The world of exploitation film ripped open and laid raw for you to experience. From 70's grindhouse to current underground, it is all here. So ripe you can practically smell it.
STRIP MAHJONG: BATTLE ROYALE (2012) D. Mark P. Forever ??? DANGER AFTER DARK 1.78 Anamorphic Widescreen This piece of sexy fluff from Japan is almost criticism proof. Watching the title STRIP MAHJONG you really only want one thing, attractive girls playing the strip game, and it delivers that in abundance. The movie scores extra points by sneaking in some extra kink value along the way. But ultimately it is not too different from a nudie cutie you would have seen from H.G. Lewis or Dave Friedman many years ago. Meaning it is serviceable and fun but there is nothing really new on display. The wisp of a plot deals with an underground broadcast of the title gameshow. They kidnap four women, all of whom have sinned in someway to make them "bad people". The ladies include a former pop star who clearly fucked her way to her position, a young wife married to a Yakuza who is holding some kinky secrets, a ruthless lawyer (also the sexiest of the group by a long shot) and finally our hero a normal young lady who got in too deep betting for online Mahjong (trying to settle a debt for her best friend). They then have to play the very complicated game and as each wins or loses cards are given that tell the players what items of clothing to lose.
But the host of the show, a loud goofy fucktard and his S+M masked (but otherwise nearly naked) assistant get to strip the girls themselves. Which to leads to several really silly scenes of the dude pulling off bras with fishing poles of blowing them off with an exploding balloon. Though he does whip the ass of the wife until she confesses her transgressions in one of the only genuinely hot scenes of the movie. The first lady to lose her clothes is the sexy Lawyer. Unfortunately one of the items she loses is her glasses which was one of the things that made her so damn sexy. But she spends most of the movie topless which is A-OK too. The girls realize they are playing for more than lost clothes and the occasional grope when the lawyer is killed for losing the game. Thus upping the stakes for all of them.
They all end up losing one by one until all of them have gotten naked and had a little show of some sort. Which leads to a high stakes final round with the other co-host, a Lolita looking nymph who cheats her way through the game. If you want to see naked Japanese girls, a little bit of kink and a lot of flat comedy you could do much much worse than this. It is an inconsequential little flick, but diverting enough for those who know what they like.
TRUE STORY OF A WOMAN IN JAIL CONTINUES
(1975) D. KOYU OHARA
SYNAPSE/ IMPULSE PICTURES
2.35
This sequel to Nikkatsu's TRUE STORY OF
A WOMAN IN JAIL is really just more of the same. Hijinks in a woman's
prison, with plenty of bare skin, some sex and a healthy dose of
unpleasant violence to keep things moving. And a really funky score
too.
The movie is structurally the same as
its predecessor. A group of young women enter the prison, emotionally
unprepared for the violence and struggle ahead of them. They are
immediately sexually abused by the other inmates. But lucky for them
MAYUMI is out of solitary confinement. Mayumi does not suffer fools
lightly and starts several extended fights to protect the young fish
in the tank. Soon we see there is more going on here than just
rehabilitation. A guard takes photos as the gang sexually assault the
fresh meat, a young girl wanted for shop lifting. These photos play a
large role in forcing her to be sold to the Yakuza and become a
prostitute. Meanwhile back inside the prison Mayumi has managed to
gain some respect and through flashbacks we learn that she killed a
man who raped her and her mother in a field. But will she go on a
killing spree again?
Like all the Nikkatsu films this is
exceedingly well made, it is no slouch of a production. But it feels
unfocused and messy sometimes as the narrative switches back to her
past and the sins Mayumi is responsible for. The whole rape
flashback feels awkward because we are not too sure the characters we
are seeing. Her mother and the guys make an appearance later in the
film though.
There is plenty to recommend though,
including a side plot about the transsexual inmate, or how the head
guard gets another girl pregnant, leading to a violent forced
miscarriage. There is a nude catfight in the baths that is sure to
put a smile on the face of any sleaze fan as well.
TRUE STORY OF A WOMAN IN JAIL CONTINUES
is worthwhile, but not groundbreaking like some of the other Nikkatsu
titles Synapse/Impulse has released so far. The movie gets in there
and is very functional, with sex scenes every five or ten minute,
punctuating that with violence. It is a fun movie but not the peak of
the Nikkatsu releases.
