s really not much more surreal than the 5th element if the 5th element had, you know, Olympic sized swimming pools filled with blood that were sprayed at the camera and all around the set, you know, pretty much most of the time. Well, let’s just start out with the plot. It is pretty simple. It follows a woman named Ruka, and, it starts out and I really like actually, I really like the way the story is told. It’s told in a very, artistic way, I think.  There are flashback scenes. There are flashback scenes that get revisited again, but with new information later on. There are also intercut with this, are parody commercials that just try to set up the world that we’re in. It reminded me a lot of of, like, Robocop in a way Mhmm. Where there’s this ultraviolet world where in the future, the Tokyo police have been privatized. I mean, that’s pretty much ripped off a Robocop, almost. Sure. But the Tokyo police have been privatized, and so, the the world is much more violent.  And, there’s a voice over. Some kids are playing on a playground, and there’s this nice voice over that Ruka’s starting to talk. Basically, my dad is a police officer. She’s talking about him, and we see her father standing there waving, and he’s he’s smiling at her, and there’s some signs or something behind him. We don’t quite know what that is. And then boom, his head explodes. Right. And immediately, it’s, it’s dark, and it’s a rainy day, and, Ruka is an adult, and she’s in the back of a of a of a car.  So it’s neat the way that it sets up kind of a mystery. We don’t know what’s going on here. We don’t know who these people are, and slowly it starts to unpack it for us. This woman, Ruka, is what they essentially call a engineer hunter. She’s a special part of the police squad who hunts these people called engineers, genetically modified people somehow that have just kind of cropped up in society, who, if they get injured, their injuries turn into weapons. That is very anime.

Clip:  It’s so bizarre. Like, it’s funny that you’re just laying it out. Like, okay. Here’s how it goes. Because in the whole first 10 minutes of the movie, I had no idea what was going on. And I was trying to write things down and, like, I I did really like the, the contrast in the beginning because, you know, I Todd this movie and it starts out with these beautiful, like, colors and flowers, and it’s all very dreamlike and pastel and, like, I like, fuzzy, like, the dreamlike imagery, and it’s all very nice. And then the guy’s head explodes, and then it it cuts to this stark, dark, you know, sharp in focus. It it you know, it’s it’s like a dystopian future kind of thing.  And I and I really liked that contrast. But then you’ve got this girl who I don’t know who she is. I mean, I guess she’s the same girl. I mean, she is. But at the time, I’m thinking I guess she’s the girl who was narrating in the beginning. And she’s sitting in this car and, like, you’re like you said, there’s not only are there these weird commercials about, like, the privatization of the police force and how great that’s gonna be for the citizenry and, you know, it’s all very brutally violent, but also tongue in cheek. It’s like, you know, we’re the friendly cops who execute people in the streets and, like, they shit. And then you like, they they’ll kill these people, and then it will cut back to an extreme close-up of their face with big smiles, like, here we are, your your protective plea yeah.  Really weird. And then there’s also, in addition to the commercials, there’s, like, a police commentator. Like, I I guess this this lady is just, like, on TV.

Todd:  I thought she was the dispatcher.

Clip:  Oh, maybe she is, but it seems like she’s on like, doesn’t it seem like she’s televised or something?

Todd:  Because it’s

Clip:  it seems like she’s always trying to, like, hype up the Craig. Like, oh, here

Craig:  we go. Like, it’s

Clip:  it’s so bizarre.

Todd:  I know what you mean because and and she’s in a she’s in a cute outfit, and she’s got her she’s very kawaii. She’s super cute. She has her blonde short hair and her cute police uniform on, and she’s in a room that’s like, got like silvery curtains behind her, almost like a game show set, and she’s Yeah. Talking into it. Yeah. I I I saw this as, obviously, it’s some parody. You know, it’s it’s Yeah. Extreme of of just like the commercials.  But it was it was also kinda ripped off too of, another film that I’m not sure if you’ve seen. It’s Japanese, called, Battle Royale. Have you seen Battle Royale?

Clip:  I’ve seen it, but only once a long time ago. I don’t I mean, I remember what it was about. It was it was The Hunger Games.

Todd:  Yeah. It was. Yeah. Basically. And and there was a similar character in there. They also came across the TV that would, instruct the kids as to what they were supposed to do, and it was all done in a very cute way with cartoons and things like, here’s how you’re gonna murder each other, and here’s where you pick up your weapons and things. Yeah. So she’s like the cheerleader for the police, it seems like.

Clip:  Yeah. It’s it’s odd. I didn’t really understand it. But whatever. Anyway, then okay. So then, like, it’s obviously some kind of crime scene. Like, they’re in front of this great big building, and there’s all these cops around, and they’re weird. You know, they’re dressed weird.  They’re, like, half cop, like, half samurai. Like, they wear masks and stuff. Okay. So there’s this criminal, I guess, up in this building. I couldn’t really tell what he was doing. It seemed like he was, like, eating a decaying corpse or something.

Todd:  I think that’s yeah. He was up on the roof and he had killed somebody or something. Yeah.

Clip:  I couldn’t even figure him out because he looked like some kinda, like, jungle guy or something. Like, he was dirty and his hair was all matted with dirt and stuff, and he was kinda like running around like a caveman. Yeah. It was all very bizarre and then the police finally get up there to him and they shoot him with these fully automatic machine guns that they carry, but he doesn’t die. It and you already you already mentioned that these engineers, like, I guess this is a clever idea. I can’t imagine where they came up with it, but it’s really kind of the basic premise for the movie is that when these engineers get injured, their injuries turn into deadly weapons. So, like, his arm gets cut off by the gunfire, and then his arm turns into, like, an extendo arm with a chainsaw on

Craig:  the end of it. Yeah. And when he

Todd:  and when he says extendo arm, we’re talking like if the chainsaw could shoot out from his arm Yeah. By, like, a tendon or something to it. It’s it’s very much like Cronenberg type body humor, but It is. Mixed with a video game, essentially.

