Your Sex Is On Fire: The Latest Nikkatsu DVD from Impulse Pictures...

ZOOM IN: SEX APARTMENTS (1980)
D. Naosuke Kurosawa
Impulse Pictures
2.35-1 / 16 X 9 Anamorphic

“Let's fuck in the fire and spread all the ashes around” - Sunspots – Nine Inch Nails

The line from that song is what sprang to mind when this movie is over, and you will see why once you will watch it. A surrealistic pyromantic horror as only Japan can deliver. A giallo hiding in the guise of a Roman Porno film. Like many of the other films in this amazing collection, completely surprising and far better than you would ever expect, from any angle on the material.

The twisted plot follows a bored housewife named Saeko who once her decent, but boring Husband leaves on a business trip is off to meet her long time lover. On her way to meet him, while riding her bicycle, she is assaulted in an abandoned lot and raped by a black gloved, long coat wearing man, brandishing an ice pick-like weapon. - An aside here, this has got to be the second or third movie of this type where I've noticed women being raped while riding bicycles. And in fields or abandoned lots. Just an odd thing I noticed about these films. – She goes on to meet her lover, who is a pretty odd guy himself. Later that night a young girl is assaulted in the part by his home, her vagina stuffed with gas soaked rags and set on fire.

We learn her lover is a piano repair man and carries an assortment of tools, several of which look exactly like the one the rapist carried. More girls get assaulted and burned to a crisp including one that Saeko walks in on while burning. This poor girl is one the killer has broken out her teeth, before setter her alight with a blow torch. Later He attempts to stuff the body of a victim into an industrial garbage disposal in an abandoned, half built apartment complex with the local mentally challenged teen girl watching him. She gets so turned on by what she sees, she eats the garbage out of a bag while masturbating. 

Then things get really weird, with some double crossing, mistaken identity, more people getting burned up, and lots and lots of explicit sex, including a lesbian scissor sex scene that evolves into a threesome that I found particularly hot.

Unlike several of the other films released so for in the Impulse Pictures NIKKATSU line, this film takes a very different approach to the Roman Porno material by being an straight thriller first and foremost. Visually and structurally this owes more than a debt of gratitude to the films of Dario Argento. Imagine if DEEP RED had been a sex film. The film has all the trappings of a classic Giallo, the black gloved killer, the convoluted plot, the classic score. It is all here. But what sets this apart is the Roman Porno trappings, setting the Giallo set pieces in the Roman Porno world of S+M and rape fantasies. Especially with this film the heavy touches of poeticism and surrealism. The final ten or so minutes of this film dips completely out of reality and into the land of surrealism and loaded imagery. In doing so the film goes from being a well made, interesting, sexy thriller, to being an artistic triumph. Something altogether more interesting.

The imagery of fire being an all consuming sexual passion, something you can either give into or be destroyed by, make the film truly unique, even in the cannon of this type of film. Several shots towards the end are quite beautiful including our lead masturbating furiously and where ever her wetness hits the ground catches fire, or another shot of a nude woman who has fallen to her death and her vagina shoots flames like her soul is escaping. Or the final coda of the film, which has to be seen to fully appreciate. 

I don't know if this is my favorite of the Nikkatsu collection so far, because I really liked DEBAUCHERY simply because it was so freaking filthy and well done. But this is probably the best made so far, with the best plot and imagery. But I would say this is really one you should take a look at, Even if you are not into sex films. This one transcends the label. 

Review © Andrew Copp

Welcome to SEX HELL!

TRUE STORY OF A WOMAN IN JAIL: SEX HELL (1975)
D. Koyu Ohura

Impulse Pictures/ Synapse

This is the second release in the Impulse Pictures line of Nikkatsu Romano Porno releases after the intense and outrageous DEBAUCHERY. This one is not as outright bugfuck crazy as that one, but still manages to climb some heights of sexuality that are unseen in American product, so it will hit the spot for sleaze fans. But what SEX HELL does indeed offer is a more complex story, and richer characters than the standard fair, making it the odd film out in the Women in Prison genre.

The film takes its ques from the FEMALE PRISONER SCORPION films that were popular at the time in Japan (and I believe also being made at Nikkatsu) where a tough, unbreakable women enters a woman's prison and all hell breaks loose with lots of action ensuing. Here we have a similar story, where a quiet, unshakable woman entering with a group of new criminals into a all female prison, only to soon clash with the gritty already established criminal hierarchy there. In a very early scene (after of course a nude cavity search and the obligatory showers) there is a topless fight and our lead gal is held down and has her face pissed on to show she has been dominated. I can't recall having ever seen that in any other WIP movie from any other country! Another girl is put into solitary confinement for days on end as her toilet backs up and we clearly see her shit all over  the room.These are the kinds of boundaries being pushed here.

The first half of the movie is where the majority of the sex happens, we get some of the the expected lesbian romps, with lots of nipple close ups filling the screen, and a few flashbacks to give us some hetero couplings as well. But about the middle of the movie it shifts gears and we start getting flashbacks to why the girls are actually in the prison. The movie starts to become rather tragic, as we learn the most of them are victims of circumstance. Men have fucked them over, used them and abused them, letting them take the fall. By the third act it becomes a women on the run/revenge pic with the sex taking a back seat completely, and a pretty satisfying little revenge picture at that. 

SEX HELL is a great example of why the Nikkatsu Romano Porno films were successful. They took formula ideas such as the Women In Prison pictures and infused them with the over the top sexuality the studio was known for, but then went way out of the way to make sure they delivered as films too. They delivered characters you could care about, with performers that could carry those characters (even though SEX HELL has no real name stars from the Nikkatsu stable) and in this case threw in a hefty dose of crime action as well. These movies are just trying to make you love them, and most of the time if you aren't easily offended (and why would you buy this title if you are) you WILL fall for their charms.

Review © Andrew Copp