Fantastic Fest 2010

Director Yoshihiro Nishimura Live in Person!

At 2009’s New York Asian Film Festival, action choreographer and director Tak Sakaguchi (BE A MAN! SAMURAI SCHOOL), director and special effects genius Yoshihiro Nishimura (TOKYO GORE POLICE) and cherubic pervert Noboru Iguchi (ROBOGEISHA) got drunk and vowed to make a movie together. One year later, here it is. This splatter-ific, fetishy, hyperactive take on the X-Men is going to shock, horrify and delight you.

It comes at you fast and furious and if something crosses the line between good and bad taste, don’t worry: five minutes later you’ll see something that makes that previous transgression seem downright quaint. Rin is a normal high school girl, but on her super sweet sixteen her body starts changing and the special forces (armed with nosemounted machine guns) bust up her birthday party and kill her guests with booger bullets. It turns out that Rin is one of the reviled mutants, known as Hirukos, who are the latest inferior race slated for extinction. But Rin runs, and discovers a resistance movement made up of other mutants. Not only are they dangerous, but they’re also armed—only their arms stick out from the sides of their heads! Swords shoot out their nipples, chainsaws project from their butts, deformed faces grow on their bellies and metal claws erupt from their wrists. But these deformities are the weapons they’ll use to tear down straight society.

MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD is cheap, tacky and weird. But it’s also clear that for all its awkward moments and low budget restrictions, it’s a successful melding of these three directors into one giant, bloody robot: the SakaMuChi. And SakaMuChi is here to crush the normals. (Marc Walkow, NYAFF)