Sex and Fury (1973)

Sex and Fury (1973) Directed by Norifumi Suzuki

Wanton indulgence in violent porn and vindictive romanticism. Norifumi Suzuki’s kick-ass, crude pinku eiga articulates with undiluted panache one of the most visceral tales of revenge in the history of cinema. It’s mean but uncommonly sexy, a superb convergence of the unpleasant and the pleasurable executed with a competent sense of sensuous erotica and gory pomposity without losing the raw, scabrous nature of its subject matter. Pinky violence superstar Reiko Ike plays Ochō Inoshika, a woman burdened with the tragedy of having seen her father murdered when she was just a child. The purpose of her existence is reduced to consummating her revenge, to dignify the memory of her assassinated father who was the target of perfidious men who now operate from the stratosphere of corrupt political power.

Norifumi Suzuki’s vengeful pathos is all about style – the violence is balletic and the act of retribution is revered as the only means of popular justice against a system dominated by criminal scum – by being predominantly an exercise in unmitigated style, the story moves forward on its own with anarchic insouciance, thus yielding a kind of storytelling bifurcation where the vindictive impetus of Ochō Inoshika feels like an individual film and the steamy story of Christina (played by a superlative Christina Lindberg), a foreign spy woman in love with a Japanese man, is seen as a separate section altogether. Emotionally, however, the tragedies of the two women are contiguous. And when the plot gradually unveils the baleful events of some of the characters, Sex & Fury’s exploitation artistry is at its best: a pitiless kaleidoscope that can look as poignant as it can appear as coarse in sheer synchronicity, what an accomplishment.

The rich, vivid period setting – Japan’s Meiji era – also adds an invigorating effect to the compositional scope of the mise-en-scène; undoubtedly elemental in making the bloodbath a very pretty and evocative pictorial landscape. Reiko Ike does not battle with her sharp sword (Katana or Tanto?), she nakedly dances with it to the rhythm of the nimbleness of her svelte feminine figure and slays according to the beat of the musicality of the cutting. Pure, fierce and cool, but with plenty of room for human sensibility.