噬女

　　Following the sudden and mysterious death of their father, a brother and sister return home to their sprawling New Orleans estate and encounter their unhinged stepmother, who will stop at nothing to gain control of their inheritance.

　　少女芳江（木口亚矢 饰）本是某艺妓馆内的低等侍女，她潜心伺候身为当家艺妓的姐姐菊奴（长谷部瞳 饰），但是菊奴对她颐指气使，绝情绝义。偶然机会，芳江过人的膂力被影野制铁的少爷影野光（斋藤工 饰）所发掘。影野制铁表面上是一家大型家族式钢铁公司，暗中则受命于国家，担负武器的制造工作。与此同时，其创始人影野拳山（志垣太郎 饰）怀有不可告人的野心，他四处网罗人生失意的女孩，将她们训练成美貌与杀伤力并重的艺妓杀手，甚至通过身体机械化改造来加强女孩们的实力。　　懵懵懂懂的芳江与菊奴被骗进入影野制铁，姐妹俩更被迫互相残杀。在此过程中，她们为了超越对方而不断加强训练和改造，继而成为影野家族不可或缺的机器人杀手。然而随着任务的进行，芳江却渐渐发现亲情的珍贵以及影野家族的丑恶用心……

　　Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.　　Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?　　n any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.　　What first striked me about the movie is the design of the bunker and the depiction of the survivors. The survivors are gaunt, filthy and terrible-looking penitents, dressed in rags and aimlessly wandering the neon-lit halls of the bunker like automatons. The bunker is a rundown, seedy place, with bright neon lights peering from all sides like the eyes of malignant beasts.　　On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.　　One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.　　Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there. See it if you can find it.

五个狗主人带着他们淘气的狗狗向山中的传奇老师寻求帮助——但需要接受训练的并不是他们毛茸茸的朋友。