Rape! 13th Hour
Encyclopedia
is a 1977
Japanese film in Nikkatsu
's Roman porno series, directed by Yasuharu Hasebe
and starring Yuri Yamashina.
. The incident has a life-altering affect on the younger man, who has now become addicted to rape. He also goes on a raping spree, and is joined with "Crimson" for further attacks. Together the men rape waitresses in an abandoned movie theater
. Due to the inability of the police to catch the criminals, vigilante groups have been pursuing "Crimson". Eventually the duo are tracked down, captured, and taken to an empty swimming pool
by a homosexual gang. There the gang sodomizes "Crimson", bashes out his teeth with a hammer, and forces him to perform fellatio
on them.
and Wife to Be Sacrificed
both featuring actress Naomi Tani
and directed by Masaru Konuma
. After this first highly successful venture into sexual violence, the studio's output became increasingly rougher. According to director Yasuharu Hasebe
, by 1976 the studio was looking for a new direction, and contacted him to develop films in a new style to be called "Violent Pink". These would be comparable to the U.S. "roughies" film genre, violent and misogynistic, but without the whips, bondage and other traditional accoutrements of the S&M genre. Hasebe had worked with the studio in the 1960s during their "Nikkatsu Action" era, but was not comfortable with the pink film genre to which the studio had turned with the inception of the Roman porno series in 1971. Reluctant to work in the sex film genre, Hasebe later recalled warning the studio, "Are you sure you want me?... You must be aware-- my craft is very bloody."
Nikkatsu hired Hasebe, though, realizing that he might push the envelope of acceptability, the studio assigned producer Ryōji Itō to watch over him. Hasebe had known Itō from his days with Nikkatsu in the 1960s, and they had worked well together. Itō had been Hasebe's assistant director on the Alleycat Rock series
. In 1976 Hasebe turned out the first two "Violent Pink" films, Rape! and Assault! Jack The Ripper
. Due to the box-office success of these films, Nikkatsu assigned him more work in the genre. The third in Hasebe's "Violent Pink" films, Rape! 13th Hour has a reputation as the most extreme of the series. Nervous about the film's graphic violence, Nikkatsu re-edited it before giving it a theatrical release. Nevertheless, the Weissers write that the released version is "graphically disturbing", "incredibly savage", "offensively appalling", and that it was "long-considered the most offensive, the most grotesque movie of all time." Hasebe later recalled with amusement that the studio had made a mistake in assigning producer Itō to watch over him, as this most extreme of their trio of "Violent Pink" films was Itō's favorite.
In spite of the film's box-office success, it became highly controversial with the public and with critics. The controversy surrounding the film was similar to that in the U.S. following the release of I Spit on Your Grave
a year later in 1978. Because of the outcry over the film, Nikkatsu ordered that the extreme violence in future "Violent Pink" films be curtailed. Two years later, the successful release of Kōyū Ohara
's Zoom Up: Rape Site
, late in 1979, returned the genre to Hasebe's original "ultra-violent" vision.
, one of Nikkatsu's stars during the pre-Roman porno "Nikkatsu action" period of the 1960s, and known at the time of the film's release as Tora-san's love-interest Lily in the popular Otoko wa Tsurai yo
series. Over twenty years after the first release of the film, Japanese critics held the film in high regard, with Kinema Jumpo placing it on their 1999 list of the 200 best Japanese films of the 20th century.
Some Japanese critics, however, found the film to be simply an exercise in cinematic sadism, and dismissed any claims of a message behind the mayhem. Allmovie similarly notes of the film, "any point which Rape! 25-ji Bokan may have is lost in the barrage of sickening violence". Director Hasebe denied any intention of allegory on his part, claiming that he did not use cinema in this way. He suggested that if such messages were in the film they had come from screenwriter Chiho Katsura and producer Ryōji Itō.
