#Naosuke Kurosawa

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Zûmu in: Bôkô danchi (1980), dir. Naosuke Kurosawa

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Dream Crimes (1985)

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Zoom In: Sex Apartments (Kurosawa, 1980)

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ZOOM IN: SEX APARTMENTS (1980)

Dir. Naosuke Kurosawa

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Naosuke Kurosawa

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Naosuke Kurosawa

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Katsuko Wakasugi in Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan (Nobuo Nakagawa, 1959)

Cast: Shigeru Amachi, Katsuko Wakasugi, Shuntaro Emi, Ryuzaburo Nakamura, Noriko Kitazawa, Junko Ikeuchi, Kikuko Hanaoka, Hiroshi Hayashi, Jun Otomo, Shinjuro Asano. Screenplay: Masayoshi Onuki, Yoshihiro Ishikawa, based on a play by Nanboku Tsuruya. Cinematography: Tadashi Nishimoto. Production design: Harayasu Kurosawa. Film editing: Shin Nagata. Music: Michiaki Watanabe.

Keisuke Kinoshita's 1949 version of the much-adapted ghost story, Yotsuya Kaidan, jettisoned the supernatural in favor of the psychological, turning the protagonist, Iemon, into a somewhat more sympathetic, even tragic figure. But ten years later, Nobuo Nakagawa went straight for the horror: a bloodthirsty, ambitious Iemon (Shigeru Amachi), who doesn't even need Naosuke's (Shuntaro Emi) Iago-like promptings to descend straight into murder. In fact, if you try to apply psychology to Nakagawa's Iemon, you'll run up against some blank walls: It's hard to understand why Iemon in this version even bothers to settle down to a life of umbrella-making after his slaughter of Oiwa's father and his complicity in Naosuke's dispatch of Yomoshichi (Ryuzaburo Nakamura), his rival for Osode's (Noriko Kitazawa) hand. By this time, Iemon is steeped in blood so far that "returning were as tedious as go o'er," to put it in Macbeth's terms. In this version, the ghosts of Oiwa (Katsuko Wakasugi) and Takuetsu (Jun Otomo) are particularly real and vengeful, not just phantoms of Iemon's imagination, as in Kinoshita's version. They lead Iemon into slaughtering Ume (Junko Ikeuchi) and her father and finally to his own doom. Nakagawa's film lacks the subtlety of Kinoshita's, but in the end I think that's for the good: What you want from a ghost story is catharsis, not irony.

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(via Coffee coffee and more coffee: Nurse Diary: Beast Afternoon)

Kangofu nikki: Kemonojimita gogo Naosuke Kurosawa - 1982

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MUHAN DREAM CRIMES / ORGASM MARIKO (1985) - LUSCIOUS LIPS IN MOVIE POSTERS (Part 16/20)

A striking image used for the combo release poster of two Japanese pinky movie poster using a cherry in between juicy lips. Suggestive yet classy.

Director: Naosuke Kurosawa, Fumihiko Kato                                                       Actors: Rei Akasaka

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The poster above courtesy of ILLUSTRACTION GALLERY

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Zoom In: Sex Apartments (Kurosawa, 1980)

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Dream Crimes

Muhan

1985

Film de Naosuke Kurosawa · 1 h 09 min · 16 novembre 1985 (Japon)

Genre : Érotique

Pays d'origine : Japon

Petite variation Angels Gut

Rei Akasaka a beau interpréter une dénommée Yû, son lien avec les Angels Gut est sans ambiguïté. Son passé (viol traumatisant et « primordial »), l’omniprésence du monde de Takashi Ishii : la ville, la nuit, la pluie, tout rappelle Nami, même le nom de famille du jeune garçon : Tsuchiya.

Petite variation Angels Gut par TeryA (senscritique.com)

Dream Crimes (1985)

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Zoom In: Sex Apartments (Kurosawa, 1980)

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Zoom In: Sex Apartments (Kurosawa, 1980)

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Movie Review | Zoom In: Sex Apartments (Kurosawa, 1980)

I'd seen this described as a giallo-influence pinku, which naturally meant I had to seek it out. Giallo, a genre of which I've seen my share, often features sexualized violence. Pinku, a genre of which I've seen fewer but am trying to get a handle on, seems to often feature violent sex. So both are already blurring the lines between those two elements, so it's only natural that someone would have combined the two. This combination manifests in the movie in a few ways, at least some of which made this work better for me than all the other pinkus I've seen so far. There's obviously the presence of the black gloved killer imported from giallo land. (The title on IMDb is Zoom In: Rape Apartments, which I imagine would have made the DVD harder to sell. Apparently this is part of a series, with entries seemingly titled to imply zooms in different directions in proximity to different rapacious locations. This is the only one I've seen.) And yes he does kill, but as we're in pinku territory he's also a rapist. And as we're combining the two, his method of torture and murder is the seriously unpleasant use of a blowtorch to the genitals. I don't know if Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci took a trip to Japan and swapped pinku tapes on the way home, but there's a meanness here that anticipates both Tenebre and The New York Ripper, particularly the latter's overtly misogynistic brutality.

The atmosphere of many a giallo has been coloured by whichever Italian city they've taken place, and likewise, you feel the milieu colouring the proceedings here as well. The heroine lives in a high rise apartment, but its surroundings resemble a bombed out wasteland, detritus framed against the illusion of socioeconomic progress. So there's certainly an atmosphere of decay, but you take the bombed out looking environment, and the use of fire, and once you get the shot of a victim completely engulfed in flames, it starts to sink in that maybe there's some historical subtext here about the atom bomb. Like in my previous pinku reviews, I suspect my limited knowledge is leading me to such a reading, but in any case, the look of the movie, while sumptuous, feels less decadent than the stylish architectural and geometric qualities I associate with some of my favourite giallos.

I've struggled with the psychological dimensions of the pinkus I'd seen previously, but this is a case where the giallo influence comes in handy, as those are less about coherent psychology than externalizing states of mind. The genre is often about women who may secretly be into kinky sex, so having a series of kinked out murders that strongly evoke the brutal rape she suffers seems like a logical extension of her trauma. And her eventual turn to the "dark side", signified by the donning of black panties as well as a genuinely stylish and erotic scene where she's pleasured by two black clad lovers as they're licked by flames, feels more plausible in this context. The heroine is played by Erina Miyai, who I'd recently seen as the dominant headmistress in Sex Hunter, and while the contrast in demeanour is drastic between the two characters, I found her both empathetic and able to sell the kinked out dimensions of her character.

I'll give this a strong recommendation, although the murders come with a great big "watch at your own risk" label.

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Zoom In: Sex Apartments (Kurosawa, 1980)