Vintage Pulp

June 3 2022

WIGGING OUT

A classic case of accessory before the act.

We were enticed to watch the film Wakazuma ga nureru toki, aka When a Young Wife Gets Wet for two reasons: Izumi. Shima. We consider her to be among the most beautiful of stars from the late 1970s early 1980s, and we had to find out why she was on the above poster sporting a dimestore wig and grease pencil mole. We should have seen it coming, considering she features two distinct looks here, but what you get is Shima as a woman who lives a double life. In one she’s a housewife and in the other—as if you couldn’t guess—she’s a prostitute.

The movie has a plot we suspect only male filmmakers could come up with. Shima suffers a rape before her marriage, though justice of a sort is later applied, and afterward she seems to lead a happily wedded life. But nobody knows that she also haunts the alleys of Yokohama’s red light district to repeatedly relive her degradation. Obviously, she needs to keep this second life secret, and when threatened we find that she’ll do anything to avoid exposure. We do mean anything.

The movie, which came from Nikkatsu Studios and is part of its roman porno cycle, is more atmospheric than most from the genre. It’s quite dark in parts—visually we mean—with a nervous jazz score that brings to mind the 2014 hit Birdman. The nice accompaniment helps, but the plot treads the same old territory, with screenwriter Masayasu Ôebara exploring the madonna-whore complex on behalf of the audience. In the end Wakazuma ga nureru toki is memorable only because it stars the radiant Shima. It premiered in Japan today in 1978.

Japan, Yokohama, Nikkatsu, Wakazuma ga nureru toki, When a Young Wife Gets Wet, Izumi Shima, Yutaka Hayashi, Yûji Yoshikawa, poster art, cinema, pinku, roman porno, sexploitation, movie review

Vintage Pulp

July 7 2017

JACK OF ALL BLADES

He likes to have his cake and kill it too.

The roman porno flick Bôkô Kirisaki Jakku was called Assault: Jack the Ripper in English, and that pretty much tells you what happens. Tamaki Katsura stars as a waitress in a dead end job who hits the road seeking thrills. She coerces nerdy Yutaka Hayashi into giving her a ride, and the two later pick up a hitchhiker, who through bizarre circumstances ends up dead. Something about the sight of blood activates a need to repeat the experience, which they do by kidnapping and killing young women, then having sex next to the bodies. The weapon of choice is unusual—it’s a cake knife, the kind you might use to spread frosting. We’d have thought a dagger or hunting knife would work better, but cake is symbolic in the film, so a cake knife is a logical choice. While it doesn’t look sharp, somehow it goes through flesh like butter. Technique is everything.

Thus armed, the couple’s attacks become more brazen, then the man’s bloodlust surpasses that of his girlfriend’s. He starts killing alone, hoarding the thrills for himself, but each murder leaves him somehow unsatisfied. Like an addict upping the dosage, he has to keep taking greater risks. Can you guess what this leads to? We bet you can if you think about it. We can’t recommend the film, at least not wholeheartedly, but we’ll admit it’s provocative the way it’s both bloody and played for laughs. And as we’ve reported in the past, being sexually aroused by murder is a real thing, so that element was interesting too. And what’s more than merely interesting is the promo shot of Katsura we found, which you’ll see at bottom. Bôkô Kirisaki Jakku premiered in Japan today in 1976.

Japan, Bôkô Kirisaki Jakku, Tamaki Katsura, Yuri Yamashina, Yutaka Hayashi, poster art, cinema, roman porno, pinku, nudity

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

April 30

1927—First Prints Are Left at Grauman's

Hollywood power couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who co-founded the movie studio United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, become the first celebrities to leave their impressions in concrete at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, located along the stretch where the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame would later be established.

April 29

1945—Hitler Marries Braun

During the last days of the Third Reich, as Russia’s Red Army closes in from the east, Adolf Hitler marries his long-time partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker during a brief civil ceremony witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the next day, and their corpses are burned in the Reich Chancellery garden.

April 29

1967—Ali Is Stripped of His Title

After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before due to religious reasons, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his heavyweight boxing title. He is found guilty of a felony in refusing to be drafted for service in Vietnam, but he does not serve prison time, and on June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court reverses his conviction. His stand against the war had made him a hated figure in mainstream America, but in the black community and the rest of the world he had become an icon.

April 28

1947—Heyerdahl Embarks on Kon-Tiki

Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and his five man crew set out from Peru on a giant balsa wood raft called the Kon-Tiki in order to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. After a 101 day, 4,300 mile (8,000 km) journey, Kon-Tiki smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947, thus demonstrating that it is possible for a primitive craft to survive a Pacific crossing.

April 28

1989—Soviets Acknowledge Chernobyl Accident

After two days of rumors and denials the Soviet Union admits there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Reactor number four had suffered a meltdown, sending a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Today the abandoned radioactive area surrounding Chernobyl is rife with local wildlife and has been converted into a wildlife sanctuary, one of the largest in Europe.

April 27

1945—Mussolini Is Arrested

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and fifteen supporters are arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting to escape the region in the wake of the collapse of Mussolini’s fascist government. The next day, Mussolini and his mistress are both executed, along with most of the members of their group. Their bodies are then trucked to Milan where they are hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station, then spat upon and stoned until they are unrecognizable.