This week for my Bi-Weekly V-Cinema roundup courtesy of Arrow’s V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayals are two very different films that showcase both the depth and breadth of this Japanese sub-genre.
It’s been a fun run, but we’re arrived at the final film on the last Blu-ray in Arrow’s Arrow’s V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayals – XX: Beautiful Hunter. Little did I know the set was about to unleash its grand finale and one of the sleaziest entries in the girls and guns subgenre I’ve had the honor of hitting play on. In the first few minutes we meet Shion, a young girl who’s led into what appears to be a dark chapel lit by a single stained glass window by a nun. The child is then given a gun by a blind priest known only as ‘Father’ and instructed to kill a bound man in order to become a ‘warrior of God’. She does and instantly has her period after shooting the man through the heart, delivering one of the hardest openings of any action film ever.
We then jump 10 years later as Shion (Makiko Kuno) is being followed by a journalist who landed on her tail thanks to their investigation of ‘Father’. They follow the now adult assassin on her way to kill an entire cabin of yakuza, mistakenly crossing paths on her escapes – she kills all of the witnesses except the photographer – Ito (Johnny Okura), whom she tracks down sometime later, after having photographed her killing his partner. It’s as he’s begging for life that he accidentally rips her top and bottom exposing Shion both physically and for having never experienced a man’s touch due to her reaction to him touching her. Shion then forces Ito to take her on a date and eventually falls for him, deciding to leave her Catholic assassin death cult.
This goes about as good as you’d expect with Shion having to kill everyone to gain her freedom a la John Wick.
If the film itself wasn’t enough Arrow is here to shed a light on the unbelievable amount of lore behind the film on its special features. The film was directed by Masaru Konuma, who had previously directed over 40 Roman Porno films, which are essentially softcore films with a heavy S&M element for rival studio Nikkatsu. Toei was interested in what he would do for the second entry in their XX series and lured him over with the project. This entry oddly enough was adapted from a novel by the same screenwriter of The Ring series Hiroshi Takahashi, to tie this to the J-horror by even one more level, the director of The Ring started as a PA for Masaru Konuma. Like previous entries in the set, the film’s star started her career as a teen model. Makiko Kuno utilized this film and a nude photo book released at the same time to shed her good girl image and let the studios know she was open to doing more adult fare.
It was kind of interesting to see this isn’t just an American phenomenon, but could you imagine if male actors were expected to do the same?
XX: Beautiful Hunter gets the roughest of any film’s of the set with an out of pocket third act, that had me speechless. When our heroine is sentenced to death by ‘Father’, instead of shooting the unstoppable killing machine in the head when they finally have her incapacitated, they instead blindfold and dress Shion head to toe in latex and sexually assault her with a cattle prod. I mean she gets out, but it leans hard into the Roman Porno of it all. The one thing that makes this hard pill a little easier to swallow is the gorgeous cinematography by Seizō Sengen who lensed 65 films in his career and really added an air of quality to this sleazefest and I say that in the nicest way possible. You have this insanity unfolding onscreen, but because it’s shot in such a way it has this sheen of respectability.
XX: Beautiful Hunter is as hard boiled as they come, but it has the set going out on its own terms and I feel like it’s a fitting conclusion to the journey. V-Cinema Essentials offered up one hell of a line up presented in gorgeous scans of the 16mm elements, but combined each film with not only extras and docs, but intros for each film that gave a bit more depth and perspective to what was about to unfold. For those on the fence about this one, I can’t recommend it enough.
