Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell (1995)

Art by Graham Humphreys

Director: Shinichi Fukazawa

Screenplay: Shinichi Fukazawa

Cast: Shinichi Fukazawa as Shinji, Asako Nosaka as Mika, Masahiro Kai the Psychic

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

A guy needs muscles after all!

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell from the get-go has the story of its director Shinichi Fukazawa. An outsider to the Japanese film industry, he was interested with bodybuilding, splatter films imported into Japan like the Evil Dead series started by Sam Raimi's 1981 independently made horror film¹, deciding to make what would become a film just over an hour in tribute. It belongs to a long history of Japanese lower budget films like this with homemade splatter effects and mid-nineties video production. The difference to others, like those made for the straight-to-video market, like Jôji Iida's Cyclops (1987), which were forty plus or so minute mini-features which got released soon after they were filmed for the video market, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell was left unfinished and unseen for fifteen years¹. It took, according to its star/writer/director/practical effects creator Fukazawa seven and a half years just to shoot the film, between re-scheduling, problems with the film stock he was forced to film on, and working around his and his cast's lives, and another seven and a half years for post-production¹. Fukazawa was finally able to complete the production in 2009 after beginning the editing process of all the 8mm film started on from 2005². Including having to take an additional two years for the original independent version of DVD¹, Fukazawa was finally able to complete the production which would become a work of international interest as well.

Those two obsessions of its lead/director Shinichi Fukazawa are very clearly visible in the film itself, and far from a critique to note the clear tributes to the Evil Dead films, as a tribute that came to us long after originally intended, by the time the Evil Dead became a pop culture institution, this really stands out again because of this. The plot is very simple, set up in a thirty years earlier prologue where a man accidently kills the girlfriend, he was about to leave, when she was trying to kill him with a knife. Burying the body in the house, this is the father of our lead Shinji (also played by Fukazawa), aptly leaving a curse for the son of a different woman he would marry that will haunt Shinji. Keeping the house as an heirloom, in real life a house the director's real father was going to scrap that was in a Tokyo suburb and his son took advantage of to film within¹, Shinji will only go back when convinced by an ex-girlfriend and journalist Mika (Asako Nosaka). With her fascination in haunted houses and wishing to write about examples like her old flame's, when learning of the strange goings-on in the premises, Mika takes him to the building.

He does not believe in ghosts, only in fitness and that smoking ruins one's beauty by sapping away the vitamin C in one's body, but the curse of his father before he met his mother now is in his lap. He goes with Mika and a male psychic (Masahiro Kai), and the later becomes the start of the hauntings as he has legitimate psychic abilities, allowing the ghost of the jilted girlfriend to possess him, thinking Shinji as his lookalike is his father and deserving punishment. It feels a homemade production, which begins because when wanting to use another 16mm or Betacam, Shinichi Fukazawa for the budget had to use 8mm, which caused as much as the problems which would cause this film to take as long as it did to be finished even in terms of digitizing the footage in the extended post-production¹.  Thankfully, with a complete film, it has the charm and atmosphere of a home movie of the time, played on a projector with actually sprockets, adding a distinct look. With hindsight, especially as its production history adds a layer like it was rediscovered and rebuilt, that helps in mood as, in mind to the homemade quality of the first Evil Dead, you see a one-man band show an incredible amount of moxy and quality to this, as well as provide a distinct tone to this film. There are visible lifts from The Evil Dead, as the psychic is possessed and even dismemberment will not stop a spurned lover who confuses son for father, but there is as much its own spin on the material even when Shinichi Fukazawa does get a moment to say "Groovy" like Bruce Campbell.

