Tag: Toshiharu Ikeda

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat (女囚さそり 殺人予告, Toshiharu Ikeda, 1991)

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It had been 14 years since the conclusion of the rebooted Female Prisoner Scorpion series and 18 since the iconic Meiko Kaji had stepped away from the role when Toshiharu Ikeda decided to resurrect the iconic Nami Matsushima for Toei’s V-Cinema line. Ikeda was reportedly a fan of the original series and put his name forward to direct with the intention of getting Kaji to return as a now middle-aged Sasori but she turned him down flat so they instead embarked on a quasi sequel in which the original Nami has died and another woman slowly takes her place to become the next incarnation of the legend.

Consequently, Scorpion is not the protagonist of this film that otherwise bears her name. Cast in the lead role of a nameless hit woman, Natsuki Okamoto was then a popular pinup model known as “High Leg Queen”. The film opens with her emerging from a barrel of concrete after being dumped by a group of men who had gang raped and then left her for dead. She’s then rescued by a yakuza, Kaizu (Minori Terada), who teaches her how to kill and is effectively her handler. After posing as a bigger to knock off an obnoxious businessman, he’s recruited by Goda (Kenji Imai), the former warden prison stabbed in the eye (though not by Nami as he claims here) in the original trilogy but now a local councillor with aspirations of being elected to parliament. The prison is about to be redeveloped and Goda claims he’s been keeping Nami a prisoner in the dungeon for the last 20 years so he needs her knocked off before anyone bothers to have a look down there.

Of course, there are a few things that don’t make sense with this scenario and are out of continuity with the events of the original trilogy. In any case, now called 701 the assassin infiltrates the prison and knocks off a woman she’s been led to believe is the original scorpion but may not actually be. It seems Scorpion has already passed into legend and the woman has become less important than the idea or the inspiration she provides to the other inmates who are then minded to rebel against authority. By hiding Scorpion away, the authorities have made a rod for their own back in allowing her apotheosis into a goddess of vengeance of all women kind.

701 is in a way reborn as Sasori. Betrayed by the people who hired her, she’s crucified in the courtyard until rescued by fellow inmate and Sasori fan Shindo (Mineko Nishikawa) who helps her try to escape from the prison in an attempt to find out what happened to the “real” Nami. It’s she who first likens the fire in 701’s eyes to that of the Scorpion and begins to give her permission to take on her name and mission. A line is drawn between the two in Nami’s incasement in concrete and 701’s breaking out of it in the opening sequence. Though it would be wrong to call this horror film, Ikeda makes frequent use of ghostly techniques to imply Nami’s apotheosis such as the sound of her spoon scraping the concrete which she later bequeaths to 701 who then becomes the “new” Scorpion. 

The film was in fact a big hit for Toei video and theatrical sequel was planned as a co-production with Golden Harvest in Hong Kong though the project fell through when Okamoto took a break from show business ostensibly for health reasons though there were rumours she had objected to the requirements for nudity. Contrary to expectations for a straight to video release, there is not actually a lot of sexual content in the film which is mainly restricted to a single sequence in which two prisoners pretend to get it on in order to distract a guard to facilitate an escape attempt. Unlike other instalments in the series, the film doesn’t have a lot of women in prison elements either, though it does make space for Dump Matsumoto, a popular villain character from women’s wrestling, as a sadistic guard with a crush on another warden who is she says the only one who treated her like a woman. Instead, it focuses on 701’s passage towards becoming Scorpion and the fulfilment of her twin missions as an avenger of wronged women breaking free from the concrete dungeon of patriarchal oppression to take bloody revenge on the forces of corruption.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Evil Dead Trap (死霊の罠, Toshiharu Ikeda, 1988)

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The embattled host of a late-night TV show is confronted by the image of corrupted maternity after receiving a snuff film in the mail that seems to feature herself in Toshiharu Ikeda’s body horror slasher, Evil Dead Trap (死霊の罠, Shiryo no Wana). A giallo-esque slasher echoing alternately by Argento and Cronenberg, the film is in part an exploration of changing gender norms at the height of the Bubble era in which the career woman hero is essentially stalked by a monster baby because she reminds him of a mother he for some reason hates.

Nami’s (Miyuki Ono) late night TV show “for those who can’t sleep” relies on viewers for its content, making use of newfangled VHS technology to play videos sent in to the studio. Her bosses are thinking of canning it for being too “fluffy” which might be one reason Nami does not immediately call the police after receiving a disturbing video of a woman being tortured and killed who is later revealed to have her own face. Instead, she gets the all female (plus one “bodyguard” who is the boyfriend of one of the team) crew together and heads out to the abandoned US military base which appears to feature in the video. 

