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Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good movie but grossly overrated

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Blistering performances.

Cult Japanese director Ikeda's take on the Basic Instinct premise: a cop investigating a seductive woman is drawn into a dark world of sexual role playing. Most wannabe erotic thrillers fail to be much of either, but Ikeda manages through excellent use of his angular glass and steel sets to create a cinematic landscape of voyeurism and entrapment. Characters are either watching each other through glass like zoo animals or seeing themselves in mirrors wondering how others see them. Mirrors become symbolic of public opinion and especially censure, and the geometric boxes people live in become cages to entrap their individuality without protecting them from dangers without or within themselves. Very watchable.

Fantastic S&M orientated thriller with a marvellous central performance from the most sultry, Kei Marimura, apparently a real life jazz singer, who plays a masochist, rape victim, who seems not entirely sure whether she is or isn't. A victim that is, and things get more complicated when she begins killing people close to her to feel the sense of loss and young policewoman, Noriko, played by, Makiko Watanabe, is brought in to really complicate things. Superb cinematography throughout and lovely swirling and assured direction from Toshiharu Ikeda. Probably the best of the series, I have so far only seen this in Japanese without subtitles, so maybe another point when I've watched it with the benefit of titles. Not always the case of course. Some stylish, bravura film-making like this is better without less than perfect dialogue. We shall see.

BEAUTIFUL PREY is another satisfying entry in the newer style of pinku cinema. None of these films seem to have quite the "atmosphere" of the 70s/80s era films, but they try hard to keep true to the general "feel" of their sleazy ancestors.Toshiharu (EVIL DEAD TRAP, ANGEL GUTS: RED PORNO) Ikeda helms this crime story of a shady businessman's wife with a penchant for S&M. What initially appears to be a rape case turns into more for the male and female duo of cops involved in the case when it turns out that the "rapist" is actually the housewife's lover. Things get confused further still as both the male and female cops are entranced by the wife's sexual magnetism, and as the "rapist" taunts both the wife and the police...A decent storyline is the highlight of BEAUTIFUL PREY. A few mediocre S&M style sex scenes may seem "strong" to some, but will be pretty casual to the average pinku fan. Again, these newer-age pinku films aren't typically as strong as their older counterparts - but they're still worth a look to the die-hard fan. If you dig this one, try XX: BEAUTIFUL BEAST as well - XX: BEAUTIFUL HUNTER ain't half-bad either...8/10

BEAUTIFUL PREY (1996) AKA: XX: Utsukushiki Emono. Butchy-pretty, sexually naive cop Noriko (Makiko Watanabe) falls under the spell of the rape victim Yu (Kei Marimura), a disaffected masochist who slowly knocks down her inhibitions while simultaneously turning her partner into a willing sadist.Meanwhile, the original rapist is still on the loose, but does Yu really want him brought to justice or is she setting Noriko up as the next victim? Noirish pink movie from director Toshiharu Ikeda, he of the overrated EVIL DEAD TRAP, like so many others, offers a curious insight into the darker side of the Japanese sexual psyche, albeit not an overly deep one. The sex scenes are standard no-pubes nipple/navel/leg expeditions with crops and chains thrown in for good measure, but it all plays rather perfunctorily and, since it's a Japanese movie, you just know everybody's gonna turn out to be firing on deep-seated sexual repression. Decently made, one supposes, and hardly the nastiest such film to come from this arena of Japanese film-making, but probably worth seeing only if you haven't seen others like it, just so you can say you did. I give it a 5.