Review of The Embryo Hunts in Secret

A mildly interesting if more explicit (as is to be expected of the Japanese) variation on William Wyler's THE COLLECTOR (1965), the film nevertheless doesn't quite equal the deliriousness of Yasuzo Masumura's similar BLIND BEAST (1969): as a matter of fact, the obsessiveness of the relationship at the centre of that film is infinitely more compelling, since the female victim here never seems to grow from the intense experience she goes through and only wants to escape her predicament, without ever striving to understand the motives of her captor! Indeed, the film's depiction of the aggressor as mother-fixated (screaming for her even at the moment of death) is perhaps its only novelty...