GUN WOMAN

This film opens in striking style: a well-shaped woman bathes in the shower, only for a hitman (Matthew Floyd Miller) to burst into her bathroom and shoot her in the head.

He then gets in a car with his colleague (Dean Simone) and the pair head off to meet their boss in Las Vegas. On their way, they begin to talk about a bizarre case of revenge they'd heard about.

And that's our cue to enter the world of a fucked up sexual psychotic known only as Hamazaki's son (Noriaki Kamata). The son of a Japanese mob boss, he's renowned for his penchant for rape and murder. When his dad dies, the son inherits a fortune - which he's granted access to, on the condition that he fucks off out of Japan.

Following a spate of deviancy wherever he goes, the son settles in Los Angeles. It's here that he catches up with the doctor he believes was responsible for his father's death, on account of the fact he was unable to cure him of his illness. And so, the doctor - the Mastermind (Kairi Narita) - is abducted and crippled while watching the son rape his wife. The scene ends with the son snapping the Mastermind's wife's neck in front of him.

Understandably, the Mastermind wants revenge. Alas, the son lives in a fortress-type mansion surrounded by armed bodyguards. As luck would have it though, he's part of an exclusive club for necrophiles which is run on a disused nuclear waste disposal site. The Mastermind hatches a plan to abduct a junkie off the street and train her to become the ultimate assassin. Once she's trained, the idea is he'll use his medical prowess to drug her into a state that replicates death and then use his wealth to bribe a club employee to help plant her in there on the day the son's due to visit.

The chosen subject is pretty Mayumi (Asami).

Once the Mastermind has Mayumi captive at his secret laboratory, he sets about training her to become the ultimate killing machine. Shades of ROCKY 4 ensue during the montage scene of her dragging heavy tyres up hills, kickboxing etc. But the toughest training is still to come: the Mastermind's madcap plan involves slashing open Mayumi above her breast and across her stomach, in order to conceal a gun and round of bullets in her wounds. Once inside the club, he tells her, her mission is to rip her loosely sutured wounds open, load the gun up and find her quarry - all within 22 minutes ... the time it will take her to bleed to death

Yes, GUN WOMAN is low on logic. You've probably sussed that. For a start, if the Mastermind is wealthy enough to pay brick shithouses to come and scuffle with Mayumi as part of her training, and clever enough at aiming a gun to shoot a guy dead with one shot from a hundred feet away, why the fuck does he need to embark on such a far-fetched scheme in the first place?

I know, I know. The film's called GUN WOMAN and it's about a woman with parts of a gun inserted into various parts of her anatomy. It really shouldn't be mulled over to any great extent. Still, these matters do tend to bother me...

Ill logic aside, writer-director Kurando Mitsutake's film is never dull. From the get-go it's filled with action, most of which is of the unabashedly gory variety. Save for one or two moments, all the grisliness is practical too - and very bloody indeed in parts (there's a sequence where the Mastermind demonstrates to Mayumi what happens when a woman her size loses 22 minutes' worth of plasma from her body by employing an unwitting naked blonde as his visual aid: this scene is both effective and excruciating).

There's also a LOT of full-frontal female nudity on offer. Especially from the beautiful Asami during the film's final 20 minutes. Such a mixture of gore and nakedness would've been a definite BBFC no-no in the past. How times have changed (though, bizarrely - considering how strong some of the images in GUN WOMAN are - they did request one cut: mentioned a little later).

Kamata is a convincing psycho, all leering menace and bug-eyed perversity. Asami has an almost entirely silent function in the film, but eventually elicits sympathy despite Mitsutake's reluctance to afford her with any background or identity.

Dean Harada's electronic score is often highly reminiscent of Georgio Moroder's from Brian De Palma's SCARFACE. This seems appropriate as stylistically GUN WOMAN clearly owes a lot to the cinema of the 70s and 80s, plus both films revel in excessive violence. In SCARFACE, relationships are torn apart by greed; in GUN WOMAN they're brought together by a thirst for revenge.

The wraparound with the American hitmen doesn't work too well, but the Japanese bulk of the film - as bananas as it undoubtedly is - amuses by virtue of sheer silly, gory gusto.

Monster Pictures' UK DVD presents GUN WOMAN in its original anamorphic 1.78:1 ratio. Shot in HD, it looks very good for the most part. Images are consistently clean and sharp, blacks remain stable throughout and colours are unfailingly bold. Skin tones are true; the extent of detail in some closer shots (the contours and blemishes on skin, etc) is staggering. The film however boasts an undeniably cheap aesthetic at times, and it's no fault of the disc's transfer that on occasion a bleached-out look is suffered from the combination of an inexperienced cameraman and shooting in the sun.

Now ... is it uncut? Unfortunately not. Our babysitters at the BBFC decided 5 seconds of a male character seen to be deriving pleasure during a scene of (simulated) sexual sadism was just too much for us impressionable Brits to endure.

Audio comes in 2.0. Dialogue spoken is a mix of English and Japanese. Well-written, easily readable removable English subtitles are provided for the Japanese dialogue only.

The disc opens with a clutch of forced trailers for other Monster Pictures titles: THE ABC'S OF DEATH PART 2, THROWBACK, CHOCOLATE STRAWBERRY VANILLA, DARK TOURIST and DEVIL'S TOWER.

After those, we're into a static main menu page. From there, a static scene selection menu allows access to the film via 9 chapters.

Extra features include four trailers for GUN WOMAN, plus the aforementioned trailers for other Monster Pictures titles (!) along with trailers for FOUND, RAVEN'S CABIN and THE SEARCH FOR WENG WENG.

The most substantial bonus is a 13-minute stills gallery, boasting pin-sharp photographs taken from on the set of GUN WOMAN. As well as providing plenty more blood and nudity, these give a fair impression of an amiable but committed shoot. They're a worthy addition to the disc but it would've been nice if they'd have been accompanied by some music, given the length of their duration.

GUN WOMAN is a very bloody action-horror. Don't pick holes like I did: just go with it. Oh, and those 5 seconds? It's irritating to learn the film's been cut, definitely, but it's still a strong proposition.

Also available on blu-ray.

Review by Stuart Willis