Clip:  It’s so weird. And at this point, we have had no explanation, so we don’t have any idea what’s going on. And I’m like, what the hell? This is so weird. And this. So then he’s, like, chopping off, you know, all these cops heads. And this whole movie is just absolutely saturated in blood. Like, I wish that I had been able to find more trivia because I wish that I knew how many gallons of fake blood were used in this movie because it’s just it’s it’s lit it’s virtually raining blood the whole movie. Yeah.  And, like, people will have appendages cut off and stand there for 3 or 4 minutes while blood just gushes out of them, like, more blood than could ever actually be in a human body. Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, it’s interesting visuals, I guess.

Todd:  Well and you had mentioned earlier kung fu films, and this is a kind of a stylistic now not not all kung fu films are like this, but there are some kung fu films that that actually are stylized this way where, blood you know, like, a person will get a limb cut off, and then it’s like a spray of blood that comes out of the arm like like a hose, you know. Right. Like a quick spray usually is what it is. If you’ve seen Kill Bill, there’s there’s a scene in there, like, the first part of the movie is, like, more like a samurai film than this or kung fu film. The second part of the movie is more like a western. But, you might remember a big, action sequence in there with Lucy Liu and and, Uma Thurman and all that. That was kinda the the climax of the first film, and that had the very same very same, borrowed the same style, where people get their arms cut off and there would just be, like, blood spraying out of their arms or their necks or whatever, just like like ridiculously, you know, with force. Yeah.  Like a geyser.

Clip:  Yeah. That’s good. That’s good. I couldn’t come up with anything that it was like. But But now that you remind me of that, yes, if you’ve seen that, it’s very much like that.

Todd:  But this is that times, like, you know, a 100.

Clip:  Yeah. Yeah. And okay. So then what’s her Roku? Ruka? Ruka. Ruka? Ruka is sitting in her police car, like, while all this is going on. And then out of nowhere, she pulls up her sleeve and you see that she’s got cutting scars on her arm, and she pulls out this razor blade and just starts hacking away at her arm. Like, not like little, you know, cuts or whatever, but, like, she’s, like, just hack and slashing at her arm, which is weird and random. And then when the TV girl is like, Ruka, it’s an engineer.  We need your help. Like, she jumps out of the car, and then her arm is fine. Like, I don’t even She, like, bandaged. She doesn’t make any sense. So she goes up there, and she fights with this bad guy. And, like, there are all of these huge fight scenes, which is fun, you know? Mhmm. But so eventually, she cuts him down, with a gun. I don’t I don’t remember it, but somehow she cuts him down.  With her her sword. Was it her sword? Yeah. She uses a sword a lot.

Todd:  And his own chainsaw a little bit. Yeah. His chainsaw got a lot of action in this in this scene.

Clip:  When she’s done, once she’s cut him down, she takes a little while to do, like, some badass posing,

Craig:  like That’s right. Like, the

Clip:  camera just stays on her while she poses for a while in these badass moves. It didn’t remind me necessarily of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but in that same vein, like, here I am. Like, I’m the badass chick who’s gonna take care of everything and look at how badass I am. It also gave me vibes throughout of, Charlie’s Angels a little bit.

Todd:  Yes.

Clip:  Yes. Like if Charlie’s Angel Charlie’s Angels went, you know, crazy and super gory, it kinda had that feel to it. Charlie’s Hell’s Angels or something. Yeah.

Todd:  Yeah. It’s just a mismatch mishmash, isn’t it, of things? But but it’s consistent. I mean, it’s it’s not It is. It’s not a we you know, there’s some movies where they just throw everything in the kitchen sink at you, but this this movie definitely has a style, definitely makes Yeah. Choices, and definitely creates a world for you, I think very quickly.

Clip:  Yeah. And it took me a while, okay, but then it gets I know this. At some point, you get some exposition when we go back to, like, police headquarters or whatever, and there’s this creepy ass coroner. It’s like Igor. Yeah. He’s got like an eye patch and he’s fat and hunched over and he’s he’s like dissecting the body of this bad guy that, the girl had just killed and he explains that what these engineers are. They don’t really know what they are except for that, like, their bodies can modify and when they’re injured, they their bodies, you know, turn into these deadly weapons or whatever, and he says every one of them that we’ve killed, we we have found this key shaped tumor inside and the they’re virtually indestructible, but if you can remove or disable that tumor, then you can kill them. And so from that point on, I’m like, okay.  I I kinda get what’s going on here, but up till then, I was I was in the dark.

Todd:  Yeah. I think that’s what’s kinda nice about this movie is that, you know, it it lays things out for you slowly, but it keeps things interesting while it’s doing it. I mean, there’s really never a dull moment in this film. No. Well, maybe the next moment’s dull. She goes to the Bob, a little bar. It’s just a one woman bar. It looks like it’s in her kitchen.  And, we get a little backstory there too. We flashback to the bar owner when, she found Ruka as a girl. So we know that Ruka is troubled. We’ve seen Ruka, a flashback to cutting herself in an alleyway, some kids making fun of her, and then this woman who owns this bar coming in and kind of rescuing her, taking her under her wing, so now Ruka goes to this bar all the time. And at this point, I thought, oh, she’s an orphan or something. This woman took her in, But, no, later on, we find out that, we get another flashback where, she goes back to the station, and instantly, something seems wrong. She’s in what seems to be I mean, the station is pretty empty. The state the interior of the station is almost like a parking garage.  There’s probably other rooms where people do work, but we’d never see it, which is No. Interesting. Anyway, she there’s this really tense moment and scene where it looks like there’s some monster coming towards her. It’s a guy. It’s in shadow, big and hulky, and he looks kind of like the cops do with the samurai type policeman’s helmet, but he has these huge horns coming out

Craig:  of it.