Jasper Sharp also gives the film a negative appraisal, calling it the poorest of Hasebe's films that he discusses in his Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema. He dismisses the film as a "preposterous red-blooded macho fantasy" which is little more than a series of attacks on women, and writes, that the final scene in which the two rapists are attacked by the vigilante gang, "almost seems like an apology for the onscreen outrages committed in the name of entertainment". Sharp describes the film as a kind of "buddy movie" made for men who claim to be attracted by women, but are more comfortable with other men. According to Sharp, the film trivializes the psychological effects of violence on women to a ludicrous degree, showing the victims enjoying the attacks to the point where one actually gives her attacker money, and asks him to return. 10kbullets.com also judges this aspect of the film—in which the victims come to enjoy their assaults—to be quite disturbing. Set pieces which stand out, according to Sharp include car chases, fistfights, and the ballerina's rape, set to the music of Swan Lake, with pillow feathers flying around the nude woman as if they were snowflakes.
's 1999 interview with Asian Cult Cinema. The director stated that it might be the film's controversial nature which caused the studio to hold back its release. Once released on videotape, it became a popular item. It was released on DVD in Japan on September 21, 2007, as part of Geneon's ninth wave of Nikkatsu Roman porno series. This release employed a new master struck from the original negative, with scratches and flaws corrected. Extras included the original theatrical trailer and a four-page booklet. English subtitles were not included on this release.
1977 in film
The year 1977 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*In the Academy Awards, Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight win Best Actor and Actress and Supporting Actress awards for Network....
Japanese film in Nikkatsu
Nikkatsu
is a Japanese entertainment company well known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio. The name Nikkatsu is an abbreviation of Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally "Japan Cinematograph Company".-History:...
's Roman porno series, directed by Yasuharu Hasebe
Yasuharu Hasebe
was a Japanese film director best known known for his movies in the "Violent pink" subgenre of the Pink film, such as Assault! Jack the Ripper , Rape! , Rape! 13th Hour and Raping!...
and starring Yuri Yamashina.
Synopsis
A man sporting a red jacket seeks shelter at the gas station where he works. He is an anonymous serial rapist known as "Crimson" and is fleeing a vigilante group which has been pursuing him. "Crimson" and the younger gas station attendant later leave together and attack and rape a young ballerinaBallerina
A ballerina is a title used to describe a principal female professional ballet dancer in a large company; the male equivalent to this title is danseur or ballerino...
. The incident has a life-altering affect on the younger man, who has now become addicted to rape. He also goes on a raping spree, and is joined with "Crimson" for further attacks. Together the men rape waitresses in an abandoned movie theater
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
. Due to the inability of the police to catch the criminals, vigilante groups have been pursuing "Crimson". Eventually the duo are tracked down, captured, and taken to an empty swimming pool
Swimming pool
A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, or simply a pool, is a container filled with water intended for swimming or water-based recreation. There are many standard sizes; the largest is the Olympic-size swimming pool...
by a homosexual gang. There the gang sodomizes "Crimson", bashes out his teeth with a hammer, and forces him to perform fellatio
Fellatio
Fellatio is an act of oral stimulation of a male's penis by a sexual partner. It involves the stimulation of the penis by the use of the mouth, tongue, or throat. The person who performs fellatio can be referred to as the giving partner, and the other person is the receiving partner...
on them.
Cast
- Akira Takahashi as "Crimson"
- Yuri Yamashina as Ruriko
- Yūdai Ishiyama as Man
- Sueto Tsukada as Young man
- Natsuko Yashiro as Girl at the love hotel
- Tamaki Katsura as Hostess A
- Naomi Oka as Hostess B
- Urara Okamoto as Upper-class woman
- Yoshihiko Tabata as Man in jeans
- Naofumi Murakami as Young man
- Ikunosuke Koizumi as Gas station attendant
- Hidetoshi Kageyama as Youth
- as Tattooed man
Background
Nikkatsu had started its SM line of Roman porno films in 1974 with the hits Flower and SnakeFlower and Snake
aka Flowers and Serpents is a Japanese soft-core S/M film starring Naomi Tani, directed by Masaru Konuma and produced by Nikkatsu. Based on a novel by Oniroku Dan , Japan's best-known author of S&M fiction, Flower and Snake was the first of Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno films to deal with an S&M theme...
and Wife to Be Sacrificed
Wife to Be Sacrificed
is a Japanese soft-core pornographic S/M film starring Naomi Tani and directed by Masaru Konuma. The film was produced by Nikkatsu studios as part of their Roman Porno series.- Background :...
