Thanks to the good people in my country that annually organize a sort of Grindhouse-styled cinema festival; I was finally able to catch up with my personal arrear in the so-called Japanese "Pinky Violence" films. The festival programmed no less than eight classics in this peculiar sub genre, and the list naturally included the infamous highlight "Sex & Fury", directed by Norifumi Suzuki ("School of the Holy Beast") and starring the unearthly gorgeous Reiko Ike. Needless to say these Pinky Violence movies only appeal to a small group of fans of cinematic smut, as they generally compensate their lack of substance with copious amounts of violent sword-wielding action, gratuitous sex and perverted insinuations. It'll quickly become evident why exactly "Sex & Fury" is considered to be a classic in the Pinky Violence series, as it features plenty of all the aforementioned elements, and then some
Barely ten minutes into the film, for example, Reiko Ike's character Ochô is in the middle of taking a bath when she's suddenly assaulted by a dozen of masked Yakuzas. Always prepared and unscrupulous as she is, she defeats all of them whilst her naked tattooed boobs lusciously swing loose outside in a snowy landscape. Does this qualify as poetic art or shameless exploitation? You decide
In fact, numerous posterior times in the film, it becomes assumable that our girl Ochô can only fight in case at least one of her mammary glands is hanging out.
The plot of "Sex & Fury" is a rudimentary simple and derivative tale of vengeance, but depth and substantial innovation aren't qualities you should be looking for in a Pinky Violence flick. As a young girl, Ochô Inoshika witnesses the murder of her father by three disguised killers. With his last strengths, he shows Ochô the drawn illustrations of a deer, a boar and a butterfly, like he's trying to give her an indication of where to look for his killers. Twenty years later, Ochô makes her living as a professional gambler and pickpocket artist. As a favor to a fellow dying gambler, she returns to Tokyo to bail a young girl out of prostitution. Coincidentally, this favor brings her straight into the dangerously territory of her father's murderers. There's also a second, and actually downright hilarious sub plot of a sexy female British spy with a double agenda: infiltrate in the Japanese crime circuit AND meet up with her long lost anarchistic Japanese lover boy!
Norifumi Suzuki maintains a fast pacing throughout the film and the ravishing ladies Reiko Ike and Christina Lindberg provide plentiful of memorable nudity and sleaze highlights. The latter, among cult fanatics also famous for her role in the Swedish revenge film "Thriller – A Grim Picture", is a terrible actress but her looks are stupendous. She's not exactly prudish, neither, as she stages a threesome and a virulent rape sequence. There's a fair amount of gore in "Sex & Fury" but the sword battle sequences are surprisingly not as grotesquely blood-spurting as I expected. Together with female Yakuza action sequences in "Lady Snowblood", the footage of this film was the main inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's epic masterpiece "Kill Bill". There's a lot of comedy in "Sex & Fury", of which some is intentional but most isn't. The absurdly flamboyant British stereotype of Guinness the master spy, for example, was probably not meant to come across as hilarious. The extended death sequences (of the gambler, for instance, and of the young lovers at the end) are undoubtedly aimed at drama and a sense of the theatrical, but instead of that they made the whole audience laugh.
The plot of "Sex & Fury" is a rudimentary simple and derivative tale of vengeance, but depth and substantial innovation aren't qualities you should be looking for in a Pinky Violence flick. As a young girl, Ochô Inoshika witnesses the murder of her father by three disguised killers. With his last strengths, he shows Ochô the drawn illustrations of a deer, a boar and a butterfly, like he's trying to give her an indication of where to look for his killers. Twenty years later, Ochô makes her living as a professional gambler and pickpocket artist. As a favor to a fellow dying gambler, she returns to Tokyo to bail a young girl out of prostitution. Coincidentally, this favor brings her straight into the dangerously territory of her father's murderers. There's also a second, and actually downright hilarious sub plot of a sexy female British spy with a double agenda: infiltrate in the Japanese crime circuit AND meet up with her long lost anarchistic Japanese lover boy!
Norifumi Suzuki maintains a fast pacing throughout the film and the ravishing ladies Reiko Ike and Christina Lindberg provide plentiful of memorable nudity and sleaze highlights. The latter, among cult fanatics also famous for her role in the Swedish revenge film "Thriller – A Grim Picture", is a terrible actress but her looks are stupendous. She's not exactly prudish, neither, as she stages a threesome and a virulent rape sequence. There's a fair amount of gore in "Sex & Fury" but the sword battle sequences are surprisingly not as grotesquely blood-spurting as I expected. Together with female Yakuza action sequences in "Lady Snowblood", the footage of this film was the main inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's epic masterpiece "Kill Bill". There's a lot of comedy in "Sex & Fury", of which some is intentional but most isn't. The absurdly flamboyant British stereotype of Guinness the master spy, for example, was probably not meant to come across as hilarious. The extended death sequences (of the gambler, for instance, and of the young lovers at the end) are undoubtedly aimed at drama and a sense of the theatrical, but instead of that they made the whole audience laugh.