Torment (1990)

... aka: Rozdarcie

Directed by:

Michael J. Murphy

Anna Bell (Debbi Stevens) is a controversial, obscenely-wealthy hot blonde pop singer in the Samantha Fox mold, as well as a tabloid fixture. Hounded by the press who obsess over her every move (and a recent breakup she's had with a high-profile actor), Anna has decided to take it easy for awhile in a large country home she purchased three years earlier but, as of yet, hasn't had the opportunity to stay in. That's how busy she's been. Her big-haired manager Mike (Philip Lyndon) keeps trying to convince her to come back to London to record, but Anna refuses the offer. The singer, already on the verge of a nervous breakdown and stressed to the breaking point, needs some peace and quiet to recuperate. She also has a bit of problem with pills and booze she's hoping to kick. Besides, nothing's stopping her from continuing to write songs right where she is. Anna doubles down on staying even after discovering that a girl in the nearby village has just been found strangled to death. Having to go back to London, Mike makes her promise to keep her doors locked and tells her he plans on sending her some company... whether she likes it or not.

One day there's a knock on Anna's door. It's a friendly and boyish-looking young man named Mathew (Rob Bartlett). A handyman, he gives her his card and offers to fix her damaged fence. She reluctantly agrees, so long as he doesn't bother her while she's trying to work. While he's there, she realizes that having him around may not be such a bad thing. Besides, there's a huge amount of work to do. She gives him a list and Mathew becomes a frequent presence around the home.

With Mike putting pressure on her to continue writing songs and Anna lacking the inspiration to do so, she finds herself being drawn to plain, simple-minded, breath-of-fresh-air Mathew and his ordinary, leisurely life. The two start spending time together, he agrees to show her some of the area's beautiful scenery and the two are soon finding themselves having romantic feelings for one another. But the party is crashed by the arrival of Anna's choreographer Guy (Patrick Olliver), who's been sent there by Mike to keep an eye on her. Guy is a flamboyant "queen" and not in that nice / funny kind of way but in the bitchy / asshole-ish kind of way. He also wears a ridiculous wig.

After Guy runs Mathew off, he returns home and jerks off to one of Anna's music videos. He then burns all of the posters and photos of her he has plastered all over his walls. You could say he's a bit of a fan. Or was. To make matter worse, Anna's sister Fiona (Catherine Rowlands) shows up for an extended visit and the two sisters don't get along well. The stress causes Anna to fall right back off the horse. Sensing her unwanted guests are getting to her and have always been the source of her problems, which isn't entirely inaccurate because both Mike and Fiona have been living off Anna's back (the manager also keeps plying her with the pills), Mathew decides to help her out. And by help her out, I mean murdering everyone around her.

After an embarrassing dinner party where a drunk Anna makes a fool of herself and Fiona and Guy both let her new amour know he's not welcome there, Mathew stabs Guy to death in the kitchen. He hides the body, burns his belongings and makes it look like he snuck out in the middle of the night. However, a suspicious Fiona finds him with one of Guy's handkerchiefs and the two sisters make a run for it. At the police station they discover it is indeed Mathew who's suspected of strangling that local girl. Apparently she made the terrible offense of singing one of Anna's songs (gulp!) off-key and then bad-mouthing her, so she had to go.

The manager shows back up and concocts a lie that the police have apprehended Mathew just so he can stage a comeback concert for Anna at a small local venue. During the concert, Anna spots Mathew in the crowd and then her actor ex-boyfriend Craig (Alan Jansen) is found slashed to death in a stairwell. Anna and Fiona return to the home to pack their belongings, with plans of immediately heading to London. Mathew kills a cop, kills Fiona and then plans to pick up just where he and Anna left off, "just like a young married couple." But Anna, who has since pretty much gone completely insane, has other ideas in store for him. She cracks a bottle over his head, puts on a disguise, goes to a hardware store and returns with a goody bag of stuff to torture him with.

The booze-soaked "revenge" conducted by Anna starts with her tying him to a chair and belittling him. She then refuses Mathew food and water whilst gorging herself right in front of him to rub it in. When he pisses himself, she rips his clothes off with a knife and throws him into a scalding hot shower. She also dresses sexy and gives him a lap dance (?!) and ends up killing somebody and burning their body in the front yard while smoking a cigarette and wearing fishnet stockings. I must admit seeing a butt ass naked guy being tortured for twenty minutes did make for a nice change of pace since almost always a woman placed in that same scenario.