both featuring actress Naomi Tani
Naomi Tani
is a Japanese actress who is best known for her appearances in Nikkatsu's Roman Porno films with an S&M theme during the 1970s.-Early career:Born October 20, 1948, in the Hakata ward of Fukuoka, Naomi Tani moved to Tokyo at the age of 18. After arrival in Tokyo, she was featured in a photo layout...
and directed by Masaru Konuma
Masaru Konuma
is a Japanese director most famous for his Roman Porno films for Nikkatsu during the 1970s.-Early life:Masaru Konuma was born in Otaru, Hokkaidō, on December 30, 1937. Konuma retains no memories of his father who was a teacher...
. After this first highly successful venture into sexual violence, the studio's output became increasingly rougher. According to director Yasuharu Hasebe
Yasuharu Hasebe
was a Japanese film director best known known for his movies in the "Violent pink" subgenre of the Pink film, such as Assault! Jack the Ripper , Rape! , Rape! 13th Hour and Raping!...
, by 1976 the studio was looking for a new direction, and contacted him to develop films in a new style to be called "Violent Pink". These would be comparable to the U.S. "roughies" film genre, violent and misogynistic, but without the whips, bondage and other traditional accoutrements of the S&M genre. Hasebe had worked with the studio in the 1960s during their "Nikkatsu Action" era, but was not comfortable with the pink film genre to which the studio had turned with the inception of the Roman porno series in 1971. Reluctant to work in the sex film genre, Hasebe later recalled warning the studio, "Are you sure you want me?... You must be aware-- my craft is very bloody."
Nikkatsu hired Hasebe, though, realizing that he might push the envelope of acceptability, the studio assigned producer Ryōji Itō to watch over him. Hasebe had known Itō from his days with Nikkatsu in the 1960s, and they had worked well together. Itō had been Hasebe's assistant director on the Alleycat Rock series
Alleycat Rock: Female Boss
aka Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss, Female Juvenile Delinquent Leader: Alleycat Rock, Wildcat Rock is a 1970 Japanese film directed by Yasuharu Hasebe and starring Akiko Wada and Meiko Kaji. It is the first entry in the five-film Alleycat Rock series.-Synopsis:A female motorcycle gang is...
. In 1976 Hasebe turned out the first two "Violent Pink" films, Rape! and Assault! Jack The Ripper
Assault! Jack the Ripper
is a 1976 Japanese film in the "Violent Pink" genre of Nikkatsu's Roman porno series. It was directed by Yasuharu Hasebe and stars Tamaki Katsura and Yutaka Hayashi.-Synopsis:...
. Due to the box-office success of these films, Nikkatsu assigned him more work in the genre. The third in Hasebe's "Violent Pink" films, Rape! 13th Hour has a reputation as the most extreme of the series. Nervous about the film's graphic violence, Nikkatsu re-edited it before giving it a theatrical release. Nevertheless, the Weissers write that the released version is "graphically disturbing", "incredibly savage", "offensively appalling", and that it was "long-considered the most offensive, the most grotesque movie of all time." Hasebe later recalled with amusement that the studio had made a mistake in assigning producer Itō to watch over him, as this most extreme of their trio of "Violent Pink" films was Itō's favorite.
In spite of the film's box-office success, it became highly controversial with the public and with critics. The controversy surrounding the film was similar to that in the U.S. following the release of I Spit on Your Grave
I Spit On Your Grave
Day of the Woman is a 1978 controversial rape revenge film. The film received a limited release, with a wider release in 1980. Prominent film critics condemned the film for its graphic violence and lengthy depictions of gang rape, and the motion picture remains controversial to this day...
a year later in 1978. Because of the outcry over the film, Nikkatsu ordered that the extreme violence in future "Violent Pink" films be curtailed. Two years later, the successful release of Kōyū Ohara
Koyu Ohara
is a Japanese film director best known known for his popular Roman Porno films, Fairy in a Cage and the Pink Tush Girl series...
