I sought this out after seeing a similar film by the same director from the same year.
It was much more complex than this, though it shared many of the same elements: sexual violence and heavy if obvious metaphors.
That movie seems to have been shot in only few days. I think this one must have taken longer.
As you probably will not see it, and the description here is poor, I'll describe it.
We are presented with a car full of four gangsters, and another of four prostitutes, apparently loosely attached to the gang. They have a bound couple they are taking to a desolate area to torture. She is to be placed nude on a cross. He is to have sex with the four women and then beaten to death with baseball bats.
He murders the first prostitute and escapes nude but for her slip. He successfully escapes, leaving his wife on the cross. (We learn that the girl was "owned" by the gang boss but has left the gang and married this fellow.) He encounters a strange group a mile away, camped out. This is two more prostitutes, two male servants and a pampered boss. They take him in and there are several strange conversations. He ends up pulling a trigger that he later learns wounds his wife on the cross above her exposed breast.
Enraged, he walks to the original group, and ends up killing everyone all around.
That description leaves out the rather heavy religious symbolism, which actually is effective because it is Christian in a non-Christian context. And there is much made in lingering shots of who is watching who, using conventional new wave perspectives on folding. She is the great watcher, wounded as a result, still watching at the end.
Two film stocks are used, black and white for what we see, or would if we were there, and color stock for what we see he sees (which is what she sees). Its actually quite intelligent in a Japanese Jess Franco sense.
There is nudity of the kind that Japanese authorities allow. So although the wife is fully nude when put on the cross (and we see from behind), all the frontal shots have a pubic modesty cover. More bizarre is the husband who alternates between being fully nude when seen from behind, but clothed in the slip when seen from the front. I suppose contemporary Japanese audiences would ignore this and accept the lingering shots of her armpit hair and copious use of bats as substitutes.
This is an odd thing, violent, blunt, lowbrow, full of unnecessary and exploitative breasts and simulated sex. And it has padded lingering shots and poor production values.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching. But it somehow transcends itself.
