Entrails of a Beautiful Woman

Back in 1986, Nikkatsu released a pair of notorious films, Entrails of a Virgin and Entrails of a Beautiful Woman, through their Roman X adult video label (an ignoble successor to the once-great Roman Porno line of erotic films of the '70s). I reviewed Entrails of a Virgin in Asia Shock, but never got around to screening the other one until yesterday. (I suppose it's a testament to the repellant nature of these films that one was enough to hold me for several years.)

Both films feature a plethora of sleazy sex scenes, probing the outer boundaries of anyone's concept of "softcore pornography." But what makes these films truly stand out is the presence of a "sex monster," a creature seemingly conjured by the perveted lusts of the various human characters, a hideous consequence of thier crazed rutting. In Virgin, the creature is a demon who grows ever more powerful (and tumescent) as he stalks the horny members of a photo shoot holed up in a farmhouse overnight. In the less-sexy and far more violent Beautiful Woman, it is a violated woman who becomes the beast, a six-foot hermaphroditic monstrosity seemingly turned inside out. When the big, red, gooey thing decides to defile a cruel yakuza wife, it grows a mutated member most closely resembling the baby alien from Alien (in flagrante, the little fella behaves in much the same way as he did with poor John Hurt).

I can't, in all honesty, offer any good reason to see Entrails of a Beautiful Woman. But then, who needs a good reason?