With shocking scenes of violent rape, murder, bestiality, necrophilia and torture, Beautiful Girl Hunter (my first foray into the 'pinku-eiga' genre) is certainly an eye-opener.
Tatsuya is a little messed up: he is the result of a vicious sex attack on his mother by a violent rapist/thief. His surrogate father treats him like dirt as a child, and degrades his mum (by tying her up, whipping her and having sex with other women in her presence) until she can take no more and kills herself.
Tatsuya eventually gets even by killing his father, inheriting a fortune as a result. But it seems that he has also inherited his real father's penchant for mistreating women, and is soon following in daddy's footsteps, abducting, raping and killing beautiful women.
A misogynistic, ultra nasty and disturbing movie, Beautiful Girl Hunter is certainly not for everyone. However, those who have an 'anything goes' attitude towards their viewing matter will probably enjoy this simply for its willingness to show pretty much anything in the name of entertainment.
A series of busty victims suffer at the hands of Tatsuya (and his biological father, who turns up towards the end of the film to join in the fun) and the humiliation they have to endure is certainly very imaginative: one is smeared all over with butter, only for it to be removed by a dog with an obliging tongue; another is forced to masturbate in front of her captor; and, in a particularly gob-smacking scene, one poor girl is denied lavatorial facilities until she can hold on no longer...
The forced sex, which occurs at regular intervals throughout the film, is also very unsettling and not for those who are easily offended. Peculiarly enough, though, for a film that is so extreme in places, the nookie is at times made rather laughable by carefully placed objects in the foreground obscuring the 'action' (think of that scene in Austin Powers and you'll get an idea of what I mean). I always find it amusing when I see what the Japanese find acceptable to show and what is deemed too obscene (for example, they have no problem with a scene in which Tatsuya masturbates over photos from the Nazi holocaust!!).
What is also rather surprising about this film is its technical excellence. There is no evidence of the low quality prevalent in many of filmdom's more seamy productions—the cinematography is great and the direction very effective. Director Norifumi Suzuki has managed to imbue this sordid tale with a level of class which is rare in exploitation movie-making.
And if Eli Roth thinks he is the last word in extreme bloodletting, he ought to check this baby out: his Mrs. Bathory bath scene in Hostel 2 pales in comparison with the bit where Tatsuya stabs a girl suspended by chains and is drenched in her blood! Beautiful Girl Hunter ends with a rather confusing and pretentious finale which might be a case of the director trying to justify his film with some kind of message. He needn't have bothered: viewers of this movie will be too busy gasping at the on-screen filth to care about any deeper meaning.
