Belladonna of Sadness (1973)

If you go into Belladonna of Sadness expecting the kind of anime movie you’re accustomed to you’ll be confused and disappointed. This is not even remotely similar to what we now think of as anime. In fact it’s not even a true animated movie. It’s partly animated but relies to a huge extent on still images.

Belladonna of Sadness was released in 1973. It was made by Mushi Production, an important company in the early history of anime. They made many of the best-known 1960s anime TV series, such as Astro Boy. Belladonna of Sadness was the third in Mushi’s Animerama series of adult-oriented anime feature films. All three films were commercial flops and the box-office failure of Belladonna of Sadness pushed the studio into bankruptcy.

It has something of a fairy tale feel, at least superficially. It’s based on Jules Michelet’s 1862 history of witchcraft, La Sorcière.

The setting of the movie is France in the Middle Ages and it reflects Michelet’s virulent anti-Catholic anti-monarchy views. Jean, a simple farmer, and Jeanne are about to be married. The wicked lord deflowers Jeanne (reflecting the popular but entirely false myth that feudal lords had this right). Jeanne responds by calling on Satan, although when he appears Satan tells her that he’s already inside her. Satan is like a cute little floating penis.

With Satan’s help Jeanne prospers but her wealth makes her unpopular with the people and attracts the jealousy of the lord’s wife. Jean becomes a wealthy tax collector and an alcoholic. Jean and Jeanne experience lots of ups and down until finally the movie just devolves into bad acid trip territory.

Finally we get a kind of bizarre nightmare orgy scene which is rather hair-raising.

To me Belladonna of Sadness doesn’t feel the slightest bit Japanese (which might explain why Japanese audiences didn’t bother seeing it). It’s clearly heavily influenced by European art cinema and by all kinds of counter-culture elements such as American underground comics.

This is a psychedelic freak-out movie. It’s not a movie, it’s a happening. Can you dig it?

There is a plot. The plot is not terrible. It’s your basic selling your soul to the Devil and getting mixed up in witchcraft kind of plot.

You can tell that the visual artists involved were real artists because so much of the artwork is incredibly crude and ugly and looks like it was done by a deranged five-year-old. Overall this is a movie that looks hideous. A large part of the problem is that that late 60s arty aesthetic has not worn well. The 60s aesthetic is terrific when it’s done with wit and style in a very “pop” way but when it’s done with serious arty pretensions it can be cringe-inducing.

The frustrating thing is that there are some very good visual moments. It does have to be said however that those moments are very hippie-dippie.

This movie uses a variety of animation techniques and only uses traditional cel-and-ink animation sparingly. It’s all very experimental and avant-garde.

It’s a movie that is quite divisive. Some people think it’s a masterpiece. Some people think it’s an embarrassing train-wreck. I lean more towards the embarrassing train-wreck theory. It is at times an interesting train-wreck. I tend to like movies that are interesting failures but this one really didn’t grab me. Maybe I just wasn’t in the right head space man.

This is a movie that was for many years little seen although despite legends to the contrary it was never a lost movie.

If you want to see this movie through to the end I’d advise getting in a large supply of mind-altering substances. Then you’re really be able to groove to it. Maybe. I can’t really recommend seeing this movie but I’d be reluctant to advise people not to see it. All I can say is that if it sounds like the sort of thing you enjoy then see it but if it sounds like the sort of thing you won’t enjoy then don’t see it. Belladonna of Sadness is just not my cup of tea.

The Discotek Blu-Ray offers a nice transfer with a number of extras. The audio commentary includes a lot of fascinating information about the tumultuous history of Mushi Production and the movie’s troubled production history.

Horny Working Girl: From 5 to 9 (1982)

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Nurse Diary: Wicked Finger (1979)

Nurse Diary: Wicked Finger is a 1979 entry in Nikkatsu’s roman porno cycle, the studio’s successful strategy to save itself from bankruptcy after television had threatened to destroy the Japanese film industry. Nurse Diary: Wicked Finger is a sex comedy, and a deliriously crazy one.

It’s one of quite a few nurse-themed movies in the roman porno cycle.

Ryoko (Etsuko Hara) is a pretty young nurse. She has decided to move out of the nurse’s dorm. She’s having an affair with a married doctor, Dr Edogawa, and she feels it may be indiscreet to have sex with him in the dorm.

Young student nurse Emi, who looks up to Ryoko as a surrogate big sister, has been resisting the lesbian advances of her new roommate. Emi does however seem to have discovered an interest in the delights of sapphic love and she’s now desperately trying to get into Ryoko’s pants.