It has its own atmosphere, helped by the small house the production was able to spill fake blood within and furthered by the practical methods to depict this gory splatter fest, the later entirely of Shinichi Fukazawa's own craft and in itself worthy of incredible praise. Some moments have eerieness to them, such as the father returning from the dead on a TV, and others are funny, such as the punch line to a random criticism of Mika's smoking biting the leads when trying to dispose of evil sentient corpse pieces. The practical effects, even the moments where they seemingly took still images and coloured over them, are memorable especially as it is overtly humorous and deliberately repulsive in the "slapstick" tone. As a fan of films like Evil Dead or Peter Jackson's Braindead (1992) when he wanted to make the film, Fukazawa got the right tone with what he loved from these films, in touches like the hand-feet meldings to the attempts at dynamic shots like the camera following flying projectiles taken from Raimi. His interest in body building does come into play, being able to hulk out of his shirt onscreen and use gym equipment as an improvised crossbow at one point, itself adding a distinct touch to the proceedings.

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell even in terms of its turbulent gestation history really exemplifies what entices about micro-budget cinema for me. It is about outsiders who get to make films away from industries to their personalities, putting everything including probably actual blood into the materials to get it made. Shinichi Fukazawa has yet to make another film, but he can at least be proud he completed this one, with the warm reception received even globally as the perfect introduction to this type of cinema in attitude.

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1) An Interview with Director Shinichi Fukazawa, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell, written by Ken Wynne for Attack from Planet B and published on April 28th 2017.

2) Reel Review: Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell, written for Morbidly Beautiful and published October 11th 2017.

1-Ichi (2003)

 

Director: Masato Tanno

Screenplay: Sakichi Sato

Based on a manga by Hideo Yamamoto

Cast: Nao Ohmori as Ichi / Shiroishi; Teah as Dai; Chihara Junia as Onizame; Chisato Amate as Satomi; Yuki Oikawa as Nao; Eiki Kitamura as Hiromi; Kazuhiro Mashiko as Hide

Ephemeral Waves

 

Where has the God in his fists disappeared too?

When Takeshi Miike became a popular figure in the West in the late nineties and early 2000s, one of the most notorious of the productions which cemented his reputation was Ichi the Killer (2001). I would like to return to that film, adapted from a manga by Hideo Yamamoto, but in spite of how controversial and dark that film was, it was a complex film in spite of all its horrifying violence and sexual perversity. On the surface it was one of his most extreme films, including a little bit of censorship for the British release, but it was also a film that subverted and provoked the viewer with a lot of difficult content, even deliberately disappointing the viewer's expectations in the finale for the ultimate provocation, by suddenly after all the content of before having an anti-climax and disappointment for its own characters.

Two follow ups, prequels exist. Ichi the Killer was about a sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer Kakihara (Tadanobu Asano) who, with his gang being targeted by an unknown assailant, learnt that the figure was Ichi (played by Nao Ohmori), a young man brainwashed to have his sexual desires intermingle with his penchant for violence, in a way that even his controller (played by cult filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto) showed a moment where he was scared of his own creation, part of that film's lasting sense of immense dramatic complexity for me. The prequels were stories of Ichi and how he came to be. One was an animated prequel Ichi the Killer: Episode 0 (2002), which is not good and definitely fits the perception of a nasty, difficult-to-defend piece of violence including sexualised forms with female characters. The other, a straight-to-video production I have wanted to see for years, is 1-Ichi, helmed by the second assistant director on the original film and assistant director on a couple of Miike's films from the period like Gozu (2003). A prequel which, baring one poor tonal choice, is a much more interesting film as a very low budget but unconventional piece of pulp which does not really fit any genre but its own.

This is definitely another example of why I am fascinated and continually returning back to low budget Japanese pulp cinema, especially the period from the nineties into the 2000s, when digital cameras would have been brought it, and this is as much in knowledge that I came to these films as I got into cult cinema in the late 2000s and may have a bias. It is very much an era of Japanese genre cinema, before irony and Western funding did mar it into the late 2000s, which is insanely vast even with what did get a DVD release, usually in the United States, back then. Why I find these films fascinating is that, set here in the average world of a small town between the arcades and back alleys, they are films where the fantastical and dark are never separated off in their own unreal worlds, but happening in ordinary everyday Japanese streets, as does happen here.

