Angel Guts: Red Vertigo

Another baker's dozen of my Pink / Roman porno film submissions to IMDb went live today. Appropriately enough, my evening's movie-viewing habits have circled around away from b-westerns to the erotic again-- Roman Porno in fact-- so I'll describe what I saw tonight. I've had the box of Angel Guts DVDs for a few years, but never got through one of the films. (Wow! According to Amazon, the box is out of print and going for $200 new now, and I got mine for around $20!-- $4 a disc!) It is not a series in the traditional sense-- a group of characters with a continuing story. But they all have in common the names of the central characters-- Nami and Muraki-- and certain themes-- rape and its aftermath being the main one. Despite my dislike of the man-on-woman violence common in many of Nikkatsu's Roman Pornos (I find the woman-on-man violence of Toei's Pinky Violence films much more to my liking), I bought the box because these films are held in high critical regard. Ironically, my dislike of rape-fests enabled me to get through the abysmal rape-and-nothing-but-rape Naked Pursuit (albeit in fast-forward mode), because there was obviously nothing there for me to think about. Just get it over with as quickly as possible, so I could say I've seen it, and never have to bother with it again. But when I've put one of these Angel Guts films on in the past, there was obviously more going on. I wasn't in the mood to tolerate the misogyny, and it was obvious I'd do a disservice to a film worth viewing if I sped through it, so abandoned the viewing after 10 minutes or so planning on watching it later. Well, I finally made it though one: Angel Guts: Red Vertigo-- and I found it a very intriguing experience. I wonder if the other films in the series are of this high a quality...

Released in May, 1988, Angel Guts: Red Vertigo was one of the very last of Nikkatsu's 17-year, 1,000+ strong, venerable Roman Porno series. (The last Roman Porno was released later the same month.) Though Nikkatsu had started their Roman Pornos with lofty goals and received high praise, the series had fallen on hard times. Red Vertigo, however, is evidence that films of high quality could still come out of the series.

Along with character names and rape, another unifying factor that I have noticed in my partial-viewing of the films, so far, is a rather poetic use of rain, and liquid in general. This one has the most hypnotic peeing scene I've ever seen in a film... not that that's saying a lot. The story has Nami as sort of a modern version of DeSade's Justine: An innocent girl whose virtue is rewarded with continuous misfortune and brutality. In this one Nami is raped (almost) by two patients at a clinic at which she nurses, cheated on by her boyfriend, hit by a car, then kidnapped and raped (almost) by the driver, with whom, naturally, she eventually falls in love... and then he is shot to death. Quite an uplifting story... One thing, perhaps, which made this one more palatable is that, though, certainly, there is violence towards women, the "rape" is inept and failed. Naomi never actually gets raped in this one. In fact in her first attempted rape, the rapist gets overly-excited and cums on his partners face before he actually completes the act; and in the second rape, the rapist can't "perform", only able to have sex with her later when it is consensual. But despite the apparently soap-opera-laden plot, it's a slow, meditative, stylish film with some very, very black humor. Very beautiful shot and directed, with skillful actors. But what it all meant, I'm not sure. Certainly worth more viewings, and highly recommended for anyone who enjoys the cinematically unusual in general and non-pornographic, well-made erotic cinema in particular. Eight out of Ten stars.