According to Kill Bill, revenge is a dish best served cold. According to The Machine Girl, revenge is a dish best served with a prosthetic arm that’s a machine gun. Directed by soon-to-be cult hero Noboru Iguchi, The Machine Girl is a riotous, ridiculously entertaining homage to Grindhouse cinema that is sure to make any and all exploitation fans wet their pants with joy.

Ami and her brother Yu are struggling to make it on their own after their parents commit suicide after being wrongly accused of murder. While Ami has become all the more tough because of it, Yu is continuously bullied at school by a crew of ruthless boys led by the son of a Yakuza clan. Yu hides the fact from Ami, and it ultimately leads to him being bullied to death. The boys make it look like suicide, but Ami knows better, and goes in search for answers. When she finds out the group is led by the son of a Yakuza clan, she charges in for revenge, only to be caught and tortured, resulting in the loss of her left arm. She escapes however, and is taken in by a couple whose son was killed alongside Yu by the same group of bullies. They outfit her with a machine gun to take the place of her severed arm, and along with them, Ami’s bloody road to avenging her brothers death takes shape.

If you’re looking for story, look elsewhere. The story here is as basic as can be, but that’s just fine. It works perfectly in setting up what we’re all here for anyway, the carnage. And boy, will you get some carnage! Gallons of blood spraying from everywhere, severed limbs, exploding heads, guys cut into pieces, nails to the face…the film is more than happy to give you every possible nasty delight you could ever wish for. And that pretty much shows that director Noboru Iguchi completely understands this style of film, and the audience he’s aiming for. He pays homage to a ton of Grindhouse classics, from Evil Dead to Master of the Flying Guillotine. Don’t worry though, QT haters, it’s not overbearing in the least.

The awesome doesn’t stop with the over-the-top murder spree. For one, the film has ninjas. We all know that is never-ever a bad thing! There’s a drill bra…yes, you read that right, a drill bra. Coming soon to a Victoria’s Secret near you! The film also has a wicked sense of humor. A chef that unfortunately pisses off his Yakuza bosses is forced to eat his own fingers sushi-style, Ami’s arm is fried like tempura, and one of my favorite scenes has Ami dousing a guy in his own son’s blood which is spraying from the kid’s decapitated body. Sadistic, and completely hilarious.

I’m really finding it hard to find much wrong with the film, yet I realize it’s not perfect. Sure, it has some bad acting, but it works in context. Like I said earlier, there’s not much story, but in a film such as this, you don’t come in expecting it anyway. No, it doesn’t make sense that a normal school girl can become an unstoppable killing machine, but it plays into the cartoonish feel of the film. I guess if I HAD to fault the film, it would be a little nit-pick with the ending. The very end is really cliché, almost like the writers finally exhausted their brains by the time they had to write the closing seconds of the film. This is after the kick-ass climax and all, so like I said, it’s definitely nothing more than a nit-pick. Since I’m not rating this film perfectly, I suppose I had to find something.

So there you have it…The Machine Girl delivers on all of the hype that the trailer created. I’m sure everyone that has seen the trailer is already excited as all hell to see this, but if you fall into the category of not really knowing why everyone is so pumped up about this film, I urge you to give it a chance and prepare for the sensory overload it’ll smack you in the face with. I haven’t had this much fun with a film in some time.