Despite being ineptly edited and shot half the time (some of the awkward dialogue scenes are also pretty painful to sit through), this isn't completely worthless. Things begin strongly as it establishes the attraction between, and then the early relationship of, the singer and the she-doesn't-know-it-yet obsessed fan. Unfortunately, that's the first 20 or so minutes and this then resorts to filler to pad out the mid-section. We get two (very cheap-looking) Anna music videos plus two songs performed almost in their entirely at an Anna concert, with her writhing around on stage in a red, skin-tight latex dress. Stevens does her own singing and is the most entertaining cast member by far. It's mostly the annoying supporting characters who drag this down a bit, though I guess they needed a certain number of unsympathetic victims to kill off. The last 20 minutes are pretty silly, but not boring.

There are some bloody death scenes, lots of Italian-style light-shining-off-blade shots, plus enough nudity and sex to put this in the "erotic thriller" category, though it predates the huge spate of DTV erotic films that went on to dominate late night cable in the 90s and 2000s by a few years. Shot on 16mm, this was virtually unseen during the video boom era. The only VHS release I was able to find was a Polish one under the title Rozdarcie. In 2004, it was shown on the Horror Channel out of the UK and, in 2010, it was released on DVD-R by IFM World Releasing. Still, this is seldom-seen and, as of this writing, only has 22 votes on IMDb.

★★

Yumeno Kyûsaku no shôjo jigoku (1977)

... aka: 夢野久作の少女地獄

... aka: 火星の女

... aka: Girl Hell

... aka: Kasei no on'na

... aka: Raging Hell Fires

... aka: Teenage Girl Hell

... aka: Woman from Mars, The

... aka: Yumeno Kyusaku's Girl Hell

Directed by:

Masaru Konuma

Aiko Tonomiya (Yûko Asuka) is the teenage daughter of a respected school inspector / former general named Tadazumi (Eimei Esumi) and from a background of wealth and privilege. She's polite, skilled at playing piano and excels at her all girl's private school; held up as a perfect example of what a proper young lady and model student should be like by the staff and one that other students should look up to and try to emulate. However, it's all really just a façade. Aiko's home life is anything but happy. Her mother, Tomiko (Makiko Kishimoto), is miserable, sickly, bedridden and suicidal. Her sadistic father has absolutely no regard for his ailing wife's feelings, torments and abuses her and often brings geishas over to have loud drunken sex with right in the home; promising the uneasy sex workers that the sounds of his daughter's piano playing will cover up the noise. Part of the tensions are due to the fact Aiko's father may not actually be her father. In fact, he's certain that's the case. However, Aiko's mother refuses to divulge the true identity of the man.

Utae Amakawa (Asami Ogawa) is about the polar opposite of Aiko. She's unpopular, viewed as a weirdo and has been nicknamed "Mrs. Mars" by the others because she doesn't quite fit in. Utae comes from more humble means and her parents worry that no man will ever want to marry such a strange girl. Utae is frequently punished for disobeying the ridiculous school rules (like no eating on school grounds) and is disrespected by staff and student alike. None of that is surprising considering Utae has zero interest in playing their game. This school prides itself entirely on cranking out dutiful, obedient housewives and their success rate seems to be entirely measured by how quickly graduates can snag a successful, upper class husband and start popping out kids. Utae's quirkiness and athletic abilities serve her no purpose in this kind of world. In fact, her two best qualities are viewed as a debit.

Even though Aiko and Utae come from two different worlds, they're still drawn together by the mere fact neither has any kind of meaningful or authentic human connection, even within their own families. Aiko starts defending Utae from the staff and other students and then befriends her. The two start becoming closer, while simultaneously alienating everyone else around them. They experiment with intimacy with a large white balloon, get caught and are chastised for it, but none of that stops them from continuing to hang out and grow closer. That closeness starts manifesting itself in a more romantic way, starting with gentle touching and then becoming progressively more sexual. However, their budding relationship is obviously something forbidden, and Utae starts to fight against it.

The school principal ("Shôichi" / Masakazu Kuwayama) is a pervert who takes advantage of his position to prey on weaker students, all while hiding behind the "respectability" of his Christian faith. (Gee, some things just never change, do they?) A lifelong bachelor, the fifty-something principal claims he's never married because it would be a distraction from his work and dedication to his girls when in fact he's too busy trying to bed as many nubile young ladies as he can get his hands on. Like many sex predators, he has a knack for zeroing in on unhappy, troubled girls who feel outcast, lonely and lost. Realizing Utae is one of those girls, the principal makes his move on her. Though she initially resists, she finally submits to his advances and the two have sex.