In this prequel, one of the students at the school is Dai (Teah), a boxer who becomes aware of Ichi when he was once just Shiroishi, played again by Nao Ohmori, an awkward student who is beaten up even by children in a judo class but is still going to become the future figure, an extremely dangerous figure whose libido is fixated around violence, something that from Miike's film was depicted as horrifying and part of that film's insanely dense emotional rollercoaster.

This is the lo-fi, miniature version of this idea, in which most of the film is Dai being antagonised by Shiroishi's existence, not actually doing anything himself beyond occasionally watching, whilst eventually plot events will lead to him slowly being transformed into the future figure. Most of the film instead has a broadly comedic edge, notable because whilst Dai himself is a dour serious figure with a boxing background, his two friends provide comedy. One rocks up to a fight with what is called a "granny perm"; the other, in the funniest touch, is obsessed with only watching the part threes of film franchises thinking they are inherently the best, whether The Godfather III (1990) or even Let's Ride the Pervert Train 3. Surrounded by these two, this film is a comedy with dark moments of violence, partially as much a slow burn psychological drama of young males being aggressive and trying to be tough by fighting each other, most of the film Dai trying to goad Shiroishi into trying to fight him out of a sense of needing to prove himself despite his toughness and capability in a brawl.

I have talked about my love for low budget Japanese genre cinema before. If I have not, (forgive the slip in memory), there is something about the ordinary environments of Japan even in animation, as recreations of environments is comment, which are inherently photogenic even at their most banal. Especially like micro budget films in the States, these slightly bigger budget productions allow you to see real world Japanese urban environments being invaded by weird genre films. 1-Ichi is a stark looking film - one which is not effeted by what is clearly a lower budget to Miike's, which had to work around its production value as much, and it arguably helps this film and its tale of pent up, frustrated young men being violent they are in bland environments, where the most idiosyncratic details are two female classmates dolled up in exaggerated fashion and everything else is so bland baring them or the arcade that punching each other in spats makes sense.

Notably as well, when it comes to the sexual aspects of this frustration, the perversity is much slower burn as a result than Miike's film, which got the spilt semen in the opening credits. Here, most of the film could be seen as a dark high school drama of young men, then suddenly someone is tied up at a baseball diamond, and being hit by baseballs thrown at them until something snaps and, after a scene away, all there is the aftermath of carnage and split semen dripping onto the ground. That sentence, even using that term twice in one paragraph, could raise a reader's eyebrow, but especially if you did not know about the original Ichi the Killer film or its source material, the sudden turn due to the low budget nature of this movie works in its favour in having this subject aspect suddenly appear like this violently. And this uncomfortable metaphor of sex and violence entirely from male characters, with only talk of women and watching lewd films, makes this sudden burst into this material actually more provocative in an interesting if creepy way.

There is one moment in the escalation that does become uncomfortable in an inappropriate way, unlike Miike's film which, whilst far more extreme, had the tonal shifts carefully structured. Here the tonal issue is the problem, jarring in how there is a scene of non-consensual sex, whilst not explicit, in a sports hall closet which involves strangulation that is meant to be disturbing if played in an absurd way. It involves the character of Onizame, a transfer student who is insane and evil from the get-go, breaking a male student's arm with ease and brutalising him, so he is deliberately seen as a horrible figure. Tonally however it jars for a film that was entirely a curious tale of all-male obsession, where fighting has an eroticised edge and a very dark humour, only to suddenly include this scene of rape against a side female character and then try to go back to comedy, in a hospital with the male victim recovering and talk of third parts of film franchises again.

Beyond this one bad creative decision, 1-Ichi works as a strange story. Ohmori being cast again is important for the film from when it was made, but this can work without any of the original context, that it is all about something in Dai becoming obsessed with Shiroishi in spite of the fact, following the original film's inspired goal to deflate expectations, he is just a bystander who would never be able to beat him or even survive a fight if Shiroishi ever found his killing instinct. Though Shiroishi stays extremely timid and way of fights to the point of being mocked, when the turn comes not one would win against him when he turns into the future Ichi, strong enough to bend a metal baseball bat with one of his kicks. Baring that one ill-advised choice early on, as a dark comedy it was compelling, particularly as much due to its look and tone providing a strange energy.