Todd:  Mhmm. And, dog girl is attached to a leash coming alongside of him. It is a weird

Clip:  It is super weird, but, like, stylistically, it’s kind of cool. Like it’s it’s disturbing to see, like, when we say dog girl, what it is, it’s this woman who’s like clothed almost from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet in leather and bondage and, like, I don’t like metal and she appears to be amputated at her elbows and knees, so she’s just crawling around like a dog on her elbows and knees. And this this guy, the big horny guy is what I called him, got he’s got her on a chain like a dog, and it’s really weird, and it’s really menacing at the you know, in this moment, and you think, oh my gosh. Here’s gonna be a big fight. And then all of a sudden, all the lights turn on and the big horny guy is happy birthday, Ruka. And it’s her birthday celebration, and all the cops in that precinct or whatever are celebrating her birthday. And not only is it her birthday, but it’s also the celebration of her 50th engineer kill. Yeah.  And so she’s she’s being decorated for that, and it threw me off because, okay, like, when the guy seemed like he was going to be a bad guy, then it made sense that he would have, you know, a little person dog. But then all of a sudden he’s a good guy, and I’m supposed to be like, wait. I guess that’s okay that you have a little person dog.

Todd:  Well, this is your first indication, aside from, you know, the videos that show that the police are violent, that the police are just completely sick in Yeah. You know, that there really are the law in here, and everything’s kind of been turned upside down. I guess it’s since the engineers came, maybe. I don’t know. I got the sense that maybe I thought at first that this might be an engineer that he had caught and made his pet, you know, in some weird, sick way. But Yeah. I don’t know if that holds up. Anyway, yeah.  They they had the as soon as they say happy birthday, we get another flashback to her, childhood when her father came home and, was celebrating her 12th birthday. And her mother’s in the kitchen, but she’s her back is to us, and she’s cutting daikon. After a little while, she her mother kinda freaks out and turns around and and and clearly her mother’s been cutting herself as well with a knife, and she kinda wrestles with her dad. And so they’re really setting this up, this troubled childhood where her mother obviously had issues, and she has taken those issues on herself with her own cutting. Then, of course, her dad was killed in right in front of her. We’ve seen that from a previous flashback. I think the idea then is that this after those two things happened, because she was still kind of a kid, this woman at this bar became her surrogate mother because she calls her mama, like, once or twice in there. So this is this this this relationship here is how this is.  I thought that the transitions here were really quite good from scene to scene, very creative. Because, for example, in this case, it shows a close-up on, I think, her mother’s arm with all the cuts. And then suddenly, we get a close-up on another arm where red rope crisscrossed across it, is being unwound. And now we are back in present day, which which threw me off, but I I didn’t realize it was present day, but it is. We’re back in present day, and there’s a guy with a with a child prostitute in a in a room.

Clip:  Yeah. See now okay. Fine. Artistic transitions, fine. But it jumped from scene to scene so much that I had, like when it jumped to this scene, I was like, what is happening? Like, yeah, it cuts to this, like, prostitute scene, like, this very young prostitute with this gross Todd fat guy, and, like, there are these close ups on this dildo. Like Yeah.

Todd:  That’s, like, spitting around. Its batteries are still going.

Clip:  And, like, the camera will, like, show us the people, and then it will cut back to the dildo and then show us the people and then back to the dildo. And I’m

Craig:  like, what? Like, I don’t even understand. I don’t know

Clip:  who these people are. Oh, I’m just gonna say it because there’s no easy way to get around my own personal ignorance, I guess, but I don’t think all Asian people look alike. But if I’m not given, like Yes.

Todd:  I know what you’re saying.

Clip:  Ruka Ruka, I can recognize her because she’s a distinctive character. But then when we cut to characters I don’t know, I’m like, who are these people? Yeah. Is this somebody that I’m supposed to remember? Because if it is, I don’t remember who it is. Well

Todd:  and then in this case, when we came from a flashback scene where Ruka was a kid, and then you’re flashing immediately Todd without any I mean, it’s just like you said, it’s just jumping to a new scene, and it this is also a kid. I wondered if this wasn’t also Ruka at first. I thought maybe we were still on a flashback at a different scene. It turns out we’re not. But you’re right. It it is confusing that way, maybe even deliberately so.

Clip:  Well, yeah. And then there there are scenes late like, there’s a scene later on in the movie where these two women are fighting, and maybe you can explain it to me because it seemed like it was important, and I had no idea who those women were. Like I know what you’re talking about. Okay. I guess we’ll I guess we’ll get there. But, anyway, the so we’re then we’re in this brothel and, basically, what it comes down to is there’s this madam who, makes appointments for these young Asian prostitutes over her phone. People call her or, you know, electronically text her or whatever, and she sets up these rendezvous with these women. And they’re like, it’s it’s S and M and and, you know, kinky stuff.  And she ends up going into, I guess, a public toilet. She notices that there’s a creepy guy behind her, And this guy grabs her and, like, puts a knife to her neck and and she’s saying, you know, if you want a girl, I can get you a girl, but I’m not available. You really should make appointments over the phone. But then but then he kills her by inserting these sharp tubes into her body and collecting her blood for reasons that I don’t understand.

