‘Angel Guts: Red Classroom’ (1979)

‘Angel Guts: Red Classroom’ (1979) was once again directed by Sone from a screenplay by Ishii, and it opens with scenes of a schoolgirl being viciously gang raped in a school classroom. Instead of being a mere continuation of the previous films events though, the camera pulls away to show that we are really watching a film within a film, and the sequence is actually part of an infamous porn film that is being screened for the benefit of some representatives of an adult magazine called Pornoc. One of the attendees, Muraki (Keizo Kanie), is a photographer for the magazine and he grows fascinated by the realism of the performance of the female lead in the field. Determinedly, he sets about tracking her down.

After eventually finding her, Muraki discovers the girl in the film is named Nami (Yuuki Mizuhara). Now a full-grown woman, Nami confides in Muraki that the underground popularity of the film has plagued her all her life. Disturbingly, Nami reveals that her ‘performance’ in the film was not acting – what every one who has ever watched the film was seeing was her actual rape as a schoolgirl. Nami confesses that a great many number of men have claimed to recognise her as the girl in the film and that she would go to any lengths to make them go away. Automatically assuming that Muraki is out to blackmail her, she removes her clothes in preparation for the sex that she thinks he has inevitably come for (there being apparently some kudos to be gained out of sleeping with the ‘star’ of such a famous film).

Shocked at the person he has found, Muraki tries to help her and suggests that, in order to break the stranglehold the film has over her, she works with him in some legitimate magazine photoshoot, an idea that Nami agrees to. A further meeting is arranged but, before he can turn up, Muraki is arrested by the police on suspicion of using under age girls in his magazine photo shoots, leaving a confused Nami to wait alone in the rain.

The film then progresses forward three years and Muraki has become a family man with a wife and child, though he is still haunted by the memory of Nami. By chance, he stumbles upon her for a second time, but by now Nami is working as a prostitute at the lowest end of the scale, content to degrade herself to any man with money and seemingly having no other aim in life than to let men use her for their own pleasure. Muraki tries to explain what happened all those years ago, but Nami is not interested. When he persists, Muraki is beaten up by her pimp for his troubles and then forced to witness Nami taking part in a group sex session with six men who, for 3,000 Yen, are allowed to do whatever they like with her. One of the men complains that one girl isn’t enough to go round them all, so the pimp opens up a cellar door and pulls out a schoolgirl held captive there who the men duly strip and rape while Nami looks on distractedly.
Although undoubtedly grim in tone, the differences in style and execution between ‘Red Classroom’ and ‘High School Co Ed’ are so immense that it is difficult to believe that it is the wok of the same director with only one year separating them (not least due to the picture quality – ‘Red Classroom’ has a sharp, modern look in comparison to the rough, grainy film stock hue of the earlier film). Unlike ‘High School Co Ed’, which concentrated on the non-consequential activities of the rapist gang, ‘Red Classroom’ depicts in stunning detail the psychological effects that such an attack can have.

The first time we see Nami here, she is hesitant, nervous around men and uses her sexuality to make them leave her alone. In a short space of time, Muraki gains her trust, but his non-appearance seems to be the final straw that sends her over the edge into oblivion. There follows unbearably prolonged scenes of prostitute Nami persistently trying to pleasure a client who has had enough and wants to leave, and one of a laughing Nami placing her head down a toilet whilst her pimp urinates over it.

‘Red Classroom’ never shows Nami as a schoolgirl, but it’s not hard to imagine her as the Nami in ‘High School Co Ed’ (or even Kawashima's sister Megu), so in effect watching the first film fills in some background detail to the events in ‘Red Classroom’. Whether or not this is intentional on the part of Sone is never explicitly detailed, but as ‘High School Co Ed’ can be viewed and regarded in isolation as a stand alone production, this approach, rather than exonerating the rampant nihilisms of the film, only serves to exacerbate and damn it further. At no point does Sone suggest drug use is playing a part in her behaviour, leaving the viewer to appreciate the shattering, long term and probably by now irreversible effect that rape in the classroom has had on her.

