Dabide no hoshi: Bishôjo-gari

When a man's wife is raped and impregnated by a serial killer, the result is a handsome playboy who grows up with a fetish for sex, torture, and murder. This Japanese production is like a morality play with no morals, with a protagonist who is at once charming, intelligent, and unredeemable; the multi-layered script fleshes out the character and those he abducts, and makes some surprisingly insightful observations about a society fixated on religion, morals, and beauty. While not achieving a balanced mix of depravity and fascination like Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Salo," "Beautiful Girl Hunter" comes close enough, though the violence and sexual content becomes excessive near the end.

6.5/10

Norifumi Suzuki's Star of Dave aka Beautiful Girl Hunter (1979) has been released in Europe by Japan Shock as Beautiful Girl Hunter, and the version is in widescreen, uncut and with original language. However, one sex scene has been optically censored/blurred as they always are in Japan. The film is based on 5-part animated series which itself was based on Masaaki Soto's adult manga. A young student is seemingly normal, but keeps a savage torture/bondage chamber in his cellar (he lives alone in a big house once his father died), and kidnaps school girls there for torture, sex games, rape and usually murder. There is one significant plot turn dealing with the film's brutal prologue, so there is no point in describing the plot anymore without spoiling this, and also beware other reviews which I've seen spoil this very badly.

This is very Japanese film in its themes, as once again the subject matter is the darkest sides of humanity, and the film tries to ask are these things "inherited" or is human nature just rotten anyway and based on instincts. There is one character, a pure incarnation of evil which is very close to the main character, too, and their relationship is the main point in the film. This same theme of darkness is even more brutally and very disturbingly handled and depicted in Katsuya Matsumura's All Night Long trilogy, and especially in part two, Atrocity (I have seen only the first two films, haven't seen part 3 yet). Once human being gives power to his instincts to kill and enjoy other people's misery and pain, all hell literally lets loose. All Night Long 2: Atrocity is definitely among the most depressing and disturbing films I've ever seen, and it was even denied a theatrical release in Japan due to its dark and extreme nature. All Night Long trilogy has also been released by Japan Shock, but only on DVD. They are very worth purchasing for fans of extreme (and also intelligent, but hard to take) Japanese cinema. In Beautiful Girl Hunter, the Nazi crimes and WW2 is handled and mentioned couple of times, so the theme of evil is global in this film as it is in our world.

Beautiful Girl Hunter uses some interesting camera techniques and details, and thus becomes even more noteworthy and worthwhile. At the end of the film, there are some elements found usually in Takeshi Kitano's films, like people between and among flowers and scenes at the sea etc. so it is obvious Japanese films are very unique and they have a style of their own. Camera is sometimes very twisted and used creatively, so this movie is technically very inventive.

It is a must to tell that the film is definitely not for all audiences, since there are many vicious scenes of bondage, rape, torture and whipping of hapless girls captured by the disturbed youngster. The sex scenes are among the most realistic and natural I've ever seen, and if you've seen for instance Gaira's "Guts" series, then you know what I mean about the authenticity of those sex scenes. Women masturbate, and as it is so realistic, it is perhaps not just acting, so if someone feels this kind of sexual, violent and also perverse imagery is off putting, don't ever try to watch this film, or others of its kind. There is also one bloody killing as the boy stabs one of the victims in the heart with Naked Blood like geysir of blood. Despite these elements from extreme horror films, Beautiful Girl Hunter has its message and theme, and also some cinematic elements, but due to its imagery, the film is very hard to understand.

The film is very slow moving, so it is not wise to try to watch this tired. There is not too much talk in many scenes and the film is very contemplative as a whole. I like this film and gladly give it 8/10 rating, and recommend it for fans of Japanese cinema, which is something that would never be made in any other culture, Western included.

I heard about this film on the "cult film" message board of IMDB and, on his dare, ordered the video through WitchingHour Video.

How can one fairly review this trash? For what it is, the photography is well-done such that I was surprised the film was made in 1979 and not more recently. The plot has something to do about a notorious rapist/kidnapper father begatting a son to one of his rape victims, a son who grows up to be like his father (at film's end, they team up). Of course, the rape victim/mother of this son is flogged by her husband in the nude for several minutes when she tells him the rapist impregnated her and begs him not to strike her belly (which he does). Overall, as if plot was relevant, I thought it tried to imply that there's a "rape" gene that can be passed from father to son -- not just any rape gene, but one that causes its bearer to commit acts of ultra-violent depravity: prolonged rape, sexual torture, bondage, bestiality, caging women and everything under the sun (female masturbation and urination scenes are here too, although it's all exaggerated). Each scene seems carefully planned by the director (unusual in Western adult films). Some scenes are more realistic than others. A depraved filmmaker, this guy Noriyumi Suzuki. Japanese males must really be misogynistic that it could be made and distributed. School-age girls and even the rapist's sister aren't spared (although the sister, in a bizarre twist, doesn't find it at all offensive and turns on her co-captive -- so there goes the "gene" theory, unless she was a twin). Something in the story about hidden sexual desires in females, regardless of age or relation. About two hours of bondage, simulated sex and sexual torture, attractive and capable and surprisingly buxom Japanese actresses (acting defined as mostly physical bumping and grinding and hanging from ropes; oh, and some begging then being killed, others begging then submitting and later killed; Russ Meyer would be proud of the talent here). Comparable to Texas Chain Saw Massacre but with a prurient sexual theme. Oh, a pretty realistic, albeit simulated, bestiality scene is thrown in. The pacing from one depravity scene to the next is impressive; must have had a large budget; true, there is little story development in-between. Pretty graphic stuff, even if it is simulated.

