Fifty Shades of a Deeper Gray: Fairy in A Cage

Beyond some extravagant and audacious bondage and torture sequences, Koyu Ohara's Fairy in a Cage (Nikkatsu Studios, '77) boasts stellar production values with period detail unique for its budget. Never have these elements been more obvious and lush than on Impulse/Synapse's Blu-ray of this infamous Roman Porno (Romantic Pornography) production. Never released on DVD or Blu-ray anywhere in the world, it finally gets the royal treatment.

Released simultaneously with the just-reviewed and highly praised Female Teacher: In Front of the Students, this superb piece of elegant perversion from '77, the year Star Wars arrived on our planet, is a must-have for collectors and the cinematically adventurous. The 'Fifty Shades of Gray' crowd may not be ready yet for  Mr. Ohara and writer Oniroku Dan's brand of S/M, but, if anybody is looking for a worthy entry point for this unique Japanese genre,  this may be a good place to start.

Mr. Dan is a Japanese novelist whose works have been enthusiastically adapted by erotic filmmakers. A couple of Dan standouts are Rope Cosmetology, Teruo Ishii's The Red Silk Gambler, and various films based on his 'Flower and Snake' books.   He's not big on plot or characterization, but he does imbue the genre with particularly personal touches.  You'll find a lot of rope bondage in the author's work, and Fairy  in a Cage is consistent with that fact.  The film is a catalog of squirmy "tortures" that run the gamut from suspension to spanking to various water-based outrages. Rape is pretty frequent, too.

Ohara, the director of the infamous Zoop Up: Rape Site,  True Story of a Woman Condemned To Hell, Wet and Rope, and the exploitation classic White Rose Campus: Then, Everybody Gets Raped, brings a more tempered artistic style to this tale of military and upper class corruption set doing WWII in the Land of the Rising Sun. The bare-bones story involves a wealthy pervert who uses a dubious military pretext to arrest and incarcerate (in his home torture chamber) a woman (Naomi Tani) that he wants for his own private amusement. Assisted by delightfully deviant wife, he involves Tani in his games, and brings along a devotee of hers (she's an actress!) for additional humiliation.

The film is lavish, somewhat confronting, but fairly predictable plot-wise until the two-thirds mark. It then shoots off on an interesting tangent and re-locates itself to a dense forest where horrors of a more personal kind are experienced by Tani, an actress who never met a torture she couldn't embrace.

The work of cinematographer Nobumasa Mizunoo on Fairy is exemplary. Surprisingly, he had only shot two Masaru Konuma classics before this (Erotic Diary of an Office Lady and Cloistered Nun: Runa's Confession), but produces the work of a veteran artist here, delivering exquisitely lit interiors complimented by striking compositions. The tortures shot through the metal bars of a cell are breathtaking, as is his photographic treatment of the film's final denouement. 

Similar in style to Toshiharo Ikeda's very fine Sex Hunter, Koyu Ohara's Fairy in a Cage is intensely erotic stuff that will arouse the open-minded and shock those bringing traditional expectations of entertainment to it. Like all Nikkatsu 'pornos', it is not, in fact, pornography as we Westerners define it, and steers well clear of hardcore sexual depictions.

That it is now available on Blu-ray is, I must admit, kind of amazing.

I urge you to support this release with a legit purchase in order to encourage Impulse's head honcho Don May to think seriously about releasing such unreleased (in the US) Nikkatsu treats as Rape, White Rose Campus..., Zoom Up: Rape Site, Sex Hunter, and Raping! on Blu-ray.  

Sexual Adventure From Nikkatsu

Impulse Pictures (Synapse) released the "Nikkatsu Roman Porno Trailer Collection" last year to the gratitude of diehard Nikkatsu fans and devotees of on-screen erotica . Its release was not dissimilar to the sexy neighbor half disrobing for you as you ogled her from the assumed cover of a darkened room. She knows you want her, but she's not going to make it easy. She wants to test your long term interest, and who can blame her? A one night stand won't pay the bills or fuel her fires when nights are cold.

Finally, the sexy neighbor has made good on her promise and exposed her sleek little body not once but twice with the releases of True Story of a Woman in Jail - Sex Hell (Koyu Ohara), and Debauchery (Hidehiro Ito). Like many a shy lass, this one is full of delicious surprises.

Ohara's flick, the first in a a sleazy trio, is modeled on Shunya Ito's Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 ('72), but it's less surreal, more erotic, and far sleazier than any 'Scorpion' entry with the exception of Masaru Konuma's Caged ('83). Having directed a minor erotic classic (Fairy in a Cage; '77) and one of my favorite pink flicks of all time, White Rose Campus - Then, Everyone Gets Raped ('82), Oharu delivers the expected goods to Sex Hell, but he also succeeds in bringing a surprising amount of solid characterization to the movie, as well as some sharp performances. In all honesty, female prison flicks can be repetitive and overly familiar, usually meeting conventions and little else, but Ohara's effort here demonstrates commitment to producing a work that rises above the usual.