Dr Edogawa has other things to distract him, in the form of a very pretty female patient named Yoko. Yoko is always developing strange symptoms which always require Dr Edogawa to give her a close physical examination. Naturally she has to take her clothes off for these examinations. If Yoko had a headache or a sore toe she would insist on taking her clothes off so that Dr Edogawa could examine her properly. Dr Edogawa is a dedicated physician so he always conducts these examinations very thoroughly, to the accompaniment of much giggling on Yoko’s part.

Dr Edogawa will have a bit of explaining to do when Yoko’s husband shows up.

Dr Edogawa also has some explaining to do when his wife finds out about his affair with Ryoko.

Ryoko has other distractions of her own to deal with, in the form of a young somewhat socially inept male neighbour named Tsugawa. Tsugawa is a Peeping Tom.

All of these sexual dramas become more and more crazy.

If you’re not familiar with Japanese comedy you might be surprised at just how broad much of the humour is. In this movie it’s very broad indeed, but combined with total insanity.

It is however genuinely very funny. Tsugawa’s misadventures with the vacuum cleaner are very funny indeed. As you might have guessed, he has turned to the vacuum cleaner to relieve his sexual frustrations brought about by gazing at Ryoko’s nakedness. It’s an episode that could easily have been merely crude but the craziness level makes it funny rather than crass.

In fact that’s typical of the whole movie. Situations with the potential to be crass end up being lightheartedly amusing instead.

The scenes with the crazy exhibitionistic Yoko manage to be both funny and sexy. The scenes with her husband are insanely over-the-top and including a fire-breathing Dr Edogawa. Literally fire-breathing. He’s been drinking pure alcohol and makes the mistake of trying to light a cigarette.

The movie does spring one or two surprises. We assume that Tsugawa is being set up as a perennial loser comic relief character with no chance of getting the girl (or any girl) but Ryoko decides he’s really sweet and she’s happy to sleep with him, even though she knows about the vacuum cleaner incident. The scene in which she sleeps with him would have been played for laughs in a British or American movie but in this case it’s oddly touching.

It’s these occasional unexpected poignant moments that make this movie interesting.

There’s a lot of nudity but overall this movie is a bit tamer than you expect from a Nikkatsu roman porno film.

Even scenes that might have been disturbing end up not being genuinely disturbing because the movie really is remarkably good-natured and is clearly aiming to amuse rather than to shock. This is an intentionally silly goofy movie and if you take any of it seriously you’ve missed the point.

Nurse Diary: Wicked Finger is totally nuts but it’s strangely likeable and even charming in its insanity. Recommended.

The Impulse DVD lacks extras (apart from some very sparse liner notes by Jasper Sharp) but the transfer is perfectly acceptable.

True Story of a Woman in Soapland: Tear! (1987)

True Story of a Woman in Soapland: Tear! is a 1987 Nikkatsu roman porno movie about a woman who works in one of Japan’s soaplands. Both the terms roman porno and soaplands are going to require some explanation.

By the beginning of the 70s the Japanese film industry was in desperate trouble, with television causing a collapse in cinema attendances. Studios realised that there were two things that would lure customers back to movie theatres - sex and violence. One result of this was the emergence of the pinky violence genre which offered both at the same time. Japan’s oldest film studio, Nikkatsu, took a slightly different approach. They came up with a genre which they called roman porno. This had nothing to do with the Roman Empire. The French term for an erotic novel is roman pornographique. Nikkatsu thought this would be a cool descriptive term for its new series of movies, but they shortened it to roman porno.

Nikkatsu went further. They cancelled all other film production and from 1971 to 1988 they made nothing but roman porno movies. It was a spectacularly successful strategy and it saved the studio, which is still going strong today. They made hundreds of these films.

Many of these films are lighthearted goofy sex comedies. Others offer extraordinary levels of violence and kink. This one offers melodrama.

Now for that other term, soaplands. Prostitution was outlawed in Japan in 1958. Soaplands sprang up to fill the void. These were bathhouses. The customer paid to be bathed by a soap girl. This was quite legal. Technically this was the only service offered by the soaplands, so these businesses remained technically quite legal. Of course if, after the bath, the customer and the soap girl were overcome by tender passions and had sex that was no concern of the soapland. Of course in every single case the customer and the soap girl ended up having sex (and money managed to change hands) but it was done in a way that always managed to remain technically legal. The soap girls were in practice prostitutes and were very high-class and well-paid.

So, back to the movie. Kikuta is a schoolteacher and a happily married man and he has a mistress, a nurse named Mizue. She mentions that she saw an old friend of theirs from their schooldays, a woman named Hasekura, leaving a soapland. She was obviously working there. Mizue was a little shocked and a little amused. Kikuta had had an affair with Hasekura at school.

Kikuta decides to re-introduce himself to Hasekura. Their old passion immediately re-ignites.

