We’ve watched a lot of movies this month, and today is the day we begin squeezing them onto the site before the end of the year. The shooter’s POV poster above was made for Aiyoku no wana, aka Trap of Lust, which is a roman porno reinterpretation of Seijun Suzuki’s 1967 gangster classic Koroshi no rakuin, aka Branded to Kill. It’s the story of a veteran hitman who botches an assignment, with the unexpected consequence that he’s ordered to kill his own wife.
It isn’t a punishment thing, exactly, that brings this about. The reason she becomes his target is narratively more complex. But killing one’s spouse is not easy even for a cold-blooded professional terminator, and ultimately he’s pitted against a couple of top yakuza hitmen, one of whom is a freaky deaky assassin who does his work alongside a nearly life-sized marionette that he voices like a schoolgirl. We know it sounds out there, and it is. Look at the screenshots below for an idea what this disturbed character is about.
The marionette gimmick isn’t totally gratuitous. It contributes to a pivotal duel that by itself nudges the movie onto the positive side of the watch/don’t watch ledger. While we’re tempted to get into the weird psychocultural reasons why embodiments of pure human evil in Japanese films are often covered in brown shoe polish, we’ll just leave the obvious unspoken. Ready for something bizarre? Then go for it. Aiyoku no wana premiered in Japan today in 1973.
