Gothic & Lolita Psycho

aka Gosurori shokeinin

2010
Directed by Go Ohara
Written by Kuroki Hisakatsu

Go Ohara’s followup to Geisha vs. Ninjas delves into the genre of the splatter films that have become a popular export from Japan. To help he’s recruited Yoshihiro Nishimura of Tokyo Gore Police, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl, and Mutant Girls Squad fame to handle the gore effects and makeup. Ohara continues the general themes of Geisha vs. Ninjas, with a girl hunting down people responsible for the death of a parent, an episodic structure of bad guy fights, and secret truths being revealed at the end about the parent but it not making a difference in the quest for revenge.

There are only a few fight sequences in this film, though they are pretty long. Some of them are interesting, some of them are boring and overstay their welcome. As a rule, the only interesting fights are against female opponents, though the final fight does get interesting as well. But the guy opponents are either: a psychic who levitates around like a lunatic, a guy who cries for his life for like 5 minutes, or a generic gang of thugs. The final boss entertains an element of danger and risk, though having seen these films enough I knew what the danger would entail, but there was an additional feature of the final fight that made it different from the other ubergore films. It isn’t as wild and crazy as Noboru Iguchi splatter flick, but it does have it’s own charm.

We watched an unsubtitled DVD, so some names are just descriptions and plot points are guesses. At TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles. There’s gonna be spoilers below, so if you aren’t cool with spoilers go read some other review.

Yuki (Rina Akiyama) – Rina Akiyama gained fame with a trademark “butt pose” in gravure magazines, leading people to call her “Bishiri no Joo” (Queen of the Beautiful Ass) and “Oshirina” (shorted version.) This movie decides the best way to capitalize on that fame is to put her in clothes that cover and de-emphasize her posterior as much as possible. Hm. Rina Akiyama has been in a bunch of Kamen Rider flicks. Gambling Maiden (Minami Tsukui) – Head of an underground club where all your secret sins and desires can be obtained, for a price. Overseas the illicit gambling in the facility via her skull blade dice shaker. Slices and dices anyone she opposes. Minami Tsukui was the star of Geisha vs Ninjas so we all knew that Ohara was going to squeeze her in somewhere. Spoon Guy (Masahito Okamoto) – Johnny ESP here bends spoons like he’s in the Matrix, harasses girls, and flies around like a weird-o. Not particularly scary, just weird. One-eyed Schoolgirl (Misaki Momose) – One-eyed Schoolgirl is awesome, and the coolest villain in this piece. Her bladed twin-guns of death combined with her schoolgirl attire and dopey attitude make her memorable far after the DVD is out of your player and you’re watching Holmes Inspection on HGTV. Her character name is Redei Eru, but that’s too difficult to remember. Misaki Momose hasn’t been in much, but if this appearance is any indication, she will be popping up in a lot of flicks soon. Leader of the Cult Masato (Ruito Aoyagi) – This jolly worshipper of the devil laughs all the time. Who knew Satanism was so hilarious? This guy! Leader does not fear the long arm of the law, for his arm is longer… Jiro (Yurei Yanagi) – Yuki’s father who builds the Gothic Lolita weapons she uses in her revenge quest. He also may know more about why her mother was targeted than he let’s on. A priest who is wheelchair bound after the attack on his family. Yurei Yanagi was in both the first two Ringu and first two Ju-on movies.

20XX Tokyo … the year we added letters to dates. “I thought it would be a good idea at the time!” said Hans Smith, architect of the scheme that destroyed the world’s economy as computers could not deal with it. Thanks a lot, Hans, now the world is filled with killers and chicks who dress gothic-lolita!

Let’s eat spaghetti. Lots of spaghetti. Okay, we get it, this guy likes spaghetti. And cigarettes. Spaghetti dude and his partner are bouncers at a club and are guarding the door. The club is your usual club movie filled with all sorts of crazy crap like gay dude raping another gay dude hard, a dude tied up as people spit fire to him, underground fighting in an octagon cage, dudes having people smash their fingers with hammers, and choreographed dancing by girls in geisha costumes without the makeup. You know, your typical club stuff. I think Lindsay Lohan is passed out on a pile of coke in the corner. Noted AV and cult movie star Asami is in there as one of the dude’s girls.

The real star of this club is the Gambling Maiden, who runs the club and also rolls the dice with a dual bladed skull. Asami’s boyfriend gets his head lopped off by the Gambling Maiden’s dual bladed skull weapon/dice tosser.

Then the Gothic Lolita Psycho comes in…with a card of the Gambling Maiden! She slices through the crowd in what is probably one of the largest choreographed fights in one of these ubergore films. Too bad it is far too obvious that a stunt man is playing the Gothic Lolita Psycho during this sequence. Eventually everyone is dead and it is time to fight the Gambling Maiden. Her skull weapon is no match for GLP’s bladed umbrella. Gambling Maiden is stabbed, and when the umbrella is opened, pieces of her go flying!