And therein lies the main difficulty with the film. ‘Red Classroom’ is undoubtedly a very well made, thought provoking film, but if there is a major flaw here, it’s that it tries to cram too much into too short a space, leaving the film feeling ‘all surface’. There is a whole lot of subtext implied that the film either cannot or will not explore in its running time. A good example of this is the inherent irony in Muraki’s missing an appointment with a schoolgirl rape victim as he is being questioned by the police for taking porn pictures of an underage schoolgirl. Although he is trying his best to help a victim of abuse, Muraki seems oblivious to the fact that he is helping to send another schoolgirl down the same route, maybe even the girl held captive in the cellar of Nami’s brothel. The blank, disinterested stare that Nami gives the men who gang rape this schoolgirl at the end of the film indicate that, she neither realises the cycle of abuse that is occurring or, if she does, she no longer cares.

The sex scenes in ‘Red Classroom’ are, if anything, greater in number and more prolonged than ‘High School Co Ed’. What is not often commented on is the striking similarities between the rape/film within a film opening sequence, and the celebrated scene in ‘Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer’ where Henry and his co-murderer settle down to watch a video of themselves committing their latest murder. In both instances, the rug is pulled and the viewer is made to feel uncomfortable as, what was previous presented as fictitious entertainment is now presented as reality within the context of the film. Thankfully though, this time round Sone does inject an element of humour early on in the film with the porn photo shoots going badly wrong due to the incompetence of the photographer’s assistant. It would be easy to claim that humour has no place in a film of this type, but within the context of the story it works well and allows some much needed light into the darkness.

The whole message and meaning of ‘Red Classroom’ is wonderfully captured in the closing scenes. Nami, gazing at her reflection in a puddle of water, seems not to be able to recognise herself anymore. Walking off back to her brothel and her pimp, she steps into the puddle and breaks her reflection into fragments, mirroring the fragmentation of her own personality and the lasting consequences of her rape long ago. No words need to be spoken, and none are; the image alone is powerful enough to hammer home the message of this harrowing and thought provoking film.

'Angel Guts: Nami', (1980)

'Angel Guts: Nami', (1980), film three of the series, sees not only a new Nami and Muraki, but also a new director Tanaka Noboru taking the helm (though Ishii still takes screenplay/ writing duties). In this installment, both Nami (Eri Kanuma) and Muraki (Takeo Chii) are journalists. Nami is an ambitious and successful reporter for a well known Japanese magazine called ‘The Woman’. Her ongoing project is a series of articles based around the theme of 'Rape and it's Consequences', that focuses on the victims of rape and the effects the attack has had on their lives. Using documented case histories, Nami tracks down the anonymous women (listed in the reports as ‘Woman X, Woman Y etc), in order to interview and gauge how they’ve coped with the experience.

Throughout the film, Nami’s encounters with the rape victims grow increasingly disturbing, but the darker the encounters get, the more perverse becomes Nami's interest and obvious pleasure over the stories they tell. One victim she tracks down has since become a stripper/actress in a live sex show and is now making a living by simulating live action rape scenes on stage every night for the gratification of an all male audience. When Nami visits her at her home to continue the interview, she bears witness to the woman being sexually attacked again, seemingly by the man who originally abused her. From here on, the film takes a dark turn when it's clear that Nami is sexually aroused by these recounted experiences and she plays them over in her mind as she masturbates in the bath with a shower head.

Nami's investigations reach their nadir during an interview with a hospital nurse. The initially friendly nurse leads her to the scene of her rape in a hospital morgue where she recounts the full horror of her attack at the hands of an insane doctor who wanted to cut her open to 'see her guts'. Obviously still highly disturbed, the nurse then turns on Nami and attacks her with a knife and Nami is only saved by the timely intervention of Muraki.

Following these events, Nami loses all grip on reality and the film takes a dark, almost surreal turn. Nami again fantasises about the rapes, but this time her fantasy is that she herself is the one who is being attacked (again masturbating at the thought). When she returns to her office to finish her article, she fantasises that the entire male staff of the magazine has repeatedly abused her and that the reluctance she showed during the abuse was far from genuine. When a concerned Muraki finds her, she is alone, seemingly in a trance and with her article in the bin. His final act of kindness and attempt to reach out to her only results in his death at the hands of the now catatonic Nami whose eyes stare as blankly as those of her namesake at the end of the ‘Red Classroom’.

