Time for another wacky slice of crazy Japanese Exploitation Horror to sate your Favorite Catgirl’s need for the weird, bloody, and downright silly. We look at the Region 2 DVD release for “Vampire Girl Vs. Frankenstein Girl”, fresh from the latest UK DVD mail-order parcel to show up in my mailbox this week.

Ok.. Ok… I know the title pretty much sums this one up, but here goes the synopsis anyway: “Senior high school student Jyugon Mizushima receives Valentines Day chocolates from the new student, Monami. Little did she know that the chocolates contained traces of Monami’s vampire blood. He gets infected from eating them and Monami confesses that she wants to live with him forever as vampires. Meanwhile, Jyugon decides that he wants to fully become a vampire with Monami’s help. Keiko, Jyugon’s jealous girl friend, sees the two on the school rooftop kissing and in a state of hysteria, attempts to throw Monami off the roof but falls off to her own death instead.

Pretty Keiko is most certainly dead, but her father, school principal Kenji Furano, the mad scientist, resurrects her as Franken girl. Thus begins a deadly combat between the resurrected Franken Keiko and undead Vampire Monami in the name of love. As all horror fans know, this kind of Vampire vs. Frankenstein conflict can only be solved by some serious fighting, beating, stabbing, chewing, clawing and end in climactic showdown battle to the death high atop Tokyo Tower!”

Oh my goodness!! Yes…. there’s obviously not a serious bone in this movie’s whole body. Sounds like just the sort of crazy, trashy, and super gory kind of ridiculous cinematic junk food that your Favorite movie lovin’ Catgirl eats steady diet of. I’ve already got a warm feeling this is gonna be an evening of truly silly movie fun…..

Sooooo….. Think it might just be your sort of movie too? But…. not certain if you wanna risk picking up a copy for yourself? Well then….. hunker down, get comfy and let Neko tell you all about it……

A collaborative effort from Naoyuki Tomomatsu (Of “Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies” fame) and Yoshihiro Nishimura (Perhaps best known for his other outrageously gory cult films “Tokyo Gore Police” and “The Machine Girl”), we get in “Vampire Girl Vs. Frankenstein Girl” a particularly strange and over-the-top piece of Japanese Exploitation as you might ever hope to see. Hoping this film might have a plot that make lots of sense? I hope not…. cause that ain’t gonna happen. But… don’t let that worry you. Neko’s pretty sure it’s not supposed to make whole lots of narrative sense.

Nope…. If you remember all those goofy black & white classic Universal monster movies of the 1940′s, then you’ll feel pretty comfortable here. Well…. OK… it does help to like Japanese anime, completely unrealistically bloody gore films, and the crazy way the Japanese absorb everything Western and somehow make it into something their very own…… If all these things are in place you’ll probably like this one a whole lot. It’s the monster vs monster smack-down fest you’ll remember from childhood… but done in glorious color and filled with cute Japanese schoolgirls. Ahhhhh…. now there we go… Neko just knew you guys would like hearing THAT. Hehehehe!!

Yep… edited with a feeling that Wile E. Coyote might just have had some input on the script, there’s little time to get to know the characters here…. and there are lots of them… or even to give them any time to interact realistically. This one is strictly about the cool gore effects and the wacky combat skills of our two monster schoolgirls and how they open up that goofy can of whupp-ass on one another. Had the film not just moved forward at it’s frenetic, crazy pace, there might have been time to actually miss that sort of thing, but at a lean 85 minutes, “Vampire Girl” does actually succeed as a sort of live action comic book. Carolyn wasn’t too keen on the silliness of it all, but I was suitably entertained in a guilty fashion by all the action. (…. But then sometimes, she does sort of think there’s something terribly, terribly wrong with me…. Hehehehe!!)

Thrown into this mix are a lot of strange “in-joke” moments that will leave many scratching their heads in confusion…. unless Japanese pop culture is one of your hobbies. The idea of the schoolgirl “gangs”…. from Keiko and her Gothic Lolita followers to the “Wrist Cut Club” and last but not least, the freakish Ganguro girls, the school social subcultures are exaggerated to an unbelievable level. Many were the times I had to explain certain of the more obscure things for poor Carolyn who was totally lost. This will make this one a hard selling point for this film here in the US outside of a precious few devotees of the weird and the Asian in horror film. (I’m thinking the Ganguro girl gang alone are going to raise bloody hell with the more thin skinned media here in the US with their almost “minstrel show” portrayal of African wannabee-ism. Politically correct this one is most certainly not…..)

However…. it’s really all meant in fun. A mean spirited “Three Stooges” sort of fun, but then hey…. Exploitation films really aren’t doing their job unless they offend somebody. Plus the cartoonish nature of the whole film wants to go this route. If it didn’t, then the whole thing would just fail. While not the best film to come down the way, I can say it had a couple of moments that will stick in this lil’ Catgirl’s head for a long, long time. I’m thinking if you watch the same sort of movies I watch, then you’ll probably be just as entertained as me…… If not, you might just want to pass here.

So is it a buy? A rental? Or what? Hmmmm…? Tough decision there. If you really like bad films, I’d say you’ll want this one for your collection. If you don’t worship at the Altar of Trash Cinema like a certain naughty Catgirl, you might just want to rent it instead…. but by all means do take a peek at this one, it’s good for a fun evening of laughing yourself silly and finally seeing what exactly would happen if a reanimated schoolgirl and an immortal bloodsucking one ever squared off for a no hold barred Battle Royal. (Now all we need is a sequel…. and I say bring on Werewolf Girl!! She’s had all her shots!! Hehehe!!)

Neko gives “Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl” 3 “Meows” out of 5…. Not great, not bad, just a tasty lil’ cookie of a film that wont fill you up or leave you toooo hungry for more of the same. It could have been better, but for Neko’s money, “The Machine Girl” still stands tall in the arena of silly gore, this one coming in a wee bit further back in the standings. Still…. for a fun lil’ monster romp, I’ve seen far, far worse……

Yep, couldn’t leave you without a look at this one….. so here ya go!!