Jokôsei: Tenshi no harawata

This first installment in the ANGEL GUTS series is the loudest and rawest. It focuses on three street punks who behave like Kubrick's Droogs in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. They spend most of their spare time raping women, harassing women and plotting to rape more women. Their routine is interrupted when one of the trio exhibits a conscience.

Director Chusei Sone employs a rugged, hand-held approach to the material and milks entirely convincing performances from the youthful cast. As rape is a consistent staple of this series, there is plenty of it in this outing, although none of it is pictorially graphic. One nightmare sequence, in which a young woman is stabbed repeatedly in the groin, does possess a poisonous cinematic power.

There is an erotic edge to the film's sexuality and, as per expectations, an emphasis on female underwear and garment tearing.

Plaudits should go to cinematographer Nobumasa Mizunoo who embellishes the film with stark, white-hot visuals and toys with both color and black and white.

The film is a character study of the dangerous miscreants who walk among us and portrays sociopathic behavior as being just one step sideways for most of us.

I like J-horror, anime and even kinda dig the pink movement, which some have claimed this a member of, but this did nothing for me. I willing to go a step further and label this one of the biggest let downs of my film watching career.

Three young rockabillies go around getting their kicks out of raping girls. One of the group starts to develop a concisions about their pass-time when his kid sister nearly catches them in the act. Invariably, the group turns on itself as the once friends begin fighting with each other. It ends on a down note befitting the film as a whole.

Aside from watching the friends yell at each other, which they do a lot, there isn't a whole lot going on here. The film is littered with LONG continual shots that only exacerbate the issue. On top of that, even when the film starts to do something interesting, it suddenly gets bogged down in ethereal philosophy that never makes any sense. For instance, after one of the buddies has his change of heart about assaulting girls, he goes out and does it again, but then stops his buddies from taking their turns. Huh? The cinematography is slow and lighting is poor. The writing is OK, as is the acting, which makes this a sub-par cinematic effort from the start. Mix the lack of technical prowess with the flimsy content and you have nothing more than a waste of time.

Oh, and one more extra note, at least one of the girls that appears in the buff does not look old enough to be doing that kinda stuff.

3/10

There's so much obscure Japanese cinema that I long to see. Thank God for niche suppliers like Tokyo Shock and Artsmagic. The latter has resurrected a five film series of Nikkatsu pink films entitled Angel Guts. High School Co-ed is the first of these films, all of which center around a brutal act of rape, around which a moral tale unfolds. This one has a group of three bikers who attack young women. One of them, Kawashima, has a small bit of conscious, though. Outside of his friends, he lives for his young sister and realizes that the violence he and his friends enact upon others could just as easily be applied to her. While I've seen more graphic material before, the actual rape scenes are very disturbing. The artistic merit is certainly questionable, and the acts are played for stimulation. However, the script is very good, and the characters come across as people. There is at least one character whose situation is only hinted at and never explained – I would have liked to know more about him. And the ending is very odd. Otherwise, definitely a film of interest, if not for those who are easily shocked.

Angel Guts - High School Co-ed (Japan, 1978) dir: Chûsei Sone

Kawashima and his two biker friends spend their time riding around and raping unsuspecting young girls. Much younger than them. His sister, Megu is coming of age, and men are starting to notice her. Ironically being overprotective he starts to feel conflicted. One day while out with his sister he saves a girl from his friend trying to rape her, which ends up leading to even more conflicted feelings. Has he fallen in love? What makes her different from the other rape victims he shares with his friend? Does he see his sister in this girl? Is he attracted to his sister? Is he distancing himself from his gang?

Director Chûsei Sone shoots this like the viewer is there, hanging out and observing, privy to the private conversations and shocking behavior. That makes it all that more realistic and difficult to look away from.

It's part of a series obviously meant to titillate and yet it goes to great lengths to show us the ugliness and the pain of the victim. Machiko Ohtani as Nami, the girl who the gang fights over, gives a pretty brave performance considering especially what she has to go through in here (and Megu Kawashima as well, as the sister). This is still an exploitation film, but it's been made as a well-crafted movie, with something more to show you than just bikers punks raping school girls. That's just an ugly world that happens to exist - we're thrust inside of it when it suddenly tries to gain a conscience.

The ending is unsatisfying, as a way to finish a story. It was summed up better when, late in the movie, Kawashima asks one of the victims "Who did this to you?" and she answers, "It doesn't matter who does it" as if in the end it's just a foregone conclusion in the world they live in.

A trio of Biker hoodlums, Kawashima, Kajima, and Sadakuni , who, which is quite apparent from the get go, spend their days raping women, talking about raping women, and planning to rape women again. Kawashima is extremely careful that his younger sister, Megu, never find out what he does and tries to protect her from the other gang members. Kajima tells Kawashima that he must rape a girl that he previously stopped the other members from raping only because his sister would have seen. but it's too late, there's already a rift growing between the gang members. This will start a chain of events that you know will not end well for any involved. I don't really take enjoyment from these rape fantasy films, this one is more thought provoking that titillating tho and has well fleshed out characters (for the most part), and i never felt my interest waning. On a side note was it just me, or did the music sound like a certain Weezer riff?? Perhaps the boys saw this film before.

My Grade: C+

DVD Extras: Commentary by Jasper Sharp; Bio/Filmographies; Separate Interviews with Toshiharu Ikeda (7 minutes) and Takashi Ishii (21 minutes); Original Sleeve art; and Trailers for this and 4 other Angel Guts Films (Red Classroom, Nami, Red Vertigo, & Red Porno) all available in Artsmagik's Box-set, but for some reason the 6th film "Angel Guts: Red Flash" is not in the set