Just like it's predecessor, ‘Nami’ is a very powerful yet difficult film to watch, dealing as it does in base human suffering and obsession. Nami’s initial interest in rape seems to be career oriented, and in tracking down and interviewing the women, Nami and her photo crew are totally ruthless. Completely disregarding the wishes of the rape victims, Nami invades their lives in the most intrusive manner, stirring up memories that the women have obviously been trying very hard to forget. One woman is reduced to a cowering wreck screaming 'leave me alone' at Nami in much the same way she doubtless reacted to the original rape attack, but Nami is oblivious to her pain just as long as her own needs are satisfied. It’s a scene that speaks volumes about the gutter press and tabloid journalism whilst begging the question as to whether Nami is any better than the rapists themselves?

In another instance, when one of the victims proves to have led an uneventful, ‘boring’ life since her attack, Nami simply invents a story involving an overly happy ending that she thinks will appeal to her editor and readership and which to her also seems a more ‘believable’ outcome. Nami is then genuinely surprised when the woman comes after her with a knife when the story is published - Nami simply can't understand what she has done wrong, and it is this single minded obsession with rape that proves to be her undoing. Nami has idealised the act of rape in her mind to the point where it has become an erotic fantasy, and in this she shares the same delusion as the men who pay to watch one of Nami's earlier studies being 'raped' on stage as entertainment.

Perhaps understandably in a film called ‘Nami’, the Muraki character takes more of a back seat this time round. Although also a journalist (looking and dressing like a cut price Hunter S Thompson) with an interest in rape, Muraki never actually publishes anything he writes. Muraki warns Nami of the dangers she is letting herself into, but then she in turn regards him as a hypocrite and questions his motivation for his interest in rape victims. Muraki confesses that, once he was an ambitious reporter like Nami who worked a lot of overtime with the aim of building a better life for himself and his wife. Instead, his prolonged absence from home left his wife alone and she herself fell victim to a rapist. Bizarrely, she ended up leaving Muraki for him because only he could satisfy her, and now Muraki finds personal relief and salvation in looking at the ‘ruined women’.

Again, the main problem with ‘Nami ‘is, like ‘Red Classroom’, it tries to cover too many bases in too short a time. Any implication that rape victims are 'asking for it' and secretly enjoy the experience is a moral landmine and it's one that has to be treated with extreme caution. The dangers of idealising any kind of fantasy around such a horrific attack are shown in Nami's ultimate complete mental breakdown, but within the film, this message is not clear enough and it is to be questioned whether a live action Manga is the most appropriate medium with which to tackle such an issue.

Nami is only tipped over the edge when the final nurse victim shows her the horrific body scars where her attacker tried to cut her open with a scalpel, but her fantasising about the earlier rapes appeared to give her pleasure with no consequence and they are scenes that make for uncomfortable viewing. Admittedly they act as first steps on her personal road to self destruction, but Nami as a character is simply not given the level of psychological depth required for the aims of the film, and the director seems to prefer to pad out the running time with totally gratuitous flashbacks (in the sense that they are not needed) of scenes of the original rapes of Nami's studies - anyone who has sat through the first two films of the series will by now know what a horrific act rape is and it would have benefited ‘Nami’ considerably to have had a move away from this literal re-enactment and concentrated more on the psychological make up of the characters, and maybe this is showing the limitations of the Manga strips the series is based on.

To be fair, none of these scenes or events within the film are portrayed in any kind of stimulating or titillating way, and any eroticism exists solely in the head of the eponymous character. Her ultimate fate is then a stark comment on those who hold such viewpoints. Although, for once, Nami is not actually raped within the film, the effects of her obsession with rape have no less a dehumanising effect than if she had been, a stark comment maybe on those who peruse those 'rape' sections in Japanese video lending libraries looking for an evening's entertainment.

'Nami' is a film with every bit the inherent power of ‘Red Classroom’ and Tanaka directs with verve, moving the film from a straightforward documentary style at the opening when Nami the reporter goes after her victims, to the surreal horror of the closing thirty minutes where simple devices such as skewed camera angles and coloured lens filters perfectly capture the madness into which Nami is descending. ‘Nami’ is an uncomfortable, brutal experience but is never less than honest and ultimately, this is what saves it from becoming pure exploitation.

The photographs are eventually published in the magazine and Nami finds herself a reluctant celebrity with people recognising her on the street and pestering her for autographs. The pictures also come to the attention of Nami’s supervisor at work, a married man with whom she has having an affair. When he tries to use the pictures as a blackmail tool to gain more control over her, Nami reacts angrily and turns him away, actions that result in him showing the pictures to the manager and getting her sacked.