Rubber's Lover (1996)

Director: Shozin Fukui

Screenplay: Shozin Fukui

Cast: Nao as Kiku; Norimizu Ameya as Hitotsubashi; Yôta Kawase as Shimika; Mika Kunihiro as Akari; Sosuke Saito as Motomiya

Re-Review

[Review contains some plot spoilers]

Set in the claustrophobic world of an unknown urban Japanese city, between the back alleys there is an underground basement accessed by a massive industrial lift, where experiments are transpiring that cross the line to violent scientific malpractice. Rubber's Lover follows alongside 964 Pinocchio (1991) as one of two of Shozin Fukui's films that may be known about in the West, entirely due to Unearthed Films releasing them in the United States in the DVD days. They are an interesting company in that their stock in trade in very transgressive cinema, be it releasing the notorious Japanese Guinea Pig films or something as notorious as Philosophy of the Knife (2008), only that among some odd curveballs* they also released these films, very much in the transgressive side of cinema but also very alien to it at the same time. That alienness comes from the fact that Shozin Fukui, working as an assistant director on Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), he is less fixated on the transgressive but a kinetic intensity in these films.

Rubber's Lover is meant to be a prequel to 964 Pinocchio (1991), though it is best to imagine that co-existing in the same world, the future of that earlier film (of a brainwashed male sex toy who gains his consciousness again) is built from the fall out to this, Motomiya (Sosuke Saito) and Shimika (Yôta Kawase) two male scientists who are being backed in experiments to use psychic powers, having progressed to human test subjects. Their tools are "ether", not the gas used in early surgery as an anaesthetic (but an apt choice of name for symbolism) but a drug that is highly addicted, alongside the "Direct Digital Drive" technology. Motomiya has become a body building sociopath which has not helped matters, with Shimika easy to manipulate into this work, between them having a habit of killing their test subjects with their nurse assistant Akari (Mika Kunihiro). Their breaking point comes when an about-to-be-wedded secretary to their benefactor Kiku (Nao) comes to them informing the pair the project is going to be shut down. Things do not turn out that way as Motomiya snaps and she is held hostage.

Both films for Shozin Fukui transpire on the idea of the extremity of physical and mental agony eventually leading to a transcendental, and usually violent, power. The experiments here also involve the titular rubber, BDSM full rubber costumes which block out external stimuli as subjects wear them, are injected with ether and have their minds blasted out with noise until psychic power is induced. The film originates from both Fukui's fascination and research into psychic powers, having met people claiming such powers, and the connections he found when he also started talking to people in the burgeoning BDSM scene in his homeland¹. Among his research, including trying one for himself¹, was the use of rubber outfits and the fact that, yes, the material blocks the ability of the skin to sweat and breath, making them both dangerous to wear as a costume for a long period of time, and in context to this film the costume is used by the scientists to induce a further state of mental agony.

With one of their last subjects being a potential success, Hitotsubashi (Norimizu Ameya), the pair has made the unfortunate decision to use someone who was researching this subject matter and they stole his work from, all alongside erased memories proving an ill advised idea especially as he has nothing for contempt for the scientists. That Kiku is an open conduit for his mind as two people glad to take revenge on their torment, set up in hints early on, proves where this will lead to. The latter plot point is of note as, whilst I am an admirer of the film, I confess that there is at least one moment of extremity which has dated even if it is treated as the uncomfortable scene it should be, named that the kick off for Motomiya snapping and holding Kiku captive is the evil scientist committing sexual assault, uncomfortable to witness though it fits the darkness of the premise.

