I spent my afternoon session online adding some Arzon / Amazon data to a new Cherry series, prefix OHO-. According to Arzon it's put out by Crystal Eizou, an important early AV company. They discovered Kaoru Kuroki, who helped make the AV "respectable"... well sort of respectable... with her appearances on mainstream talk shows. Also, director Tôru Muranishi started at Crystal, then went on to found Diamond Visual. This short-lived studio created the "kyonyuu boom" with the discovery of Kimiko Matsuzaka. We see her at left in what I believe was the first image I ever saw of her, in 1989... and I have not recovered yet... Several more recent JAV girls outsize her in every way, but Kimiko still retains her beauty, that pale skin, and that innocent, earthy charm...My IMDb submissions for the day were:
1979-06 Seifuku kyôhaku okashi (制服脅迫犯し) Shintoho Company; dir: Kiyoshi Nakayama 61分
1979-01-20 Semi-Documentary: Fake GYN Doctor (セミドキュメント にせ婦人科医 - Semi document: Nise fujin-ka-i) (Banmei Takahashi; prod: Den'ei [jp])
1978-09 16-sai no koukishin: Onna ni shite! (１６才の好奇心 女にして！) Shintoho Company; dir: Kaoru Higashimoto (Kaoru Umezawa (as Kaoru Higashimoto)
1979-03-06 Zetsurin Toruko mansion: Mitsugi (絶倫トルコマンション 密戯 / 絶倫トルコ・マンション 密戯) [Seinen Gunzô] dir: Kô Hayasaka
1978-10-07 Ganbare chikan: Yubi zeme (がんばれ痴漢 指ぜめ; Shinya Yamamoto (I) Y.S. Enterprise / Nikkatsu;
1978-10-21 Harassing Perverted Girl (おさすり変態娘; Osasuri hentai musume) (Genji Nakamura; Watanabe Pro / Nikkatsu
1978-10 Hatsujô apaato: Rangyou shûdan (発情アパート 乱行集団) Shintoho Company; dir: Minoru Inao
1978-10 Hikô joshigakusei: Nure hajime (非行女子学生 濡れはじめ) Shintoho Company; dir: Mamoru Watanabe
1978-01 Jokôsei maruhi seihanzai (女高生（秘）性犯罪) Shintoho Company; dir: (Kaoru Umezawa (as Kaoru Higashimoto) Kokuei Company / Shintoho Company
1978-07 Jôfu okashi (情婦犯し) Shintoho Company; dir: Giichi Nishihara
And my old submissions that went live today:
Semi-dokyumento: Meiki no kenkyû (Tadashi Yoyogi, 1975)
Osanazuma: Shoya no wananaki (Mamoru Watanabe, 1976)
I returned to the wild world of Pink cinema for my evening's viewing pleasure last night: Hisayasu Satô's Rafureshia, or Slut Wife: While Husband's Away (すけべ妻 夫の留守に; Sukebe-zuma: otto no rusu ni; Kokuei / Shintôhô; 1995). I haven't found a poster to this film yet, but here it is on a Japanese VHS double-feature with Toshiya Ueno's Best Film of the year at the Pink Taishô: Keep on Masturbating: Non-Stop Pleasure (連続ＯＮＡＮＩＥ 乱れっぱなし; Renzoku onanie: midareppanashi; Shintôhô; 1994).Satô is a director with whom I've had an odd history. I learned about his work in Thomas and Yuko Mihara Weisser's Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films (1998). Weisser paints him as some kind of madman, with a "bitter, sledgehammer style". He claims Satô's films are "difficult to watch, filled with savage brutality, rape and sexual abuse," etc. The pictures in the book of Satô, and his films similarly show a criminally insane crackpot at work. I do enjoy a rather more extreme type of cinema than most people, but I was repulsed by what I read, and had no desire to see Satôs cinematic atrocities. However, when some of his films were made available to the U.S. DVD market, I gave them a look just out of curiosity. After that my opinion changed completely. I have found the few films of his that I've seen (four or five out of over 50 that he has made), to be thoughtful and well-made, if, yes, shocking, radical and experimental. It's possible I have just seen his "tamer" films, but then one of those I've seen is Naked Blood (1996) which is often cited as one of his most extreme. (For a hint of this film's content, IMDb lists as a Continuity Goof: "After frying and eating her hand, in another scene she uses cutlery to cut bits of herself off and both hands can be seen.")... I have found Satô himself, in interviews, to be an intelligent, enthusiastic and humorous artist, and I have found all his movies that I have seen to have just this sort of character.
