Bijo no harawata

This movie, I would like to say, was completely great. I can see how many people would think that it's just a shocker film. This isn't completely untrue, but it's as much of shocker fiction as Chuck Palahniuk's books are. One of my favorite movies of all time, Bijo no Harawata is a certain type of crudely made movie that you can have just about any reaction to. It's scary, funny, silly, gross, full of off-the-top material and to some people, arousing. The fist time I saw this, it was with my friend, and his mother had brought it home for him to see it. He said it was just some screwed up Japanese movie, but I saw so much more of it. It's badly made, yes, but it has a certain type of poignancy as to be beautiful, too. As the Director says himself, this is a shocker movie made for a certain reason. Its like atrophy. If you leave audiences soft, then the entire human race is going to be soft. I think this is a good philosophy, and I agree with it one-hundred percent. Bijo no Harawata is the type of movie that gang rapes the hell out of fitness, yogurt, and all of this new-wave stuff.

A sequel in name only, we have another decadent journey into the realm of horror perversion. While this is notably improved over the first installment, it still has much room to improve.

First of all the movie is really short, only about 66 minutes. That's hardly feature length. Though I digress, given what the film is most concerned with showing (graphic rape scenes) I think a short run time is just fine.

A woman witnesses her friend commit suicide and decides to investigate the matter on her own. In the course of her investigation, she uncovers a criminal group marketing a new designer drug and taking woman for slave trade. She tries to put an end to it, but is ultimately taken captive and viciously (and I do mean viciously) raped. She is injected with the drug, but OD's and dies, only to return as a slimy, mutant hermaphrodite.

The sex is handled more competently than the first film, but is ever bit as uncomfortable. The blood and gore are noticeably less until closer to the end when the blood monster goes on it's rampage. Those scene will stick with you for a while.

This could have worked, but is killed by the same problems as it's prequel, that and it's near obsession with graphic depictions of gang rape.

5/10

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.

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.

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.