Strange values, these Japanese film authorities: no male frontal nudity, no graphic penetration scenes but lots of the most realistic, prolonged simulated rape/torture scenes I've ever heard of. Still, if America allowed its distribution, it would be X-rated for its content alone and the realism of the "simulations" of murder and rape and degradation of the women... One could easily conclude that nothing like this could ever be made in a more civilized country that actually respected its mothers, sisters, and female children. I guess they call it "free expression."

More pornographic than what passes for "XXX" here, even though it is all simulated. Not a "date" movie. I can see only envision that hard up guys who blame females for their dating ineptitude and wish to vent on them, similarly-depraved minds and misguided liberals (an oxymoron) will champion this one.

This is a well made beautiful film about the kidnap and torture of women. Its great to look at but I have yet to determine why I should want to watch it. Don't get me wrong it has nothing to do with refined sensibilities, I can enjoy twisted exploitation as well as anyone, but there's simply something wrong.

I think the problem with it is that its rather a dull movie. Terrible things happen to good looking woman...and thats about it. There is some attempt at character, but its not all that interesting. Its as if its trying to be more than the bondage porno it is.

I had been drawn to the film when I had read several articles that mentioned its bad reputation, so when I found a cheap copy I figured I'd give it a try. Perhaps back in 1979 it was something, but today with these jaded eyes its unremarkable. I've seen films of every sort and this one didn't strike as much of anything.

Will you find it offensive? If naked tortured women offends you, or you have stayed in the mainstream in your tastes, you probably will be offended or made uncomfortable, but for anyone else, this is probably going to bore you much more than it will shock or excite you. It has not lived up to its reputation.

This movie is about young sex murderer. His mother herself was raped by a criminal and afterward his formerly milquetoast professor father abused both of them, believing his wife "enjoyed" the experience and his son was the product of the rape. Through either "nature" or "nurture" the son grows up to be a sex criminal himself, kidnapping women and sexually abusing them (onscreen) and then sometimes killing them (offscreen), even while he tries to have a conventional romance with a childhood friend. Eventually he meets his birth father, who is still and active rape-murderer himself.

This is a controversial movie, mostly because it has been more widely seen than most "pinku eiga" films and a lot people simply don't understand the genre. If people like violent action movies or slasher movies, no one (today at least) assumes they're homicidal maniacs because everyone knows that people aren't REALLY being killed. Well, the same thing is true in "pink" films. Of course, the women aren't REALLY being raped (nor are the girls in schoolgirl uniforms REALLY schoolgirls), and in fact the rape scenes are actually kind of ridiculous. Some people are either incapable of separating fiction from reality (notice I didn't say fantasy) or they don't give other people credit for being able to do so. The ridiculous rape scenes aren't necessarily even sex fantasies for all the male viewers (like me, for instance), but to the extent they are--well, even feminists acknowledge that woman have rape fantasies (yet don't want to really be raped), why is it surprising that many NON-RAPIST men do as well?

Ironically, the controversy largely comes about because the women in "pinku eiga" like this often end up enjoying the rape. After the "schoolgirl" is abducted, tortured, forced to masturbate for her captor and eventually violated, he lets her goes and sees her later back at school where she is now happy and well-adjusted. But this is exactly WHY these rape scenes are so unbelievable. It's an old-fashioned idea that men commit rape because they think the women "enjoy" it. Rapists are sadistic *bleeps* who probably would be very disappointed if the woman enjoyed it, or in most cases they are simply sociopaths who don't care (nobody thinks murderers, muggers, and burglars do what they do because they think their victims "enjoy" it). But you simply don't judge movies by how a child or a disturbed individual might react to them--or we'd only have movies fit for small children and disturbed minds. A NORMAL person will just laugh this off, or perhaps be titillated by the basically consensual BDSM. Besides, compare rape and sexual assault statistics in Japan to those of that "PC"/feminist fortress that is America and then you can try to tell me the problem is MOVIES. . .