The nurse girlfriend finds out and she’s outraged, even though she has a fiancé on whom she’s cheating.

Kikuta’s wife finds out about her husband’s little nurse girlfriend. She doesn’t have much respect for her husband but she won’t give him up because as she says he’s so easy to control.

Kikuta makes a solemn promise to Mizue to give up Hasekura and he makes a solemn promise to his wife to be faithful in future.

Of course he doesn’t keep either promise. Kikuta isn’t exactly a bad guy but he’s weak and he’s absolutely hopeless where women are concerned. He’s not the kind of guy you’d pick as a Casanova. He’s more like a naughty little boy. Maybe that’s why all three women want him.

The fact that Hasekura is a prostitute isn’t made into much of an issue. It really only figures in the plot to the extent that Hasekura has enough money to be able to offer to keep Kikuta as a kind of pet.

The ending is a surprise, to say the least. And it's certainly effective.

Director Takashi Kodama handles things pretty well and doesn’t allow the story to get bogged down at any point. All the cast members are more than adequate.

Japanese erotic movies tend to be both less graphic and more graphic than contemporary erotic films from the US or Europe. They’re less graphic in that because of a peculiar cultural taboo they couldn’t show any female pubic hair. On the other hand they could show stuff that you wouldn’t generally see in softcore offerings from other countries. The sex scenes in this movies are extraordinary intense and steamy, and sometimes soapy. And there are many many sex scenes.

This is a romantic-sexual melodrama and it works pretty well. The characters have enough substance (and enough tangled motivations) to keep our interest. True Story of a Woman in Soapland: Tear! is highly recommended.

The Impulse DVD offers a reasonable if less than stellar transfer.

Flower and Snake (1974)

Masaru Konuma’s Flower and Snake is one of the more notorious movies in Nikkatsu’s immensely successful “roman porno” cycle. It was released in 1974.

In 1971 the Nikkatsu studio was struggling financially. They then abandoned all other film production projects and from then until 1988 they made nothing but roman porno films. It was one of the most astute business decisions in the history of cinema. Nikkatsu went from near-bankruptcy to prosperity and the studio continues to thrive to this day.

The term “roman porno” comes from the French term for an erotic novel - roman pornographique. The name was adopted because Nikkatusu thought, quite correctly, that it sounded kind of cool.

Makoto Katagiri lives with his mother Miyo. They live comfortably since Miyo runs a successful business - she makes S&M porno films. Makoto has a few sexual problems of his own. When he was a young boy he thought that a black American serviceman was hurting his mother. He must have been hurting her since she kept moaning. So Makoto took a gun that was kept in the house and shot the serviceman. In fact of course his mother was a prostitute, the GI was a paying client and Miyo was at the time thoroughly enjoying her work. Before he died the American GI tried to strangle Makoto. So it’s not surprising that Makoto is not quite normal sexually.

With women he is impotent but he masturbates regularly and with enthusiasm tinged with bitterness.

Miyo feels no embarrassment about her line of business. Sex has always been her business and she is perfectly relaxed about it. Makoto isn’t relaxed about it at all. He still has dreams about the night he shot that GI.

Makoto’s boss Senzô Tôyama has a problem as well. He has a beautiful young wife named Shizuko but she won’t have sex with him. He’s actually rather fond of kinky sex but Shizuko but allow him to have any kind of sex with her at all.

But he has a plan to deal with the situation. He will get his loyal employee Makoto to kidnap Shizuko. Makoto’s job with then be to train Shizuko to be an obedient wife.

Senzô Tôyama thinks that Makoto is an expert in sadomasochism and bondage because he found S&M porn in Makoto’s desk. The truth is that Makoto is a bit of a bumbling amateur. It’s his mother Miyo who’s the expert. Fortunately Miyo is on hand to help with Shizuko’s training.

Makoto ends in regular reports on the progress of the training. The problem is that Tôyama starts to suspect that Makoto is enjoying the training process a little bit too much. After all the purpose is to make Shizuko an obedient wife for him, not for Makoto.

Makoto also finds that with Shizuko brutally tied up his impotence is no longer a problem.

There’s lot of potential for both sexual and emotional jealousy. Tôyama is jealous of Makoto because he suspects that Shizuko enjoys sex with Makoto. Makoto is jealous of Tôyama because Shizuko belongs to Tôyama. Miyo is jealous of any woman that Makoto is interested in sexually or emotionally. Shizuko’s faithful maid Haru is prey to all kinds of jealousies. And the apparent emotional dynamics of the situation do not necessarily reflect the real emotional dynamics.

