View Larger Image

Entrails of the Virgin Director: Kazuo 'Gaira' Komizu Number of Items: 1 Format: Animated, Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen Audience Rating: Unrated Running Time: 73 minutes Studio: Wea Corp Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2004-07-27 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 6 Average rating: 2.5 "Interesting Japanese Exploitation Cult Classic..." Let me begin by stating that before seeing this DVD, my knowledge of Japanese cinema was restricted to some Akira Kurosawa and the Godzilla films I watched as a kid. This film bears NO resemblance to anything I have seen before, Japanese or otherwise, the films that most closely parallel this endeavor would be Italian sleazemeister Joe D'Amato's Emmanuelle and The Last Cannibals and Erotic Nights Of The Living Dead. This is a Japanese sex and gore classic, with the emphasis definitely on the sex. The film relates the story of a group of photographers and models who retreat to an isolated cabin (are there any other kinds in these horror films..) for a softcore porn shoot. Before long things get out of hand as the men reveal themselves to be misogynistic jerks, on par with the inbred idiots in Meir Zarchi's I Spit On Your Grave, whose sole purpose seems to degrade and violate the young models. The misogny and hatred of women in this film is truly the most shocking aspect, making for some disturbing scenes such as when a young photographer's assistant wrestles one of the semi-nude models until she collapses with the rest of the entourage cheering this on. To further complicate things, the entourage's night of debauchery wakes a slimy, humanoid creature from a nearby swamp. Monster fans should take note that the creature is an immense let down, basically a guy covered with limited body make-up and sporting a huge schlong that would make Ron Jeremy envious. The beast summarily stalks and kills the men in a variety of dimly lit gore setpieces, and assaults the women with his huge pecker before killing them too. It is of interest to note that in some instances the beast is more considerate of the women than their chauvinistic male counterparts. If this sounds interesting, it is...to a certain degree. The novelty factor of mixing a large amount of pretty raunchy sex with a standard slasher subplot is fascinating indeed in theory. In application, fans looking for hardcore sex will be disapointed, largely due to the Japanese practice of obscuring or fogging the genital regions of actors during sex scenes, as you can guess no actual penetration is shown. I must admit though that the fogging was less distracting than I thought it would be and did not detract from whatever enjoyment I got from this film. Now as for the gore, there is plenty of it including one scene where a woman's entrails are ripped from her love nest immediately following sex, but much of it takes place in badly lit areas and is hard to discern. The acting is below average horror film campiness and some of the dialogue (subtitles) is so awful it was impossible to restrain laughter. For those interested, the Japanese actresses are pretty hot and very nice to look at, if not listen to-one of these girls has the most annoying voice ever, more like a high pitched squeak. Upon ordering this DVD, I was expecting a fun variation on the old Evil Dead, Cabin Fever recipe of people stuck in an isolated area stalked by an evil force. What I got was a truly unique and somewhat disturbing film that will surely appeal to genre fans. Having said that this is not the type of film I would watch regularly and probably will not order this film's counterpart Entrails Of A Beautiful Woman, which is reportedly even more offensive. The DVD presentation itself is beautiful for such an old, obscure film. The picture and sound was quite nice. The extras are kind of slim though with only a theatrical trailer and a boring interview with the director included. Still, kudos to Synapse for digging up this little known cult classic.