DEBAUCHERY (Ryoshoku) (1983)
D. Hidehiro Nakagawa
Impusle Pictures
1.85 16X9 Anamorphic
This first release from
Synapse/Impulse pictures new line of Japanese
Nikkatsu
Pink films is sure to cause some shock waves among collectors who have been
waiting patiently for the titles to arrive.
DEBAUCHERY has it all and then
some. While it may not be as savage as some of the already available Pink
classics like
BEAUTIFUL GIRL HUNTING: STAR OF DAVID or
ASSAULT! JACK THE
RIPPER or as politically motivated as the work of
Koji Wakamatsu, it delivers
on the most important aspect of these films, which is sheer unadulterated perversity. If you are looking for a
film that touches on your secret perversions,
DEBAUCHERY is
more than likely
that film.
The movie starts out quietly enough with our heroine
Ami (Japanese sex starlet
Ryoko Watanabe) playing racquetball with her Husband’s oldest friend and
her former boss. As she leaves with her husband she mentions in passing that
she is uncomfortable with the way the friend looks as her. Her husband
mentions that he was probably always in love with Ami. After a night of lovemaking it becomes clear
that Ami and her Husband are not in the most heated of relationships. The next
day Ami meets her friend and in turn runs into the former friend again and in an
awkward conversation he reveals some information to her about a high class
brother called “
Madame Machiko Society Club” where many women go to be
prostitutes. Often many of them being housewives looking for thrills. Taking
the bait, Ami whores herself out one afternoon to a brutal young Yakuza man. Finding she has a taste for the dangerous life, she gets a job at Madame
Machiko’s. This of course leads to
several heated encounters with clients that include belt whippings, anal beads,
and an impressive slow motion fuck scene that puts all modern porno to shame.
After her first prostitution session she offhandedly stuffs the money she made into the hand of a crazy man in the park. She clearly did
not do it for the money, but for the thrill. It turns out this elderly, insane man
is a single Father raising a rambunctious teenage sexpot in a tenement that
will play heavily in the last reel of the film.
The meat of the movie however is how Ami becomes the captive
sex slave of one of her clients, and the sexual torture she ends up enduring at
the hands of this madman, who managed to set the entire enterprise up to get
control of her and her sexual awakening.
It is from this point that every sexual fetish imaginable (save some
scat) rears its blood engorged head; whipping, bondage, lingerie, leather,
thread around nipples, fingers in the butt, leading around by chains and collars,
forced to crawl through the streets, rape, given to homeless men for a gang-bang,
pissing, medical/bandages, even incest sneaks out of the box before it is all
over and done with. Really no stone is left unturned.
But for the uninitiated what makes these Japanese movies like this so
intriguing is that they are well made films, with high production values and
actual stories. These are not one day wonders shot on the cheap with
non-actors, short end film stocks and production staff that didn’t care. These
are highly professional films with career writers and directors on board who
took them very seriously. There is actual storytelling capability going on,
which usually makes them that much more aggressive, more unusual, and much more sexual
when it gets down to brass tacks. Some of the material may be very offensive to
western eyes, but it is also the much more sexually charged as well.
Of course due to the very weird censorship issues this is still fogged, so genitalia is not visible. Which is only an issue twice in this movie.
Otherwise nude genitals are kept out of the picture and replaced with creative
perversions.
The DVD looks really good, with some mild grain early on during the racquetball scene, but once it gets to the heavy color saturated stuff in the brothel scenes it looks quite lovely. The colors
really pop all around the actors setting a highly sexualized mood but are
always stable and satisfying. The sound is always solid and distortion free.
The only extras are a very entertaining trailer and great liner notes from
Jasper Sharp who has a book about Japanese film hitting the shelves called
The
Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema.
If you like erotica, Japanese cinema of cult cinema, you owe
it to yourself to take a look at this.
Review
©
Andrew Copp
