Twilight Dinner (1998)

 

Director: Yutaka Ikejima

Screenplay: Kyôko Godai

Cast: Yumi Yoshiyuki as Tsukiko Kurotani; Kanae Mizuhara as Mayako Kurotani; Kyôsuke Sasaki as Kazuhiko; Reina Azuma as Kumi; Kazuhiro Sano as Hasegawa; Ken'ichi Kanbe as Saitô

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

In the first shot, Twilight Dinner from the prolific pinku director Yutaka Ikejima combines violence and erotica with a nude woman, dead, on a white tiled bathroom floor with blood everywhere. The first dialogue of the film, in an interrogation room time after between police and the lead Kazuhiko (Kyôsuke Sasaki) is crass, "What made you literally eat her pussy?", which suggests something more unintentionally gross or/and ridiculous, and is definitely a line which was chosen for shock value. Instead, Twilight Dinner is surprisingly, for its more lurid and openly transgressive parts, more eerie and peculiar, an example of pink erotica cinema's creative side as long as the films could still be sold on their eroticism. Traumatised, and guilty for the murder of that woman, Kazuhiko recounts crossing paths with two sisters moving into an apartment, his fate sealed all because of a wine opener left on the street he kindly returned to them.  

The sisters have a lot of "red wine", and if there is a potential flaw with Twilight Dinner, it is blatantly obvious from the get-go, whilst a fascinating take in the end, this is a vampire film which takes nearly the whole of the hour plus length for Kazuhiko to figure this surprise out. It takes three quarters of the film for the term "vampires" to be said, and the plot itself in terms of these revelations is the weakest piece of the production. We know ahead of time too this turned south as an event in his life when Kazuhiko bookmarks the film recounting this tale to police detectives, questioning him for the murder of a woman we saw at the beginning, and trying to rationalise this until his argument vampires were involved becomes incredulous to them.

Yutaka Ikejima wanted to make a vampire in mind to their available resources, and dropped in late nineties urban Japan, with the stark apartments and tightly walled bars, the film does capture a fascinating atmosphere. Between the chimes and bells in the soundtrack, to the mannequins within the apartment of youngest sister Mayako (Kanae Mizuhara) and the eldest Tsukiko (Yumi Yoshiyuki), he makes a film in spite of its simplistic plot structure which is distinct. You will know it involves vampires from the wine bottle collection, but Kazuhiko trying the wine and getting into the mystery is clearly the point above the plot. The film is fetishishtic already before its erotic content in how it treats the horror content, clearly not being led by the plot but what the production can do in terms of mood and images even for a low budget film, befitting a pinku film where images of an erotic kind are their selling point. Thick red blood split on broken white tea cup porcelain, on a stark interrogation room and on a wooden table, is just as distinct as the sex scenes themselves, as explicit as you can get away in softcore in real bodies of actors in exaggerated acts, the actresses in particular emoting here loud enough in them they could be heard in the next room, all clichés but in itself as exaggerated and contrasted by horror content which is as heightened.

As the film escalates, from Kazuhiko being with the youngest sister Mayako, physically weaker and protected by the eldest Tsukiko, to Tsukiko herself becoming interested in him, the little this can do as a low budget film is, admitting personal tastes, moody and interesting beyond the erotic content. My fascination with low budget and obscure genre work but especially Japanese horror films, their own distinct locations and styles, even if working with even the cameras at access, is at hand here, but this is especially the case with a pinku film like this where the plot is clearly less important than the fixation on sex and the morbid, codified when in a sex scene Tsukiko bites Kazuhiko's lip mid-coitus, blood spilt from the wound, intermingling into the kiss after.

It is a film that was sold as pinku, and it has to be considered in mind, alongside the male gaze involved, this is a film clearly wanting to show this too. But the starkness is felt on purpose too, even if there is a lot of explicit faked sex in what short a length the film is, cold and grungy with a sense of deliberation. Yutaka Ikejima, alongside being insanely prolific as an actor, is also a director with over a hundred credits, and whilst he started in the nineties, a man who at a minimum makes six films in one year just in 1995, it is really obvious as has been common in Japanese pinku cinema's history he experimented here because he was allowed to, in a genre which produces these films quickly but has a lax attitude to letting the directors and writers improvise.

Even that the sisters are not actually sisters, and does indulge in a scene which was clearly there for a male audience to have a female-female sex scene, one able to get away with some form of phallus uncensored with a strap-on onscreen, befits the polygamous nature of the film's sexuality. The vampires, even if a potentially problematic metaphor, due to how vague the script is and not fully allowed to be fleshed out, are being used in a fascinating way here in how they led to Kazuhiko waking up sexually beyond his moral original life, but also unfortunately one that becomes destructive uncontrolled. And that is legitimately part of the plot, again in mind to any potential issues with what the metaphor suggests, alongside the whole issue of the film being made with a male gaze. Kazuhiko's sexuality starts to change as he turns, trying to flirt with a guy in a bar than trying to bite him. Again, this has an issue of what the metaphor means, but as that scene is not done as a gay panic moment, it does whilst rush through this section have the film, meant to sell its actresses in explicit sexual scenes, deal with Kazuhiko suddenly developing a libido so strong he is not only having sex with many women, but men too.

The vice comes from his complete lack of satisfaction, ennui, and the finale will be a destructive sexual act. The metaphor is still vague, and a concern in meaning, but with the tone suggesting a subconscious desire through vampirism coming out as a neurosis, and dangerous one with any partner, it is interesting to see Twilight Dinner as a pinku horror film touch, if not perfectly, on a metaphor always intermingled with vampirism, from a country which does not have the mythology naturally in their folklore, and run with it even briefly. The film's murky, minimalistic tone makes it difficult to view as anti-sex or anti-pansexual too, a film which does not really deal with vampires as a supernatural entity barring the blood red moon over an apartment block as the one unnatural form. Personal interpretation does have to be considered, as with the frank fact this is meant to be as much erotica too, but it fascinates as an erotic horror film which is playing with this material even in a format which would be sold for a male audience first.

Eventually the sex has a grotesque side involving the finale hinted at in the prologue, which would put some viewers off, but it feels appropriate. Throughout the film, as a low budget pinku, has a base side, of real bodies and real sexuality even against exaggerated acting in the sex scenes, which can be a factor in putting some off, but feels appropriate for how this deal with transgressive sexuality. Eventually the ending, where someone is literally bitten to death in an intimate area, is gross, but alongside not actually showing as much as you think is also harrowing as a violent act of devouring someone, even getting into taboos when, for no reason when thinking period blood is involved, the female victim is ashamed for a bodily fluid that, whilst natural and not problematic, is seen as a taboo in many culture.

Even as an erotic film, as with other pinku, this feel likes a sibling to many, in multiple sub-genres, which have come from a movie movement so vast, it has constantly led to experiments, flights of fancy, or here eliciting shocks on purpose. Twilight Dinner is not a masterpiece but has many compelling turns as a vampire film, presenting a great surprise as a film and evidence for me of how creatively interesting some of the least examined areas of low budget or outsider cinema/moving images can be.