Bijo no harawata

Kazuo Komizu, who hasn't made one decent film, directed this "notorious" shocker and should be ashamed that it was a hit upon its Japanese release.

Yes, it does feature scenes of rape, gore and dismemberment, but so what? It has the style of a bad American porn film shot and badly photographed by Ed Powers ("Dirty Debutantes") and is incredibly slow.

It seems to have earned its notoriety based on its roster of anti-social acts.

There is a huge difference between this and horror that is well produced.

Just because someone likes their cinema a little wet does not mean they'll accept crap like this. On the contrary, that kind of fan (myself, for example) tolerates even less crap than the average punter out there because he's seen so much and has become overly discerning. It's a shame production companies don't realize that.

One reviewer here (ZombieKilla81) commented that the film's "near obsession with gang rape" is one of the factors that killed it. I disagree. The subject matter is never the issue. The issue is how that subject matter is treated. In ENTRAILS OF A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, it is treated so unimaginatively that it is boring.

Personally, I like graphic depictions of psychopathic behavior (with an intriguing context) if the material is well directed, freshly photographed and aesthetically pleasing. This Nikkatsu horror/pink hybrid is woeful.

AKA Guts of a Beautiful Woman

The second part of director Kazuo 'Gaira' Komizu's 'Guts Trilogy'. A young woman looking for her missing sister is kidnapped, drugged, and raped by a Yakuza gang. She discovers that her sister suffered the same fate before being taken to Africa and sold into slavery. The young woman escapes and manages to reach a clinic where she tells a nurse everything that happened. Then, with the drug still in her system, she runs to the clinic roof and jumps, killing herself. The nurse decides that she will seek revenge on the Yakuza gang responsible for the girl's rape and death. Unfortunately, her plan backfires, and she herself is captured, forcibly drugged, and raped. However, the gang overdo the drug dosage and the nurse dies - only to be resurrected as a hermaphrodite, inside-out, zombie/corpse, who promptly seeks revenge on all responsible for her own rape and murder.

If the first movie (Guts of a Virgin/Entrails of a Virgin) was Gaira's attempt at a 'cabin in the woods' type slasher, this is his take on the 'rape-revenge' genre. The sex/nudity is dialled back a little from the first film, but it's still pretty heavy. The gore, though, is amped up. Gaira obviously had a bigger budget this time around, and the prosthetics/splatter work is consistently pretty good. He even manages to work in a homage to the Alien chest-burster. The performances are still cartoonish, with inept Yakuza gang members serving as light-relief (these guys are definitely more Sopranos-style henchmen than Godfather), and as with the first film we have to wait too long before the blood 'n' guts start flying around, but it's well-shot, and overall is a slight improvement. 5.5/10.

The first half (actually a little more) of the movie is a standard pink eiga film with requisite nudity, sex scenes and violence. This time the story is Yakuza that are capturing women to become sex slaves in another country. To make the women more willing they inject a drug that causes them to become nymphomaniacs. But one of the women escapes, makes contact with another woman that learns of this. At this point the movie becomes a revenge story for the rest of the movie. There's still more nudity and sex to come but into the second half several scenes of gory violence take place. I won't give it all away. It is worth watching.

The acting is good by some, bad by others. I did like the basic story which moved right along.

One minor blooper or Behind the Scenes item is at about 27 minutes in, you can see for a second the actress has tape or a shibue covering her private part. Of course not ever Japanese pink movie uses it but they obviously did in this one.

As pink movies go this one was fully watchable. If you don't like pink movies then maybe it's not for you. As always, they are rarely classic film making. Still, this was different than most and kept my interest the entire time.

Entrails of a Beautiful Woman sounds similar to Entrails of a Virgin but the two movies have some significant differences and you don't need to know one to watch the other. This film is essentially a gangster drama with a few softcore pornographic scenes and some supernatural horror elements in the final third. The movie criticizes and exposes the loss of honour, structures and values among organized crime institutions.

This film is about a group of gangsters involved in drug dealing and human trafficking. A young woman named Yoshimi is looking for her sister who disappeared some time ago. She starts to suspect that her sister's boyfriend Higashi might have been involved in her disappearance. It turns out that her suspicions were correct as the boyfriend kidnaps her when he realizes that she is about to figure out the truth. He reveals that her sister has been sold to Africa via the Philippines. The gangsters plan on making Yoshimi suffer the same fate but the young woman manages to escape. The traumatized woman has a chance encounter with psychologist Hiromi as she is running for her life. She tells the psychologist everything she knows before having a mental breakdown and committing suicide. Hiromi feels unable to move on with her life and decides to avenge Yoshimi's tragic demise. She starts dating Higashi and hypnotizes him to manipulate him into murdering the clan members he is involved with. However, Hiromi's ambitious plan backfires and the gangsters set up a deadly trap for her. Just as the bad guys seem to be getting away with their evil deeds, a surprising twist of fate changes the tides and leads to a dramatic showdown.

This movie convinces on several levels. If compared to Entrails of a Virgin, this movie has a more complex plot with a few interesting twists and turns. The locations are once again cleverly chosen and vary from a revolting restaurant over a psychologist's office to gangster headquarters in a stylish apartment complex. The film has some decent atmospheric passages such as the scenes at an elegant bar or the surprising twist that occurs along an empty road on the outskirts of a metropolis. The special effects are quite memorable when the supernatural elements start occuring in the final third as the film turns into a bloody tale of revenge.

The film is however not without its flaws. The characters are overall less fleshed out than in the preceding Entrails of a Virgin. Lead actress Ozawa Megumi however does a decent job at portraying an empathic psychologist with clever ideas and a resilient mind. She is a strong heroine viewers will empathize and sympathize with. The light effects are once again underwhelming, especially in the opening third that takes place in some warehouse. The camera work is only of an average quality and somewhat unfocused and unsteady at times.

At the end of the day, Entrails of a Beautiful Woman can be seen as a spiritual predecessor to the Japanese V-Cinema throughout the nineties. This brutal gangster thriller isn't a far cry from the works of renowned directors such as Miike Takashi and Mochizuki Rokuro. The brutal stylistics and polarizing characters are quite similar but Entrails of a Beautiful Woman is missing the depth and wit of films like Shinjuku Triad Society and Another Lonely Hitman. This movie here is therefore only recommended to adamant fans of brutal Japanese gangster movies or over-the-top supernatural slashers.

'Oh, Japan! This mishmash of Yakuza thriller and horror flick (English title: 'Entrails of a Beautiful Woman') has a little bit of everything- rape, tentacles, strange designer drugs (Angeluh Rainu!) and a hermaphroditic monster. Not for the faint of heart, but well worth watching, if you have the 'guts'.

This is most definitely NOT for those with a weak composition, but is a rollicking good time for those whose tastes run towards the more esoteric and decidedly unenlightened. Pairs well with 'Emanuelle in America', 'Ebola Syndrome', and 'Boxer's Omen'. At a brisk 65 minutes or so, it doesn't wear out its welcome and makes for a good night fun, even if you feel icky afterward. A bleach bath can take care of that, though!