Why is the Gothic & Lolita Psycho so Gothic & Lolita Psycho? A handy flashback shows us that she was once non-Gothic, non-Lolita, and non-Psycho, until psycho devil worshipers broke inter her house, crippled her father and crucified her mother. All on her birthday! It’s enough to make anyone go Gothic & Lolita Psycho.

So now Yuki tracks down the psycho devil worshippers, including the girl from the prologue. Next up is a college professor who has psychic powers that we see demonstrated by sexually harassing some schoolgirls. Their fight takes place in the gym, he’s armed with a mop and flies around the room. After a big fight with lots of people, having a fight with only one person is sort of a slowdown. It also makes Yuki look ineffective as she fails and fails to kill this one guy who seems rather unintimidating. Sorry, I don’t think flying around with a mop is that threatening. But that’s just me. A guy who isn’t scared of mops, unless I’m robbing McDowell’s and Eddie Murphy is working.

So after mop guy gets killified, there is a random fight with the Kamikaze biker gang that has nothing to do with much of anything. We know are the Kamikazes because they spell out their name via distorting their bodies into the individual letters. They also don’t have their bikes anywhere near them, though Yuki tosses some handlebars at them and we can assume that the bikes were destroyed offscreen, which also saves the film the cost of procuring a bunch of cool motorcycles. I guess the Kamikazes were beating up her next target, as after she finishes with them she’s gonna kill that guy, but he begs for his life.

And begs.

And begs.

And begs.

Kill him already!

She finally does, and look, target number four walks in, a chirpy schoolgirl with only one eye (for she lost it when killing Yuki’s mother!)

This is when the film goes back to being awesome.


One-eyed Schoolgirl whips out gunknives or gun blades or whatever you call guns with knives sticking out of them. I’m not up on the weapon lingo for dumb weapons. She blasts a heart shape into Yuki’s umbrella with bullet holes, but Yuki manages to hide well enough that the schoolgirl wanders off. Yuki passes out and has visions of her crucified mother freaking out and turning into a demon. She wakes up and dad has saved her and brought her home.

Surprise! One-eye Schoolgirl is there as well and we have a shootout, as Yuki has a new umbrella, this one armored and with a gun. This fight makes up for that last few fights. There is a Mexican standoff, then the phone call happens. Yes, One-eyed Schoolgirl has a cell phone in the handle of one of her guns.

Don’t be interrupting my phone call, goth girl!

After a long time on the phone eventually One-eyed Schoolgirl’s call cannot be completed as dialed, if you catch my drift.

Time to fight the big boss! Number 5 is the leader of the underground Satanic Gothic cult, hanging out in the underground Satanic Gothic cult headquarters that’s decked out in pentagrams. The Leader taunts her about her mom, and has her dad captive and chained to a guillotine. She must hold the rope for the guillotine blade so it doesn’t fall while having a swordfight with the Leader. The fight goes on for a while before the inevitable happens.

Yuki is rather sad and has flashbacks of her mother dying as well, while the Leader just laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs. But the magical necklace of Satanism that Yuki is wearing glows and soon Yuki transforms into a demon monster.

It’s Dr. Gothic and Lolita Hyde!

The necklace used to belong to Yuki’s mother before she was killed, making you think that her mom was a Satanic-possessed woman and the gang killed her to try to free Satan to do their bidding, but it failed. So now Satan is free and possessing Yuki.

Leader rips off his sleeve and reveals an arm all scarred up, says something about her mom, then shows he can stretch out his arm all long like Mr. Fantastic as he punches her in the face over and over and over and over again from across the room. But you never his a devil-possessed woman. She rips off his stretchy arm (it would have been hilarious if that goo that was inside of Stretch Armstrong dolls sprayed out instead of blood, but it doesn’t.) He gets killified dead.

Visions of her dead parents help calm her down, though by the next night, she’s back at The Tokyo Gothic club killing more goons. You see, when you’re a killing machine, you just can’t stop.

Gothic & Lolita Psycho was pretty fun, but had some slow parts. The two best fights are the very beginning and with the One-eye Schoolgirl, with the swordfight with the Leader coming in third. Everything else I didn’t think was worth much of anything. The out of left field transformation of Yuki into a crazed devil-possessed monster was a nice touch, and helped reinvigorate the finale to make it more memorable. Though I liked the film, I think it is a step down from previous gore films, but it is a step up in terms of Go Ohara putting together a coherent story. He’s made the episodic nature work together better, and some of the action set pieces are much more complicated than anything in Geisha vs. Ninja. But it is still a lot of the same. It remains to be seen if Go Ohara will end up pulling off movies not about a girl setting out for revenge and murdering people one by one.

Rated 8/10 (roll the d-eye-ce, skull time, black flowers, momma, phone time, pentagram tiles, the power of magic, card captor!)

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