{"id":5446,"date":"2012-08-21T11:51:38","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T15:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5446"},"modified":"2012-08-21T12:42:49","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T16:42:49","slug":"dvd-eros-school-feels-so-good-erosu-gakuen-kando-batsugun-1977","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5446","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Eros School: Feels So Good \/ Erosu gakuen: Kando batsugun (1977)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>E<\/a><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Film: Good\/ DVD Transfer: Very Good\/ DVD Extras: Standard<\/p>\n

Label: Impulse Pictures \/ Synapse Films\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: June 12, 2012<\/p>\n

Genre: Japanese Pink \/ Adult \/ Ill-conceived Erotic Comedy<\/p>\n

Synopsis: In this jovial comedic romp of mirth and sexual assault, a convicted serial rapist is granted parole, but immediately proclaims his full intention to deflower his high school’s women.<\/p>\n

Special Features: Liner notes by Jasper Sharp<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Review:<\/p>\n

The rivalry between two high schools \u2013 Eros and Agape \u2013 is interrupted and upset by the arrival of a convicted rapist whose goal is to never assault the same girl twice! Can he succeed in \u2018bagging\u2019 Eros\u2019 promising runner Misa (Asami Ogawa), or will her longtime admirer and his bespectacled best buddy get to Misa first?<\/p>\n

From the director of an assortment of rape films (on a highway, apparently in a motor vehicle, in a female high school) and the screenwriter of prison-based pink films comes a wacky youth comedy with softcore elements + rape as comedy. There\u2019s also the use of a pig that predates South Park<\/strong> and one of its most cherished insults, and \u00a0was perhaps inspired by inappropriate goat activities in Nico Mastorakis\u2019 Island of Death<\/strong>, another celebration of anti-social aberrations released in 1977.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s bizarre comedic tone seems to be the end result of filmmakers who realized they\u2019d taken their own dramatizations of eroticized sexual assault to its \u2018creative\u2019 limits in prior films, and kind of ran out of juice (er, ideas). Being stuck in a rut is a key reason exploitation meister Roger Corman switched from grim gothic Poe adaptations to tongue-in-cheek horror comedies in the sixties, lampooning the genre elements as well as its historic film icons because he had nothing more to say within that specific genre.<\/p>\n

That isn\u2019t to say the filmmakers were justified in crafting this weird comedy; it strangely succeeds in both offending and creating laughter for being completely bonkers. On one level, Eros School<\/strong> is straight T&A with the flagrant nudity, skirt chasing, and judo groping (it\u2019s a sport!) , but instead of the high school seniors being comprised of weak women & assertive boys, the girls are \u2018Amazon\u2019 aggressors who fight amongst themselves, and beat the crap out of boys. The lone exception is Ryu (Morihei Murakuni, in his final screen appearance), the bucolic \u2018rapist with a name,\u2019 freshly released from a juvenile prison, who not only starts groping the teacher, but demands that his first assault victim \u2013 the school newspaper\u2019s editor \u2013 print his proclamation of intending to assault every girl he can in the next issue.<\/p>\n

Ryu, perpetually wearing \u00a0non-conformist country clothes and a wide-brimmed hat (a Clint Eastwood homage?) also has a pet pig whom he places in high esteem (hence the revenge element in the final reel), and he\u2019s able to successfully assault students because all adult teachers are super-wimps, and seem infected with the emotional and social maturity of grade schoolers.<\/p>\n

On the day of the big race, Miso\u2019s chance at scoring one for the home team goes in an unexpectedly different direction, and the labour with which director Koretsugi Kurahara choreographs absolute behavioral Wrongness is pretty elaborate. Maybe Miso should\u2019ve put fresh orange juice on her feet for good luck, as offered by her long-suffering (and guitar-strumming) admirer?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not unusual for the adult industry to satirize itself and its conventions, but Eros School<\/strong> feels like an early signal where Nikkatsu\u2019s Roman Porno series was going to run out of steam within a few years after pushing every genre conventions and crafting hybrids to their max. Perhaps because it was made in 1977, it has a strangely refreshing absurdism which will undoubtedly make it a rare variant within pink\u2019s stalk & assault sub-genre.<\/p>\n

Impulse Picture\u2019s DVD (Vol. 3 in their series) comes from a clean albeit slightly soft-focus print which may have been cropped down to 2.35:1 from a wider ratio by the studio, as headroom in several shots is either tight, or the noggins bob up and out of frame. The sound mix is straightforward and features a score by Naozumi Yamamoto (under the pseudonym Sansaki Okuzawa), who seemed unsure of the film\u2019s tone and sometimes scored scenes as drama, or as jokey, physical comedy. Perhaps he was wondering how the hell he went from scoring Seijun Suzuki\u2019s Branded to Kill<\/strong> (1967) to Eros School<\/strong>\u2026 and a lot more<\/em> that decade.<\/p>\n

Jasper Sharp\u2019s liner notes are brilliantly informative and funny, and he provides a good chronicle of Nikkatsu\u2019s switch from straight film to adult in the seventies, and the utter strangeness of Kurahara\u2019s film.<\/p>\n

Director Kurahara\u2019s handful of directorial efforts include Sex Rider: Wet Highway<\/strong> (1971), True Story of Sex and Violence in a Female High School<\/strong> (1973) before a rare poke at straight cinema as co-producer\/production planner of Antarctica<\/strong> (1983), directed by his older big bro Koreyoshi Kurahara.<\/p>\n

Writer Akira Momoi\u2019s other Nikkatsu titles include the women in prison diptych True Story of a Woman Condemned: Sex Hell<\/strong> (1975) and True Story of Woman Condemned Continues<\/strong> (1975), whereas actress Asami Ogawa\u2019s highpoints include Erotic Diary of an Office Lady<\/strong> (1977) and a smaller role in Star of David: Beauty Hunting<\/strong> (1979).<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2012 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— \u00a0Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0E<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ E . Film: Good\/ DVD Transfer: Very Good\/ DVD Extras: Standard Label: Impulse Pictures \/ Synapse Films\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: June 12, 2012 Genre: Japanese Pink \/ Adult \/ Ill-conceived Erotic Comedy Synopsis: In this jovial comedic romp of mirth and sexual assault, a convicted serial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[1508,1486,1507,1509,1506],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1pQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5446"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5457,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5446\/revisions\/5457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}