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

Death and horror and cannibalism "All Night Long"

NIGHT OF DEATH aka La Nuit de la Mort (1980)

D. Rapheal Delpard

Synapse Films

1.66 Enhanced

This highly unusual French shocker is a lesuirly paced little weirdo of a movie. But give it a chance, it is sure to win you over by the end. Fans of Jean Rollin will find the aura of madness and sexual menace especially rewarding I would think.

Pretty Isabelle Goguey plays Martine, a young woman who is thrilled to find a job at a far away nursing home in the country. Seems the job market is just as shitty in France circa 1980 as it is here in the USA these days. Her older and slightly goofy boyfriend seems more than a bit happy to let her go away for months at a time to work. He probably doesn't mind the extra income and new found sense of freedom. Once there she immediately falls foul of the headmistress Helene, a classic domineering old bitch who runs the place with an iron fist. The old folks staying within all display the typical quirky manias one expects to see in this type of move, much to the chagrin of already on staff nurse Nichole (Charlotte De Terckheim) who is more happy just to have company hear he own age. But what neither of the girls know is that the old folks are blood thirsty cannibals under the wicked spell of the head mistress using their murders as blood rituals.

Also going on, quite randomly it seems is a black gloved, giallo styled murderer that mostly we just hear about peripherally in news papers or gossip. We see that the hospital groundskeeper is a loony and possibly he could be killing these girls by sticking a giant needle in their neck. Or maybe he is just one big red herring.

The scene where he freaks out is a highlight, as Martine watches him storm about his room, reliving some past transgression with a woman, all the while mimicking his murderous and lustful rage on a non-existent participant. The other scenes of the cannibalistic geriatrics stalking through the corridors hold a particular amount of nasty horror, that is surprisingly unsettling and nasty. Maybe it is the innate fear of getting older, maybe it is that the one guy looks like Martin Short when he hits sixty and drooling blood. But the scenes are nasty and uncomfortable. The blood ritual scenes are also pretty unpleasant and horrifying with a nasty sexual edge to make them that much more uneasy. In fact the entire proceedings have this air of sexual authenticity.

Overall NIGHT OF DEATH is a curious, and fairly shocking little number with a genuine ambiance of gruesome inequity that is rarely found in modern horror cinema. The Synapse DVD is typical of their output I.E extremely well done. No extras to speak of unfortunately, but the transfer itself, and the queasy nature of the movie, should be enough for you to make an informed buying decision. Check it out.

Review © Andrew Copp