Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl

Eastern Eye

R4 DVD

This is certainly a quirky and strange work of Japanese horror, combining a 1950’s teen school love story with a gorefest of quite astounding proportions. The characters are suitably dysfunctional from the members of the wrist cutting club to the fans of U.S. president Obama who all try to look like African Americans and run the school’s Ganguro club.

Monami is the new girl at school, she is also a vampire. She falls for Mizushima, but he is already dating Keiko, albeit a little reluctantly. On Valentine’s Day Monami is able to slip him a chocolate, as it is the Japanese custom, while the other girls have all had their confiscated. Her chocolate is a little different, it is laced with her blood and Mizushima begins to change into a vampire. This begins a love triangle between the three that has to be seen to be believed.

When the two girls fight it out over Mizushima, Keiko falls to her death but that’s not the end of the story. This is when the Frankenstein tale comes in. It seems Keiko’s father believes he is a reincarnation of Dr.Frankenstein and dressed in a Kabuki outfit he carves up bodies hoping to find the secret of life. He is now thrilled to have his daughter on the table and uses a drop of Momami’s blood found in the oversexed school nurse’s office to re-animate her. Keiko is not the frail girl of her previous incarnation, oh no, she has been made “bigger and bigger” from body parts harvested by the school’s nurse from students slaughtered around the school by the school’s nurse who doubles as a serial killer. There are the super strong wrists of the wrist cutters, the African American legs of the Ganguro club and lungs of the Chinese teacher who comes from a land where smoke fills the air (China).

It is now on for young and old as Frankenstein builds bigger and more monstrous creations (these scenes resonate with Re-animator) and Monami kills off those who stand in her way with a greatly expanded mouth filled with very sharp teeth, never mind the help of her assistant Igor, who is now the school janitor.

The battle scenes become more and more extravagant and are made with the best CGI mixed with buckets and buckets of blood. At the same time there is a marvellously subversive sense of humour, the film is presented as a teen school story and scored with 1960’s go-go girl music. This is truly a marvellously bizarre cult horror film and so extreme it is truly exhilarating.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No. 3 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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