There is some stuff in this movie that is really hard to take, unless you happen to be turned on by forced enemas. It’s not that you see anything particularly graphic but the idea is pretty off-putting. I have a pretty high tolerance for kinky erotic movies but some of this stuff was way too much for me. I should add that the bondage scenes are fairly brutal.

It’s a pity because the emotional dynamics really are interesting, and the interest is enhanced by the rather ambiguous performances of several of the actors, especially Naomi Tani as Shizuko. She gives a performance that is both subtle and disturbing. We not only have doubts about what some of the characters say about their feelings, we have doubts as to whether they understand their own feelings.

There’s also the tone of the movie which at times veers towards twisted black comedy. This is certainly not a sex comedy but some scenes are played that way, or are at least pushed to the point of deliberate absurdity. These are people who are playing kinky sex games with each other but director Masaru Konuma and writer Yôzô Tanaka are playing games with the viewer as well.

The movie is based on a novel by Oniroku Dan, a somewhat controversial Japanese writer of S&M erotica whose work was considered to have a certain decadent flavour.

Impulse’s DVD is barebones but provides a decent transfer. They’ve released it on Blu-Ray as well.

Flower and Snake is a disturbing exploration of twisted sexual desire. If you can get past the off-putting elements mentioned earlier then it’s quite an interesting film but it is definitely not for everyone.

Nurse Girl Dorm: Sticky Fingers (1985)

Nurse Girl Dorm: Sticky Fingers is a fairly late entry in Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno series. In the early 70s all the major Japanese studios were in dire financial straits, having never recovered from the advent of television. Nikkatsu’s answer to this problem was to embrace sex. They switched over entirely to making erotic movies, a move that proved to be immensely successful and which saved the studio. Their “Roman Porno” films, made between 1971 and 1988, were incredibly varied. Some featured brutal sexual violence. Many had strong sadomasochistic leanings. But others were lighthearted goofy sex comedies. Nurse Girl Dorm: Sticky Fingers definitely fits into the latter category. It’s pure sexy fun.

It all takes place in the nurse dorm in St Elizabeth’s Hospital, somewhere in Japan. The young nurses are all of course sex-crazed.

The movie opens in typically outrageous style with a young nurse named Mayumi masturbating with a vacuum cleaner. At the crucial moment the killjoy dorm supervisor, accompanied by her bulldog, interrupts her. The bulldog is vitally necessary to keep these girls under control and to make sure he doesn’t miss anything he has a flashlight mounted on his head. Yes, this movie is going to be a crazy ride.

The dorm is in turmoil because Yuki is coming back. Inoue Yuki (Jun Izumi) is a legend at St Elizabeth’s Hospital. She left to get married but now she’s divorced and she’s back in the nurse dorm. The dorm supervisor is taking no chances. Every drop of alcohol has to be removed from the dorm. She’s going to watch Yuki like a hawk.

Yuki shares a room with Noriko. Noriko loves living in the dorm because it’s so much fun taking baths with all the other girls. Pretty soon Yuki and Noriko get down to some serious lesbo lovin’.

Apart from masturbating with vacuum cleaners the girls spend most of their time trying to sneak their boyfriends into the dorm. Yuki is horrified when she sees Mayumi tying bedsheets together to make an improvised ladder. Don’t these younger girls know anything? Yuki always keeps a rope ladder in her room, a much more effective solution.

By this time it’s obvious to the dorm supervisor (and to the viewer) that Yuki is a very bad influence on the other girls. They’re wild enough but Yuki combines wildness with cool intelligence and imagination, a dangerous combination.

Yuki’s ex-husband, a cop, shows up. He wants her back but she’s set her sights on Dr Kodama. Unfortunately Mayumi has set her sights on him as well.

It builds into a classic bedroom farce with multiple men smuggled into the dorm and a positively staggering amount of sexual activity. The dorm supervisor is too busy to deal with this situation. She’s managed to kidnap one of the men and she’s got him tied up and is giving him a good flogging. This is exactly the sort of thing she’s always dreamed of doing and she’s having a really good time. She’s a believer in discipline.

There’s plenty more kinkiness where that came from - sex in the back of a hearse, the ex-cop subjecting all the nurses to full-body searches, fun with handcuffs, etc.

The kinkiness is all played for laughs. There’s a lot of fairly steamy sex and a lot of nudity, but in fact all of it is played for laughs and it’s silly and good-natured and cheerful.

And it’s funny. Humour doesn’t always translate from one culture to another but that isn’t a problem here. This is your basic sex comedy, executed with enthusiasm and with that touch of craziness that is so very Japanese. It’s a very likeable movie.

All of the acting is good with Jun Izumi as Yuki being the standout performer as the bad girl who is really just a girl who wants to have fun and intends to do so. Yôko Ishidô is terrific as the dorm supervisor who turns out to be just as perverted as everyone else.