Craig:  Yeah.

Clip:  And, then Ruka gets a call that she needs to go to this crime scene, and when they go to the crime scene, this woman’s body is broken and folded into this small cardboard box with all of these vials of her blood, around her And I feel like there’s something with, like, the key, like, they know that one of their engineers has done this or something. Gosh. I don’t know. It’s so confusing. Help me out here, Todd.

Todd:  Well, it it it it follows the pattern because, even in the beginning, the guy, who had, cut up the the the person up on the roof, had put all the body in the body parts into a box, and, I think there were some blood vials or something. Anyway, yeah, you’re right. They’re standing around. They’re looking at it. They’re saying this follows the pattern. It has to be an engineer that did this. Then, Yuko basically goes on the subway. What I think what’s happening here is that we’re supposed to start, like, the the the chief is saying, okay.  Now it’s really becoming a problem with these guys. We need to be more, aggressive at getting all of these engineers. And so he sends Yuka back out, and Yuka goes on a subway. The impression that I got is that Ruka had to pose as a prostitute. Right?

Clip:  I Like because this this engineer was targeting prostitutes

Craig:  Oh. So they

Todd:  sent That’s right.

Clip:  I think that’s what it was. So they sent her out dressed slutty like a prostitute to try to find this guy.

Todd:  Actually, that makes sense. I missed that part. That makes total sense. Because as she’s on the Craig, it you know what’s kinda fun about this movie too is it is so Japanese. Like, there’s so many Japanese things in here. Like, the child prostitution thing is is a real thing. You know? I mean, they’re still dealing with this right now in Japan. There’s still a weird level of acceptance in Japanese society of sexual activity and sexualizing, fetishizing young girls.  I mean, it’s it’s open. They’re, like, the last developed country in the world to, like, pass laws against it. I think just it’s only a few years ago that it became illegal to own to possess child pornography in Japan.

Clip:  Oh, my gosh.

Craig:  I mean,

Todd:  this is a country where

Craig:  you can

Todd:  go and you get, like, school girls panties out of a a vending machine, you know.

Clip:  Ew. I don’t wanna talk about that anymore. Woah. You’re educating me on things that I don’t wanna know.

Todd:  I didn’t know. You didn’t know this. It’s funny. Yeah. No. It’s, yeah. It’s fun and as wacky as Japan could be. It has its dark side, and this this movie just kind of, like, visits all like, checks the boxes, essentially.  And then one of them is the groping on the trains. This is another common problem to the point where they actually have cars for women only in Japan. So, yeah. This guy’s tried gropes her on the Craig, and so he she takes him off the train down into an, I don’t know, an alley or something like that, chops off both of his arms, all both of his hands, and and then opens a parasol. And this is, you know, when the blood is raining down, and she opens a pair I thought this was simultaneously really funny and and and sick and beautiful at the same time, this scene.

Clip:  Yeah. It’s funny that you say that because I thought the same thing. I mean, he’s standing behind her with his severed arms held up in the air just gushing blood, so it’s raining blood. And she’s walking in the foreground towards the camera with her parasol and it’s in slow motion. And it is. I mean, from a cinematography perspective, it’s it’s a beautiful shot. I actually thought that that scene was really kind of satisfying. Mhmm.  You know? And that Yeah. Here’s this creeper. And, like, it’s not like he did any not that it’s okay to grope people, but a relatively minor crime considering, you know, other things, but, that he got his comeuppance. I I just thought it was a satisfying scene. Random and there’s lots of random things, like, beef even before that happens, she’s on the train and she’s looking around and, like, I assume, you know, she’s looking for the engineer. She’s looking for somebody who would be interested in her as a prostitute or whatever. But then there’s this I thought it was a girl. I couldn’t really tell if it was a girl or a guy, but, like, this punk kid, standing on the train eating bugs.  And then they do, like, an extreme close-up of this kid’s mouth, and, like, not only is he or she eating bugs, but, like, just allowing the ooze to, like, dribble out of his or her mouth for no reason.

Craig:  Like, what was what was the point of that? To be honest. I don’t even understand what was happening.

Clip:  It reminded me of, what was the movie that we watched? The boxer. The boxer. Yeah. Yeah. It reminded me of that when the guys were eating all the rotten food. Oh, man.

Todd:  It’s weird. I think that guy was supposed to be a suspicious character, you know, like, oh, maybe he’s the one. And also, this is a weird futuristic world where somebody can just sit and eat a tin full of bugs on the, you know, train and nobody nobody nobody notices. Then, she goes back to the train, and then it’s, like, just her on there. And then when she looks up, suddenly, there’s a creepy guy in front of her, and we can recognize this as, looks like it’s the same guy who killed the madam earlier because he’s got the long, scraggly hair.

Clip:  Right.

Todd:  And they end up, they end up with a fight scene, big long fight scene in a hallway. I guess they jump off the Craig. They end up in some hallway somewhere. Mhmm. And again, like you said, the fight scenes there are a lot of fight scenes in this movie, and they’re pretty cool. They’re very stylized. They’re very staged. I thought they were very satisfying.  They were really thrilling and fun to watch. And then, of course, because, you know, when these people get injured, weird stuff happens. Mhmm. It’s it’s even more interesting because you’re kinda wondering what’s gonna happen next. And she slices this guy’s head through the eyes and toward the back. So takes off, like, the top portion of his head. And out of the top, he kinda turns around. And when he comes back, his brain is exposed.  This is, like, grown back. And instead of eyes now, coming out of his eyes are 2 large gun barrels. Oh, so so so weird. You know, he said the director said that he was looking at some Salvador Dali paintings, and that’s what kind of inspired his the germ of the idea for this film.

