Violent Virgin (1969) User Reviews

I have a tail.

[Meganeguard · 6/10 · 19 April 2007]

While it might be too much to say that the Japanese film industry was in shambles by the late 1960s because of the popularity of television and Western films, it is indeed appropriate to say that it had fallen on hard times. Kurosawa and a number of his contemporaries were either no longer making films or, because their needed budgets were quite high, had their films produced in foreign countries. Even independent film directors such as Oshima Nagisa directed television documentaries in order to support their film endeavors? So what type of film dominated theater screens during the late sixties and the early seventies? Pink films, or soft core porn. While they were viewed as the lowest form of film art, they did draw (male) audiences and a few of the starlets from these films did in fact become quite recognizable.

As for content, most of these films were quite vacuous and, of course, the aim of titillation was more important than plot or true innovativeness. Yet, there were some pink film directors such as Wakamatsu Koji who tried to add an artistic treatment to his pink films. With extraordinarily low budgets, say around one million yen per film which was valued then in the late sixties around five thousand dollars, which led to him using non top of the line pink film starlets, Wakamatsu created films that to some might seem philosophical and to others nothing more than porn with airs of something higher, but it should be noted that his film effort, Affairs Within Walls (1965) did receive acclaim from the judges at the Berlin Film Festival, but it also led to his being fired by Nikkatsu in 1965.In 1969 Wakamatsu directed ten films, including Go, Go, Second Time Virgin and the film I am about to review Violent Virgin or Gewalt! Gewalt: shojo geba-geba.

Filmed entirely in a desolate field, Violent Virgin opens with two cars traveling along a dusty road. Three men and three women, apparently members of a gang, have a couple bound and blindfolded. After they reach their demonstration, they drag the man and woman, whose names we soon learn are Hoshi and Hanako, out of the cars and dump them on the ground. It seems that Hanako was the boss's girl, but she eloped with Hoshi. Captured, it seems that they are going to be murdered, but not before they are humiliated by the other gang members. Their clothes are eventually stripped off and Hanako is tied to a cross. Hoshi is informed that the big boss has ordered that he be made into the "boss" for the day. The male members of the gang refer to Hoshi as "boss" and each of the female members intend to have sex with him before he is killed. However, Hoshi strangles the first prostitute and runs. After this, things really begin to become bizarre.

It would be too easy to call Violent Virgin a disturbing film. The quality of acting and the surreal setting of the setting keeps the viewer from being truly drawn into the film, but the film does touch on a number of issues that the viewer cannot help but ponder after the film, almost mercifully, comes to an end, such as the distinction between man and beast and how thin the wall separating the two might truly be. While I cannot recommend this film to the casual viewer of Japanese film, it might be an interesting film to view for those interested in Japanese New Wave films or those interested in a director who is often considered to be an outcast amongst outcasts.

Wounded Mother of the Fields

[tedg · 12 April 2008]

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.