Impulse’s DVD offers a very good anamorphic transfer. The only extra is the liner notes by Jasper Sharp which don’t tell us much abut this particular film but do tell us plenty of interesting stuff about pink films and roman porno in general.

This is one of the lighter entries in the Roman Porno cycle. It has good-hearted craziness without disturbing weirdness and it’s sexy and amusing.

Nurse Girl Dorm: Sticky Fingers is a lot of fun. Highly recommended.

The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (2003)

Mitsuru Meike’s The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai, released in 2003, may be the strangest movie I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some pretty strange movies.

The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai is a pink film (pinku eiga) which is the Japanese term for a softcore erotic movie. While the softcore sex film was by this time out of fashion in most countries and was becoming a very rare bird the genre was still thriving in Japan in 2003. This particular movie was originally released in Japan as Horny Home Tutor: Teacher's Love Juice. Surprisingly it made the crossover to the art-house circuit in the US and Europe and became a minor sensation.

It is among other things a political satire (about George W. Bush) but don’t be put off by that. Political satire becomes very dated and very embarrassing very quickly but in this case it doesn’t matter. The satire is so silly and so bizarre that it’s morbidly fascinating whether you agree with the movie’s politics or not. And there’s so much other craziness here that you can just enjoy wallowing in the weirdness. The weirdness is not so much in the content as in the tone and the style.

And you can enjoy the special effects. The special effects budget must have been around fifty bucks. You have never seen such cheap special effects. Ed Wood’s movies have more elaborate special effects.

The movie begins with a pretty private tutor named Sachiko Hanai (Emi Kuroda) giving her pupil some lessons in American geography. He learns more about the geography of the female anatomy than that of the United States. We quickly figure out that this is an imekura sex club, a kind of brothel where customers can play out their sex fantasies, and that Sachiko is a prostitute.

Sachiko then heads off to a coffee shop where an exchange is taking place between some Middle Eastern gentlemen and a North Korean spy/assassin. An item of great value is changing hands. In the course of the exchange Sachiko is shot through the head. Now for most girls a bullet hole in the centre of the forehead would be the end of the line but for Sachiko it’s just the beginning. She has now gained the power of precognition as well as vast insights into mathematics and philosophy.

And she has that valuable item in her possession.

What is the item? It’s George W. Bush’s finger. Or rather, it’s a clone of George W. Bush’s finger. And it has immense power and significance.

Sachiko soon learns that if you’re of the female persuasion it has other interesting possibilities. It can not only offer deep penetrating insights into various subjects, it can have other deep penetrating properties as well. Which she realises when it forces itself on her and brings her to a shattering orgasm. It should be added that it’s not just a cloned finger, it’s a flying cloned finger.

Meanwhile that North Korean spy/assassin has her apartment staked out. While he’s waiting he eats all her food and finds some naughty pictures of her. He has a very nice time with the pictures and then he finds a real treasure - a pair of her panties. Which she has worn but hasn’t yet had time to wash. He naturally confiscates them.

Sachiko has been busy as well. She has hooked up with Professor Saeki. They discuss philosophy and have sex. Discussing philosophy gets them both really hot. He goes crazy when she talks about Noam Chomsky.

The professor persuades his wife that it would be a great idea to move Sachiko into their house. She could act as tutor to their teenage son Mamoru. Sachiko is an excellent tutor. She knows how to motivate a boy. She sets him some difficult mathematical problems. When he gets the answer right she takes off an item of her clothing. When he gets the final question right her panties come off. It’s strip tutoring, which seems to me to have considerable educational potential. Once the panties come off she offers him some tutoring in subjects more interesting to a boy than mathematics.

Eventually Sachiko and the spy assassin hook up. He is surprised by some of her little quirks. Whenever she starts to grapple with an esoteric philosophical question she has to frantically masturbate.

She has other quirks. She only tastes food ten minutes after eating it. And she seems to be losing feeling in a sensitive part of her anatomy.

Surprisingly there is a plot. Sort of. A spy plot, involving that finger and the fate of civilisation as we know it.

The finger is linked to a top-secret high-tech device. Part of the device is a rubber ducky on wheels. Yes, it’s that sort of movie.

There’s a crazed action finale in a cave, which of course involves both sex and guns and dream sequences which might be precognition, and lots more craziness.

Emi Kuroda does quite well in the lead role, conveying Sachiko’s strangeness very effectively.

Director Mitsuru Meike apparently started losing his grip in the later stages of the production and there were doubts as to his ability to finish it.

