DVD: Female Gym Coach: Jump and Straddle / Onna taiiku kyôshi: Tonde hiraite (1981)

September 15, 2014 | By Mark R. Hasan

Film: Very Good

Transfer: Very Good

Extras: Standard

Label: Impulse Pictures / Synapse Films

Region: 1 (NTSC)

Released: June 3, 2014

Genre: Japanese Pink / Adult

Synopsis: An assistant at a cosmetics company is urged to join a new rhythmic gymnastic team that seems to have been created more for the benefit of male executives than company morale.

Special Features: Theatrical Trailer / 4-page colour booklet with liner notes by Jasper Sharp.

Review:

Junko Asahina (Horny Working Girl: From 5 to 9, and I Love It From Behind!) plays Kei, a former balance beam gymnast who’s somewhat traumatized by her company’s decision to hire her former coach, a cocksure tyrant who ruined her concentration and severed future certificates of merit when he just had to bag his pliable protégé the day before her Big Performance.

Although slightly less politically wrong than the aforementioned films, Gym Coach features plenty of inappropriate groping by upper management, but overall it’s a silly tale of a male-dominated cosmetics company who revamp their women’s athletics division into a rhythmic gymnastics team. At 25, Kei’s ‘too old’ for competition, but she acquiesces to her team’s pleas, dons a purple lycra suit, and participates in rehearsals while her ex-coach / mean lover bullies the team with insults and grueling workouts.

Well, not really, because while the actresses were given minor gymnastic training, they pretty much wobble they way through hastily performed routines. The music is ditsy disco-pop with moronic lyrics, the sex scenes are exceptionally silly, and Kei’s adventure ends when she consummates her relationship with her ex, followed by a naked streamer dance in triumph (because that’s what a dancer does when she’s in a state of bliss).

The comedic moments within Gym Coach are often quite funny – a supervisor’s wandering hand and Kei’s shame-on-you defensive slaps are amusing – and veteran director Koyu Ohara provides some striking compositions in 2.35:1 ‘scope, but there’s something missing from this particular tale. Perhaps it’s just too vacuous, or lacks the combination of gravitas and ridiculousness in other Roman Porno productions. Asahina sells the film with her innate charm, and the roughly hour-long length ensures the film doesn’t meander, but it’s a weaker effort, perhaps distinguished by its emphasis on humour rather than the usual wrongness.

Series fans will recognize a few familiar faces (not those…), such as the cosmetic firm’s boss, played by I Love It from Behind! scumbag Shinsho Nakamaru, as well as the identical office location.

Ohara’s other Roman Porno films released by Impulse / Synapse include True Story of a Woman in Jail: Sex Hell (1975), True Story of a Woman in Jail: Continues (1975), and the S&M cult classic Fairy in a Cage (1977). Asahina appeared in Ohara’s I Love It from Behind! (1981) and Goldfinger: One More Time Inside (1983).

Impulse’s DVD features a clean transfer with a teaser trailer, and Jasper Sharp’s contextual liner notes which provide overviews of Asahina and Ohara’s careers in the Roman Porno realm, and the director’s peculiar penchant for what Sharp describes as “the ultra-nasty and the ultra kitsch,” of which hip-swinging Gym Coachcertainly qualifies in the latter.

External References:
Editor’s Blog — IMDB

Vendor Search Links:
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