Remember when all the marketing hype for the Tarantino / Rodriguez Grindhouse hit and everybody started wondering aloud whatever happened to all the low budget exploiters that the two unrepentant fans were trying (too hard) to recreate?  Sure, they were never mainstream, per se, but these cheap, often sleazy, always violent flicks were an industry unto themselves through the US, Italy, even here in Canada throughout the 70s and 80s.  So where’d they go?

The long answer involves a lengthy discourse on the impact of home video and rise of the multiplex at the expense of independent theaters and drive ins but the simpler response is simply to say: GO EAST! 

Specifically, go to Japan, the land where pubic hair on screen is absolutely forbidden but tentacle sex in cartoons is okay and you can buy used panties from vending machines.  The cheap, straight to video industry there thrives on extreme stuff and western companies are starting to take notice.  At the moment the sharks are circling around a little charmer called The Machine Girl – a film already guaranteed at least a video release here and an obvious cult title in the making.  And why would the big Hollywood guns be interested? 

Because it’s got a dismembered school girl with a machine gun for an arm, that’s why.  Plus ninja-yakuza.  And a flying guillotine.  And a sushi chef forced to cut off and serve his own fingers.  And chainsaws.  And a drill-bra.  And gallons of blood spraying at gloriously high velocity from numerous dismemberments.  And that’s just the trailer, which you can see here.  Yes, please.