From a kink perspective, this is one juicy and creative exercise. Ticking the usual boxes (lesbianism, rape, and shower fondling), it also adds a cheery helping of golden games and sensual brutality. A bloody tampon makes an appearance here, too, and would again seven years later in the wild White Rose Campus; in that, a pervert  enters a public bathroom and engages in some mind-boggling tampon-sniffing. Ohara's strength is his guiltless commitment to the material.

A terrific DVD bonus here is a color reproduction of the film's original poster; it's an absolute corker. On top of that, Japanese film expert Jasper Sharp provides concise and info-rich liner notes on the film and its cinematic context.


Highly recommended... and the first sequel is on its way...

 Impulse's simultaneous release is the inferior Debauchery ('83) from director/writer Hidehiro Ito. Ryoko Watanabe stars as an unhappy housewife who finds herself on a semi-reluctant erotic odyssey to a land way beyond her personal boundaries.

Directed and shot with an average amount of style, it's powered by a strong central performance and a constant escalation of its shock factor. 

The theme of a woman exploring her limits is not new at all in Japanese cinema. Recent releases such as the Flower and Snake remakes have plumbed these well-worn depths with unbridled panache, but Debauchery, though a more modest affair, lifts itself out of typical 'Oniroku Dan' territory (many of these efforts are based on Dan's novels) by sheer invention and a refusal to remain within "acceptable" limits (relatively speaking); the "explosive" climax neatly returns our heroine to her initial starting point, completing a neat circle. During this period in Nikkatsu's history, their output was as controversial and limit-pushing as possible. Debauchery reflects that status.

With these two releases, Impulse has established a solid standard for their Nikkatsu releases. The transfer/print quality is as good as it's going to get (bar a Blu-Ray bump), and the choice of material is strong.

One of the upcoming titles that excites me immensely is 'Zoom In: Rape Apartments', a truly mind-boggling piece of fiery erotica that will be retitled Zoom In: Sex Apartments for its US debut. This film is a must for the whole damn family (well, at least those over eighteen).

 

Also falling into the must-buy category are Eros School: Feels So Good, and Zoom Up: The Beaver Book Girl (not seen by me, this one, but I'm as excited as the bloke on the cover).

 

Zoom Up: Rape Site

This Zoom Up: Rape Site poster is subtly spectacular with its color foreground and chillingly colorless background.

This Koyu Ohara flick, which gave Nikkatsu many headaches, is not on DVD, VHS, or Blu-Ray.

For an enterprising distributor, this is THE pick of the bunch.

Although available in Japan, Ohara's White Rose Campus: Then, Everybody Gets Raped is also begging for broader Western exposure.

Are We There Yet?

I don't know why the makers of White Rose Campus: Then, Everybody Gets Raped! (Shirobara gakuen: soshite zenin) didn't go for a more provocative title         :-)

Didn't they understand that punters want to know what they're getting?!

This really is diamond quality exploitation from Nikkatsu and the late Koyu Ohara, the underrated director of Fairy in a Cage, Zoom Up - Rape Site, Wet and Rope, Sins of Sister Lucia, and dozens more.

In this dynamic sleaze epic, Ohara, shooting hand-held, captures a gloriously perverted vibe as he tells the pulp perfect story of a busload of high school girls imprisoned, raped, and assaulted by a trio of escaped convicts.

The film is remorseless in its depiction of base desires and niche fetishes.

The story opens with the lead villain, Yuichi Minato, an actor who worked hard to establish a resume of perversion, entering a female toilet block, locating a used tampon, and proceeding to suck it dry. With his deviant bona fides established, we become more than a little concerned when he observes a busload of virgins pulling up outside.

Yuichi and his psychotic pals sneak onto the bus and begin wreaking havoc after the bus has left the station and they've deposited the fat and ugly girls by the side of the road.

For me, what distinguishes great exploitation filmmaking from bad exploitation filmmaking is sincerity.

If you're going to tackle a subject, don't be embarrassed by it. Grab it by the balls and pull hard. Rip them off and stomp on them if you have to, but don't go crying to the high brows that you weren't making an exploitation film, you were trying to "say something important about human relations". Fuck off! Entertainment first.

Because Ohara is so damn sincere, and because he's energized by the subject matter, he delivers a masterpiece. He serves up glorious exploitation with a mean streak that has the whiff of a Corman pic, the grit of Sam Fuller, and the shit-eating bravado of Zebbedy Colt channeled through Max Hardcore and Sam Peckinpah.

When the villains get the girls to strip at gunpoint and line up for a chorus call of rape, you watch appalled and impressed because this gem is taking you to places only imagined in Greenleaf porno paperbacks from the 70's. Corman, Friedman and Herschell Gordon Lewis (God bless 'em all!) didn't go this far -- they never combined sex and violence with this much unapologetic ferocity.

Although the film was made to appeal to Nippon raincoaters, it has the broadest appeal of almost any pink film I know of. It embraces American exploitation conventions unabashedly, and may have been influenced somewhat by Earl Barton's Trip With The Teacher (1975)

...and Don Siegel's Dirty Harry (1971).

An echo of the great scene in Harry in which the irrepressible 'Scorpio' (Andrew Robinson) takes control of a school bus can be heard in Ohara's feature length perversion of the concept.

