Credited cast: | |||
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Hiroko Isayama | ... | Sachiko |
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Rie Nakagawa | ... | Yoko / Wife |
Hatsuo Yamaya | ... | Ryûnosuke / Husband | |
Rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
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Moeko Ezawa | ... | Waitress |
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Kôichi Hori | ... | Eitarô |
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Kyôko Kanô | ... | Ari |
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Toru Ohe | ||
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Akira Takahashi | ... | Jihei |
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Yuri Yamashina | ... | Hana / the maid |
Sachiko is on the run from the law after being implicated in the murder of her mistress. In her travels, she comes across the charming, squeaky-voiced Yoko who offers her refuge in her candle-lit inn. She can't believe her luck. But of course, things are never that easy. Yoko calmly informs her that her husband, Ryûnosuke, is a cruel and violent man. Upon meeting him, it becomes clear that Yoko's claims were not unfounded - though she has left out the part about how she enjoys cruelty and sexual deviance just as much as her significant other. The couple blackmails her and threatens to deliver her to the police. Sachiko has no other choice but to obey them.
An astonishingly uncompromising film that begins innocently enough (or seems to) and descends (or ascends, depending on your viewpoint) to truly Sadean levels of depravity, with much glee. It appears that a wrongly accused young girl is being rescued by a pair of wealthy hoteliers but not so. Hatsuo Yamaya plays the husband and main man and it is such a ferocious performance. The wife and two housemaids are at the whim of this cruel man. I say 'cruel' but everybody seems to enjoy everything so maybe not. Anyway one of his little party pieces after dinner is to hoist the three women's garments up over their heads and then when they are bare bottomed give them a little scratch or cut with a knife from the table. This is nothing to what goes on in a wild sexual melee which takes up the last quarter of the film. I have used the word 'uncompromising' but in fact during the sex and violence scenes, so annoyed was the director with the censor's insistence on not showing pubic hair, that he creates great big black boxes on the screen to more than cover any offending glimpse but also to let it be known how stupid he feels the censorship to be. Indeed with the degree of s&v on display the prohibition on pubic hair does seem vaguely ridiculous.