Rafureshia was made towards the ends of Satô's first run in directing, roughly ten years during which he made over fifty films. He would take a break from filmmaking a couple years after Rafureshia. Though still amazingly low-budgeted, this one had a higher budget, and a longer shooting schedule than his previous Pink films. So he had five days to shoot instead of the usual four. Satô says his intent in this film was to show, in a darkly humorous style, three characters locked in unsatisfying lives, all making the jump to a new, freer existence. Satô's most notorious films were scripted by Shirô Yumeno, but this one was by Taketoshi Watari, a younger screenwriter with more interest in fantasy and manga than realism. Satô claims Watari is a more adaptable writer than Yumeno, which is why he asked him to write this atypical manga-based comedy project. Watari appears in the film as one of the group of homeless men who find and rape the cooperative Alisa after she has escaped from her incestuous father.
Though the film features the inter-locking stories of three women, the main character is probably Alisa, played by the actress Kinako, who made her film debut here. This is the only film she made with Satô and Kokuei studio, but she went on to act for several other major Pink directors like Satôru Kobayashi, Minoru Kunizawa, and Kinya Ogawa. She gleefully performs one of the more outrageous scenes in the movie, in which she goes overboard at a sex club where she has been hired to play chainsaw-wielding Sadist to a Masochistic man in a diaper sucking a bottle and whimpering "Mummy, mummy". Them chainsaws can be dangerous, you know...
The luscious and intelligent Yumi Yoshiyuki plays Harumi, the put-upon housewife who is the "slut wife" of the theatrical title.
Yoshiyuki debuted in 1993 and was a major Pink film actress throughout the '90s. She won Best Supporting Actress at the Yokohama Film Festival for her roles in the mainstream films Murder on D Street and Daikaijû Tôkyô ni arawaru (both 1998). She began directing in 1996, winning several awards at the Pink Taishô. She continues to act and direct, and she remains a gorgeous woman. We see her at left in director Tôru Daimon's (no entry for him at IMDb yet?!) 1999 Xces film Misoji dôsôkai: Hageshisugiru seiyoku (三十路同窓会 激しすぎる性欲; re-released in 2009 as 三十路の痴女たち 浮気妻・セレブ妻・恥じらい妻).Harumi's nagging and perverted mother-in-law is played by Satô's favorite actress, Kiyomi Itô. Itô had debuted in 1984, and began working with Satô when he was assistant director to Academy Award-winner Yojirô Takita. Itô starred in Satô's directorial debut in 1985, and stuck with him until she retired from full-time film work to run a Tokyo bar.
The main actor, Koichi Imaizumi, is also a frequent collaborator with Satô. Despite his roles in more than 100 straight films, Jasper Sharp, in his DVD commentary, reports that Imaizumi is flamboyantly gay. Critical of the way gays are portrayed in Pink films supposedly geared to a gay audience, he began writing his own gay Pink film screenplays. At least one of these was directed by co-star Yumi Yoshiyuki by the way.
Anyway, Rafureshia, like many Satô films, has to be seen to be believed or understood. It is very imaginative, and giving away the bizarre plot will spoil most of the surprises. How many "Porn" films contain a refutation of Einstein's Theory of Relativity? The plot, while completely lucid when seen a couple times, is not presented simply and linearly, but disjointedly, having the characters each follow their own stories, which then tie into each other. Uniquely, as far as I am aware, for a Satô film, it is a comedy, but it is a very black comedy.
It gives few out-loud laughs, and those are more from the outrageousness of the situations rather than traditional comedy. Nevertheless, the bizarre but whimsical tone does make it a comedy... If any US Pink film DVD producers are listening out there, give us more Satô, please! The guy is a wacky, perverted genius, and we need more of his stuff! I see I gave this film a phenomenal nine stars at IMDb when I first saw it a few years ago... and who am I to argue?... Let's conclude this day's discussion with another glance at the beautiful Ms. Matsuzaka. She was in the spotlight all too briefly-- less than two years, but made a hefty impact on JAV style. Before her, nothing but skinny girls. As far as the big-boobs and the BBWs, Après Matsuzaka le déluge. Gone but not forgotten.
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