| Vintage Pulp | Dec 31 2022 |
You're a political radical? We think that's sooo hot.
The beautiful promo you see above threw us into confusion for a bit. It's supposedly for a film called Gendai kôshoku-den: Teroru no kisetsu, aka Modern Passion: Season of Terror, but the poster contains only the first half of that title, which could conceivably make it for an entirely different film. And since our initial research revealed that Gendai kôshoku-den: Teroru no kisetsu has strong political elements, the art here seems incongruous. But after a bit more digging we've decided it's the correct poster alright. The two female stars listed in all the Japanese websites we checked—Tomomi Sahara and Yûko Ejima—are right there front and center, visually confirmed. We suppose the poster is an example of the studio, Wakamatsu Production, selling their political drama by any means necessary, including making it look like a roman porno flick.
That said, Gendai kôshoku-den does have sexual elements. It's about an alleged political terrorist played by Ken Yoshizawa, who's living with two women in a vast suburban housing block, but is unaware that he's under surveillance by Japanese security services and that his apartment has been bugged. We see no signs Yoshizawa is involved in any shady activities, though he's suspected of an embassy arson that occurred several years ago. He appears to have no job, while his girlfriends both work. This quiet existence is suspicious to the two agents. They see it as, “laying low.” Day after day they listen to Yoshizawa eat, have sex, chat with his girlfriends, and talk to himself. On the occasions he leaves the apartment, they follow.
The irony is thick with this situation. One agent asks the other, “Does he have anything worth living for, like us?” What a question, coming from a federal voyeur, watching a guy who has a lordly existence chilling, eating, wandering around, and screwing all day. His partner responds to the question: “I no longer know what we're watching.” Indeed. Is Yoshizawa really a political risk, or is it all just another state-level paranoid delusion like so many of the past? And since states have the power to make their fantasies real, even if Yoshizawa is innocent of all wrongdoing, will he be fashioned into a traitor anyway, unjustly prosecuted and perp-walked before the masses?
Gendai kôshoku-den: Teroru no kisetsu isn't a roman porno because it didn't come from Nikkatsu Studios and predates the official establishment of the genre, but there are similar elements, particularly an exploration of rape fantasy, mercifully brief. In this case, it's possible to argue that this is a metaphor for Yoshizawa's alleged urges to hurt people for political gain—or maybe he's not even a terrorist, but just a regular man, prone to terror in pursuit of whatever he wants. It's a question that roman porno, being mainly a template for kinky male fantasies, doesn't usually ask. That isn't to say roman porno is all bad. There are some deep ideas explored occasionally, but Gendai kôshoku-den: Teroru no kisetsu, with its underlying political intrigue, is engaging in a way Nikkatsu's offerings usually aren't.
Kôji Wakamatsu, the man in the director's chair, makes an engrossing slow burn of the movie, and expertly milks this central question of terroristic acts, inching toward a conclusion that will exonerate Yoshizawa, condemn him, or leave everything ambiguous even after the credits roll. On another layer just below is a subtle questioning of the nature of Japanese/U.S. relations, of imperialism, and the national ennui of an occupied nation. In addition, ocurring at intervals is a wonderful and haunting Vince Guaraldi-style solo flute score by Meikyu Sekai (a group, not a person), which is later supplanted by Max Roach's great tune, “Sunday Afternoon.” Gendai kôshoku-den: Teroru no kisetsu, despite its proto-roman porno digression, is a movie we can recommend. It premiered today in 1969.
JapanWakamatsu ProductionGendai kôshoku-den: Teroru no kisetsuModern Passion: Season of TerrorKen YoshizawaYûko EjimaTomomi SaharaMeikyu SekaiMax Roachposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 28 2022 |
Slippery pavement ahead. High accident risk. Proceed in low gear.
Above is a poster for Sex rider: Nureta highway, or alternatively Sex Rider: Wet Highway, starring Mari Tanaka as a woman about to be married who succumbs to a case of cold feet and flees her impending nuptials. Her escape gets off to a bad start when she hits a guy with her car. He's not seriously hurt, but seeing a chance to possibly profit, pretends to be gravely injured. Tanaka, no doctor she, mistakes his fake unconsciousness for death and decides to dispose of the body. Reality gets a little bent from that point, as the film descends into a dreamlike state and we poor confused viewers aren't actually sure if the guy is dead. In any case, Tanaka dumps the body in a lake, but is seen doing it by a nearby hunter, and is sexually assaulted by this witness. At that point the dead/not dead man reappears to defend her, claiming, “I'm the ghost of the guy you hit.” Okay.
