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.

★★★

Hard focus: Nusumi-giki (1988)

... aka: ハードフォーカス 盗聴

... aka: ハードフォーカス 盗聴＜ぬすみぎき＞

... aka: Hard Focus

... aka: Hard Focus 盗聴

... aka: Hard Focus: Eavesdropping

... aka: Shitsurakuen sokuryô chizu

... aka: Survey Map of a Paradise Lost

Directed by:

Hisayasu Satô

Reporter Satoshi Nukada (Tôru Nakane) likes to become really immersed in his various stories. Not just content with documenting them, or living vicariously through them, he also wants to participate in them, and walk in the shoes of the people who populate the articles he writes. But his editor warns, "If we tried everything we wrote about, we'd be in prison by now!" Nevertheless, Nukada is planning on applying this same technique to his new assignment: An expose on telephone sex clubs. Nukada heads to the Banana Club, which looks like any other boring office building with workers doing their thing in their drab individual rooms with lettered doors. The phone service enables members to connect with like-minded individuals interested in anonymous (and sometimes paid-for) sex. The journalist immediately meets his connection, a strange 17-year-old private school student named Midori Hoshikawa (Rio Yanagawa), who works there part time filling in for other girls. When Nukada tries to take her out to dinner so he can interview her, a red sports car pulls out in front of them. Out steps club member Norio Kihara (Kazuhiro Sano), who claims he's already reserved a date with Midori. He takes her and then drives off.

Kihara turns out to be a computer programmer whose dull job has led him to seek excitement elsewhere; namely hacking into the phone sex service and engaging in a very active, very violent and very kinky sex life. He and his pill-addicted wife (Kiyomi Itô) already enjoy sex that includes tying her up with cables, pinching her nipples with power cords, electro-shocking her tits and privates with live wires and slicing her ear open with a knife and licking the blood. But, ya know, no harm no foul there because his wife happens to be really into it. Still, her willingness to go that extra mile to please him (including also making amateur porn tapes with him) isn't quite enough, so he seeks out other females.

Midori is one of those ladies. After he takes her to a "love hotel," she warns him that she's on her period, to which he replies that's precisely why he wants to have sex with her: "I want to taste your blood!" While I won't go into graphic detail about what occurs after, I will say that he most definitely gets his wish. Not that Midori is completely opposed to that. She's more than a little bit screwed up herself.

Midori is obsessed with the real-life 1986 suicide of pop star / actress Yukiko Okada. After winning a televised singing competition, Okada went on to appear on popular TV shows and had #1 hit singles when, at just 18 years old and at the height of her popularity, she decided to end it all by jumping from the top of a seven-story building to her death. Her suicide shook Japan and her heavily-publicized death led to a ripple effect of similar suicides in the country. Midori claims she witnessed the suicide and saw Yukiko's bloody corpse afterward, concluding that "It was so sexy." She then confesses that her most erotic dreams involve fantasizing about falling to her death and hitting her head on the concrete.

Kihara is found dead in a hotel bathroom and Midori is also found at the scene of the crime rattled and injured, though still fine. Rumor gets back to Nukada that Kihara may have been videotaping the tryst prior to getting killed and said video may contain evidence of what really occurred there. When she isn't writhing around suffering from drug withdrawal skin creeps, Kihara's always-scratching wife refuses to talk to him. Once Midori is released from the hospital, the reporter finds himself becoming immersed in both a murder plot and some, uh, other bizarre stuff.

This, like most of Satô's other stuff, is a notch above most other erotic films. Not only is it well-made but it's also interested in the darker aspects, psychology and emotion behind sex as opposed to merely showing the sex acts themselves. It's interesting and thoughtful at times, exploitative and base at others, a little surreal and even a little frustrating. And, while it's less sexually graphic than hardcore porn, it's more sexually graphic than most American and European soft-core. The emphasis is still on BDSM scenarios, both consensual and not-so consensual, and the expected themes from this director are all present and accounted for. Expect lots of lonely, miserable lost souls shuffling through their empty existence of urban isolation in a futile, desperate attempt to force some kind of feeling into their lives... even if that feeling is only one of physical pain. All capped off with a major WTF ending.

Very few of the director's titles ever made it to the U. S. or Europe during the video area, likely because there really wasn't a place for them in most video stores. While they were far too graphic to put in the general rental sections, they weren't quite graphic enough for the backroom adult sections or bookstores either and thus fell into this impossible-to-market void. As a result, this one wasn't officially released until the 2006 DVD from Arts Magic Ltd.

★★1/2