Hentai byôtô: SM shinryo-shitsu (1989)

... aka: 変態病棟 ＳＭ診療室

... aka: Pervert Ward: S&M Clinic

Directed by:

Hisayasu Satô

Watching every genre film from a certain time period is occasionally going to take you down some pretty dark alleys, and director Hisayasu Satô's particular alley is darker than most. Meaning, this disturbing, discomforting and psychologically heavy shocker, which is violent, sexually explicit (though not quite pornographic due to Japanese censorship laws) and filled with truly bizarre kinks and fetishes, is unlikely to appeal to many viewers out there.

"Psychological counselor" Dr. Yasukazu Mizumura (Kazuhiro Sano) puts his patients through bizarre "therapy" that involves making them listen to experimental, discordant "alpha wave" music and sounds while staring at their reflections in a mirror and having conversations with themselves. He also secretly records these sessions to both analyze and get off to later. His wife, Ryoko (Kiyomi Itô), is starting to get sick of his demented ways, particular his insistence on her participating in rough, kinky sex ("Isn't that what a wife is for, huh?") He has a particularly strange fetish for fresh fruit, which he likes to chew up and spit in her face before taping an apple core over her mouth (?) while he chains her up and abuses her. Their sex usually involves such erotic acts as slapping, strangulation, snapping rubber bands on her back, eyeball licking (!) and violently jabbing her privates with a sharp instrument (!!) However, Ryoko didn't sign up for any of this when she married covert sadist Yasukazu and was only indulging him for the sake of their marriage. Now fed up, she finally builds up the courage to leave him.

Exactly a week after Ryoko disappears, a woman who looks exactly like her and calling herself Kei Shirakawa (also played by Itô) shows up at the psychiatrist's clinic looking for insight into some strange dreams she's been having. Since Ryoko made mention of having an identical twin sister who'd been adopted out as an infant and is still out there somewhere, Rei may be her or may be a mentally-disturbed / schizophrenic or vengeance-seeking Ryoko back to play some kind of sadistic game. Dr. Mizumura isn't entirely sure himself. Because her handwriting is different, she's a nymphomaniac (propositioning him a mere minute after they first meet) and has a taste for sadomasochism (she stabs her own hand with a pen during their first meeting), he suspects it may be the twin but decides to go along with her either way.

Kei is quickly able to seduce the doctor right on the patient's couch during a sex session that involves snapping bra straps, giving her a wedgie, ass smacking, sodomizing her with her high heel shoe and, apparently doc's favorite activity, jabbing her in the crotch with a pen. Afterward, he's not willing to let the girl go home and instead chloroforms her and makes her his sexual slave. He gives her an injection of some experimental hallucinogenic drug, dresses her in some kinky, spiked leather outfit, ties her to a bed, has her mouth pried open with some kind of contraption, squirts grapefruit juice all over her and then does his patented pen routine again. Later torture involves being threatened with eye gouging and being wrapped in plastic and repeatedly dunked in a bathtub.

Kei reveals that she and her sister were once conjoined twins until they were separated and now she gets turned on any time she's near a scalpel. In fact, before she met this doctor, she regularly used to masturbate with one (!) Her ultimate goal turns out to be having the doctor ejaculate inside of her so she can become pregnant with Siamese twins. This would double the whammy as far as her scalpel fetish is concerned because she'd have to be cut open with one during the C-section and then her offspring would also have to be separated via scalpel. Additional revelations are made about the psychiatrist and a traumatic occurrence from his youth.

So what does it all mean? I'm not entirely sure, but there's a lot of interesting stuff to ponder in this 55-minute film. One thing that automatically leaps out at us is the near-constant use of various reflections; reflections in glass, reflections in mirrors, characters seeing their reflections on screens, watching themselves have sex in mirrors and looking themselves right in the eyes as they unload their secret desires. Sometimes self-reflections are distorted as if seen through a funhouse mirror, there are POV shots from inside mirrors and TV screens and, at one point, the female lead has a mirrored box slipped over her head, forcing her to stare at a fractured version of her own face as she's being tortured.

Childhood trauma suffered by both the doctor and the twin have been the primary driving force in shaping their twisted adult sexual fantasies. The lengthy sex / torture scenes are going to cause more discomfort than arousal for most viewers and the settings are all cold, lonely, orderly and isolating; like everything is taking place in some kind of endless black void. Though this isn't always easy to sit through - I'd even say it's sometimes downright grueling to sit through - it's still pretty fascinating, with convincing performances (particularly from the female lead) and strong, stylish and compelling visuals and direction from Satô on what was obviously a tiny budget.

