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.

★★★

Ling qi bi ren (1984)

... aka: 靈氣迫人

... aka: 靈氣逼人

... aka: Ling hei bik yan

... aka: Occupant, The

... aka: Tenant, The

Directed by:

Ronny Yu

After having spent most of her youth in Vancouver, Canada, college student Angie (Sally Yeh) returns to Hong Kong for a three week visit to work on her Masters of Arts thesis paper on Chinese superstitions. Strapped for cash and unable to afford to stay at local hostels, she's then forced to deal with questionable used car salesman / Realtor Hansom Wong (Raymond Wong), who's one of those cliché "comic" characters in 80s HK cinema who's supposed to be charming in their pushiness, ineptitude at appealing to the opposite sex and complete lack of self-awareness, yet mostly just comes off as grating and obnoxious. He puts Angie up in a fully-furnished tower block apartment that hasn't been occupied in quite some time. The price is... curiously affordable, which is usually not a good sign. 

Angie's first night there, a heavy wooden table keeps moving to the center of the room, she hears a woman singing and a couple arguing through the walls and there's a frequent knock on the door, yet nobody is there. Someone leaves flowers and a weird note outside her door. She assumes they were from Hansom, but he denies it. Also, the strangely emotionless building caretaker Poon (Hao Ren) clues her in on something else interesting: She's the only person currently staying in the building.

After showing her around at a temple and taking her to see a psychic medium (Mama Hung), Hansom invites himself into Angie's apartment and ends up getting thrown out of the window onto a parked car by an unseen force. Though he's (regrettably) not killed or even injured, the police are still called and Inspector Valentino Chow (Chow Yun-Fat), who's recently been busy busting pickpockets, pimps and sex workers, is on the case. Well, actually, he's not officially on the case for very long.

Due to angering a high-ranking politician after catching him with an underage massage parlor worker, the force has temporarily let Valentino go on an extended "holiday" until things cool down, which opens up plenty of free time for him to assist Angie. Naturally, he too becomes attracted to her, which starts up a rivalry of sorts between him and Hansom, though the men are able to put their differences aside long enough to help Angie investigate.

The previous tenant in Angie's apartment was a popular nightclub singer named Linda Law (Kit-Man Mak), who shot her married lover Robert (Melvin Wong) dead and then committed suicide immediately after. Since she died a painful and unnatural death, Linda continues to haunt her apartment. Angie begins subconsciously taking on some of the dead woman's traits, like suddenly smoking and painting her fingernails red, and things are bound to get worse the longer she stays there. However, the non-religious Angie doesn't necessarily believe in ghosts or the supernatural despite all of the odd occurrences in the apartment.

Trying to knock some sense into her, Valentino takes her to his spiritualist friend, Mr. Chan (Lieh Lo), for advice. He talks about how, within a haunted space, the brain waves of both the ghost and the occupant can start to sync if meditation and other spiritual tactics aren't employed. To ward off possession, the person needs to become one with Jesus, Buddha or some other God so that there's no room left inside for an evil force to inhabit them. So what does Angie do immediately after hearing this? She returns home, lights some candles and calls forth Linda's spirit, getting herself possessed in the process. There's an exorcism attempt, but that only temporarily works. Angie's new friends then must try to come up with a way to rid her of the spirit before she goes back to Canada.

Considering the director and the presence of two charismatic lead actors, all in the earlier stages of their careers, this was a huge disappointment. It's low on action, conceptually and visually unexciting, extremely talky, doesn't feature any decent make-up or special effects (the "best" - and only - real attempt is a single cheap animated ghost) and can't ever seem to find a balance with its disparate genre hopping. The film's dramatic, romantic and supernatural elements all get sidelined as this leans very heavily into the comedy, which turns out to be a fatal mistake.

While Chow and Yeh do have a few pleasant / charming moments together, they're constantly undercut by Wong's endless mugging and camera hogging, which grow extremely tiresome early on, never let up and do the film as a whole irreparable harm. This character should have either been a small part of the film or cut from it altogether instead of becoming the primary focus. Not surprisingly, Wong had a hand in the film's production and financing, and is a "presenter," so that probably explains why he's given the majority of the film's dialogue and is stuck front and center most of the time.

Director Yu made a number of other genre films like The Saviour (1980), THE TRAIL (1983) and Bless This House (1988) in Hong Kong before the international success of his The Bride with White Hair (1993) landed him in Hollywood. There, he's make the horror sequels Bride of Chucky (1998) and Freddy vs. Jason (2003), both of which were successful at the box office, followed by the HK / U.S. co-production Fearless (2006) starring Jet Li, which was also an international hit. This Cinema City release is the worst thing I've seen out of him yet, though it's not exactly terrible either. It's mostly just uninspiring and forgettable.

★★