Japanese Exploitation Explosion – Iconic Images from Japanese Exploitation Flicks Part 1: 20-11
Iconic Images from Japanese Exploitation Flicks Part 1: 20-11
by Keri O’Shea
When I suggested to Marc that it might be a fun idea to put together a list of definitive images from the best (and the worst) of the very broad range of exploitation movies which have emerged out of the Land of the Rising Sun, I honestly had no idea what a difficult task it would be. So much so, that I had difficulty narrowing it down to a mere twenty. Thing is, and without entering into a debate about what makes up exploitation cinema in the first place, I decided that I didn’t want to just go for the obvious. Yes, Takashi Miike is going to be featured in here because he damn well deserves to be, but what I didn’t want to do was reproduce that Audition shot of Eihi Shiina holding a syringe. Iconic it may be, but there is a lot more out there to explore, in its own way just as disturbing, or crass, or funny, or grisly, as any of the better-known titles.
So, without further ado, let’s get going on the first half of the countdown.
20: All Night Long (1992)
Violence, Murder. Revenge. Rape. Love. All Night Long is the first of a series of films, and compared to what followed, reserves its gory ugliness for a few key scenes. Nonetheless, this is a hard-hitting piece of cinema, and one of the most coldhearted coming-of-age flicks out there. When three teenage boys, strangers to one another, witness the brutal murder of a woman by a deranged ‘salaryman’, shock throws them together, forming them into an unlikely group of friends. However, the after-effects of what they witness acts as a catalyst for some big changes, and precipitates their own excursions into violence. The image I’ve chosen here is that catalyst – the nonsensical murder of an innocent, which prompts even more nonsensical killing.
19: Marebito: the Stranger from Afar (2004)
When an isolated man becomes obsessed with a strange suicide to which he is witness, his investigations see him embark on a journey to another world – the Mountains of Madness, situated below the streets of Tokyo. When he reaches his destination, he finds a strange, mute young woman chained to a wall. Who is she? He takes her back to his world and tries to care for her, but she can apparently only live on human blood…Lovecraftian insanity blends with obsession, surveillance and insanity in this underrated movie, one which is as compelling as it is queasy.
18: Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies (2001)
The Japanese seem to like putting their schoolgirls through their paces, don’t they? Well, at least here they get a little recompense: a virus which only affects fifteen to seventeen year old girls first sends them wild with joy, then, err, kills them – but they come back to life as flesh-hungry zombies. This is a daft horror-comedy, one which happily parades its references to popular horror movies (Romero Repeat Kill Troops, anyone?) and splashes the gore around liberally. Lots of fun. Lots of eye-grabbing images, too…
17: A Living Hell (2000)
Often referred to as the Japanese Chainsaw Massacre, A Living Hell certainly shows that deranged families can exist on both sides of the Equator. To be fair, the people perpetrating the abuse here, grandmother Choyo and granddaughter Yuki, have apparently been through their own hell, but whatever has or hasn’t happened to them, when they move in under a distant relative’s roof, they let off steam by terrorising the wheelchair-user son Yasu, who also lives there. It’s unusual to have an elderly woman in films at all, least of all as an amateur torturer, so it is Choyo whose image best represents this movie.
16: Assault! Jack the Ripper (1976)
Before anyone wonders, no, this film has absolutely nothing to do with Jack the Ripper at all, unless you count the fact that sharp knives are involved. Assault! Jack the Ripper is in fact from the ‘violent pink’ genre, where sex and death aren’t just included in the same film, but depend on one another. When a bashful pastry chef agrees to give a lift home to a new waitress – one of the world’s worst, by the way – they accidentally run over and kill a hitchhiker. The effect of this? Missy gets turned on. So blood is arousing…guess there’ll be more if it, then. The climax (sorry) of the movie is where it’s at its nastiest, and also where something’s gotta give, and my chosen image is from that scene.
15: Evil Dead Trap (1988)
Late-night television show host Nami regularly receives odd video tapes, so she isn’t too nervous about playing yet another which gets sent to her at the studio – that is, until she watches it. It seems she has just witnessed a murder. Oddly undeterred, she and a small crew go to the deserted factory which she recognises from the video, and walk straight into a series of horrifying traps. The elaborate set-up of these, as well as the batshit crazy framing story, makes this one of the best Japanese horror films, for me, of that decade. The scare potential of a mysterious video was with us long before Ring, too…
14: Entrails of a Virgin (1986)
There is absolutely no reason you’d have seen Entrails of a Virgin unless you were suckered in by that title, but in any case, I’ve seen it for you, and what happens is this: a team of amateur pornographers head into the wilderness for a shoot and awaken a generously-endowed demon who proceeds to rape and kill – according to his whim – the members of the party. That’s probably all I need to say. The plot is barely existent, the rude bits are heavily fogged, but this is a sleazy piece of trash which has some interesting scenes. One of these is featured below, and if you must know, there’s also a woman touching herself with a severed arm. Complaints that this isn’t the image I’ve chosen to the usual address…
13: The Blind Beast (1969)
A blind man becomes dangerously infatuated with a young model after exploring, by touch, a sculpture of her body in a gallery. He decides to kidnap the girl, taking her to his dark, sinister shrine to the tactile pleasures of the human body, where each wall is covered in sculptures of body parts. From the sinister mind of Japanese writer Edogawa Rampo – and if you have any curiosity at all about the origins of some of the more warped body horror to emerge from that countrry, look no further – comes Moju, a nightmarish love-story which retains its capacity to shock.
12: Naked Blood (1996)
Three young women – a gourmande, a vain beauty, and Rika, a girl involved in a Virtual Reality relationship with her cactus (yep) – volunteer to take part in a medical trial. What they didn’t reckon on was that the young aspiring scientist son of the doctor in charge of the tests, Eiju, was about to add his own experimental serum into what they are being injected with. Myson, as he calls it, transforms pain into pleasure – rather too well, as soon the women are mutilating themselves like nobody’s business. Mmm, eyeball…
11: Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
This hugely influential movie, shot completely in black and white, has a tremendous legacy in Japanese horror and sci-fi cinema and it’s little wonder: the film is awash with arresting images. When a probably-insane young man who enjoys sticking metal into his body is killed by a salaryman out on a drive, the salaryman in question begins to, unwittingly, follow suit, and soon he himself is a human/scrap metal hybrid. What is happening to him? And what is behind it all? Definitively disturbing, this is David Lynch cinema with a hard metallic edge.
Think I’ve missed out the best? Keep an eye out (!) for the iconic Japanese exploitation images Top 10…
