Sheila Hatori And Her Machine Gun (Japan 1995)

Rating: *
Cast: Hiroko Yakushimaru

Ugh. This is one of the worst films I have ever seen, and giving it one star is still pretty generous. How disappointing. With a title like this and a video cover featuring a young schoolgirl spattered with blood and swinging around a sub-machine gun, how could I pass it up? Well, it's over two hours of pure torture to watch. Not having the benefit of subtitles, it's hard to figure out what's going on - not that there IS much going on. Sheila Hatori is the melancholic daughter of a powerful Yakuza boss. When daddy gets killed, she reluctantly inherits his empire and his loyal gang. Her new Yakuza buddies band together to help her get revenge on her father's murderer while showing her a little bit of the wild life at the same time. Quite literally, all of the action in the movie takes place in the last thirty seconds of the film when young Sheila FINALLY picks up a machine gun and unconvincingly plugs a couple of rounds into the already dying villain. The rest of the film is a painfully tedious narrative with mind-numbingly awful camerawork and lifeless performances parading around as high drama. Blah. One of the very few films I've had to use the fast forward scan button on, and it was STILL too long.