Akai kami no onna

When discussing the politically incorrect (to put it mildly) Japanese films that fall in the category of Pinku eiga (adult pink films), it's helpful to refer to Thomas Weisser and Yuko Weisser's Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films. They explain how "the term Pinku eiga goes back to a review in 1962 where it was said to describe the large amount of exposed female skin in the film Flesh Market. Okura Studios, which released Flesh Market, took up the term in their promotional literature and applied it to many of their other products. In time the term became commonly used for any film with lots of sexual content." But that's only part of the story. As Ian Stimler notes on the dvd liner notes to Tatsumi Kumashiro's A Woman with Red Hair (1979), due "to strict postwar censorship laws, these films were forbidden to show genitalia, pubic hair or 'hard-core' sexual intercourse. Therefore filmmakers had to be creative in their depiction of sexual acts through the use of extreme close-ups and inventive compositions" and "depict often startling sexual situations and perverse obsessions." With A Woman with Red Hair, Kumashiro pushed this type of filmmaking into art-house fare, garnering some critical praise, and it was the kind of financial success that helped push the whole enterprise to a wider audience. A Woman with Red Hair stars Junko Miyashita as a hitchhiker who is picked up by a truck driver - Kenzo Renji Ishibashi, who also starred in Takashi Miike's Audition (2000). A messy affair follows where he tries to rape her, but then she seduces him, and then they decide to live together. Obviously, this homestead is not going to be like anything out of I Love Lucy, and instead of Fred and Ethel, the neighbors are psychotic heroin addicts - and with all the drunk rows and violent sexual secrets that follow it's easy to posit that everybody has some 'splainin' to do. American audiences acclimated to edgier fare addressing issues of dominance and submission, like Adrian Lyne's 9 1/2 Weeks (1986), will get a run for their money (or the exit) here. Cinephiles who like going off the beaten track will be privy to some remarkable color schemes and memorable montage sequences, including one strange bit that goes back and forth between a drunk sing-along and a tricycle ride that climaxes with a strange masturbation scene. A Woman with Red Hair was put out by Nikkatsu, which the liner notes remind us was "one of Japan's oldest and most prestigious" companies, but one that was loathe to miss out on the potential profit being exhibited by the pink film industry - so they entered the arena in 1971. In Japanese Cinema: The Essential Handbook (also by the Weisser's) A Woman with Red Hair is given the distinction of being regarded "as one of the very best Nikkatsu pink films and it's director Kumashiro's most accomplished movie." It is also noted that actress Junko Miyashita "won the Hochi News award for best actress of 1979. The film secured her position as the Queen of Eros, Junko's name was synonymous with 'the joys of free sex' for more than a decade in Japan." The dvd release by KimStim is presented in its 1.85:1 theatrical aspect ratio with no frills beyond a filmography. For more information about A Woman With Red Hair, visit Image Entertainment. To order A Woman With Red Hair, go to TCM Shopping. by Pablo Kjolseth