Why ‘Mikadroid’ is the Bloody, Bizarre Trip You Need to See
In horror circles, it’s an all-too-common situation to hear someone lead a conversation about special effects by judging them for their lack of realism. Whether the costumes or the prosthetics are realistic can turn into a slight against how good or bad a film is.
But sometimes a level of the unreal is the whole point. Sometimes it’s all you need.
That is to say, verisimilitude isn’t always the hallmark of great horror cinema. One subgenre in particular, tokusatsu horror, has for a long time strived to emulate the theatrical and stage-like in its presentation first. Tokusatsu is Japanese for “special photography”, a genre utilizing special effects and inventive camerawork to yield explosive television and movies, and tokusatsu horror does all of that while balancing everything you need to make a gorey and monstrous creature feature.
So today, for your consideration, I offer a great lesser-known tokusatsu horror film: Mikadroid: Robokill Beneath Discoclub Layla (1991). Or, just Mikadroid for short.
What Is Mikadroid About?
Coming in at a tight 73-minute runtime, Mikadroid follows the reawakening of a secret Japanese military project to make cybernetic super soldiers out of Olympic athletes. Buried by the firebombing of Tokyo during World War II, one hastily completed version lies in wait to be deployed against invading forces: the Mikadroid.
But when a discotheque is established over the rubble decades later, the machine man rises from its makeshift tomb to terrorize the citizens of Japan. In Discoclub Layla’s basement-level parking lot, bullets begin to fly as a clubgoer and a maintenance man evade the mechanical menace. Their only hope is two mysterious gunmen with a connection to the cyborg, hunting down the Mikadroid to turn it off once and for all.
An Abridged History of Tokusatsu Horror
Though the premise itself is enticing enough, understanding Mikadroid’s place in the grand scheme of tokusatsu history enriches the experience all the more. While in Western parlance, tokusatsu has come to mean “guys in super suits fighting guys in monster suits”, the genre itself is much more than that.
Tokusatsu horror in particular embedded itself long ago as one of the largest branches of foreign horror. One of the most impactful post-WWII horror films of all time, Godzilla (1954), was just another tokusatsu film before it was the darling of many a filmmaker. As was Gamera, Rodan, and pretty much every other kaiju film. Mikadroid takes special inspiration from these films and was also produced by the prolific Toho Studios, making them spiritual cousins.
As tokusatsu evolved and became more slanted towards a younger audience in Japan with the masked hero shows of the 80s, and 90s (your Kamen Riders and Gorengers), the horror branch moved alongside it. It mirrored smaller threats, focusing on more grotesque villains on a human scale; Shinya Tsukamoto’s seminal work Tetsuo: The Iron Man is the best example of the period. Production companies in the Western world rarely stepped up to the plate in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but since then releases like Psycho Goreman and Smoking Causes Coughing show that tokusatsu horror remains in demand and well-loved, both in Japan and abroad.
Mikadroid and A Who’s Who Of The Tokusatsu Crew
I give this whole historical preamble to say, Mikadroid is an ancestral waypoint in the genre, and a delightfully strange embodiment of all the things that make tokusatsu horror what it is. And what is it exactly? Well, first and foremost, it’s special effects and insane camerawork. That’s all thanks to a stellar crew, the majority of whom would go on to be major players in tokusatsu horror and Japanese cinema at large.
Mikadroid’s effects were done by Shinji Higuchi, who would later go on to direct Shin Ultraman and co-direct the masterpiece that is Shin Godzilla. Though the production was on a tight budget, it had some very impressive effects. You get mechanical limbs bursting out of backs, decayed bodies, explosions, and an instantaneous rotting face effect that I will never cease to be impressed by.
There are also quite a few scale miniatures of the underground ruins shown during the film’s final act, all composited seamlessly. It doesn’t hurt that the film was directed by another special effects veteran with an eye for these things: Tomoo Haraguchi. He’s best known for his work on the 1990s Gamera films, which you should also check out if you find yourself having practical effects fever after this.