Clip:  I can see that. That makes sense. Yeah. And so then, Gun Eyes, which is what I will refer to him from now on. Gun eyes, like, shoots, it’s not even bullets and, like, these effects are kind of weird. Like, I don’t I don’t even know, like, he’s kinda, like, shooting, like, fleshy

Todd:  Yeah.

Clip:  Weird stuff out of the guns and

Craig:  Yeah.

Clip:  But he does. He shoots yeah. I guess. He shoots out what kind of almost looks like bone shards that pin her, Ruka, to the wall. And he comes up and he pulls out one of those tumor keys. And he puts it he, like, puts it up to her arm and a little keyhole appears when the key gets close to her arm. And he puts it in there and he turns it and, like, her flesh splits open, and then it just cuts away. I I I think it cuts to her in the hospital, like, she doesn’t know exactly what’s happened to her and and then they end up back at the, precinct slash warehouse wherever they work.  They’re examining the top part of this guy’s head that she chopped off and the creepy coroner is like, well, I didn’t find the key in there and the fact that he’s still alive after having the top part of his face chopped off probably indicates that he’s an engineer, so he’s probably still out there. And the chief of police, who’s also there, is adamant. He’s like, ‘Ah, these engineers, we have to exterminate them all, like, exterminate them all. And Ruka is standing there with kind of a trepidatious look on her face. And the indication I got, which ends up being true, is that because the key was put into her, is that she is an engineer now too, which is why she’s concerned about exterminating, all the engineers.

Todd:  Right. The exterminator is now the exterminatee. And Right. It’s a pretty typical trope too, but an interesting interesting turn of events that nobody saw coming. Right?

Clip:  Right. Right.

Todd:  Now this next part, was very confusing to me because just like you said earlier, I, like, I didn’t recognize this guy at first.

Clip:  I didn’t either. Later, we find out, okay,

Todd:  he was one of the cops. I guess Right.

Craig:  He’s

Todd:  one of the cops who’s been hanging around. And we just get to follow him for a while. He just goes on a bender. It’s like he’s depressed or he’s trying to relax, and he normally shoots up or he’s normally a drug user. At least, he gets into the seedier parts of town, I guess, on his off hours. And, so he’s kinda hanging out. He’s, talking about how he wants speed.

Clip:  Okay. Good. Alright. Now I hadn’t put together that those 2 people were the same people until this morning when I was reading about it. And and you’re right. He is talk he, like, he’s super tired. Like, he pulled an all nighter, and he wishes he had some speed. But then it goes to a new scene, and I didn’t recognize that this was the same guy at all because he’s he’s dressed up like a pimp, and he’s, like like, strolling down the street

Craig:  like a

Clip:  pimp and, like, grabbing his junk and stuff. And it’s I I just I was getting ready to cut you off because you’re like, well, he’s just hanging out and, like, you can’t just he’s he visits the seedier parts of town. Yeah. Seedy and that he goes into, like Yeah. The weirdest, most bizarre bordello Yeah. That you can possibly imagine.

Todd:  Oh my god. This scene this I was eating chicken?

Clip:  Oh Todd. I can’t believe you were eating while you were

Todd:  watching this movie. I had to put it down at this point. I had to put

Craig:  my chicken down at this point.

Todd:  Yeah. Yeah. It’s well, it’s like a big party type, atmosphere. Everybody’s making out with each other. It’s really crowded. It’s it’s seedy. It’s dingy. Loud music playing.  And there are all these mutant kind of people in there. Well, like, some people are clearly just dressed up, and some people maybe have have piercings and tattoos or just Todd modifications, but I think the implication was at least a few of the people here are maybe engineers or at least

Clip:  Yeah. They they have to be. It’s weird. And for some reason, Ruka is looking for one of these girls, and the only reason that I know that is because she has, like, a file with a picture of this girl who’s you can see her exposed breasts and she doesn’t have any nipples and it it it almost looks like an incision, like her nipples have been removed, but then it’s not reconnected with, stitches, but it’s like teeth. Yeah. Like her boobs have teeth. Yeah. And it’s all these Kinda sexy though.  Okay.

Craig:  I think I have a doctor’s appointment. We’re gonna have to reschedule this.

Clip:  Alright. Oh, man. You you might wanna consider editing that out. But whatever, you know, whatever you’re into, that’s cool. But it’s all these mutant folks, and it it looks like it’s kinda like an auction block, I guess.

Craig:  It’s great. It’s it’s great.

Todd:  It’s like it’s like a reveal. It’s like, it’s almost like it’s a go go bar or whatever. Yeah. And and the go go dancers are the prostitutes because they have numbers carved on them. And, the owner or the emcee or whatever goes up to the first one and reveals her. And it’s it’s her. Right? She’s the first one. Right? The girl you just described,

Clip:  I think. Maybe. I don’t know. There’s there’s a few of them.

Todd:  And and like you said, like, that’s kind of her only thing is that cut incision with the teeth on her boobs or whatever. Then it goes to reveal the next one. The next one’s, like, even a little bit more elaborate. This girl has, is almost like a a snail. She has a big Yeah. Like, shell on her back, and her eyeballs are on the end of stems, and she’s kind of crawling

Clip:  around. Test tubes?

Todd:  Yeah. It’s super gross and weird. Then she reveals, it’s like, here’s the first one. Alright. Here’s the second one now. Here’s the grand prize. And she opens up the next one, and it is an organic looking chair. It is like a a woman’s skin has fused and wrapped itself around the Craig.  But it’s breathing. And the kind of like where those where the crotch would be on here is a little oh, I don’t know. What’s the name of that flood? What’s An orchid. Orchid thing, whatever. It starts pissing on the crowd.