A word about Japanese softcore might be in order. Back in the 70s Japanese erotic movies could feature very graphic simulated sex but were absolutely forbidden to show even a glimpse of pubic hair. By 2003 things had changed and The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai does feature female frontal nudity. And while there are no shots of penetration there are several shots of ejaculation. So softcore doesn’t mean quite the same in Japan as it does elsewhere.

The Palm DVD release includes the original Horny Home Tutor: Teacher's Love Juice plus the extended director’s cut of The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai, plus an episode of a Japanese TV show featuring Emi Kuroda. It’s even crazier than the movie.

The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai offers lots of sex, lots of Emi Kuroda naked and lots of lunacy. Whether it’s inspired lunacy or not is a matter of opinion but this movie is certainly unique and for that reason it’s recommended.

Momoe’s Lips (1979)

Momoe’s Lips is a 1979 entry in Nikkatsu’s “roman porno” series, the Japanese studio’s attempt to find a way to tempt audiences back to movie theatres by offering them something that television just couldn’t offer - outrageous helpings of sex and sleaze. They churned out an immense number of these films and they were hugely successful. The roman porno movies fell into two broad categories - goofy sleazy sex comedies and incredibly nihilistic sex and violence epics. Momoe’s Lips is about as nihilistic and sleazy a film as you’ll ever hope to see. Perhaps I should add that the original title was Rape Shot: Momoe’s Lips.

Tôru Miyake (Noriaki Abe) is a journalist working for a scandal sheet. His specialty is scandals involving the entertainment business. It pays well if you have no ethics and don’t mind being the journalist equivalent of a cockroach, and Tôru cheerfully describes himself as a cockroach.

He’d like to go after Momoe but going after her could be very injurious to one’s health. That’s the only mention of Momoe in the movie. Apparently it refers to a real-life pop star. I’m sure she was thrilled to have her name associated this film, and even more thrilled by a slightly later film called, wait for it, Molester Train: Momoe’s Butt.

Tôru decides instead to go after Yôko Miki (Minako Mizushima). She’s the latest singing sensation and her career is being managed by Mr Hoshino. There are rumours that Hoshino keeps his young female singing stars pliable by pumping them full of drugs. Tôru thinks he has a way of finding out if this is true or not (we’ll come back to this later).

Tôru discovers that poking his nose into Mr Hoshino’s business can be pretty injurious to one’s health as well.

Then Yôko gets kidnapped. Tôru isn’t sure whether it’s some stunt on Mr Hoshino’s part of if the kidnappers are part of someone else’s scheme or whether they’re just crazies. He doesn’t care. There’s a great story in this and that will improve his bank balance.

Tôru thinks he can get a lead from a friendly whore. He doesn’t get the information he wants but she does give him a good time. And at discount rates.

Meanwhile Yôko is not having a good time. She’s getting raped by three crazies, including an odd young man known as Dragonfly. Dragonfly is actually a big fan of Yôko’s. He has all her records. He worships her. That doesn’t stop him from raping her. Some fans do carry things a bit too far.

There’s one thing that puzzles Tôru. He is convinced that Yôko is injecting drugs (or perhaps is being forcibly injected with drugs) but he can’t find any needle marks on her. And he examined every square inch of her body. Yes, every square inch. Yes, even there. No needle marks. In fact Yôko is being injected with drugs but the method by which it’s done provides one of the movie’s many shocking moments.

Tôru figures, correctly, that Mr Hoshino will pay a lot of money to get Yôko back. He’s willing to pay five million yen. Returning her to Mr Hoshino probably is not doing the girl any favours but five million yen is five million yen.

The violence is non-stop. It’s not just the crazy kidnappers and Mr Hoshino’s goons getting violent. Other extraneous characters wander into the film simply for the purpose of beating up Tôru or getting beaten up by him. There’s a lot of sex, some of it consensual. Even the consensual sex is fairly sleazy. You may want to take a shower after watching this movie. The rape scenes are not particularly graphic but they are shocking and brutal. If you’re sensitive to such things then this is not the movie for you.

Tôru may be the most unsympathetic protagonist in cinema history. He’s not an anti-hero, he’s just a sleazebag. There are no heroes in this story. Just nasty cynical violent people out for their own interests. The ostensible heroine (or victim) is not exactly a paragon of virtue either.

It’s a movie that does manage to go places that I personally had never even thought of. When Tôru follows Yôko into the ladies’ room, follows her into the stall, slams her up against the wall and pulls her panties down you figure you know what’s going to happen next. And you’d be totally wrong. What he’s actually trying to do is collect a urine sample from her. He’s performing a kind of impromptu drug test.

Director Katsuhiko Fujii does a pretty solid job, adding a few nice visual flourishes.

The acting is more than adequate. These are not nice characters but Noriaki Abe and Minako Mizushima manage to give Tôru and Yôko just a little bit more depth than you’d expect.

