Machine Girl is all the proof you need that low-budget exploitation cinema is alive and well. Instead of looking for it in the now-demolished fleapit theaters of Times Square, it’s coming to you in the comfort of one’s own living room, by way of Japan. This is not a bad thing. Exploitation movies are designed to go over the top, and Machine Girl not only goes over the top, it tears the top off, sets it on fire, and throws it back at you.
We are, after all, talking about a movie where a teenaged girl gets one arm amputated by gangsters, then attaches a super-tommy gun to the stump and goes to town on her tormentors. Heads gets blown apart. Limbs are hacked off. Holes are blown through torsos and weapons fired through the holes. Gorehounds won’t just be delighted; they’ll be smacking their foreheads and laughing in disbelief at some of the stuff the filmmakers pull here. But it’s all more surreal and hallucinatory than anything else, and after a while you’re not so much grossed out as amazed at how much they’re able to jam into a mere ninety minutes of running time.