At several points, the women remark on how difficult it is for them working in the TV industry where they need a big story just to earn their place in their room. Nami even jokes that if she were to die investigating the tape it would only boost the ratings while simultaneously putting her life on the line for the sake of her career. Meanwhile, we later realise that Nami is being targeted in part because the killer, who has a child’s voice, thinks she looks like his mother whose voice is frequently heard playing on a loop via reel to reel tape. He later attempts to kill Nami by wrapping what appears to be an umbilical cord around her neck, while she is finally subjected to a forced birth as maternity is visited on her almost as an act of rape even as she resists it. It could even be said that she is a kind of mother to the group, and one who ultimately fails to take care of family as each of her team falls victim to one of the traps set by the killer.

Meanwhile, the film adopts a slasher-esque morality in which the first victim is killed shortly after having sex with her “bodyguard” boyfriend, assistant director Kondo (Masahiko Abe), who had up until that point been suffering with erectile dysfunction only to be sexually revived thanks to the violent and eerie space of the abandoned military base. Another of the women attempts to leave the compound, but is caught by a random man claiming to be working for the killer who violently rapes her but also strangely answers some of her questions about what’s really going on as he does he does so. Nami is also less than shocked by the video after putting it in the machine, giving a response which suggests it’s not unusual to receive this kind of material or to witness such brutal treatment of women. 

The killer does indeed make good and ironic use of new technology, at one point putting one of the victims on TV begging for their life to taunt Nami and having a giant set up featuring several screens plus the reel to reel tape. A mysterious man also lurking around the military base suggests to Nami that the sender of the video is likely a crazed stalker, a pervert who wanted to see her naked who lured her to this remote location and then murdered all her friends when actually it’s almost the reverse that’s true and Nami is being targeted both for and not being a mother. Often switching to a Testuo-style shuttling camera and blue-tinted filter, Ikeda enlivens his genre adventure with interesting composition and a fantastic use of lighting right down to the oscillating blue police light in the killer’s lair as Nami attempts to retake control of her image and escape the penetrating gaze of her audience along with the patriarchal cage of an oppressive society.

Trailer (dialogue free)

Scent of a Spell (魔性の香り, Toshiharu Ikeda, 1985)

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Esaka (Johnny Okura) feels like someone’s watching him. He has this sense of being observed by some otherworldly force along with a generalised feeling of uneasiness. But his paranoia seems to melt away after rescuing a young woman, Akiko (Mari Amachi), whose attempted suicide he witnesses during a rainstorm on his way home. He takes her in and one thing leads to another. For a time, they’re blissfully happy but then something starts to nag at him. Is Akiko really who she claims to be, or a demonic force of monstrous femininity?

It’s this malevolent quality to which the title of Toshiharu Ikeda’s noirish romance Scent of a Spell (魔性の香り, Masho no Kaori) alludes. Esaka is captivated by a hint of mystery and his own white knight syndrome, bewitched by Akiko but also perhaps growing tired of her and fearful of romantic commitment. He has after all been married before and his friend’s comments seems to suggest the cause of marital breakdown may either have been his womanising or his wife’s baseless jealousy. Akiko tells him that she’s on the run from an abusive husband prone to jealous rages and that though she has escaped from Osaka to Tokyo he always manages to track her down. Her sense of being pursued and Esaka’s of being watched seem to perfectly align while he seems to appreciate the fact that she needs him and he is quite literally sheltering her from danger.

Nevertheless, there are cracks in Akiko’s story beginning with the fact the bridge she threw herself off wasn’t the kind to pose a serious risk to life. The drop is only a few feet and though she resolutely refuses to be taken to a hospital because her husband might find her, she may be exaggerating the extent of her injuries. Meanwhile, she seems to have something of a jealous streak becoming irritated when Esaka talks to the proprietress of a local bar, thereafter apparently submitting herself to the attentions of his over-friendly colleague. Perhaps she had a reason to be annoyed given that she didn’t previously know any of these people and he inadvertently excluded her from the conversation, but it’s difficult for Esaka to know if she’s actually being unreasonable or he’s overreacting to a threat to his male pride and autonomy.

It’s this threat to his freedom that’s inflamed when he overhears another man talking to the lady behind the counter at a cafe he regularly goes to about his own girlfriend who is also named “Akiko” written with the character for “autumn”. Though there must be dozens of women with this not all that uncommon name combination in the city, it plants the seed of doubt in him that perhaps his Akiko and the other are the same and she’s two-timing him with this other guy while he’s at work. It also adds to his feeling that she has some kind of malevolent supernatural quality as if she were deliberately targeting lonely men for nefarious reasons. When the man from the cafe is found dead at home having been bludgeoned to death, he can’t help but feel that Akiko must have been involved and possibly intends to harm him too.

