Bishimai nikudorei (1986)

... aka: 美姉妹肉奴隷

... aka: Beautiful Sisters: Flesh Slaves

Directed by:

Katsuhiko Fujii

Was there a Japanese movie from the 70s or 80s that didn't paint sex in nasty, negative light? Now it may be because I watch so many horror and suspense movies, but the vast majority of Japanese erotic films I've seen from this era focus specifically on the darker sides of sex and relationships. Perhaps it's a cultural thing; a primal scream from more open-minded individuals trapped in a somewhat sexually conservative environment. In a way, it's actually refreshing. A lot of sex films tend to be ridiculous and unrealistic; the best way to ruin a fantasy is to introduce some reality into the equation, eh? Female critics have often pointed out that "sexually liberated" women depicted in more "sex positive" erotica are anything but. They aren't liberated so much as they're just not very discerning about who they'll have sex with. That's because men made the vast majority of these films and that's probably how many would prefer it. They'd love for every beautiful young woman to happily give themselves freely to any and every sod who shows them the least bit of interest.

What stands out about many of these darker Japanese movies is the melancholy undercurrent running through them. The characters usually want healthy sex lives, and love, but somehow society seems to always prevent it. The air of shame and repression is often heavy, with characters in such need of release that the men are reduced to sexually ravenous "beasts" who take what they want and the women have to try to avoid them, accept them or even, as is the case with one character here, somehow learn to enjoy it.

Films like this are often written off as sexist fantasies, but it should also be pointed out that the men are consistently portrayed as complete scumbags while the women are usually shown in a much more sympathetic light as victims of the uncontrollable male libido. It should also be noted that the men almost always doom themselves with their terrible behavior while the women are usually able to turn the tables, get revenge, evolve and move into a dominant position by the end. To some viewers, that may not justify watching over an hour of them being roughed up and sexually assaulted to get to that point. Trust me, I completely understand!

Reiko Yumioka (Rei Akasaka) has recently graduated from dentistry school and just moved into a new highrise office space with enough room for both her clinic and a small apartment. She's hired her younger sister Kyôko (Megumi Kiyosato) to work as the receptionist. The two women just finish up with a female client when a man - Ryôhei Taki (Isao Nonaka) - shows up claiming to have a toothache. With just the two ladies and him in the office / apartment, he pulls out a knife and makes the two women lock the door and put a closed sign out front. He then drags them back to a bedroom and demands "Strip!"

When Kyôko refuses and tries to run out, he slices her arm, rips her clothes off and then rubs his blade all over her breasts and crotch, scaring the girl so bad she urinates herself. Big sis offers up her own body in exchange for sparing her sister. Kyôko makes it to the bathroom and locks herself inside as the intruder has her sister strip and lie down on the bed. He feels her up and sticks his finger in her mouth, questioning why she isn't aroused (gee I wonder) and then demands she make him some instant ramen.

Before all is said and done, both of the sisters are raped and beaten multiple times. At first terrified, the more reserved and inexperienced Kyôko starts suffering from Stockholm Syndrome and begins craving sex from her attacker. Like a beaten dog, the shittier he treats her, the more she comes crawling back, craving what he has to offer. She also turns against her sister and becomes jealous whenever he decides to rape her instead! Things are much more complicated for Reiko, however. For starters, she's not into men and has a female lover, Mari Tazaki (Kiriko Shimizu) she regularly sees but hasn't yet committed to.

Making Reiko the centerpiece of the film is what ends up lifting this somewhat above the norm. She's having a hard time getting her business going and one gets the impression that has a lot to do with her being a woman. Her former professor, Yoshiaki Masaki (Kazuyuki Senba), is willing to help her financially stay afloat while she's building her practice, but only if she'll have sex with him once a week to "earn" the money. The fact Reiko is a lesbian is yet another tool used by men to try to keep her in her place. Taki even handpicked her establishment specifically because he found out she was a lesbian; assuming she wouldn't go to the police because he could out her and ruin her business / future. He constantly makes digs at her about her sexuality, claiming "I can't trust a lesbian!" and threatening "I'd enjoy killing a lesbian like you!" and even gets her own sister to start mocking her for being a "pervert" and making ridiculous declarations like "I want to be loved by a man!" to make it clear she isn't anything like her sister.