Clip:  And they’re loving it. They’re like, yeah.

Todd:  Oh, yeah. It’s like a beast now.

Clip:  Be showered in urine. It’s a

Todd:  giant golden shower in there. Wow. Yeah.

Clip:  It it’s really gross. It’s really it it reminded me a little bit of society. Like Yes. Just this weird body horror. As weird as it is, I have to give it credit. I mean, it’s it’s it looks great. It’s disturbing. Like, I’m watching it, like, you know, out of the side of my eye kind of cringing, like, oh my god.  But if you’re looking at it from a technical perspective, it looks fantastic. Oh, it’s wonder. Like, it’s really good.

Todd:  I mean and you know, honestly, I just I thought it was creative and clever and Todd, and I really I mean, to say you enjoy it, you know, is I thought it it really made the movie. You know, you’re thinking of the thing, anything Cronenberg has done, Videodrome. I mean, this is all, like, in that same vein. It really is a society. Absolutely. I I I don’t know. I just like, I really dug it, and I think that if the effects had not been so good, I wouldn’t have liked it as much,

Clip:  You know? Oh, sure. Absolutely.

Todd:  And this this next scene is the best scene in the movie as far as I’m concerned.

Clip:  Oh my god. It is a really good scene, but I think I’ll have nightmares about it for the rest of my life. Yeah. That’s why it’s so good. It’s a really good scene, but it’s so uncomfortable. Okay. So this cop, he orders number 69, who is the booby teeth girl. And so, like, she goes back into this room where all of these and she straps him into this chair and I guess I get what you’re saying when because she’s a hot lady, except for the booby teeth.  She’s a very beautiful woman and it’s very seductive, you know, like, she’s she’s strapping him down and then she kneels between his legs and starts to go down on him. And at that time, out of the corner of his eye, he notices that there’s somebody else in the room and it’s GunEyes. And as soon as he notices that Gun Eyes is there, he, like, you know, takes a surprised inhalation of breath and number 69 bites his dick off and spits it out on the floor. Oh my god. Seriously, nightmares for life.

Todd:  And he’s sitting there and his dick is spraying blood just like we’ve seen arms, legs, things

Craig:  of free blood. Also horrible. It’s horrible.

Todd:  It’s horrible, but oh my gosh.

Clip:  And then the the the the guy, Gun Eyes, comes and is, like, we’re gonna start the body transfiguration procedure. And he just, like, starts drilling into this guy’s ankles. Yeah. That was weird. It it was weird, and I’m not really sure why he was doing that. But, the guy is fighting, obviously, but he’s strapped into this chair, but he breaks one of the straps and he is armed because he’s a cop. So he pulls out his, little handheld machine gun and he goes to shoot Gun Eyes, but the hooker, number 69, jumps in front. And so she gets sprayed with gunfire and, she gets cut in half from her waist down.  Now we know how the engineers work, you know, when they lose a part of their body or they get injured or whatever, it turns into some sort of deadly weapon. Well, this woman’s

Craig:  god.

Clip:  He goes he goes the the guy, the John, the cop, goes running out into the hall, but he’s kinda crawling and stumbling around because the stump of his dick is still sticking out of his pants. And I I and, so he’s sitting out there in the hall and she comes out the door head first, so she just looks like her normal self. But then when she comes all the way out, she’s on the ground and she’s, like, dragging the lower part of her body and the whole lower part of her body has turned into, like, a crocodile mouth or, like, you know, an Audrey 2 from Little Shop of Horrors.

Todd:  Yeah. Yeah. It’s like a mermaid.

Craig:  And she

Clip:  and she just she scoots around the floor and, like, scoots at him really fast and her vagina mouth starts chomping on him. Oh, God. Listen, I have to tell you, I try not to go here too often, but as a gay man, this just is the epitome of why why I am a homosexual.

Todd:  Oh, do explain.

Clip:  Because because because somewhere somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, that’s just how I picture the vagina in general. Lady lady listeners out there, listen. I get it. It’s a beautiful thing. But when I think about it, that’s what I see.

Craig:  It’s a

Todd:  giant crocodile mouth. Oh, this little guy. Well, he gets it.

Clip:  If any if any movie were ever gonna turn me straight, it’s certainly not this one. Oh, man.

Todd:  It is hilarious. Oh, this I loved that scene. Oh, it’ll the you know what I loved about that scene aside from the I mean, it’s so Cronenberg. It’s so Cronenberg. David Cronenberg did a movie, the the premise of the movie was that she had this kind you know, she had teeth and a kind of a mouth, but it was in her armpit, not her vagina.

Craig:  Not her vagina.

Clip:  There’s there’s there is a movie, called Teeth, which is about vagina dentata, which is also a horror movie. It it was actually pretty good. We should watch that sometime. But let’s not get too let’s not get too hung up on the crocodile vagina lady. Alright.

Todd:  Because there’s more to talk about. It may not be sexy. It may be a little sexy. Oh my god.

Clip:  I’m so sorry. Grossing me out, Sam.

Craig:  I totally got it. It

Todd:  it may not be sexy, but it is an awesome effect. It is. It’s really cool. They show it all to you. Like, they’re they’re not doing a ton of, like, extreme close ups and quick cuts and I mean, they do a lot of that in this movie, but then they’re not afraid to just show you the full on effects. You know? Yeah. And they do it a lot and it looks good, and it’s convincing, and it’s scary, and it’s gross, and it’s wonderful.

