Yasuzo Masumura - Irezumi (1966)

Another interesting film by Masumura, although it drags a bit towards the end. Otsuya is a beautiful young woman coming from a middle-class family. When she gets abducted and forced into geisha life, she catches the eye of a tattoo artist who marks her back with a horrific spider. From there on, mayhem ensues as virtually every man who interacts with Otsuya gets killed. At the very end, almost all the characters we have encountered over the course of the film are dead.

Whereas Kisses, the first film I ever saw from Masumura, was an intimate character piece, Irezumi (Japanese for Tattoo) is a plot-driven revenge story, a sexy costume piece that verges on the melodramatic and pulpy. The story moves along quickly and characters get killed off with no remorse (the most disturbing death scene is without a doubt the very first one, where Shinsuke, Otsuya's lover, drives a knife through the scull of an assailant).

What sounds like a simple guilty pleasure, is, upon the first viewing, indeed just that. The story is, at times, all over the place and can't find its focus thematically. There is a common trait to most characters, in that they get killed over what they want most: being with Otsuya. But Otsuya's actions are not rooted into any sensible emotion or want other than taking revenge. And for what it is, the movie works just fine.

The character of Shinsuke is another interesting piece to this film, as he starts the film as a pansy and goes on to kill three different people. He quarrels with himself and over his deeds and finally tries to kill Otsuya, only to be overpowered by her and stabbed to death himself. Unfortunately, neither his actions nor Otsuya's for that matter, make much sense by then, so that the spectator is pushed aside emotionally and cannot invest himself fully in the movie until the end.