Guts of a Beauty
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Despite what we regularly read in the mass media, horror and exploitation movies - with the exceptions of maybe \'Baise-Moi\' (V Desperantes & C Trinh Thi, 2002) and \'Porno Holocaust\' (J D\'Amato, 1979) - rarely feature both sex and extreme violence in the same film. There\'s many a mainstream US horror flick with gore and the occasional-but-obligatory teen breast shot (shower/skinny dipping scenes etc), but not much else. Luckily we have Japanese cinema to provide us with a blend of sex and gory splatter moments, especially in the form of Kazuo \'Gaira\' Komizu\'s slightly misogynistic, erotic-horror exploitation, \'Guts...\' trilogy (comprising Guts of a Virgin/Guts of a Beauty/Rusted Body). In 1986 Gaira made the second of the trilogy, Guts of a Beauty...
Hagashi, a Yakuza (Japanese gangster) of the Ichiyama clan, offers to help a teenage Japanese girl, Yoshimi, to find her missing sister. Little does she know that it was Hagashi who had kidnapped her sister and sold her to slavers in Africa. Hagashi\'s 3 Yakuza goons quickly proceed to strip completely naked, grope, generally humiliate the poor girl. To add further insult to her injuries, they inject her with a huge dose of pure \'Angel Rain\' heroin. When Hagashi pops out, leaving his 3 stooges to keep hold of her, they help themselves to the Angel Rain and Yoshimi manages to escape. She makes it to the Aquarium Clinic hospital where she is met by female psychiatrist, Dr Hiromi. When her smack-withdrawal begins, however, the yearning for heroin drives her to jump to her death from the hospital roof. Whilst the Yakuza try to cover up Yoshimi\'s death, the psychiatrist vows to avenge her.
Assuming Yoshimi\'s identity, Dr Hiromi seduces and hypnotizes Hagashi, making him attack his fellow Yakuza the moment they call him an idiot. This inevitably leads to a very gory ordeal for him that involves stabbing, slashing, shooting, dismemberment and general bloody torture that ends in his death! The Ichiyama gang quickly find, drug and capture the avenging shrink. By the end of her ordeal, her naked body convulses and shakes before collapsing, dead.
When Dr Hiromi is taken to be buried along with Hagashi\'s dismembered remains, they seem to suddenly join together and then spring back to life as a skinless humanoid monster, that looks like something from an anatomical atlas (or the newly ressurected Frank in Clive Barker\'s 1987 \'Hellraiser\'). This glistening red zombie-beast proceeds to exact a final revenge upon the Yakuza. The first gangster to die has his head partially destroyed in a low budget, but very gory above-the-jaw decapitation reminiscent of P Jackson\'s Bad Taste (1989) or J Buttgereit\'s Nekromantik (1989). Able to switch between looking like the 7\' flayed monster, and the far sexier Dr Hiromi, the creature is able to seduce one gangster, before snapping his neck. Next the monster finds the female Yakuza. After revealing its demonic penis - a writhing, squealing cock-with-teeth that resembles the chestburster from Alien (R Scott, 1979)! - the gangster-ess gives the thing oral sex.
With a mixture of sex, gore, nudity and violence and, at times, an irregular narrative structure, Guts of a Beauty has a uniquely bizarre quality to it. Guts... is by turn dubiously misogynistic, gloriously surreal, hilariously strange, satisfyingly gory and generally outrageous sleazy entertainment of a rare order! The closest comparisons to this film, and its sequels, would be the odd D\'Amato or Buttgereit movie, or the stylish, OTT madness of Takashi Miike\'s magnificent Ichi the Killer (2002). This really is a film that has to be seen to be believed! The trilogy includes Guts of a Virgin (1986) and Rusted Body (1987).
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Hagashi, a Yakuza (Japanese gangster) of the Ichiyama clan, offers to help a teenage Japanese girl, Yoshimi, to find her missing sister. Little does she know that it was Hagashi who had kidnapped her sister and sold her to slavers in Africa. Hagashi\'s 3 Yakuza goons quickly proceed to strip completely naked, grope, generally humiliate the poor girl. To add further insult to her injuries, they inject her with a huge dose of pure \'Angel Rain\' heroin. When Hagashi pops out, leaving his 3 stooges to keep hold of her, they help themselves to the Angel Rain and Yoshimi manages to escape. She makes it to the Aquarium Clinic hospital where she is met by female psychiatrist, Dr Hiromi. When her smack-withdrawal begins, however, the yearning for heroin drives her to jump to her death from the hospital roof. Whilst the Yakuza try to cover up Yoshimi\'s death, the psychiatrist vows to avenge her.
Assuming Yoshimi\'s identity, Dr Hiromi seduces and hypnotizes Hagashi, making him attack his fellow Yakuza the moment they call him an idiot. This inevitably leads to a very gory ordeal for him that involves stabbing, slashing, shooting, dismemberment and general bloody torture that ends in his death! The Ichiyama gang quickly find, drug and capture the avenging shrink. By the end of her ordeal, her naked body convulses and shakes before collapsing, dead.
When Dr Hiromi is taken to be buried along with Hagashi\'s dismembered remains, they seem to suddenly join together and then spring back to life as a skinless humanoid monster, that looks like something from an anatomical atlas (or the newly ressurected Frank in Clive Barker\'s 1987 \'Hellraiser\'). This glistening red zombie-beast proceeds to exact a final revenge upon the Yakuza. The first gangster to die has his head partially destroyed in a low budget, but very gory above-the-jaw decapitation reminiscent of P Jackson\'s Bad Taste (1989) or J Buttgereit\'s Nekromantik (1989). Able to switch between looking like the 7\' flayed monster, and the far sexier Dr Hiromi, the creature is able to seduce one gangster, before snapping his neck. Next the monster finds the female Yakuza. After revealing its demonic penis - a writhing, squealing cock-with-teeth that resembles the chestburster from Alien (R Scott, 1979)! - the gangster-ess gives the thing oral sex.
With a mixture of sex, gore, nudity and violence and, at times, an irregular narrative structure, Guts of a Beauty has a uniquely bizarre quality to it. Guts... is by turn dubiously misogynistic, gloriously surreal, hilariously strange, satisfyingly gory and generally outrageous sleazy entertainment of a rare order! The closest comparisons to this film, and its sequels, would be the odd D\'Amato or Buttgereit movie, or the stylish, OTT madness of Takashi Miike\'s magnificent Ichi the Killer (2002). This really is a film that has to be seen to be believed! The trilogy includes Guts of a Virgin (1986) and Rusted Body (1987).
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