I was unable to track down any legitimate DVD or VHS release for this title, though at one time it was streamable on the now defunct pinkueiga.com website. That same widescreen copy is also probably the source copy for the DVD-R a few bootleg outlets currently carry.

★★★

Uma to onna to inu (1990)

... aka: 馬と女と犬

... aka: 馬と犬と貴婦人

... aka: Animal Fucking

... aka: Horses, Dogs and Ladies

... aka: Horse, Woman and Dog

... aka: Mitsuryo no Migiwa

... aka: Poaching by the Water's Edge

... aka: Ruff Sex

... aka: Uma to inu to kifujin

... aka: Uma to onna to inu: Chô-abunômaru 'sanjûku'

Directed by:

Hisayasu Satô

"Everyone just leaves me with nightmares."

The sadistic "Queen" (Emi Uehara) of (we're to assume) an otherwise unpopulated beach has an interesting way of dealing with young female trespassers who sometimes end up there: She either kills them or degrades and sexually abuses to the point where they just kill themselves. Along with her two male goons (Takahiko Kobayashi and Tatsuya Takahashi), the latest victim (Yuri Sasaki) is whipped with a riding crop, smeared with cake and then raped by all four. Oh, I only mentioned three? Well, that's because the Queen then brings in her pet pooch to join in on the festivities. Afterward, the girl wanders into the ocean and drowns herself. Living nearby is a lonely, mentally-disturbed photographer named Ryo (Kazuhiro Sano) who lives in a shack on the beach, photographs then engages in necrophilia with any female corpse he happens to stumble across and is also occasionally used as a submissive sex slave by the Queen, who forces him to join her and her men in group sex.

The next "trespasser" is a nameless young woman (Kanako Kishi) who miraculously washes up on the beach with no memory of who she is, where she came from or how she got there, only a vague suspicion she's somehow connected to the area. Despite her amnesia and the fact she appears to pose them no real threat, the Queen and her men bury her in the sand up to her neck, put duct tape over her mouth and then leave her for dead; hoping the tide will just take care of her. However, she's rescued by the photographer and taken back to his shack.

The jealous Queen hates all women, which seems to stem from a traumatic childhood incident involving her siblings. She claims her sister attempted to push her off a boat, accidentally fell in herself and drowned but it's much more likely she just murdered her as there's also mention of a brother who also died under mysterious circumstances. When she discovers that the amnesiac wasn't killed and Ryo plots to run away with her (after he sucks her toes and the two have sex on an inflatable raft), she arranges to torture and kill them, which culminates in having her men hold the girl down and letting her horse rape her (!!) There's also some last minute revenge and a couple of silly plot twists thrown out at the finale.

The film's true trump card in cult circles is, of course, the fact it contains several amazingly unpleasant and graphic bestiality scenes. Thankfully (at least for this viewer) all of the more extreme shots have been pixelated out, though what's shown is more than enough to give you a good idea of what's going on. However, despite the novelty of containing such scenes and the director's eye for nicely-composed shots (changing the setting from his usual urban hell environment also makes for a nice change of pace), this is less interesting, thought-provoking and entertaining than any of Satô's other films I've seen. For a director who's already proven he can be arty, substantive, exploitative, surprising and subversive all at once, this comparably emptier attempt at surface-level shock just doesn't feel like enough.

The plot isn't very engaging and so paper-thin it can't even sustain just 58 minutes, narrative drive is sorely lacking and even seemingly-outrageous characters like the dominatrix and necro somehow come off as flat, though knowing this director that very well could have been intentional. There's also a bit of technical sloppiness that comes to the forefront at times. We're supposed to believe this is a remote and mostly unpopulated stretch of beach where characters feel trapped yet we then see the goons having a drink on the balcony at night, where you can clearly see headlights from cars on a busy stretch of highway right behind them.

Filmed under the ambiguous title Mitsuryo no Migiwa ("Poaching by the Water's Edge"), theatrical distributor Shintoho opted to change the name to Uma to onna to inu ("Horse, Woman and Dog") to highlight the animal scenes. That ended up working brilliantly as the film became one of the director's biggest financial successes, one of the most profitable pink films of its time and one of the most profitable films in Shintoho's history. The studio then immediately bankrolled a second bestiality-themed film for Satô: Umagoya no reijô (1991), which has been given a number of English-language titles like Lady of the Stable, Wave and (clearly the best of the three) Neigh Means Yes.

While not difficult at all to find online nowadays if you know where to look, this was never officially released outside of Japan to my knowledge. There, it received a VHS release in 1999 (which gives the English-language title of "Animal Fucking"!) plus was available to stream on pinku specialty sites.

★★