Panik
House
| Review
by Curt Purcell
This
is the sequel to SEX
AND FURY, with Reiko Ike reprising her
role as Inoshika Ocho, but a different director
taking the reins. Ike's presence provides
the main and perhaps only real continuity
between the movies, because FEMALE YAKUZA
TALE departs dramatically from the first,
both stylistically and story-wise.
The opening credits foreshadow
some of the strange turns this movie takes.
In the rain, Ocho battles a gang of generic
assailants with her umbrella. Somehow, she
loses all her clothes, but keeps on fighting
naked. It made me sit up and take notice,
and it superficially recalls her nude fight
in the snow garden in SEX AND FURY, but
this is far more gratuitous on every count.
The fight is a self-contained set-piece
with no narrative point, and the nudity,
though welcome, comes out of left field.
As the movie proper begins,
Ocho's backstory (or maybe rather what Tarantino
would call her "mythology") from
the first film is simply dropped and another
presented in its place to illuminate her
relationships to a completely different
cast of characters, to a degree that I found
jarring. The two backstories are actually
more complementary than contradictory, but
no attempt is made to link them or to establish
any continuity.
Ocho arrives in a new place,
and immediately finds herself knocked out,
molested, and set up to take the rap for
a "crotch gouge" murder (evidently
the most recent in a series). It turns out
that there's a ring of prostitutes smuggling
drugs in their vaginas, and Ocho's been
mistaken for a mule. Naturally, as soon
as she's able, she sets off on a rampage
of revenge.
The sexploitation factor is
ratcheted way, way up here. Numerous scenes
depict male Yakuza inserting and removing
the drugs. The scenes aren't explicit, but
they are coarsely suggestive. In one, a
Yakuza complains about the smell, and in
another, several Yakuza bet on which girl
can accomodate the largest object. The climax
is a preposterous set-piece in which a legion
of naked prostutites battle the male Yakuza.
The scene is played for zany camp rather
than the arresting fusion of bloodletting
with Ike's sex appeal, from the first movie.
If stoopid fun is what you
want from these movies, then FEMALE YAKUZA
TALE is probably the one that you'll prefer.
I think it falls too often into spoof, which
lowers it a lot in my estimation. Whatever
your preferences, if you like one movie,
you'll absolutely want to see the other.
They make an essential pair, so much so
that I'm surprised they weren't offered
as a set or a double-sided disc. Chris D
provides audio commentary again, and his
essay from SEX
AND FURY is included here as well.
