Shishûgoku: Ki no hen

This strange Japanese horror, based on a manga by Makine Muroi, kicks off in fine trashy style: a young woman is chased through the woods by three men who tear open her top before chopping off her leg with an axe. That's nudity and gore in the very first scene!

The film then follows a group of four female students and their teachers as they travel to an isolated village to study folklore. Of course, this being a horror film, when they arrive, they discover that the locals are more than a tad strange, inducting the girls into the village with a bizarre 'foot amputation ceremony' that involves their leader Mayor Amano wearing a mask that makes him look a bit like Noseybonk from UK kids show Jigsaw (if you don't know what I'm referring to, give it a Google - it's seriously freaky!).

After some more weirdness, a sex scene between Dr. Ashihara and his buxom assistant, and a gruesome dream sequence, it eventually transpires that, for hundreds of years, the villagers have been preying on visitors, eating the men and using the women to bear children. Realising the danger they are in, the girls try to make a bid for freedom, but with the locals blocking the roads, a run through the surrounding woods is their only option. Will they survive? I guess that is to be seen in part two (which I will give a watch if I happen to run across it, but which I won't go out of my way to find).

Well, I was drawn to this 2017 movie as it was a Japanese horror movie. Sure, I had not even heard about it prior to getting to sit down and watch it in 2020, and I had no idea what to expect from the story. However, I will say that given the movie's cover, then I wasn't actually having much of any high hopes for the movie.

But still, it being a Japanese horror movie is more than sufficient to get me to watch something. And so I did. But I can't claim that "Corpse Prison Part One" (aka "Shishûgoku: Ki no hen") from director Hideo Jôjô was particularly outstanding, much less entertaining actually.

I didn't know that it was based on a Manga, but as this movie turned out, I have little interest in getting acquainted with the Manga, much less with this Part Two for the movie.

The acting in the movie was adequate, taking into consideration the severe limitations imposed on the cast by the lack of a proper storyline and script.

The storyline in "Corpse Prison Part One" was just atrocious. It was rather boring to be bluntly honest, actually.

My rating for this 2017 Japanese horror movie is a mere three out of ten stars. I was not impressed in any way, nor were I particularly entertained by what transpired on the screen. If you enjoy Japanese horror movies, there are far better choices readily available.