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.  

Female Teacher: In Front of the Students

What's to be said about Yasuro Uegaki's Female Teacher: In Front of the Students (just out from Impulse/Synapse) is all good. Very, very good, in fact.

Nikkatsu, the old Japanese film studio that, after sixty years, suddenly turned dark and erotic to make ends meet, has, admittedly, made its share of lame efforts such as Nympho Diver and I Like It From Behind, both recently released by Impulse/Synapse. I suppose some folks bought them, but, for mine, they have little appeal because they're doing nothing that hundreds of British and American softcore porn flicks haven't already done.

You can't say the same about Nikkatsu flicks like Assault - Jack The Ripper, Rape!, White Rose Campus - Then, Everybody Gets Raped, Sex Hunter - Wet Target, Sex Hunter (the Ikeda film), Secret Chronicle - She Beast Market, and Zoop Up - Rape Site. All of these feature exploitation elements that are very culture-specific, and do not shun the sticky mix of sexual violence and eroticism that many Western films are afraid of.  Although S/M is being mainstreamed (and reduced to blandly flavored vanilla) by works of dubious literary merit such as 'Fifty Shades of Grey' (a massive bestseller), its harsher, more incendiary essence has been shaved away.

Nothing is shaved away in Impulse/Synapse's Female Teacher: In Front of the Students, a truly subversive Nikkatsu flick that some would describe as "troubling" for its perspective on rape. To take its politics too seriously would be to misunderstand its intentions. It is, afterall, a skin flick for a skin flick audience, so it takes a fantasy often imagined by women to its natural end point. If you think it condones the view that a raped woman can be sexually charged by the resulting trauma, you're projecting too hard. This is fantasy Japan-style, not reality.

The pretty Rushia Santo is 'Reiko', a new teacher at an elite high school. Forced to discipline a group of spoilt brats led by the particularly nasty Takuya (Toru Nakane), she finds herself intimidated by the boy. After an unnerving exchange with the group, Reiko is raped in one of the school's showers. Humiliated, she doesn't report the rape, but she keeps a piece of a jigsaw puzzle dropped at the scene by the masked rapist. Over the next few days, she attempts to identify her attacker, and flashes back to key images of the rape, but  her search is sidelined by a series of highly erotic seductions that relight the fire of the incident.

Like Toshiharu Ikeda's little-seen Sex Hunter (not be confused with Sex Hunter - Wet Target) and the notorious Captured For Sex 2, Female Teacher: In Front of the Students exudes an atmosphere of sexual nihilism and abandon that is downright intoxicating. Director Uegaki demonstrates a superb eye and flair for dark eroticism, and creates a seventy minute masterpiece that sucks us into a sexual maelstrom while never ignoring the story's emotional journey. Santo is excellent as a woman on an odyssey of deep exploration, and delivers a strong emotional, physical, and intensely sexual performance as a teacher torn between tradition and the delicious call of the dark.

The film has an amazing look. It's gritty and beautiful all at once, and the compositions, subtle camera moves, and extreme close-ups are striking. The sex runs the gamut from hetero to lesbian, and there is a potent threeway worked into the mix. The narrative never flags, and the sense of anxiety experienced by Reiko is always felt by the audience.

A great selection from Impulse/Synapse, and, hopefully, a sign of the direction future releases will take. Films like this offer a rare and exotic glimpse into the human mind, and underline why nobody does it better than the Japanese.