Shin yôjo densetsu: seirên (2004)

Director:

Satoshi Torao

Writer:

Ken'ichi Takashima (story)

Release Date:

22 October 2004 (Japan)

Plot Keywords:

Softcore

Cast

Ikki Funaki
Jun'ichi Kawamoto
Hideaki Mizuki
Kazuyoshi Ozawa
Aoi Sola		(as Sora Aoi)
Shintaro Wada		(as Shintarô Wada)
Yuuken Yoshida		(as Yûken Yoshida)

Also Known As:

Erotic Ghost: Siren (International: English title)
Siren (USA) (DVD title)

Runtime:

76 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Certification:

South Korea:18

Filming Locations:

Japan

Company:

Take Shobo Company

Low-rent "Resevoir Dogs" with sexy Aoi Sola as a.. . . well, you figure it out

Aoi Sola is famous in her native Japan as an AV (adult video) starlet. AV is a very strange and very Japanese genre where the actors apparently have real sex, but they don't actually show the penetration (which is still illegal in Japan). I haven't seen any of her AV work (and I don't really see the point actually), but I have seen Sola in several simulated softcore "pink" films, one of which, "Raw Summer", is pretty good and actually approaches a genuine drama. This movie is also better than expected--it's a SOV (shot-on-video)"pink" movie, but it actually succeeds somewhat as a legitimate horror flick.

A gang of men have just pulled off a daring bank robbery. They stop by the seaside to snatch up a young woman (Aoi Sola), partly because they think she might have seen something, but mostly to have some fun with her back at their hideout. This seems like a perfect set-up for a typical rape-and-bondage-happy "pink" movie, but it ends up going in a very different direction. The strange, mute girl is more than willing to have sex with each of the guys, but everyone that goes off alone with her winds up dead. At first, the paranoid gang-members suspect each other rather than the innocent-looking young girl, but eventually they figure out there is something strange about her. They hear eerie music when she is around. I won't give away her true nature, but if you look at the title and the opening scene (where she emerges naked right out of the sea), you can probably figure it out (at least, if you have any basic knowledge of Greek mythology).

The male actors here are actually pretty good, although their characters are all rather annoyingly named after various cinematic serial killers--i.e. "Jason", "Lector", "Chucky", and "Jews"(?) (I'm still trying to figure out the last one). The scenes between them play like kind of a low-rent "Resevoir Dogs". Sola doesn't have to do much acting as her character is mostly mute, but she does a pretty good job of looking alternately sexy and sinister. And it's easy to forgive her just about anything when she takes clothes off--she has just about a perfect body (I don't think her breasts can possibly be real, but if that's the case, her plastic surgeon deserves some kind of award). Naturally, this very low-budget SOV effort is no masterpiece, but for what it is, it's pretty entertaining.