Once you get past the sex and nudity there’s an effective and nasty little hardboiled crime story here with some very noir touches.

The Impulse DVD offers a very good anamorphic transfer. The only extra is in the shape of liner notes from Jasper Sharp.

There are sleazier roman porno films but I’m not sure there are any that are more thoroughly nihilistic than this one. But if you’re in the mood for sleaze and nihilism Momoe’s Lips is recommended.

Fairy in a Cage (1977)

Fairy in a Cage, written and directed by Kôyû Ohara, is perhaps the most notorious of the long series of roman porno movies made by Japan’s Nikkatsu Studio between 1971 and 1988. It should be explained that these movies have nothing to do with the Romans - the French term for an erotic novel is roman porno and I guess someone at Nikkatsu though it sounded classy.

In the latter stages of World War 2 the Japanese military police are cracking down on anti-war activists. Judge Murayama takes an active hand in the interrogations, especially of female suspects. He is considered to be a specialist in this area. Murayama’s idea of interrogation involves torture with definite sexual overtones.

There is however considerable doubt as to whether any of these female suspects is guilty of anything more than catching Murayama’s eye. He has now picked out his next victim, the young and very beautiful wife of a rich jeweller named Kikushima. There is not the slightest evidence against her but Murayama really wants to torture her. So evidence is manufactured implicating Mrs Kikushima and a kabuki actor named Sennosuke Inoue.

The first stage of Murayama’s interrogation technique is to tell Mrs Kikushima to take all her clothes off. At this stage she realises she’s in a for a rather unpleasant time.

Murayama works closely with the military police and in this case a new recruit, Lance-Corporal Taoka, will be taking an active part in the interrogations. Also taking an active rôle is Murayama’s young assistant and mistress Kayo. Taoka isn’t happy with the situation at first, then he starts to enjoy it and then he starts to become sexually obsessed with Mrs Kikushima. It is implied that Taoka is sexually inexperienced and may even be a virgin. He is definitely somewhat disturbed sexually. When it is suggested that he should pleasure himself with some whores he gets very uncomfortable. He is perhaps a little bit afraid of women.

Young Kayo takes charge of the torture of Inoue, the kabuki actor. Her idea of torture is to force Inoue to have sex with her and to force him to endure the horrors of fellatio. That would certainly be enough to break any man’s spirit, especially given that Kayo is young and very pretty. Yes, this is one very strange movie.

Taoka’s sexual obsession why Mrs Kikushima grows, He even contemplates rescuing her. He is however not quite a knight in shining armour. His idea is to get her out of the clutches of Murayama so that he can have for himself and rape her at his leisure. Taoka is not a healthy young man.

Murayama and the military policemen are clearly exceptionally depraved (they really really enjoying torturing attractive young women) and young Kayo is perhaps even more depraved. Her hobbies include forcing men to submit to sex, watching other women get tortured and humiliated and having Murayama tie her up (he has to make sure that the ropes really hurt her) before pleasuring her.

OK, so this sounds like a straightforward S&M software porno movie. But this was the 1970s, a time when film-makers in various countries were getting very attracted to the idea of making movies about the relationship between power and sex. More specifically playing with the idea that power leads to moral corruption which then leads to sexual depravity. Or perhaps that the sexually depraved are attracted by power, especially absolute power over others. In Italy Tinto Brass explored this idea in Salon Kitty and it was his original idea for Caligula (although Caligula as released bore little resemblance to Brass’s original conception). These ideas are perhaps vaguely plausible and they certainly had possibilities for movie-makers who could make S&M movies and then claim that they weren’t making just making porn movies - they were making movies that were serious political statements.

Fairy in a Cage is very obviously exploring these same ideas. Its main weakness is that it doesn’t offer us much insight into the psychology of the two most interesting character, Murayama and Kayo. Taoka is a bit more fully developed. It seems likely that he is only aroused by women when they’re under his power.

Minoru Ôkôchi’s performance as Murayama is extremely good and Rei Okamoto is extraordinary as Kayo. Kayo is not a girl you’d want to take home to meet Mother.

Naomi Tani has to be given credit for volunteering to undergo some pretty extreme bondage, much of which apparently was genuinely painful. She’s a gorgeous woman but to be honest she’s essentially just a prop. She’s merely an innocent victim, Naomi Tani does a good job enough job conveying her fear and her humiliation, but we know no more about her at the end than we knew at the beginning. The focus here is on the psychology of the torturers (both the male and female torturers).

