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NB : Unfortunately, I can't add Kanji to my review.

"Satsu satsu (ayame)" aka "Suicide Dolls".

The film is made up of four distinct segments, having the common theme of suicide. Each of the first three segments focuses on a female character led (or who wants and chooses?) to commit suicide in front of the observing eye of the motionless camera. The spectator is therefore a sort of clandestine witness. The final segment is technically very different, and features dolls primarily animated in stop motion. I don't want to spoil everything, but I need to say that the last segment is different from the others because it is the character of an actress who commits harakiri, and not a "normal" character. I will come back to that.

Tamakichi Anaru is one of the most fascinating directors, and I would love to be able to watch a real interview with him one day (I only ever saw him in the documentary Making of Suicide dolls, and he was very busy, even though he answers a few questions from Shino Setsuna). If we count, out of 7 segments, in 3 films, he still produced 5 segments depicting just a woman committing suicide each time. This is obviously not a coincidence, and there are so many possible reasons behind this choice.

To put it in context, he first made "consensual" adult films (AV), before producing the 3 films that we know well, for a more atypical collection from Aroma. 3 pornographic horror films, belonging to the snuff movie genre (Trumbling Doll of Flesh, Women's Flesh my Red Guts, and Suicide Dolls). If Suicide Dolls is sold exactly like the previous 2, I think it's really different, and doesn't have the same fetishistic aspect. Anaru himself said during filming that he was no longer a porn director (which is perhaps not to be taken literally, but hey...).

In short, Suicide Dolls contains all the dark and melancholy discourse of Women's Flesh my Red Guts, but with less of the erotic, greedy, sensual aspect. It's a drier film, with more important dialogue than the previous ones, and a less experimental aspect (if we exclude the segment with the dolls).

It's a very sincere film in the way it depicts suicide. There is an omnipresent effect of reality, and something is really palpable (is it death? Solitude?). Tamakichi Anaru wrote the script and the story board, and I find that the dialogues are all excellent, full of meaning. In this film, and in Women's Flesh (released the same year) life in Japan is seen as something bleak, and society is a kind of steamroller that crushes (mainly) women. Why did Anaru choose women? There are a thousand possible reasons, I'm not going to detail my ideas, it will be endless.

Let me mention the 3rd segment (story): "Kyôen" (can't use hiragana, sorry). According to my research (to be taken with caution) the word means something like "co-starring", and is composed of the kanji (I'm not allow to add it) which means "performance" , "act", "stage", and the kanji (same) which means "together, both, neither, all, and, alike, with"... The segment presents an (AV?) actress who discusses her thoughts about death, with a director. The actress is going to commit suicide for real, and he plans to film it. We therefore see the behind the scene of the film of this Harakiri suicide. Anaru plays the director, and Kikurin (seen in TDOF) also plays. The main role, the role of the actress, is played by Shino Setsuna who is a key person in Anaru's career, since she helped him in his 3 "horror" films as a makeup artist. In this last film, she is also an actress. (I also wish someone had done an interview with her. I'll talk more about her and Anaru in my review of the Making of Suicide Dolls.) So we have an actress whose final performance is suicide. It made me think a little of the writer Yukio Mishima.

Well, to give a slightly more concise opinion on the film itself, I will say that the special effects (although some did not work as Anaru wanted) were, as always, sensational. The actors and actresses acted really naturally. There really is the Anaru/Setsuna touch. It's a film that is meaningful to me, and I think it is very accurate in the way it depicts the deepest loss (of oneself, of the world).

So, it's a thought-provoking film, but is it still entertaining? Yes, it is.

I think it's Anaru's least accessible work to understand. So I recommend watching Women's Flesh my Red Guts first, then TDOF, finaly this one.

Red Room invites people to participate in a game to win money : the "King's game". It is not excluded that this film could have influenced quite a few elements of popular culture of the 21st century. I don't want to draw any conclusions, especially since it was very underground when it came out (it still is, to a certain extent), but the similarities are sometimes surprising. If you look you might see what I mean. I think at least that it was able to contribute to the myth of the Red Rooms, as certain films contributed to that of the Snuff movies.

It's a film that I really like, without being my favorite of Daisuke Yamanouchi. I'm actually a big fan of this director, he's one of my favorite Japanese directors and even one of my favorite directors in general.

What do I like about Red Room?

First, the story: it has many twists and turns, the dialogues are very well done: the film is a psychological thriller in addition to being a splatter and torture-porn. Without being ultra-gory or extremely graphic, or even ultra-violent (one of the least brutal films of Daisuke Yamanouchi in my opinion) it still contains cruel, perverse scenes, which explore the pain of the characters in a captivating way. And there are some original things that I don't want to reveal!

I would say that another quality of the film is its accessibility: there is nothing experimental, we are in a more traditional work, with participants who compete to survive, around a card game.

I wanted everyone to survive, but as you can imagine, there were deaths. The ending was successful in my opinion.

There are quite a few other things to say, but my memories stop there and the essential is said.

If you want to discover some extreme Japanese cinema, give it a chance!

The film remains cool for those who already like Valentine's style, but, I don't know, maybe I was in a less good mood.

This time there is the addition of self-harm to the fetish elements already present in the previous films. Nothing bad, just small cuts (resulting in a few drops of blood), and NAZI symbols. Because the film takes place on a Christmas Eve (apparently) with an evil NAZI. It is supposed to give extra meaning to the trilogy. In truth, I didn't really understand where the scenario was going, but that's okay. It's the most psychedelic of VomitGore, with an editing that makes very rapid cuts. The images of Lucifer Valentine are mixed with those from archives, particularly cartoons. I understand the idea, but I won't say it was amazing. I don't know if I was a little jaded by the formula that we already know well. There was also a curiously long disclaimer at the beginning (too long).

I recommend for die-hard fans, but for the curious and others, I stick with ReGOREgitated and Slow-Torture Puke Chamber. Afterwards, I must say that the film strictly corresponds to its title.