Of course, the star of the show is the Mikadroid suit itself; a giant metal power armor bonded to the human inside. Aesthetically, it’s the kind of monster you’d only see in a black-and-white sci-fi film from the 1940s. Since the Mikadroid is an invention of a 1940s mad scientist, this is an intentional and loving homage to the creature features of that era. It ends up being more charming than frightening, ala Ro-Man of Robot Monster fame, but with far more skill in its construction. The appeal of the Mikadroid cyborg is only enhanced by how the film is cut together and shot.
Lights, Camera, and Very Stylized Action
Unless you’re the kind of person who, like myself, enjoys strange editing choices, your mileage may vary when it comes to the film’s cinematography. Whatever gripes I had about the pacing died down when the full vision came together, as the editing is full of very fun reveals and a smattering of visual sucker-punches.
A personal favorite of these is when our protagonist Saeko sees the Mikadroid in full for the first time which I adore. Lit from behind, quick close-ups give small bits of the armor’s corroded metal detailing; showing you what a humanoid tank this cyborg is, utilizing those low angles every chance it gets to really enhance its size.
When in motion, the Mikadroid is even more of a spectacle thanks to Haraguchi’s direction. Shooting around a bulky suit with limited mobility is no mean feat, and Mikadroid does that with pure style. The deaths in this film are presented surreally, reminiscent of a giallo film in its editing (if the typical, black-gloved killer was a rusty, boxy robot with a katana). Not the least of which is a sequence in which the Mikadroid performs a “death by a thousand cuts” style attack, leaving his victim covered in bright red technicolor blood.
Some deaths are shot like dance scenes, with uncanny movements from the victims who feel floaty. Others are shot more suggestively, with shadows of the killer robot and his target moving on walls. And some are just so hilariously abrupt it takes time for your brain to catch up with them. The bombastic score behind it all sells the vision of a bizarro killing machine perfectly, even when the deaths are silly at times.
And that score, by the way, is courtesy of industry icon Kenji Kawai. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because he composed the incredible soundscapes for the supernatural anime Devilman, the tragic ghost film Dark Water, and the legendary haunting that is Ringu. Kawai’s involvement is shorthand for a great atmosphere in your film, and Mikadroid is a fun moment in his career. His score feels like something of a B-movie opera here; it fits given the Mikadroid is a very larger-than-life villain, treated like a lumbering menace of a relic by not only the camerawork but the soundtrack that plays in his wake.
A Machine Monster With A Message
Beyond its visual appeal, Mikadroid ends up telling a thematically satisfying story among all the carnage. The film has a dark humor about it, communicated most often in its madcap deaths. That fatal humor brings an “if we don’t laugh, we cry” philosophy to the film’s most blatant theme: wasting your life on a futile cause.
Both the antagonist and protagonists are forced to go through the motion of burning time, which is revisited in most of the film’s quieter scenes. A sense of being stuck, forced to wait for the end. In the same way that Godzilla was born as an embodiment of the unkillable, unfeeling bomb, the Mikadroid is an embodiment of the people on the ground after the bomb drops. Godzilla is an incarnation of the pure destructive output of the bomb. The Mikadroid gives form to growing old in the rubble left behind by the explosion.
The bloodthirsty Mikadroid is a failed patriot—not one that failed but was failed by his government. A squandered body, and squandered youth, sacrificed in the name of a now nonexistent empire. In the end, Mikadroid’s surprisingly poignant finale leaves you wondering how much man was left inside that lumbering metal suit once the war effort chewed him up and spit him out. And I for one find that pretty impressive given how campy the movie can get.
In the end, your thoughts on Mikadroid will more likely than not fall into one of two categories:
- It’s a soulful piece of tokusatsu history, one that stands as a testament to the genre’s scrappy experimental spirit, and a precursor to a lot of great modern tokusatsu horror.
- It’s a cheesy J-horror movie where an adorably clunky cyborg guns down everybody in his wake.
And in a way, both are true. Mikadroid simply hit that sweet balance of “sometimes goofy, sometimes serious, but always entertaining” that you want out of a b-horror movie. I hope this article has inspired you enough to go seek out this hidden gem regardless of which camp you fall under.
Categorized:Editorials