Clip:  It really is. I mean, as disgusting as it is, the effect is really good. Like, there’s a point where she’s laying on the floor and I can only imagine that this actress just had the lower part of her legs tucked up under into this into this like costume piece, but there’s a part where she just spreads her legs wide open, so it’s just like this gaping maw of a mouth. And and, like, it’s it is creepy and it’s scary and it it looks really good. Mhmm. I mean, in a terrible disgusting way.

Todd:  Feed me, Seemal. Well, hell. We’re from here we go. I mean, to me, the movie’s over. The movie’s over from this point. This is my favorite movie. Nothing tops that.

Clip:  I don’t remember exactly the sequence of how things happen, but at this point, so that guy, the cop guy, gets turned into an engineer, at this point and he goes and kills a bunch of cops, and then that sparks and eventually himself gets killed also, and that sparks the police chief to be, like, we have to exterminate all the engineers. Anybody who’s even suspicious. Yeah. Anybody even suspicious. But I feel like even before that, Ruka finds somehow she tracks down Gun Eyes and she goes to his apartment and they sit down and have a conversation where we get the true story, which this is actually what I found most interesting. As I was, you know, the whole movie is so gonzo and wacky, but then when they sit down together and we find out the backstory, it really kind of makes sense as a plot. This this guy says okay. So he starts telling this hypothetical story.  There was this guy once and he was a great sniper and, he worked for the police and he was an excellent sniper. He never missed anybody, whatever, but then there was a job that went wrong where he didn’t get the bad guy and the bad guy shot him and so he was let go from the police force, and he this guy, the sniper, had a son who was a genius, but because the sniper was now unemployed, they couldn’t afford to pay for the son’s education. So his former boss, the sniper’s former boss came to him with an offer for a hitman job and, it was enough money that it would pay for the son’s education. So the sniper had to take this deal and he took the deal and it turns out that, the guy that he was supposed to kill was Ruka’s dad, and the reason that they wanted Ruka’s dad killed was because Ruka’s dad was leading protests against the privatization of the police force. So as it turns out, it’s the chief of police, the one that we’ve known through the whole movie, is the one who hired the sniper to kill Ruka’s dad, which Ruka never knew. Gun eyes is like I was the sniper’s son, but as soon as he had done the job they were supposed to do, they killed him. I was in I’m I’m gun eyes now. I was in school and I was studying genetic engineering and I was studying the genes of, like, psycho killers.  And so he took, like, all these genes of all these famous psycho killers like Guine and Manson and all these folks and he injected them all into himself and it kinda made him go crazy to the point where he jumped off a building and he said, I don’t know if I died or what happened, but I ended up in front of this great big giant door and when he opened the door, this little devil, this little short guy with a little these little horns, opens the door and hands him one of those key tumors and he says, and then I woke up and I was alive and I didn’t know what happened, but I had this key tumor and I studied it and it turns out that it was, you know, like the psycho killers genes, but way more potent and so I replicated it and I put it in myself and I put it in other people and that’s who the engineers are and he’s trying to convince her the engineers aren’t the bad people, it’s the police who are the bad people and we have to go after the police and he’s appealing to her saying, it’s not about revenge at this point, you know, the guy that killed your dad is already dead, so we need to go after the guy who made the guy kill your dad, which is the police chief, and he’s, like, so let’s work together. And so she stands up and pulls out her samurai sword and chops him straight

Craig:  down the middle and

Clip:  and and then says, thank you for telling me.

Craig:  It’s great.

Clip:  But I really liked this scene and then I liked the the subsequent scenes because we’ve seen all of these commercials about, you know, how brutal and violent the police force are. But even with all that brutality and violence, it really seemed like they were going after the bad guys. But as it turns out, the police are just this corrupt military force, who are not concerned about protecting the citizens. They’re really only concerned and it’s all corrupt. And so then the last part of the movie becomes Ruka standing up against that establishment.

Todd:  Yeah. We get, mama from the bar who gets pulled in basically quartered, you know, tied up Right. To 4 different cars, and she sees that happen, then she gets pissed off and kills all those cops. We see all this violence being committed against random citizens and things, and Haruka might come in. And then I think we come to the 2 women who you were not sure who they were.

Clip:  Yeah. I don’t know who they were.

Todd:  Now I don’t know who the woman was who was the police officer who came out of the police station with that long sword or whatever, but I’m pretty sure that the other girl, because she was a girl, who had the long knife as her arm, was the prostitute, was the child prostitute from before.

Clip:  Okay.

Todd:  I think she was.

Clip:  Yeah. That makes sense.

Todd:  Yeah. So they had this big fight. I I don’t remember how that turns out. Anyway, it’s just like little fights here, little fights there.

Clip:  Major police brutality, you know, like they’re just pulling citizens off the street and shooting them at random, like, it’s super violent and gross.

Todd:  And they’re laughing, and I mean, it’s it’s completely over the Todd, completely over the top. Oh oh, my one of my favorite scenes was when mama was in the bar, and, she it was before she gets captured. She has a broken bottle, and she shoves it in the guy’s face. She twists it around a little bit and stuff and kills him so he falls to the ground. And then she blows in the end of the bottle and out pops that, like, circular part of his face from the end of the bottle.

Clip:  Yeah. And she smiles. It’s hilarious.

Todd:  Steps on it. There’s there’s a lot of humor. It like, really dark humor in this. There’s it’s just filled with it. It’s a lot of visual gags like this, and whatnot. Anyway, we get to the end and Ruka faces off against The dog girl. The dog girl first. The dog girl, like you said, now now has knives.