The sad part of the story is that it doesn't even matter that Reiko is a capable, educated, hard-working career woman who simply wants to make a good life for herself and her sister. She's still forced to debase herself and compromise both her pride and her sexuality to make it in a man's world, as well as deal with the constant threat of being ostracized by society if her secret gets out. That leaves the door wide open for an sleazy opportunist, sex predator and criminal (who's revealed to be on the lam for stealing money from his prior job) to exploit her.

What usually holds movies like this back somewhat is the fact it IS a sex film first and foremost and that's the primary objective. It's almost non-stop sex and rape from beginning to end. Nearly all of the uncomfortable encounters start out forcefully or under coercion, but then the women appear to eventually "get into it" and start acting like they're enjoying it. While that completely fits the Kyôko character, it's somewhat of a betrayal when it comes to Reiko, though the fact she's willing to engage in the first place does make sense. Interestingly, the only sex act with fully consenting partners found in the entire film is the brief girl-girl scene between Reiko and her lover at the very beginning. The resolution to the story is interesting and somewhat amusing.

The people who made this could have been content filming "The Erotic Adventures of a Hot Female Dentist and Her Sexy Sister" and had two "sexually liberated" women happily entertaining clientele and be done with it, but they didn't, and I respect that even if the results are mixed. At least they were shooting for something more.

This is part of a loose "Beautiful Sisters" series, though the entries have nothing to do with one another story-wise. Others are Beautiful Sisters: Seduced! (1982), Beautiful Sisters: Strip! (1985; also featuring Akasaka) and Beautiful Sisters: Panting! (1987; also featuring Kiyosato). The director had a long and prolific pink movie career stretching back to the early 70s and includes over 50 titles, so I'm probably not done with him just yet.

★★1/2

Taiji ga mitsuryô suru toki (1966)

... aka: 胎児が密猟する時

... aka: Embrio lovi u tajnosti

... aka: Embrione

... aka: Embryo

... aka: Embryo Hunts in Secret, The

... aka: Quand l'embryon part braconner (When the Embryo Leaves to Hunt)

Directed by:

Kôji Wakamatsu

After having distribution and censorship issues with one of his previous films despite it successfully playing at the Berlin International Film Festival, Wakamatsu moved on from Nikkatsu Studios to form his own independent production company (Wakamatsu Production). This was their first release and it's considered one of the precursors to the popular pink film movement (sex-and-violence exploitation films, though typically with an artistic bent) that would make a big impact in Japanese cinemas the following decade.

It's a dark and stormy night as wealthy department store manager Marukido (Hatsuo Yamaya) and Yuka (Miharu Shima), an employee at one of his stores, get hot and heavy in the back seat of his car. She insists they go somewhere else, so he takes her into a building and carries her up the stairs to an apartment. The naïve and inebriated Yuka doesn't seem to notice (or care about) the huge amount of red flags telling her she may be in danger. For starters, the apartment they go into is clearly seldom used and is nearly devoid of all furnishings. When asked about it, he claims it's a spare apartment that he never spends any time in. So why would he take her there instead of his more comfortable primary home? Second, his behavior right from the start is extremely odd. He stares at her intently and lurks in the shadows as if sizing her up; comparing her to something or someone else. And then, while the two are in bed together, he starts getting so rough she has to repeatedly ask him to stop. As for his pillow talk techniques, demanding to know how many men your prospective lover has slept with prior and not taking "I can't remember" as an answer probably isn't going to be getting anybody in the mood.

