Angel Guts - Coming Soon
Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2004 5:45 am
Here's some information on Angel Guts - sorry for the length of this post.
ArtsmagicDVD is now in a position to announce that it has acquired the North American rights to the acclaimed....in Japan...and notorious...abroad....Angel Guts series. This series has been described by critic Pete Tombs as being the breakthrough movies that enabled the current surge in Easter horror to take place. They also mark the introduction of director Takashi Ishii to the movie business, since it was his manga, Tenshi no harawata (Angel Guts), that led to the creation of the series, and finally to his emergence as not just screenplay writer but director.Beginning in 1979, the latest Angel Guts was made in 1994. As a director, Ishii is perhaps best known for Gonin.
This is ArtsmagicDVDs first venture into the world of Japanese erotic cinema, and for many Westerners, it is a very strange world indeed. This is partly due to the West's taboos on subjects covered, which include SM relationships and rape. Anything to do with SM receives the censor's shears in many countries, if any filmmaker is brave or foolhardy enough to attempt to deal with the subject. Where rape takes place, it is nearly always undertaken by easily identified social misfits, usually psychopaths, or bad-ass gangs of youths. Artmagic has experienced what happens when these films are placed before the UK censor. Back in 2002, with the permission of Nikkatsu, we decided to submit two of the series to the British Board of Film Censorship. These were Red Classroom (Akai Kyoshitsu) and Red Dizziness (Akai Memai), and both came back with the demand for cuts to be made: Red Dizziness cuts amounted to 41 seconds and Red Classroom 29 seconds. We decided that we were not happy to comply with these demands.....many of our movies had already suffered from the attention of the censor...and withdrew them.
Critics tell us that Japanese sex films divide into two basic categories, which are both generally known as "pinku" cinema, a term that seems to have come into being around the early sixties, and may refer to pink flesh in American porn. "Pinku" proper refers to the lower budget products, whereas Nikkatsu created a category of film all of it's own, known as roman-porno, which mixes "romance" with porn. (In fact, if you look on many of the Japanese wraps, the katkana reads "romance series"...no mention there of porn.) Both styles include serious exploitation movies. In other words, although their purpose is to appeal to the voyeur in us, the subjects they tackle are treated more seriously than those of many mainstream cinema products. Where roman-porno sets itself apart is in the use of larger budgets and consequently a glossier look and feel to the viewing experience. But both have proved fertile ground for the quickening of directorial talent. Crossover directors include the now feted Kiyoshi Kurosawa, as well as Koji Wakamatsu, Noboru Tanaka, Toshiharu Ikeda, and Hideo Nakata of Ringu fame. Indeed, Nakata served his apprenticeship in the business, and thought so highly of it that he recently paid tribute to his master, Masaru Konuma, in a documentary entitled Sadistic and Masochistic.
The five Angel Guts movies are to be released in digi pack form this March...if we can put the package together in time. The directors involved include Chusei Sone, a man who spent his whole career in roman-porno, was a seminal influence, and, in our opinion, one of its greatest directors. His offerings are High School Coed and Red Classroom. The script for the former was written by Toshiharu Ikeda. Ikeda, best known as director of Evil Dead Trap, (which was incidentally scripted by Takashi Ishii), went on to direct Red Porno. Noboru Tanaka, who directed Village of Doom, was in charge of the most horrific of the series, with scenes involving gut wrenching mutilation. Its title is Nami. All Ishii's heroines are called Nami, but this is the only film of that name. Finally, Ishii himself emerged to direct Red Dizziness.
This is a collection of important directors all dealing with the same theme, rape, and all centre around a girl called Nami. The results range from poignant to nauseating. You never doubt the seriousness of directorial input. The rapists may be youth gangs, they may be psychopaths, but they are more likely to be the unfortunate and inadequate. The heavily censored British have one of the highest incidents of rape in the world, the Japanese one of the lowest.
ArtsmagicDVD is now in a position to announce that it has acquired the North American rights to the acclaimed....in Japan...and notorious...abroad....Angel Guts series. This series has been described by critic Pete Tombs as being the breakthrough movies that enabled the current surge in Easter horror to take place. They also mark the introduction of director Takashi Ishii to the movie business, since it was his manga, Tenshi no harawata (Angel Guts), that led to the creation of the series, and finally to his emergence as not just screenplay writer but director.Beginning in 1979, the latest Angel Guts was made in 1994. As a director, Ishii is perhaps best known for Gonin.
This is ArtsmagicDVDs first venture into the world of Japanese erotic cinema, and for many Westerners, it is a very strange world indeed. This is partly due to the West's taboos on subjects covered, which include SM relationships and rape. Anything to do with SM receives the censor's shears in many countries, if any filmmaker is brave or foolhardy enough to attempt to deal with the subject. Where rape takes place, it is nearly always undertaken by easily identified social misfits, usually psychopaths, or bad-ass gangs of youths. Artmagic has experienced what happens when these films are placed before the UK censor. Back in 2002, with the permission of Nikkatsu, we decided to submit two of the series to the British Board of Film Censorship. These were Red Classroom (Akai Kyoshitsu) and Red Dizziness (Akai Memai), and both came back with the demand for cuts to be made: Red Dizziness cuts amounted to 41 seconds and Red Classroom 29 seconds. We decided that we were not happy to comply with these demands.....many of our movies had already suffered from the attention of the censor...and withdrew them.
Critics tell us that Japanese sex films divide into two basic categories, which are both generally known as "pinku" cinema, a term that seems to have come into being around the early sixties, and may refer to pink flesh in American porn. "Pinku" proper refers to the lower budget products, whereas Nikkatsu created a category of film all of it's own, known as roman-porno, which mixes "romance" with porn. (In fact, if you look on many of the Japanese wraps, the katkana reads "romance series"...no mention there of porn.) Both styles include serious exploitation movies. In other words, although their purpose is to appeal to the voyeur in us, the subjects they tackle are treated more seriously than those of many mainstream cinema products. Where roman-porno sets itself apart is in the use of larger budgets and consequently a glossier look and feel to the viewing experience. But both have proved fertile ground for the quickening of directorial talent. Crossover directors include the now feted Kiyoshi Kurosawa, as well as Koji Wakamatsu, Noboru Tanaka, Toshiharu Ikeda, and Hideo Nakata of Ringu fame. Indeed, Nakata served his apprenticeship in the business, and thought so highly of it that he recently paid tribute to his master, Masaru Konuma, in a documentary entitled Sadistic and Masochistic.
The five Angel Guts movies are to be released in digi pack form this March...if we can put the package together in time. The directors involved include Chusei Sone, a man who spent his whole career in roman-porno, was a seminal influence, and, in our opinion, one of its greatest directors. His offerings are High School Coed and Red Classroom. The script for the former was written by Toshiharu Ikeda. Ikeda, best known as director of Evil Dead Trap, (which was incidentally scripted by Takashi Ishii), went on to direct Red Porno. Noboru Tanaka, who directed Village of Doom, was in charge of the most horrific of the series, with scenes involving gut wrenching mutilation. Its title is Nami. All Ishii's heroines are called Nami, but this is the only film of that name. Finally, Ishii himself emerged to direct Red Dizziness.
This is a collection of important directors all dealing with the same theme, rape, and all centre around a girl called Nami. The results range from poignant to nauseating. You never doubt the seriousness of directorial input. The rapists may be youth gangs, they may be psychopaths, but they are more likely to be the unfortunate and inadequate. The heavily censored British have one of the highest incidents of rape in the world, the Japanese one of the lowest.