One of the elements we like about pinku films—aside from the action, the visuals, and the glimpse into a culture not our own—is that the women who have suffered all sorts of degradations at the hands of men inevitably massacre their tormentors in the last reel. When that doesn’t happen, we’re cheated of the final catharsis, which makes us party to the abuse rather than cheerleaders for the abused’s emancipation. We don’t need to be shown that the world is cruel—we just want to see something done about it, if only in the realm of violent fantasy.

Thus Sadao Nakajima’s Poruno no joô: Nippon sex ryokô, aka The Pornstar Travels Around Japan, aka The Kyoto Connection doesn’t quite deliver for us. It’s a rather simple film, and it has nothing to do with traveling around. Quite the opposite, actually. The porn star in question is held captive in a room most of the movie and repeatedly abused by a rather disturbed taxi driver for whom she eventually develops feelings. Psychologists, so we hear, call this sort of emotional inversion Stockholm Syndrome. We call it a letdown, even though we understand there’s an attempt to make a serious point here.

At least the movie has Christina Lindberg in the title role, so that’s a substantial silver lining. The poster above is one you can find on many websites, but we suspect only we have the rare two-panel version below. Too bad the printers produced such a shitty image. We can only assume that upon seeing a nude Christina Lindberg, they printed the posters one-handed while abusing themselves. Poruno no joô: Nippon sex ryokô, aka The Pornstar Travels Around Japan opened in Japan today in 1973.