lazarillo
This movie is paired with another Japanese rape-revenge film "Hitch-Hike" (evidently a re-make of the 1977 Italian roughie with David Hess) on Troma's recent "From Asia with Lust" DVD, This is unfortunate marketing though because this movie completely fails as a sexy "pink" film. But it is somewhat successful as a harrowing rape-revenge film a la "I Spit on Your Grave". It's quite different than the American rape-revenge classic though. Ironically, the American film it most resembles---with its mixture of black comedy, unsettling violence, and general weirdness--is "Mother's Day", a film directed back in the day by Charlie Kaufman, brother of Troma head-honcho Lloyd Kaufman.This movie involves two feuding sisters, who are going camping and wind up at a deserted campground after a car accident. There they run into five sadistic creeps. The guys are not your usual sniggering, backwoods misogynist stereotypes though; they're all escaped mental patients with dangerous sexual fetishes that they indulge in with the two hapless girls. "Pyro" is an impotent pyrophiliac, who rapes women with his lighter. "Hypo", short for hypoxiphilia, is a giggling retard who gets off on depriving his partners of oxygen. "Necro", short for necrophilia, is the perfect guy to take "Hypo's" sloppy seconds. The less said about "Copro", short for coprophilia, the better (look the word up if you need to). "Thanatos, short for thanatophilia, is the only halfway sympathetic one, who longs only for his own death. The rape and abuse scenes are genuinely harrowing, and also somewhat disturbing and genuinely disgusting. But aside from some nice boob shots, they are definitely NOT erotic. This is pretty typical of American rape-revenge films actually, but it certainly isn't of the Japanese "pink" genre.Unfortunately, the "revenge" scenes aren't so good. They're pretty perfunctory after the protracted rape and abuse scenes and involve the unnecessary intercession of a third female, a nurse from the mental asylum played by Japanese AV star Miyuki Yokoyama (ironically, the only actress who DOESN'T have any nude scenes). The movie tries to make a typical statement on the futility of violence, but it's a pretty ham-handed one. Still, the movie overall was worth watching I guess. But it wallows in wrath a lot more than lust.