That's all we'll do on the plot. We want to note that Nikkatsu Studios, undeniably, had an obsession with rape. Their movies are very against the grain nowadays (and were back then too, we suspect, or at least hope), but we think there's value in looking at them objectively. Modern art is always a momentary endpoint and has to be understood with its evolution in mind. That's why we don't judge these sometimes disturbing films too harshly. The 1970s were a time of cinematic exploration and it was coupled with a new sexual freedom wherein merely to shock with nudity was usually considered a nudge toward more liberation. As we understand it, many feminists back then were pro-nudity. It was a flip-off to a patriarchy that had stifled women for centuries.
But when VHS and the porn explosion came along the winds shifted. Billions were made selling women's bodies and women made virtually nothing. Digital tech, which arrived to stick nudity and sex in the faces of people who hadn't even asked to see it, was the final straw. Today, many people see any female nudity as exploitative, and rail against any depiction of violence against women as implicit endorsement of the same. It's understandable. We all have our own red lines. Everybody's upsettable. Even the people who claim to be hard-as-nails free expression absolutists. Don't believe it? Tell one of them you think belief in a god is childish, or you're tired of veneration of the armed forces, and see how that goes. Everyone is upsettable.Japan was a more patriarchal society than many leading up to the roman porno period, so the push toward sexualization was quite strong there. Though cinematic censorship against frontal nudity and sex acts was firm, such prohibitions merely made Japanese filmmakers creative. It's incredible how shocking a roman porno movie can be without showing a wisp of pubic hair. The rape obsession is just one example. There was also a focus on bodily functions, submission, and more. Despite those shocks, we feel like roman porno films differ only in number—rather than content—from what was being produced in the West during the same period. In the U.S., France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, et al, the 1970 to 1980 timeframe was likewise characterized by an exploration of themes that today are considered taboo.
We love foreign films, and upon exploring Japanese cinema, we progressed from post-war dramas, to samurai and martial arts epics, to counterculture pinky violence films, and thence to roman porno. Ultimately, poster art is one of the linchpins of our site, and roman porno films have great posters, which is the main reason we talk about them so much. We could just share the posters and stop there, but that usually feels inadequate for people who take film as seriously as we (and hopefully you) do. So we watch the movies, but sometimes wonder if we've learned all we can from the genre and maybe should call it quits and move on. But for now we'll keep exploring films such as Sex rider: Nureta highway. In the end, we have to give it credit—at least it tried to be different. But it also should have tried to be better. It premiered in Japan today in 1971.
JapanNikkatsuSex rider: Nureta highwaySex Rider: Wet HighwayMari TanakaKen Yoshizawaposter artpinkuroman pornonuditycinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | May 17 2021 |
Who says cats don't like to get wet?
We're back to Japan today, with another Nikkatsu Studios pinku flick, this time Mesunekotachi no yoru, known in English as Night of the Felines. We like cats, so this one should be a slam dunk. It's about three women who work in a sort of massage parlor in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo called Turkish Paradise, where they provide soapy rubdowns and other services to male customers. They manage to get involved in efforts to convert an ostensibly gay youngster named Makoto to heterosexuality. Two items of note here: apparently soapy rubdowns are a thing in Japan; and apparently the filmmakers considered sexuality a strictly a-or-b deal. But whatever, in this all-or-nothing milieu conjured up by writer Akira Nakano and director Noboru Tanaka, men can be converted from totally gay to totally straight, which totally leads to troubles in typical Nikkatsu fashion. The movie is partly comedic in nature, and lurches between laughs—or attempts at generating them, anyway—to surprisingly dark interludes involving voyeurism, suicide, and more. It was interesting, and the gender bending nature of it was different. For us most of its value was in watching the Turkish Paradise felines and their bubbly slippings and slidings. Soapy rubdowns. Who'd have thought? Since we can't visit Turkish Paradise we're going to show the movie to the Pulp Intl. girlfriends and see if they can learn some tricks. Wish us luck. Mesunekotachi no yoru premiered in Japan today in 1972.
JapanNikkatsuMesunekotachi no yoruNight of the FelinesTomoko KatsuraKen YoshizawaHidemi Haraposter artroman pornosexploitationcinemapinkumovie review