The published photoshoot also attracts the attentions of Muraki (Masahiko Abe), this time a social misfit who seems to spend his time either stalking Nami or masturbating over her pictures. His strange loner ways have also made him prime suspect by his neighbours for a series of underwear thefts that have been plaguing the district and also as being the stalker who has been spotted lurking around the neighbourhood. Muraki clumsily tries to make contact with Nami, but his extreme lack of social skills make him look more like a crazed stalker out to do her harm, and Nami at first flees from him in terror. When she sees him waiting outside her window at night in the pouring rain, she takes pity on him and, realising that he means her no harm, she agrees to a date. But while he is en route to the meeting, a young girl is brutally murdered and Muraki, being chief suspect, becomes victim of a lynch mob of locals who hand out their own brand of summary justice by shooting him on sight.

‘Red Porno’ is rather a strange film in the cycle, and very much a backwards step from the quality of the previous two installments. At barely over an hour’s running time, ‘Red Porno’ plays for the most part more like a straightforward ‘pinku’ movie with lots of extended sex scenes that border on hardcore, and a great many prolonged shots of Nami masturbating with bizarre objects like eggs, pencils and, most graphically, with the leg of a table, complete with close ups of copious amounts of baby oil and bodily fluids. As erotic and well filmed as these scenes are, there’s hardly any linking plot to speak of surrounding them. And what plot there is simply does not hold water, particularly the pivotal moment around which the whole film hinges.

Nami goes along to the photo shoot in place of her friend, but the next scene cuts to her bound, naked and pleading for release while she is photographed. This surely begs the question ‘How did she get into this situation’? Wouldn’t she would have realised long before that stage what the photo job actually was and, if she was physically co-erced into the shoot, then why doesn’t she simply go to the police and prevent the photographs being published? There is no suggestion that Nami actually secretly enjoyed the experience (ground covered previously in ‘Nami’) and though she constantly tells people ‘this is not what I am’ when they question her about it, she curiously seems to take her appearance in the magazine very much in her stride, only getting annoyed when people make the connection between her and the girl in the photographs.

By far the most disturbing scene in the film however, is the murder and necrophiliac rape of a schoolgirl that comes literally from nowhere. Throughout the film there are references to a mysterious figure in the neighbourhood and the above mentioned thefts of underwear, but nothing prepares the for the shockingly brutal scenes of an anonymous schoolgirl grabbed while walking home by a masked figure, having her head repeatedly slammed against the wall until she is dead then the having her dead body sexually assaulted. To add further insult to this extreme injury, the attacker then urinates over her naked breasts, laughing all the while until some locals spot him and chase him off.

By no stretch of the imagination does this scene serve any purpose to the film whatsoever. There is no link made between him and Nami or the magazine photos etc, and it is gratuitous violence simply for the sake of it and the whole scene feels like it has been shoe horned in to provide an obligatory rape sequence. In any event, the murder and rape could easily have been toned down or, perhaps more in keeping with the general vagueness that this mysterious prowler is initially introduced, could have occurred off camera with no resultant detriment to the story.

And, unfortunately, this is the fault that runs straight through ‘Red Porno’; ultimately, it is a film that has nothing solid to say for itself. The fetishisation of women, the de- humanising and anti social effects of pornography, the hypocrisy inherent in attitudes toward the porn industry, - ‘Red Porno’ could be about all of these or it could be about none of them. All these issues are touched upon with all the certainty of a Chinese whisper and, rather than flesh them out into a solid core, the film instead revolves around a series of sex scenes which, in a rare departure for the series, carry a genuine erotic charge. The characters of Nami and Miraku are at best only lightly sketched, and as a result both are one dimensional and pretty unsympathetic.

As a stand-alone experience, ‘Red Porno’ would be a curious, yet hollow experience, but as part of a series of films that has so far tackled their subject matters in an intelligent, thought provoking manner, it’s very much the square peg in the round hole. A fact that maybe accounts for the seven year gap between the appearance of this film and the next one in the series. For the final ‘Angel Guts’ film to be produced by Nikkata studios, Takashi Ishii himself took over the director’s role.

