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LOVE AND CRIME (1969)
4 stars
88 Films. Limited Edition Blu Ray. Out Now
Here’s an interesting release, as part of 88 Films ongoing Asia Collection, from director Teruo Ishii, possibly best known for HORROR OF THE MALFORMED MAN (1969, Kyôfu kikei ningen: Edogawa Rampo zenshû). LOVE AND CRIME (Meiji · Taishô · Shôwa: Ryôki onna hanzai-shi) explores the stories of 4 famous murderers.
It starts with Dr Maruse (Teruo Yashide), who works at the Tokyo Forensic Institute, faced with cutting open his wife, who has committed suicide it seems. He discovers she had sex before this, but not with him! He visits past cases in the hope of understanding her actions and psychology.
First up is “Toyokaku Inn Case”. A series of killings in 1957. Chiyu Saito (Mitsubishi Aoi) owns an inn hotel with her waste of space husband Kosuke (Kenjiro Ishiyama). She wants to sell up and open a geisha house, as they are going bust and she believes her other half is having an affair. As she confides in her assistant Kinue Munakata (Rika Fujie), thoughts turn to murder – though she doesn’t realise that her confidant is actually the one having the dalliance with her spouse! This case lead to the first woman sentenced to death in Japan. It plays out like a horror story, and is surprisingly gory with a surfeit of sex and nudity – including next to a corpse! Quite stylish, it includes a walled up corpse and burial in a thunderstorm.
“Sada Abe Apprehended” is the same tale as the more famous, oft banned, IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976) by Nagisa Ôshima. Sadomasochistic sex between Sade and Kichizo (Eiji Wakasuji) – she strangles him as requested… but a bit too much. She ends up running off with her lover’s severed penis. The story jumps around the timeline, cutting between the courtroom and the incident itself. Not a patch on the Ôshima version, though interestingly the Murase character interviews the real Abe on a bridge. The segment ends with reenactments of similar crimes that followed.
Story three is “Yoshio Kodaira”, and is about a male killer (unlike the other parts). We see photos of his crimes (actual real images?). He is emotionally unstable, with explosive anger, no empathy and abnormal sexual desires and was responsible for raping and killing seven women and girls. Not the kind of person you would like to meet. Shot in black and white, this has Kodaira (well played by Asao Koike as a sweaty grotseque) being questioned by police, with the film, flashing back to show his heinous acts. There is an interesting inference at the end that it wasn’t his fault – “…did the evil that lives within all women cry out to him? Is it women’s bodies that drive men to madness.” Perfectly reasonable explanation for his actions!
The final tale rattles through the story at breakneck speed. There is a feature length version of it from 1958 – WICKED WOMAN (Dokufu Takahashi Oden). Oden Takahashi (Teruko Yumi) is forced into marriage to Naminosuke (Shin’ichirô Hayashi). Six months later, tumours start to appear on his face, as leprosy disfigures him. Disgusted by him she takes a lover Tomekichi – when her husband discovers them, her new paramour kills him. They run away together, but he then sells her to a brothel! There she meets Ichi and a series of gory murders follow until she is brought to justice and graphically beheaded (the last woman in Japan to be executed in such a manner).
The production has several alternate titles: Criminal History of Bizarre Women/History of Bizarre Crimes by Women in the Meiji, Taisho and Showa Eras/Meiji, Taisho, and Showa Eras: Grotesque Cases of Cruelty by Woman
Steve Kirkham
EXTRAS
3 stars
Audio Commentary by Jasper Sharp & Amber T.
Kiss of Death (17 mins) Mark Schilling talks about the film.