You may be wondering how Yuka ended up in this situation to begin with. She doesn't really know the first thing about Marukido. And he doesn't even know her name until they're inside the apartment. It basically boils down to Marukido being an almost mythical figure at her place of employment. He's handsome, well-dressed, rich, mysterious and single, and a frequent topic of conversation between his curious female employees. Yuka was drunk and the opportunity arose so, well, why not? However, unbeknownst to her, Marukido's has other plans for her. She's the spitting image of another woman from his past, a woman he carries a lot of resentment toward. And now that he has a hate surrogate in a vulnerable position, why not vicariously take it all out on her?

Eventually holding her captive, Marukido subjects Yuka to one torture and indignity after another. After slipping her a sleeping pill, he ties her up and lashes her with the "whip of love from God almighty" that he claims will "bring together your flesh and soul." After whipping her bloody, he screams "Women like you make me sick!", calls her "filthy" and "a cheap whore," compares her to a "stinking dog" and belittles her for merely being a lowly clerk.

He withholds food and water as punishment, threatens to shave her head and rip out her fingernails, slices her with a razor, repeatedly dunks her head underwater in a bathtub, terrorizes her with a lit candle and forces her to walk around on all fours and drink from a bowl like a dog. All the while, he insists he doesn't plan on killing her. He merely wants to "train" her so she can break her of her pride and help her regain her "shining purity" so that he can marry her. However, Yuka is more resilient than he anticipated.

Frequent flashbacks to Marukido's previous marriage are used to explain his psychological issues. Viewing the world as being full of hellish suffering, he never wanted to bring a child into it and got a vasectomy, but his wife mysteriously ended up pregnant anyway. Initially believing she'd had an affair, he whipped and tortured her to try to find out the identity of the father, only to learn she went to a doctor behind his back and got artificially inseminated. At least that's what she claimed. Ignoring his pleas for her to get an abortion, she then attempted to leave him to raise the baby on her own. Though it's never shown what happened to the wife, we're led to assume Marukido murdered her at some point. He now keeps a "mortuary mask" / mold of her face, supposedly taken from her corpse, in a chest in the closet along with his whip, rope and other toys.

We're also given another major character insights, namely that Marukido's mother committed suicide after a nervous breakdown and hung herself in the stairwell of the families store. Though it is again left somewhat vague, it's mentioned that she perhaps killed herself due to guilt over an incestuous relationship she was having with her son. All of this has led Marukido to become impotent.

73 minutes of nonstop torture, screaming, whimpering and agony are clearly not going to appeal to all viewers out there (it's not really my cup of tea either), but this has to be recognized for being well-made on a low budget regardless. One can certainly try to pluck a deeper meaning out of the proceedings (the mother fixation / safety of the womb connotations alone should keep you busy), but the target audience is clearly those into bondage and sadomasochism. The female lead is naked and tied up in a variety of rope configs for nearly the entire duration, and the primary emphasis is on "breaking" her into complete subservience. I've seen some viewers describe this as misogynistic and others describe it as feminist (tables are eventually turned), but I personally didn't see it as being either.

Even if you're not into BDSM, if you can approach this as an exercise in style, it does have visual rewards. There's effectively bleak / claustrophobic atmosphere (nearly the entire film takes place inside a dimly-lit apartment), stylish lighting and black-and-white photography and the occasional interesting directorial or editing touch (white light flooding the screen to signal the flashbacks, a few double exposure hallucinations...) to help cut through the repetitive nature of the plot. The lead actors aren't bad either.

This was given a theatrical release in Japan and some European countries like Belgium and France and was also occasionally screened at film festivals. I'm not aware of any U.S. release. Screen Anarchy put it out on a 4 disc set called Kôji Wakamatsu: Volume 1, which also included the same director's films Secrets Behind the Wall (1965), the Richard Speck-inspired VIOLATED ANGELS (1967) and Go, Go Second Time Virgin (1969). The set only includes French subtitles but English supplemental titles are available for download.

★★1/2