Vampire Girl VS Frankenstein Girl (2009) [REVIEW] | Draculina VS Kabukistein’s Daughter

Ah, yes the other kind of “Vlad Love”, not the comedy extravaganza by beloved author Mamoru Oshii, but the vampire biting, the wrist cutting, the blood spurting like geyers after each and every bizarre mutilation, which in some cases will enable flight, this the kind of love we’re talking about today!

While i could have reworded the truth as an excuse to review Tokyo Gore Police (it is after all the love story between blades and mutant flesh, a lot of both, etc.), i think the occasion just fits another japanese horror gore-o-rama from director Yoshihiro Nishimura (the aforementioned Tokyo Gore Police, Helldiver, Meatball Machine, Mutant Girls Squad), co-directing here alongside a another famous name in the “pink eiga”and horror genre, Naoyuki Tomomatsu, better known for his zombie comedy horror Stacy from 2001, also known as Stacy: Attack Of The Schoolgirl Zombies.

As it’s often the case for these movies, Vampire Girl VS Frankenstein Girl is based on a manga on the same name by Shungiku Uchida, and tells the story of Monami, a vampire with a perpetually teenage look attending a typical Tokyo high school, that falls in love with one of her classmates, Mizushima, himself the reluctant boyfriend of Keiko, the daughter of the viceprincipal-science professor and leader of the “Sweet Lolita” gang.

Unknown to Keiko, her father secretly moonlights as a Kabuki-clad Victor Frankenstein in the school basement, trying to reanimate dead corpses with the help of the busty school nurse, and they hit on something when they discover Monami’s blood can bring life to dead body parts, and more.

Monami gifts Mizushima a Valentine’s chocolate heart spiked with her blood, thus making him a vampire, Keiko finds out about this treachery on the school’s roof but clumsily falls to her death, so “Kabukistein” resurrects her as a “Frankenstein girl” so she can take revenge on Monami, and the two battling it out for Mizushima’s hearth, his opinion on the matter unasked for big time.

And yes, if it sounds somehow familiar, i’m pretty sure it was just partly a response to Twilight’s, just mildly influenced by the zeitgeist, but figured why not, since they did parody a lot of japanese subcultures, like the ganguro girls, the gothic lolitas, and the wrist cutting, which Nishimura also made fun of in Tokyo Gore Police.

I mean, this is a movie that has a “wrist cutting club” and a “wrist cut contest”, and in a flashback with Monami’s mother we see Francis Xavier hunting vampires in the woods, and these are just a couple of random things taken out of context, but do give you a good idea of how absurd and over the top the movie is, and how it revels in its deliberate ridiculous overdrive.

More importantly, it has indeed everything that fans of this genre will want from it, from insane amount of blood sprinkling like water from a garden hose, a lot of practical gore of good craft, side characters as flamboyant and delightfully ridiculous as the main ones, and plenty of weird scenes that you couldn’t even imagine, like a musical segment where “Kabukistein” uses a spinal cord as a guitar, alongside the expected anime style fight where people throws “blood blades”, uses arms as boomerangs, and does crazy shit until we can get the versus match promised by the title.

It also has blackface and some “questionable” stuff concerning the ganguro girls, but honestly the execution of that it’s so silly and delirious it’s just as “offensive” as the other jabs at subcultures, i doesn’t come off as nasty or spiteful, it really doesn’t. It’s all in good demented fun, and indeed it’s both ridiculous but incredibly entertaining, self-aware enough to poke fun at how it’s finally time for the final fight scene you wanted to see from the beginning, not that you will mind as everything before that it’s wildly entertaining, far from boring and banal, to the point you won’t notice or care much about the surprising lack of nudity (considering it starts AV star Eri Otoguro, whom previously also played Aya in the first Oneechanbara movie).

Cute ending, too.

My only complain is that it ain’t as good as Tokyo Gore Police, but still, a pretty fun one, regardless of what either Mary Shelley or Bram Stoker would have thought about the idea. 😉