Utae and the principal are caught by stuffy English teacher Miss Torako (Moeko Ezawa), who reveals to Utae that he's used the same grooming technique on countless other girls at the school over the years, as well as having his way with the mothers of failing students; agreeing to pass them in exchange for sex. However, Miss Torako is less interested in trying to protect Utae's feelings than she is having the principal to herself. She's in love with him, and has been for some time, though he doesn't reciprocate. Still, Utae believes she's found her kindred spirit in the principal and, when she finds out she's pregnant, plans on having their child. The principal then lures her to an abortionist under false pretenses. Though Utae manages to escape, she self-aborts by banging her abdomen against a piano until blood is running down her leg. Meanwhile, Aiko uses sex to get vital information from several staff members.

Soon after graduation, a small building on the campus burns to the ground and a charred corpse, burned beyond recognition, is found inside. A letter arrives addressed to the principal. It's a suicide note from Utae, who informs them that since she died a horrible death she will now be returning as a ghost to seek her revenge. Utae was also kind enough to send a letter to the police informing them the principal, the secretary (Noboru Mitani) and Miss Torako have all been embezzling funds from the school, as well as revealing that the devout churchgoing principal has been frequently seeking the company of geisha.

The cycle of destruction continues as creepy supernatural events start occurring. After the principal is slipped a piece of "charcoal" (burnt brain), he's chased by a driver-less trolley car that attempts to run him over. He's then sent a surprise package containing a dead rat with the inscription "Utae Amakawa's Fetus." Utae's ghost finally reveals herself; appearing before the principal and his two co-conspirators upside down in front of the window and laughing maniacally. That's followed by several mysterious deaths. The ghost causes a car crash by crawling up the hood of a car and either hangs someone or scares them into hanging themselves (after decapitating and de-tailing their beloved pet cat!) The utterly perplexing finale takes place either at a large rock quarry that may be Hell, or may be Mars, or may just be a regular ole rock quarry!

The aptly titled Girl Hell creates an ugly, ugly microcosm of the world where no one can be trusted, abuse is rampant, love is a ruse and our mere existence is both pointlessly cruel and cruelly pointless. All of the adults here are horrible people inflicting irreparable damage on the young due to their own self-interest, arrogance and desires, and the film is especially focused on putting adults in positions of power and influence under the microscope. Even a fire-and-brimstone street preacher (Nobutaka Masutomi) who spends his days lecturing passersby about the dangers of sinning and hell is later seen paying to have sex with one of the young girls. No doubt he'll be right back on that street corner the following day condemning others for their choices, just like the principal of the school and the general father will be right back to their respectable places within society the morning after abusing others behind closed doors.

Though this Nikkatsu production is technically in the pink / soft-core category, it also cuts it as an actual movie. Sure, there's a lot of nudity and sex involved (including from pink film regulars Tamaki Katsura and Rei Okamoto), but it also effectively and compellingly tells an interesting, intelligent story; providing characterization, plot twists and lots of subtext and food for thought along the way. However, its descent into outright surrealism and the nonsensical during the last half hour certainly isn't going to be for all tastes. From a technical standpoint, production values and cinematography (by Yonezô Maeda) are all very solid, though that's typically the case with Nikkatsu. The very bizarre score, which has synth and rock elements, is credited to Cosmos Factory.

As far as I can tell, this is the very first attempt to adapt the work of Japanese author Kyusaku Yumeno; an early 20th Century mystery, sci-fi and horror writer who's sometimes compared to H. P. Lovecraft. Yumeno is best known for his 1935 novel Dogra Magra, which is considered influential in regards to shaping later Japanese sci-fi films and manga and was also adapted for the screen in 1988. This one, adapted by Akio Ido, was based on a short story contained in his three-part anthology Shōjo jigoku ("The Hell of Girls") called Kasei no on'na / "The Woman from Mars"; also one of the titles used for the Japanese DVD release of the film.

However, it must also be pointed out that this bears many striking similarities to the 1954 Parker-Hulme murder case in New Zealand, which was also the basis for the French exploitation film DON'T DELIVER US FROM EVIL (1971) and Peter Jackson's critically-acclaimed art house hit Heavenly Creatures (1994); the film that got critics to finally start taking him seriously after he made a string of gory horror films. It's probably no coincidence that this and Don't Deliver... both contain a very similar self-immolation climax, just as it's probably no coincidence that Jackson's film shares an uncommon amount of similarities with this one. Aside from almost identical characters in an almost identical predicament, Creatures also shares many key pieces of imagery with this one. Of course, this could all just be an amazing coincidence, but I'm not so sure.

★★★