Fairy in a Cage was based on a story by Oniroku Dan, a very successful writer of S&M erotica and a close friend of the film’s star Naomi Tani. She had already established herself as an actress in pink films (Japanese erotic movies) but her appearance in numerous adaptations of Dan’s stories for Nikkatsu made her a star and Japan’s queen of cinematic S&M.

Fairy in a Cage is, like all of Nikkatsu’s roman porno movies, very well-made (Nikkatsu was and is a major studio) and it looks great. It was, predictably, controversial at the time. Which is hardly surprising. It is pretty extreme. While the political subtext is definitely there this movie is really more of an exploration of the psychology and eroticism of sadomasochism. So it really is, quite unashamedly, a softcore S&M erotic movie. Which is of course exactly what Nikkatsu wanted. So whether you enjoy this movie depends entirely on your feelings about S&M erotica. If the subject matter doesn’t bother you then it has some claims to being, along with Just Jaeckin’s The Story of O and Radley Metzger’s The Image, one of the classics of the genre. And you can always pretend that you only watched it for the political subtext!

Female Teacher: In Front of the Students (1982)

Female Teacher: In Front of the Students is a 1982 entry in Nikkatsu’s roman porno cycle.

Reiko (Rushia Santô) is a new teacher at a tough high school. Her male students are rowdy and uncouth and the girls aren’t much better. Unfortunately Reiko doesn’t quite have what it takes to win their respect. Then one day, in the female teachers’ locker room, she is raped by one of her male students. She does have one clue to her assailant’s identity - a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that he dropped in the shower while raping her.

Reiko has her suspicions as to the rapist’s identity and decides to do some investigating. She thinks it might have something to do with her decision to drop one of the boys from the school tennis team. Rather unwisely she allows one of her female students, Kumi, to help her. Kumi has already tried to initiate Reiko into the joys of lesbian sex. Kumi suggests breaking into her boyfriend Takuya’s house to look for evidence and as a result Reiko not only gets raped again, she gets held prisoner and subjected to various indignities. And she learns that tennis racquets can be used for all sorts of sexual purposes. Takuya rapes her and Kumi, not to be outdone, rapes her as well. For Reiko it’s a weekend of humiliation and degradation and the most humiliating part is that the orgasms are so good. 

She also suffers the worst sexual indignity that any woman can be subjected to - having tennis balls hurled at her. I honestly had no idea that there was such a thing as tennis as a sexual fetish but it seems that there is.

Apart from countless sex scenes there is a mystery plot here. Reiko still doesn’t know who raped her the first time. She’s obsessed by the idea of finding the answer. She still has that jigsaw puzzle piece but the problem is that it seems that jigsaw puzzles are popular with all the men in this town. The piece turns out to be, fittingly, part of a female thigh from a Modigliani nude. 

 

She discovers that one of the downsides of being an amateur detective is that you get raped a lot. The upside is that sometimes the getting raped part is pretty good. And her friend Shoko assures her that all women like the idea of being raped. Well Shoko likes the idea anyway. 

As you may have gathered this is is not a movie that could even remotely be described as politically correct. If that bothers you, or if the idea of a movie that revolves largely around rape bothers you, then don’t even think about seeing this movie. 

Rushia Santô as Reiko is a capable enough actress and she’s a very lovely lady and she spends a sizeable part of the film’s running time naked. Rina Oka as the breathtakingly depraved Kumi is very impressive and also frequently naked. Kyôko Sagami plays Reiko’s friend Shoko and yes, she gets to take her clothes off as well. If extraordinarily beautiful nude women are something that appeals to you then this movie delivers the goods on that front. It might seem strange to say that a movie mostly about rape is a very female-centric movie but that’s the case. It’s not that the male actors aren’t competent but the focus is on the women.

As with all the Nikkatsu roman porno movies it’s all softcore and there’s no frontal nudity but the sex scenes are quite intense (and sometimes disturbing) and the three lead actresses don’t keep their clothes on for very long.

Yasuaki Uegaki spent most of his career as a director making pink films and he certainly knew how to shoot sex scenes. Apart from that he manages a few atmospheric scenes in the deserted school buildings that almost have a gothic hint to them.

Nikkatsu was a major Japanese studio and their roman porno movies tended to be well made with fairly high production values. This film is no exception.

Impulse’s DVD offers a good anamorphic transfer. There are no extras apart from a trailer but there are liner notes by pink film guru Jasper Sharp.

Nikkatsu made a whole series of Female Teacher films, all of them being unrelated apart from featuring female teachers and sex.

Female Teacher: In Front of the Students is very sleazy but it’s sleaze with a certain amount of style, and with hints of the weirdness that makes Japanese exploitation movies so fascinating. The plot does have a few twists and there’s even a love story although it’s a sleazy love story. Mostly it’s a dark sex thriller and as such it’s highly recommended.