Clip:  Yeah. She has swords as her legs first. Well, like, Ruka goes back to the police station and, like, on an, like, a speaker system, the captain’s like, oh, so now you know the truth. You know, I I had to do it or whatever, but I raised you like my own and, like, he’s trying to guilt her or whatever. And then she goes in and he’s there with the dog girl who now has swords for legs. And they have a huge, like, matrix style fight where this dog lady is jumping up on the walls and the ceiling, and it’s it’s awesome.

Craig:  It’s really awesome. It’s it’s

Clip:  really cool. But she takes out the dog girl and then the chief is, like, how can you kill me? I raised you. I’m like your father and she doesn’t even say anything and, they fight, and she ends up chopping off his legs. And then he shoots himself up with some what was that all about? Do you know?

Todd:  I don’t know. I really don’t know. He had something in it that that was on the dog girl the whole time, actually. Pulled them off of her. It was, like, 4 syringes full of some green stuff. And I don’t remember seeing this at all previously in the movie. But my guess was that maybe he, all along, had some way of turning himself into one of these engineers if he needed Todd, if the time came.

Clip:  I wondered. Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, That that doesn’t add up exactly because it doesn’t really turn him into an engineer, but what it does is from his bloody stumps where she has cut off his legs, now the blood is coming out so quickly that it’s like a jetpack for him. So he can, like, fly around the room on his jetpack leg. So great. It it I mean, it’s it’s cool. You can’t argue with it.  It doesn’t make any logical sense, but it’s it’s cool. It’s a cool idea. Yeah. And, so they fight some more, but she ends up killing him, and that’s pretty much it. It it cuts to, the same commercial for the police that we’ve seen, but then at the end of the commercial, it’s like, you know, the film burns away and behind it is Ruka standing there like a badass, like she’s ready to go into battle all these bad cops. And now dog girl is, like, her dog girl. Instead of swords instead of swords for legs, she has machine guns for legs. And it’s it’s an awesome tableau.  Like, it’s a great image. You know, this dystopian kind of, you know, wrecked up city in the background, and then Ruka standing there like a badass and the machine gun legged dog girl right behind her. And then it it cuts to black and, just in great big huge letters, it says something like, more gore coming soon or or something along those lines. Yeah. And then there’s there’s, like, a a credits scene where we see that, Gun Eyes is not dead. Somebody, this the young prostitute, with the machete arm, like, put his severed head back on him. So he’s he’s back now. And obviously, they were setting it up for a sequel which I don’t know if that ever happened.  Do you did did a sequel ever happen?

Todd:  One was announced in 2009, but, I don’t think it’s it’s come up it’s come out yet. Or, you know, I don’t know what where it is now. It’s a but it is it’s the kind of movie it’s like a comic book. You know? It’s like a it’s like a video game. They’ve created the world. They’ve created all the rules and things, and you could you could make a sequel after sequel to this Sure. To this kind of thing. It it could be the world’s most bizarre franchise.  It’s not likely to be, but, it fits it fits well within that. If this were animated, it would be on Netflix right now. It’d probably be in season 3.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah.

Todd:  I thought it I I found it just fun to watch. I just from beginning to end, I was engaged, I was marveling at the effects. It was so over the top that only a couple times it, like, really kinda turned my stomach. Most of the time I thought it was funny, You know, there was a lot of humor in here. It was just interesting. And like I said, Todd didn’t take too much aside from a little bit of confusion here or there, it didn’t take too much to unpack the story. The story was pretty straightforward. It was easy to follow, and it was, it’s not super original, the premise

Craig:  of Yeah.

Todd:  Just still in future, police gone bad, you know, that kinda thing. But what is super original is

Clip:  story. Right.

Todd:  This whole notion of the body horror aspect of it, you know, with the Yeah.

Clip:  Ultimately, at its core, it’s just kind of like a cop revenge story, which, you know, we’ve seen a bunch of times with. It it it’s kinda like Death Wish where cop has his family hurt or killed and then goes out on this rampage or whatever. So it’s not necessarily original in that way. It’s a fine story, but all of the rest of it, all of the stuff with the body horror and the engineers and all that stuff, it is pretty unique. I’ve never seen anything just like it. I have to say that I had more fun talking about it with you than I actually had watching it. I really think that this is a cultural thing. It was just too out of my lane.  It was odd and bizarre and I just kinda couldn’t I I just couldn’t kinda connect with it. I’m glad to have seen it, and I appreciate it for what it is, and it was fun talking to you about it. But, god, what a weird movie.

Todd:  Would you say I I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie with this much blood in it. I don’t I don’t know if I’ve seen a gorier movie than this one.

Clip:  Have you seen the Evil Dead remake?

Craig:  Oh, okay. No.

Clip:  That might well, in any of the Evil Dead films.

Todd:  Yeah. That’s

Clip:  true. You know, there’s there’s tons of blood. But, no. I I can’t imagine. I mean, there’s so much blood splatter in this movie. It’s Craig, but it’s it’s it’s artfully done. And, you know, there are places where this the effects look fantastic, and then there are places where they maybe don’t look so great that you forgive those not so great moments for how good it is in other places. And I don’t know that I would ever watch it again.  No. I do know. I wouldn’t. But, it was certainly interesting and I love it when we do weird different stuff. So it was fun. It was fun to talk about.

Todd:  It sure was. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed this one, please share it with a friend. You can find us on iTunes, Google Play, anywhere your favorite podcasts are. You can also find us on Facebook. Like us there, share us with friends, and let us know what movies you’d like us to do in the future. Until the future, I’m Todd, and I’m Greg with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.