TIME TO PREY

That's no lady. That's a sexual predator.

This is a pretty rare poster, very hard to find in uncensored form. It was made for Kamakiri fujin no kokuhaku, generally known in English as Confessions of Lady Mantis, a bizarre little movie about a woman who’s a serial life destroyer. Midori Sasaki stars and plays a well known television host who embarks on a spate of affairs, with misfortune soon striking each of her involvements. But before we go on, let’s take a moment to appreciate the movie’s unusually beautiful opening credit sequence. Midori is photographed in similarly loving fashion throughout the film:

Getting back to Midori’s affairs, her first is a formula one driver who’s later killed in a crash. Then a neighbor she tempts gives up his perfect wife and beautiful house only for Midori to abandon him. Five flings all end badly for the men, but number six happens to be a contract killer. We won’t tell you what happens next. It’s amazing Midori gets through all these men in a movie running just over an hour. You really have to appreciate the conciseness of Japanese b-cinema. That being the case, we’ll be concise too: Kamakiri fujin no kokuhaku is interesting, occasionally funny, and worth a look, but not special. It premiered in Japan today in 1975.

Japan, Toei Company, Kamakiri fujin no kokuhaku, Confessions of Lady Mantis, Midori Satsuki, Yuki Morisaki, Gorô Ibuki, pinku, poster art, cinema, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 14

1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago

Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.

February 13

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

February 12

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

February 12

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

February 11

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.