NAKED RASHOMON DVD Review

For a short time in the early nineties Hollywood dabbled with making high-budgeted erotic movies, first and foremost amongst these Paul Verhoeven's "Basic Instinct". Now imagine if studios would have reacted to that movie's success by reorganizing itself into factories churning out ONLY that type of movies, and pushed hard to distribute them towards mainstream (and even highbrow) audiences.

A strange thought, yet in Japan this actually happened during the early seventies when the biggest studios (faced with extinction by television's growing success) started to invest heavily into adult-oriented cinema. Japan's oldest big studio Nikkatsu kept itself out of bankruptcy with this strategy for seventeen years, and their erotic output during that time is knows as Roman-Porno.

This Roman-Porno genre nowadays has a growing number of fans, because unlike the independently made no-budget "pink" movies these films actually had good production values, often resulting in works of artistic merit.
Because of the genre's newfound popularity, titles have begun to appear on DVD even in the West. Mondo Macabro is one of the companies who is doing their damnedest in getting many of these (often hard to find) films released in the USA, and "Naked Rashomon" from 1972 is one of their newest titles. Fans of the genre might be knowing what to expect, but I am a newbie, having heard a lot about Roman-Porno yet having seen little of it.


So what did I think of it? Read on (I will keep things relatively SFW)...

The Story:

Marquis Katsuragawa wants an heir for his dynasty, but his wife is barren. Therefore Katsuragawa has made arrangements to frequently sleep with Shino, the wife of his bodyguard Todo. This is a lucrative deal for Todo and Shino, but Todo cannot bear sharing his wife with his boss so he leaves her. Shino finally gets pregnant, and when she delivers a twin boy and girl Katsuragawa keeps the boy as his own, pretending his wife is the real mother. He also orders Todo to get rid of Shino and the remaining baby girl, but Todo's conscience prevents him from killing them. Instead, he hides them in a remote village.

Eighteen years later, on the eve of the second World War, Todo is a well-to-do respected man. But then he receives a letter from a dying Shino, asking him to be her daughter Kyoko's guardian. Todo complies, but finds Kyoko to be a very difficult girl who yearns to work in a brothel as part of a plan to exact revenge on her father Katsuragawa. But even meeting that man has become difficult, as he has been promoted to Home Secretary. Then Kyoko meets her twin brother Hiroyoshi who, unknowing of the fact that they are brother and sister, falls in love with her...


The Movie:

Chusei Sone used to work for famous rebel-director Seijun Suzuki, so it shouldn't be too surprising to find many tricky camera moves and stylish embellishments in "Naked Rashomon". And indeed things start with a bang, no pun intended: the first shot after the credits shows a made up stage actor rehearsing in front of a mirror. What makes this shot so surprising is that the camera seems to have been placed inside his mouth, looking out! It is one of many sight gags Chusei Sone has hidden in the film, but unfortunately the best of these are all at the start.
Many gags involve the use of the color red. Red objects litter the screen, and when someone suffers a serious wound, blood geysers almost as wildly as in "Tokyo Gore Police".

Sone is indeed gifted with a nice eye for the camera, but the actual storytelling here is rather bland. The biggest problem here lies with the muddled behavior of Kyoke, who in all right should be our heroine. If any of her actions would have been according to a plan, or a logic even, it would be easier to get engrossed. As it is, she does weird things and more weird things happen to her. And it's not just her either: oftentimes the characters that are on screen seem just to be looking for an excuse to get the film to the next bit of nudity. This doesn't help the story, which was convoluted to begin with.

Still, the Roman-Porno movies distinguish themselves from their "Pink" brothers by having a bigger budget an production values, and with "Naked Rashomon" this shows. There are costumes, big sets and the whole film looks glossy rather than cheap. And Chusei Sone plays a nice game by having his two leads play both the young versions of Shino and Katsuragawa, and the older versions of the twins Kyoko and Hiroyoshi as well.

Speaking of nudity, first and foremost the Roman-Porno films were about offering a bit more than regular movies and television did. However, this being Japan, not very much is allowed even when you're "breaking the rules" on purpose.

So how sexy or daring is "Naked Rashomon"? Not much, Frankly.
The sexual aspect of the story is more aimed at being socially shocking then at being titillating. There is even some Edogara Rampo-like depravity thrown into the mix, consisting of decadent aristocrats, bondage and incest. It all adds surprisingly little to the film.

But let me say that the breasts of lead actress Hitomi Kozue are truly beautiful indeed and Chusei Sone knows it, giving them almost more close-ups than her face.

As for all other nudity, creativity and sound is used to imply more than is shown although a few times you will see astonishingly blunt artificial "masking" of the proceedings, as the examples on the left show.

I'm particularly fond of the diagonal band, which makes the whole screen look like a large "FORBIDDEN!" banner!


Conclusion:

A curious thriller, and I can reprint most of what I normally say about movies by, say, Jean Rollin. It looks good, there is some interesting play here with colors and compositions, but the acting and story left me very much underwhelmed.

Kyoko's journey towards revenge is an odd one and never invites the audience to really take her side, no matter how much of a bastard Katsuragawa is.
And without a lead to really root for, this film never gets above the level of "interesting" at best.


About the DVD:

Mondo Macabro released "Naked Rashomon" as a single disc, and it's regionfree (which I'll always applaud).
The video is soft and the contrast at times seems to be low, giving this dark movie rather drab look. Things change whenever the color red enters the screen though, and that is good as "Red" is almost a character in this film. Audio is fine, an unassuming stereo mix of the original Japanese track with good (and removable) subtitles.

Then there are the extras.

To start with there are two sets of text screens, one about the history of Nikkatsu and one about the film "Naked Rashomon" itself. Both are short but very decent.

Next are two documentaries. One is a 25 minute overview of the rise and fall of the Roman-Porno genre, while the other one is basically a 10-minute lecture on Chusei Sone by Japanese exploitation expert Jasper Sharp (who also wrote the book "Behind the Pink Curtain").

Hearing the Mondo Macabro theme music in the run-up to the menu always brings a smile to my face, if only because it reminds me there will be some insane trailers on this disc. And indeed, there is a Nikkatsu trailer gallery which has trailers for "The Watcher in the Attic", "Naked Rashomon", "The Sins of Sister Lucia", "The Prosperities of Vice", "Assault! Jack the Ripper" and finally "Female Prisoner: Caged".

And of course there is also a 7 and a half minute Mondo Macabro trailer mash-up which serves a s an overview of their recent catalogue. I prefer real trailers but I always find these segments almost impossible to turn off, weird music and all...

All in all this is a very good disc for this film. "Naked Rashomon" was not exactly my cup of tea but the whole package here should delight the fans of it.
Which concludes my review.