Abunômaru: Ingyaku (1988)

... aka: Abnormal
... aka: Abnormal: Ugly Abuse
... aka: Celluloid Nightmares
... aka: Re-Wind

Directed by:
Hisayasu Satô

First and foremost, this is a sex flick that was made primarily for that purpose. However, as is customary with this particular director, you're given a more artistic, stylish, thematically interesting and better quality film than is the norm for the erotica genre... not to mention something darker, gorier and much more twisted! An "Underground Video Film" (snuff tape) is found in a trash heap along with the dismembered remains of its "star." A detective takes it home and watches it with his girlfriend (Kiyomi Itô) only to be surprised to find she gets turned on by it and wants him to break out the handcuffs afterward. Meanwhile, at a local sex shop, another snuff tape is dropped off anonymously and falls into the hands of Akira, one of the workers there who's also studying film in college. Akira takes the tape home and tries to watch it but is interrupted by his sister Tomoe, who plops down on his bed and nonchalantly says "Come on! Let's commit incest." And, for what's it's worth, that they do. Upon later inspection, Akira begins to believe the murder depicted on the tape is the real deal.

Akira eventually crosses paths with the detective's girlfriend, a self- proclaimed "crime hunter" who's strangely fascinated with this particular case and decides to launch a freelance investigation of her own. Posing as a magazine reporter, the girlfriend (who refuses to ever give out her real name and goes only by "The Crime Hunter" for reasons we will later discover) starts snooping around and begins to suspect that a mysterious former TV producer turned underground filmmaker named Cross (Kazuhiro Sano), as well as Cross' lover Mari, a former actress who now works alongside Akira in the porn shop, may somehow be involved with the tapes and a shady company called 'Studio Omega.' Whoever is doing the killings is using a specially-equipped camera with a retractable blade hidden near the lens to provide a POV of each death in what's a clear reference to Michael Powell's classic Peeping Tom (1960).

Abunômaru: Ingyaku (which has been making the bootleg rounds for years now under such titles as "Abnormal," "Celluloid Nightmares" and "Re-Wind") is an evocatively gritty and bleak mixture of sex and horror- thriller set in a neon-tinged urban environment and filtered through a fuzzy 80s video aesthetic. Director Satô caters to nearly every sexual fetish / perversity under the sun - S&M, rape, pantyhose, lesbians, incest, you name it - while simultaneously delivering some pretty vicious gore / murder scenes as well as a central theme about a filmmaker's complete emotional detachment whilst hidden behind a camera lens. This is also one of the director's more accessible works. I've seen a handful of his other films, like MUSCLE (1989) and NAKED BLOOD (1996), and this is by far the least-confusing and easiest to follow of the ones I've watched.

The sex in this film is about as graphic as a non-hardcore film can get but, sticking with Japanese censorship rules, there's no frontal nudity. That's OK. The director just tries to make up for it by showing pretty much everything else! There's tons of T&A, lots of simulated sex, crotch rubbing and licking, long close-ups of French kissing, nipple and tongue sucking, etc. There are also a handful of pretty gruesome moments to go along with that, including an arm being sliced open and spewing blood, a fingernail getting ripped off with a knife, numerous bloody stabbings, torture with a syringe and Tabasco sauce (!), a plate of spaghetti festering with maggots and a head bashed in with a tripod. There's certainly more than enough here to please exploitation fans. The fact it's well made and doesn't wear out its welcome at just 65 minutes are added bonuses.

The cast also includes pinku regulars Reika Kazami (Sexy Battle Girls), Sayaka Hitomi (Subway Serial Rape: Lover Hunting) and Rino Shimazi (Captured for Sex 2). It has never officially been released in America but there's a version online with fan-made English subs and that's the best we got right now.

★★★

Fertilize the Blaspheming Bombshell (1990)

... aka: Mark of the Beast
... aka: Triangle of Death

Directed by:
Jeff Hathcock

Lights! Camera! Action! Well, uh, forget about the lights. While on their way to Vegas to get hitched, Sandy Russell (Sheila Ryan) and her fiancé Rod (Mark Blanchard) get lost out in the desert and end up in the tiny village of Ellivnatas (read it backwards), which is so small it isn't even listed on their map. They stop in a bar to use the phone, encounter some strange people who stare them down, run out of gas soon after they leave and discover someone's poked a hole in their fuel tank. It isn't long before a small group of hooded Satanists come crawling out of the rocks brandishing torches. Rod is set on fire and pushed over a cliff, while Sandy gets her top ripped open by the horned-headdress-wearing coven leader, who then carves a pentagram on her chest with a dagger, rapes her and stabs her to death. Meanwhile, Sandy's identical twin sister Susan (also Ryan), an anthropologist with ESP abilities, senses something is wrong and heads down to a desolate area called "The Devil's Playground" to look for her; facing a similar fate in the process.

This is a cheap, poorly-acted, poorly-written, poorly-filmed, mostly dull movie that was saved from the scrap-pile after Troma acquired it (when it was still being called Mark of the Beast) and released it under a colorful new title (Fertilize the Blaspheming Bombshell). There's next to no plot and about half of the run-time consists of scenes of the heroine walking or driving around in the desert. The night scenes are horribly lit and hard to make out and unfortunately there are a lot of them. Considering the amateurish nature of the entire movie it's a bit surprising they could even afford to hire Bo Hopkins, who gets to play a redneck sheriff for about the twentieth time in his career, though his role is bland and ultimately pointless. Rick Hill (from the Deathstalker movies) has a slightly better part as Dan Allen, a friendly gas station attendant who tries to help out Susan but may have ulterior motives.

After a lot of tedious and boring scenes, the film finally becomes at least slightly amusing in the last half hour upon the arrival of Robert Tessier as the perverted devil cult leader. After Susan stumbles onto him heading over a black mass at "The House of Satan," he punches her in the stomach and calls her things like "an irreverent bitch" and "a blaspheming slut." She's then dragged out into the desert where she's slapped around some more and has her pants pulled off so that they can use "the hard-on of sin" to "sanctify this unholy fornication." Susan finally manages to escape and then spends the rest of the movie getting in dune buggy chases and climbing around rock formations clad only in her panties stabbing, impaling and setting the bad guys on fire; only catching her breath long enough to strip off her top and bathe under a waterfall (!)

Lead actress Ryan (who passed away in 2012) was James Caan's wife for less than a year in the 70s and is billed here as Sheila Caan. Around the same time he was shooting big budget films like Dick Tracy and Misery, this is what she was doing. Though not given much to work with, her acting really isn't completely terrible and she gets naked several times. During a shower scene, close-up shots of a body double slowly massaging her breasts and ass were poorly spliced in. There's additional nudity from a few of the female cult members, including one who dances around with a snake while wearing only a thong. There's no gore, no special effects and barely even any blood, though there's some adequate stunt work here and there. Still, if you want something covering small town Satanism, you'd be better off watching THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN (1971) or Race With the Devil (1975) instead of this.

Director Hathcock also made the really bad rape-revenge movie VICTIMS! (1985), the really bad shot-on-video slasher flick NIGHT RIPPER! (1986) and Streets of Death (1987), which was shot-on-video, involves hookers "starring" in snuff tapes and is probably really bad, too.

★1/2