Review of Lustful Revenge

A recent vintage (1996) Nikkatsu shocker from Masaru Konuma, the director of the dark and erotic "Wife To Be Sacrificed". Although this is a much lower budget affair than his excellent earlier work and is handicapped by a TV movie look, it still reflects the director's more deviant personality and features disturbing content. In the opening sequence, a gorgeous woman is being raped and strangled. After she dies, the killer cuts off her left nipple with a pair of large scissors. The nipple is then inserted into her mouth. All of this is depicted graphically and erotically. And that's what Konuma does; he unflinchingly and without apology eroticizes sexual violence. Every aspect of the film has a sexual charge, including the complex relationships of the central characters. The beautiful and sensual Itsumi Osawa is Moki, a forensic detective on the trail of the nipple-cutting, vagina-stabbing killer. She is having an affair with her jealous boss and is being pursued by another detective whose motivations are clouded. Although the film is structured as a whodunit, it works best as a pink thriller. Konuma's taste in thirtysomething women is impeccable, and he provides us with a copious amount of leering nudity and mouth-watering shots of several gorgeous creatures in panties. As one would expect, there is an S/M element to the story and a theme of bad women being punished. This is not one of Nikkatsu's greatest, but it pushes the perversion hard, and that is never a bad thing.