Fantastic Fest 2009

Milly (Miki Mizuno, CARVED) and her husband and child are driving out of the city in the family sedan without a care in the world. WIthout warning, the Jack Brothers, a wild-eyed maniacal gang of thugs, rape her, kill her husband and ignite her baby before her eyes for no other reason than cheap thrills. Milly, broken and left for dead, literally picks up the (her) pieces, bonds them with some truly inventive bio-weaponry and starts to take bloody revenge one lowlife at a time. She has mastered the martial arts, including the use of a particularly lethal retractable samurai sword, gun-chucks and a 12-guage implanted femur canon.

With the first of many, many dismemberments, we immediately notice the signature effects work of the new king of Japanese Gore, Yoshi Nishimura (TOKYO GORE POLICE, VAMPIRE GIRL VS. FRANKENSTEIN GIRL). In Nishimura's world, the Japanese must have nylon fiber cardiovascular systems. There's simply no other explanation for the gyser-like pressure of his ubiquitous arterial blood spray.

Picking up soon after the first installment, HARD REVENGE MILLY: BLOODY BATTLE finds our hero recruited by a young woman named Haru to take revenge on her behalf. Haru's boyfriend has been brutally murdered and nobody but Milly has the skills and the arsenal to take on the killers. This quest finds Milly toe to toe with close partners of the Jack Brothers who are equally anxious to exact their own revenge on Milly. My personal favorite delight in BLOODY BATTLE is Ikki (Kazuki Tsujimoto), perhaps the most aggressively proud and strong homosexual lead in the history of exploitation cinema. Spouting lines like “if you were not my brother, I would show you the ecstacy of homosexuality,” Kazuki chews up every inch scene and is a perfect counterbalance to Milly’s stoicism. (Tim League)