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.
TOKYO GORE POLICE (2008) D. YoshihiroNishimura Fever Dreams Ent. / Media Blasters 1.66
This is probably the goriest movie to come out since Peter Jackson stopped working in the splatter genre. I've heard people laud it's freaky grue splattered approach, deride it for being so over the top that they found it stupid, or even dismiss it entirely for being so outrageous that they found it boring. As one of my friends I watched this with said when it was over, "there was enough here for at least two or three movies!" And that my friends is no lie. In a lot of ways Tokyo Gore Police is the splatter film of the technologically impaired ADD generation with limbs flying, heads splitting, torsos erupting etc. every few minutes as to never allow the audience a chance to catch their breath, much less get bored. Blood literally splatters the camera lens so much that the lens cleaning mop boy should have gotten top billing.
But if this was all this movie had to offer it would have pretty much just kinda of sucked. I was one of the few who strongly disliked MACHINE GIRL on those grounds as it was all noise, thunder and spraying blood, with nothing underneath. That film was a teenage gore monger's version of what a Japanese gore film "should" be like. I was afraid this was going to be more of the same. But thankfully it is anything but.
The schizophrenic plot starts off with a young girl watching her policeman father being brutally killed while on duty guarding some officials. A man just walks up and shoots him in the head (causing an amazing, total head explosion that sets the mood for the film to come). Cut to present and we meet Ruka (EihiShiina) who witnessed this as a child. she is now an adult and working for the police force just like her dad. But unlike when she was a little girl, the police have changed drastically. They are now privately controlled and funded, no longer run by the state or Government. Ruka is what is called an "Engineer Hunter" because she hunts down a mutant strain of criminal called an Engineer" that has a tumor inside of them that causes any wounds on their body to morph into a new mutated body part. So say they have had fingers cut off. Then the tumor would cause those fingers to become new, super strong, snake like appendages. These Engineers are a new breed of super Criminals that are taking over the Tokyo underground. Ruka is one of the elite team who is able to stop them. she understands you have to cut the tumor in half to get the job done. But soon she will realize there is much, much more of a connection to her past, the engineers, the privatization of the police force and the murder of her father than she could ever dream of. And mucho blood will be shed along the way. And you will see sights you have never seen in a film. Guaranteed. Don't believe me? How about the fake commercials for a start. yes we've seen them in Paul Verhoven's work with ROBOCOP and STARSHIP TROOPERS, but here they take an even darker tone with pro suicide commercials, an anti-seppuku spot and a spot for "cute" razors for cutting yourself just like the Emo Kids in America! yay! Or what about the Mutant Engineers themselves? with each one suffering different injuries they all come back with stronger, weirder new body parts that would make David Cronenberg proud. Like the leader whose eyes have been replaced by small flesh cannons that shoot wads of tumors. Or the unfortunate fellow who had his dick bit off, so now it has grown back four feet long and works like a 44 magnum. Or my favorite the girl whose legs are now a giant alligator mouth who scoots across the floor biting the shit out of everyone she sees! Then there is the sidekick of the Chief of Police that I'm not even sure is a mutant, but just some unfortunate woman he has tortured himself. A quadruple amputee that he leads around on a lease like a dog, in full S+M gear including a gas mask, who in the final reel is armed with blades on all her stumps and sent in to fight. I also should say there is something mighty sexy about this limbless gal. I'll just leave it at that. Or that moment of moments where one dude visits a freak bar for fetishists where Engineers are the main course and sees a parade of Mutants ending with a female human chair(!) that pisses on the audience!
But even amongst the geysers (and I mean geysers) of blood and mutants, what makes this a good movie is that underneath all of this is a lot of meat for the brain to chew on. this is primarily a treatise on how privatization of any organization that serves the public interest is a terrible idea. How that will mutant into a situation controlled by lust and greed and ultimately destroy the very public it is supposed to serve. there are also several other through lines dealing with America's negative influence upon the Japanese culture going on as well. which is doubly interesting considering this was produced and financed by an American company.
Though over the top, and sometimes goofy, and certainly owing more than a nod to other films like THE EVIL DEAD, VIDEODROME and STARSHIP TROOPERS, this turned out to be a terrific little movie all its own and I highly recommend it to those looking for high octane splatter AND something with a brain to boot.