Of course, this may just be his fear that she will hurt him emotionally and his growing paranoia is a defence mechanism designed to protect himself against her abandonment or an infringement on his freedom. Or, alternatively, Akiko really is a dangerously crazed and jealous woman and letting her into his life will mean not a moment’s peace until it’s over. Even so, the pair of them discover intimacy in connection in their raw, desperate love making. Every time Esaka’s doubts rise to the surface, Akiko seduces him or he her and he momentarily forgets. In this, the film may have a latent misogyny as a final twist suggests that in the end all women are prone to fits of jealous rage not to mention cunning and trickery directed against each other as much as men who are also, to be fair, faithless liars and cheats. Akiko’s tragic backstory suggests something similar, that she is the inheritor of a legacy of compromised maternity and paternal betrayal. In any case, Esaka is not quite the hero he imagined himself to be either and in the end cannot save Akiko who may also in a way be choosing to sacrifice herself for love of him. Echoing the ending of In a Lonely Place, Ikeda casts their romance as fatalistic tragedy and bathes the noirish closing scenes in a heavenly golden light that suggests true love ends only in futility.

Scent of a Spell is released in the UK on blu-ray 17th February courtesy of Third Window Films.

Mermaid Legend (人魚伝説, Toshiharu Ikeda, 1984)

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“Even if someone kills you, you wouldn’t die,” a drunken husband somewhat sarcastically replies having pledged to come back and haunt his wife if he died and she married a man who didn’t drink. His words take on a prophetic quality given that the heroine of Toshiharu Ikeda’s Mermaid Legend (人魚伝説, Ningyo Densetsu) takes on a quasi-supernatural quality as an embodiment of nature’s revenge after someone tries, and fails, to kill her having already killed her husband for witnessing their murder of another man who’d tried to resist their plans of buying up half the town to build a nuclear plant. 

By the mid-1980s, Japan’s economy had fully recovered from post-war privation and was heading into an era of unprecedented prosperity which is to say that the coming of a power plant was not welcomed with the same degree of hope and excitement as it may have been in the 1950s when it was sold not only as a new source of employment for moribund small towns but an engine that would fuel the new post-war society. Several industrial scandals such as the Minamata disease had indeed left those in rural areas fearful of the consequences of entering a faustian pact with big business, which is one reason why the guys from Kinki Electric Power sell it as an amusement park project though even this has the locals wary not just of the disruption it will bring to their lives and potential ruin of their livelihoods which are dependent on the protection of the natural environment but that what is promised simply won’t be delivered. Fisherman Keisuke (Jun Eto) says as much when lamenting a previous aquaculture programme which didn’t pan out and caused lasting damage to marine life. 

In any case, as others say there’s no money in going out to sea anymore and its clear that the old-fashioned, traditional way of life practiced by Keisuke and his newlywed wife Migiwa (Mari Shirato) is no longer sustainable. Migiwa is an abalone diver working without modern equipment but using heavy weights to dive deep enough to reach the shells. As such she’s dependent on her husband to pull her back up to the boat when she tugs the rope. She must put her life entirely in his hands though in truth, he does not seem to take his responsibility all that seriously. The couple bicker relentlessly and not even she really believes him when he says he witnessed a murder which might be understandable given the extent of his drinking. All of which is further evidence against her when she manages to escape from the assassination plot and runs straight to the nearest policeman who thanks her for turning herself in implying he believes she is responsible for Keisuke’s death. 

The possible collusion of the policeman hints as a further sense of distrust in authority which has become far too close to corporate interests. Shady industrialist Miyamoto (Yoshiro Aoki) ropes in both the mayor and the head of the fishing association in his talks with Kinki Electric Power along with Shimogawa from the local tourist board who evidently opposes the plans as he is the man Keisuke witnesses being murdered. As Miyamoto says “sometimes your hands get a little dirty” though he never “directly” involves himself matters such as these. The situation is complicated by an unresolved love triangle between Miyamoto’s spineless son Shohei (Kentaro Shimizu), a sometime photographer, who is resentful of Keisuke and in love with Migiwa complaining that Keisuke always outdrinks him and gets the girl too hinting at his sense of wounded masculinity. Isolated by his class difference, he appears not to approve of his father’s actions but later does little to stop them and eventually sides with corporate interest over his feelings for Migiwa who in any case seems to have become more attached to Keisuke following his death which she vows to avenge. 

There is there is something quite strange in the prophetical quality of Keisuke’s words also predicting the “black sweat” of the Jizo on the beach and the mystical storm which does eventually sweep everything clean destroying the signs for the new nuclear power plant already installed on the beach. In this way, Migiwa becomes a vengeful force of nature taking up arms against those who wilfully ravage and pollute the natural environment while damaging the lives of those who lived on its shores such as herself and Keisuke. She takes revenge not only for the murder of her husband by corrupt capitalists but against that corruption itself even as she laments that “no matter how many I kill, they just keep coming.” “Don’t worry, maybe all this was just a dream,” Keisuke once again prophetically intones though it’s difficult to know if it’s defeating the capitalist order that is a fantasy or the maintenance of the idealised rural life to which Migiwa seemingly finds her way back swimming into an unpolluted sea surrounded by the floating barrels of ama divers and clear blue skies, a creature of nature once again.

Mermaid Legend screened as part of this year’s JAPAN CUTS.