's Zoom Up: Rape Site
Zoom Up: Rape Site
is a 1979 Japanese film in Nikkatsu's Roman porno series, directed by Koyu Ohara. This film is the first in Nikkatsu's "Zoom Up" series and its success led to six more sequels in the same motif...
, late in 1979, returned the genre to Hasebe's original "ultra-violent" vision.
Critical appraisal
In their Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films, Thomas and Yuko Mihara Weisser give Rape! 13th Hour a rating of three-and-a-half out of four stars. They write that the film has allegorical meaning beyond the gratuitous on-screen violence. The film is said by some Japanese critics to be a commentary on the state of filmmaking in Japan at the time of its release. The brutalization of women in an abandoned movie theater, for example, is interpreted symbolically. Ruriko, the ballerina who is assaulted by the two men in the film is said to have been named after the actress Ruriko AsaokaRuriko Asaoka
born 2 July 1940 in Xinjing, Manchukuo , is a Japanese actress.- Filmography :* * * Alone on the Pacific aka Alone Across the Pacific...
, one of Nikkatsu's stars during the pre-Roman porno "Nikkatsu action" period of the 1960s, and known at the time of the film's release as Tora-san's love-interest Lily in the popular Otoko wa Tsurai yo
Otoko wa Tsurai yo
Otoko wa tsurai yo is a Japanese film series starring Kiyoshi Atsumi as "Tora-san" , a kind-hearted vagabond who is always unlucky in love. The series itself is often referred to as "Tora-san" by its fans...
series. Over twenty years after the first release of the film, Japanese critics held the film in high regard, with Kinema Jumpo placing it on their 1999 list of the 200 best Japanese films of the 20th century.
Some Japanese critics, however, found the film to be simply an exercise in cinematic sadism, and dismissed any claims of a message behind the mayhem. Allmovie similarly notes of the film, "any point which Rape! 25-ji Bokan may have is lost in the barrage of sickening violence". Director Hasebe denied any intention of allegory on his part, claiming that he did not use cinema in this way. He suggested that if such messages were in the film they had come from screenwriter Chiho Katsura and producer Ryōji Itō.
Jasper Sharp also gives the film a negative appraisal, calling it the poorest of Hasebe's films that he discusses in his Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema. He dismisses the film as a "preposterous red-blooded macho fantasy" which is little more than a series of attacks on women, and writes, that the final scene in which the two rapists are attacked by the vigilante gang, "almost seems like an apology for the onscreen outrages committed in the name of entertainment". Sharp describes the film as a kind of "buddy movie" made for men who claim to be attracted by women, but are more comfortable with other men. According to Sharp, the film trivializes the psychological effects of violence on women to a ludicrous degree, showing the victims enjoying the attacks to the point where one actually gives her attacker money, and asks him to return. 10kbullets.com also judges this aspect of the film—in which the victims come to enjoy their assaults—to be quite disturbing. Set pieces which stand out, according to Sharp include car chases, fistfights, and the ballerina's rape, set to the music of Swan Lake, with pillow feathers flying around the nude woman as if they were snowflakes.
Availability
Rape! 13th Hour was released theatrically in Japan on January 22, 1977. The film had not been released on video at the time of Yasuharu HasebeYasuharu Hasebe
was a Japanese film director best known known for his movies in the "Violent pink" subgenre of the Pink film, such as Assault! Jack the Ripper , Rape! , Rape! 13th Hour and Raping!...
's 1999 interview with Asian Cult Cinema. The director stated that it might be the film's controversial nature which caused the studio to hold back its release. Once released on videotape, it became a popular item. It was released on DVD in Japan on September 21, 2007, as part of Geneon's ninth wave of Nikkatsu Roman porno series. This release employed a new master struck from the original negative, with scratches and flaws corrected. Extras included the original theatrical trailer and a four-page booklet. English subtitles were not included on this release.
English
- Hasebe, YasuharuYasuharu Hasebewas a Japanese film director best known known for his movies in the "Violent pink" subgenre of the Pink film, such as Assault! Jack the Ripper , Rape! , Rape! 13th Hour and Raping!...
. (1998). Interviewed by Thomas and Yuko Mihara Weisser in Tokyo, 1999, in Asian Cult Cinema, #25, 4th Quarter, 1999, p. 32-42.