10/30: Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl

10/30: Welp. Today's movie was the extremely on-the-nose titled Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl. Now, I know what you're thinking: how have I not heard of this film before? It must have swept the Oscars the year it came out, taking home all the top awards. How did I not tap in to all the buzz that must have surrounded this masterpiece in cinema? Well, brace yourself, but with a name like Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl this movie is ACTUALLY positively atrocious. I know. Shocker.

Now, don't get me wrong. I enjoy the over-the-top ridiculousness of bizarre Japanese splatter gore movies as much as the next guy who watches way too much horror. The buckets of blood, weird body growths that become weapons and all the bubbly Japanese school girls smiling through it all are a good time. I'm looking at you, Tokyo Gore Police (such a positively bizarre but blast of a movie). So why isn't Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl nearly as much fun? Or, for that matter, much fun at all? Well, since the plot of this steaming hunk of crap isn't even worth getting into (spoiler alert: a vampire girl and a Frankenstein girl fight. Whoaaaaaa!!!!), perhaps this review is better served by just creating a list of all the stuff that makes this movie generally worthless at best and straight up offensive at worst. Which is saying something in a movie about graphic bodily dismemberment:

1. Asian girls in blackface, complete with engorged lips, white-lined eyes, and tribal spears. Yep. Spears. Apparently their dismembered legs also give you super powers.

2. A wrist-cutting club who competes in wrist cutting competitions. Apparently their arms create great helicopter propellers and invincible boomerangs. 

3. Blackface.

4. Blood chocolates that turn you into vampires. Or Igor. It's hard to tell.

5. The most obnoxious Japanese Dr. Frankenstein dressed up in a Kabuki mask because... reasons, I guess?

6. Still blackface.

7. Cameras that must have been borrowed from Days of Our Lives. For that matter a plot, too. 

8. Either a braindead cinematographer or none at all. 

9. A guy being tied to a cross then said cross being launched hundreds of feet into the air, used as a plank, and then launched back again, impaling someone. Why? Because.

10. You guessed it. Blackface.

11. Apparently vampire blood is like Flubber, wiggling around and avoiding capture. Missed opportunity not having Robin Williams voice the vampire blood.

12. A "twist" so lame you roll your eyes.

13. A soundtrack so annoying with J-pop you want to join the wrist cutters club.

14. Blackface so tone deaf that it'll ruin any fun this movie might have had because you're squirming in your seat not because of mutilated vampire/Frankenstein people but because it's so damn racist.

If this movie sounds like a good time, sorry, it isn't. For every moment of fun Japanese splatter there's at least ten minutes of boring, indiscernible dialogue that is often being punctuated by intense racism or suicide jokes. With so many other fun J-gore movies out there don't be pulled in by the title of this colossal mess and go have fun watching people's limbs turn into weapons and shit. Again, looking at you, Tokyo Gore Police.

I guess it's telling I'm ending this review with the name of another movie.

3/10