There is a raw, cruel humor present in White Rose Campus... and Ohara fucks with our our expectations of how the film's issues will be resolved.

Let me just say that there are no "good guys" to be found here... just some "good girls" who got more than they bargained for when they took a trip with the teacher.

A subplot involving one of the girls (pictured above) and her relationship with one of the convicts is a surprise addition to the heated proceedings.

As is common with all Japanese pink films, nudity is cloaked by quivering mosaics. Since there is so much nudity on show here, the mosaics jump around like frogs, making for a slightly distracting experience at times.

Once the action moves from the bus to a country mansion, the pace does not flag. On the contrary, there are plenty of surprises in store for the girls, their teacher, and the audience.

Most exploitation films do not live up to their titles. This is definitely not one of those.

The film has been released twice on DVD in Japan; although both transfers are stellar, there are no subtitles.

A gray market VHS (with subs) was distributed in the 90's by Thomas Weisser of Video Search of Miami.

The Force of Desire

My first exposure to Yasuharu Hasebe's Assault - Jack The Ripper (Boko Kirisaki Jack) was a VHS tape from Japan. A Japanese director, who has become a great friend, sent me the tape in '97. He was sure I would love it.

He wasn't wrong.

Until recently, Hasebe was best known in the West for Black Tight Killers, a girl gang film with a whodunit plot. It's watchable and inventive, but nothing extraordinary.

Assault- Jack The Ripper is one of four Hasebe classics that revolve around the subject of rape -- hetero- and homosexual rape. It is most certainly extraordinary.

Nikkatsu produced hundreds of low budget films under the "roman porno" (Romantic Pornography) label. All are focused on sexuality, usually of a deviant nature. Some, such as 1979's Star of David -- Beauty Hunting (Dabideno hoshi: Bishojo-gari) are brutal, erotic, and bloody.

Others, such as Toshiharu Ikeda's Sex Hunter (1980) are elegant and twisted.

Hasebe's unofficial "rape quadrilogy" is comprised of: Rape (Okasu!)

Assault - Jack The Ripper (Boko Kirisaki Jack)

Raping! ( Yaru!)

...and Rape - 13th Hour (Reipu 25-ji: boukan), easily the most unusual of the bunch as it features homosexual biker rape.

All four films were made quickly between 1976 and 1978. They redefined the genre so thoroughly that Nikkatsu copped a lot of flack for their vicious, unrepentant content. The studio did not produce anything quite so vicious again until Koyu Ohara's Zoom Up - Rape Site (Zuma appu: boko genba).

In Assault - Jack The Ripper (1976), a homely but sexually precocious young woman encourages a shy man to commit acts of rape and murder with her. They form a partnership that is doomed.

The mixture of sex and violence is powerful and erotic; Hasebe does not attempt to de-eroticize the violence; nor does he depict it explicitly. The film is big on crotch stabbings, but not once do we see a knife penetrate flesh.

As is common and natural for art depicting sexuality, especially Japanese art, garments and undergarments are heavily fetishized. When the film's "heroes" knock a tennis player off her bicycle with their car, Hasebe jumps in for a close-up of her white, cotton panties as she falls to the ground. He emphasizes sexual anticipation, but denies it completion.

All sex in Hasebe's violent pink world is forced and unwelcome. When it is not, it is the subject of voyeurism. In Rape (1976), the heroine, who is recovering from a rape, gets turned on by secretly watching her boss screw a co-worker. Her excitement incites her desire, yet also reminds her how easily sex can become brutality. She is conflicted. This conflict is a consistent theme in the director's work.

The heroine of Assault becomes more desirable to the hero because she allows (permits?) him to express his anger and sexuality without boundaries.

Trouble enters paradise when his cravings, now fully unleashed, exclude her participation... and no longer require her "permission" -- so the bond is severed.

Psychology aside, Assault - Jack The Ripper is a truly great horror film with a rousing, 70's-style jazz score, beautifully staged violence, and stellar performances.

If Hasebe is referencing even one American film in his violent pink masterpiece, it is Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). A scene involving a mental patient who is given a ride by our heroes has many similarities to the hitchhiker scene in the '74 film. Where Hooper emphasized physical and mental violence, Hasebe emphasizes sexual violence and desire as a type of delicious but deadly contagion.

Even though Assault is the best of a fabulous four, I rate Raping! (1978) very highly, too. It is easily the most erotic of the bunch and exceptionally inventive. A lengthy sequence involving voyeurism and two-way mirrors at a love hotel is brilliantly directed. Rape features an excellent villain and a moody, glum atmosphere that was imitated slavishly in Yojiro Takita's Serial Rape (Renzoku Boko; 1983). Rape - 13th Hour suffers from stop/start pacing and lackluster direction (it feels like Hasebe's well of invention had run dry by this 4th installment).


The Geneon DVD (Japan, GNBD-1296) of Assault is a flawless presentation of the film; it is not subtitled.

The Mondo Macabro DVD (USA, MDO 135) also features an excellent presentation of the film; it is subtitled in English.

The Geneon DVD of Rape - 13th Hour (Japan, GNBD- 1327) is flawless also, but not subtitled.