'Angel Guts: Red Vertigo' (aka‘Red Dizziness’) (1988)

'Angel Guts: Red Vertigo' (aka ‘Red Dizziness’) (1988) sees Nami (Mayako Katsuragi), working as a nurse in a hospital and living with her boyfriend who makes his living by photographing women for adult magazines. During one of her shifts at work, Nami is attacked and sexually assaulted by two terminally ill patients out for one last thrill before they die. She manages to escape them and, distraught, leaves the hospital for the safety of her home, counting on the support of her boyfriend. When she arrives however, she catches him engaging in sex with one his models and dismissing his relationship with Nami as nothing serious. Nami confronts the pair and storms out of the house in a daze, unaware that her bad day is about to get a lot worse.

Meanwhile, Muraki (Naoto Takenaka), is this time a high flying stockbroker on the run after being caught embezzling 3,000,000 yen from his clients and employers. Not only do the police want to speak to him, but he has also been receiving phone calls and death threats from his angry clients, so much so that his wife has left him. When one particularly violent phone call pushes him over the edge, Muraki jumps in his car in an attempt to escape to anywhere. With his mind not on the road, he runs into and knocks over Nami, herself fleeing from her home in a dazed state. Thus, the paths of the two main characters cross for the final time.

Thinking her dead, Muraki bundles Nami into his car and drives away from the scene of the accident. Rather than take her ‘body’ to the authorities, he stops the car in a quiet country lane and proceeds to sexually assault her, only stopping when Nami comes round and he realises she isn’t dead. Nami tries to escape, but Muraki catches her and attempts to rape her, but his impotence prevents him. She again manages to get the upper hand and escape, but then both wind up in a bizarre hippy type squat in a deserted building and an uneasy truce is brokered when Muraki confesses that he only wanted to be with someone. Through their dialogue, Nami comes to recognise a similar loneliness in herself and slowly the hatred she feels ebbs away. Nami accepts his offer of a lift back to her home in Tokyo, but en route the pair stop off at a hotel.

Whist at the hotel, the relationship between Nami and Muraki becomes highly sexual as each finds the other fills a void in their lives. Vowing not to return to their old lives in Tokyo, the pair decide to hit the road together and start afresh. Before they get too far, the car they are driving runs out of petrol. Muraki leaves Nami alone in the car while he walks back to the petrol station with an empty canister but, at the station, he gets involves in a petty argument with a total stranger who shoots him dead. Nami, oblivious to his fate and once again alone returns to the squat in the hope Muraki will return to her there. By the films close she realises that he is not coming back.

‘Red Vertigo’ is by far the most conventionally structured of all the ‘Angel Guts’ films, with a lack of the sexual savagery that runs through the other films in the series. Although in many ways the most sexually graphic installment of the series (with a large portion of the latter half of involving highly graphic, prolonged scenes of sex between Muraki and Nami), the sex in ‘Red Vertigo’ is consensual. Despite this, the film maintains the same general ‘non erotic’ atmosphere generated within the rest of the series with the scenes never degenerating into fantasy porn or base titillation. This is largely due to the fact that this relationship and the resultant sex is based on loneliness and desperation rather than love, and because of this the viewer feels voyeuristic rather than stimulated through watching them.

And this ultimately is the main theme of ‘Red Vertigo: the need for emotional connection between people that exists in everyone; a connection that is not present in the act of rape, and similarly, it does not exist in the kind of sex without love born out of prostitution or despair. The message is a positive one; that there is the very real need for respect between a man and a woman, and this respect is sorely lacking in Nami’s relationship with her patients, her boyfriend and, initially, with Muraki. ‘Red Vertigo’ gives the impression that, if Muraki had been shot and killed just a few short hours sooner, then Nami would not have batted an eyelid. His death though comes at a point when a very real bond of affection has been made between the two that seems to border on love; a strange love it may be, but Cupid has never been particularly fussy where he shoots his arrows. Once severed, Nami’s renewed sadness and confused feelings of being let down (she does not know why Muraki didn’t return to her) at the end are almost unbearable to watch.

At the close, Nami dances alone to a tape machine back at the squat, initially promising herself she would return home stronger and build a new life for herself and showing the real ‘Angel Guts’ that the series title refers to. Her strength is short lived though and her last words in the film are words of doubt as to the future and whether everything really will work out all right in the end. It is a supremely touching scene of human uncertainty that, for anybody sitting through the first four films, will come as a welcome and totally fitting close to the series of films. ‘Red Vertigo’ completely sums up the importance of love and affection in a world where it is all too often absent, and with the previous four films showing in harrowing detail the devastation that can be wrought when it is anything but present.