I will, having been an admirer of the film, confess that there is a least one moment which does not hold up as a good choice even for a film which is dealing with extremity, namely that the kick off for Motomiya snapping and holding Kiku captive is the evil scientist committing sexual assault, uncomfortable to witness though it fits the darkness of the premise. It is the one moment in a film, which does deal with explicit kink and titillation, which does jar in the modern day. Thankfully, it is depicted as horrifying, as it should be, and doesn't mar what Rubber's Lover escalates to in terms of a visual and audio assault worthy of being seen. That Kiku does have that plot point, which in this world where people have some semblance of confirmed psychic power, helps soothe the scene. It at least means, whilst it could have been done differently, there is a sense that it will be building to something of worth, she connecting literally to a male test subject who has been left a drug addict and tortured for a prolonged amount of time, Hitotsubashi once a talented chemical scientist reduced to this, and thus two damaged figures getting their revenge in a literal devastating power.

Shot in extreme monochrome, this is not a "pleasant" film but it is a thing of a vile beauty, compelling from the get-go in its deep black and white visuals. You can feel the dankness of the environments, even in a DVD standard release, just for the grain in the scenes. It was, humorously, due to it being perceived that the rubber suit would look terrible in colour¹, but that little change helps the film have a distinctive style which adds to it. One scene later on, which actively hurts the eyes as Hitotsubashi awakens with his new powers and lashes out, has flashing imagery and turns into a combination of Peter Kubelka's notorious advert for a beer Schwechater (1958), of black and white figures in flashing edits,  and Paul Sharits' short film T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G. (1968).

For the most part, this is a kinetic mood piece, which as a result means that any theme for the film, as talked of, is told through the action. The effect, the experience, of the film is through pulp storytelling where the atmosphere takes you in and pummels the viewer. Even when the film returns back to society, Shozin Fukui likes to depict an urban reality through grime and the lived in environments he probably lived in himself, particularly as between this and 964 Pinocchio he has an obsession with Japanese supermarkets and their septic white decor, a location with their paths and shelves which is very cinematic in its own way.

Rubber's Lover is a great example of how, for me, Japanese locations in their genre cinema, from wasteland behind wire fences to ordinary stores, have an inherently unique mood that is inherently cinematic, even if you do not take into consideration the distinct cultural aesthetic behind their public environments like their pedestrian utility signs to crossing light systems having a specific sound when people can cross that have poor eyesight. This could all stem merely from watching so many films from Japanese that had to shot on existing locations, but never was there an environment usually ignored in cinema, ordinary public environments, which even in their animation (as replicating real locations is common) Japanese film and television filmmakers have breathed a life into. In other country's cinema, like mind, there was always a danger of it coming off cheap; probably because films like this use them in resourceful ways, one back alley could lead to such peculiar sights like those you witness in Rubber's Lover.

The film also manages to carve its own distinction in the tiny subgenre of Japanese cyberpunk, creating its own startling imagery. The full rubber suit, with a head set obscuring the entire area above the neck and two cameras on each hip showing the wearer's eyes, is startling, and once the physical and metaphysical nature of the piece comes about, the style of the film which was already extreme even becomes poetic in its extremity, when such incidents like it "snowing" inside an apartment transpires. Tragically, Fukui's career whilst continuing onwards became obscure in terms of access.  This is a shame as, together with 964 Pinocchio, they are very idiosyncratic films by themselves, worthy of rediscovery and startling experiences separately.

Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric/Intense

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

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1) The Unearthed Films release offers a small interview with the director-writer which provides these interesting titbits.

Rubber's Lover (1996)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4e/Rubber's_Lover_FilmPoster.jpeg/220px-Rubber's_Lover_FilmPoster.jpeg

Dir. Shozin Fukui

With the sense of having to blink, slumped back at the end credits, trying to get my senses back together, a secondary viewing doesn't detract from the sensitory barrage of Rubber's Lover, only add to it. Is it all brute sound and violent content only? Probably, but you can become very complacent if one merely goes about believing any art that is lurid and outright hostile is unacceptable. Sometimes you need to shoot up the experimental drug rectally, get the rubber gimp suit on and let your mind be expanded by the pulsating, audible noise being played through the speakers, as crafted as the sound torture a character in the film creates on magnetic tape for a project to expand human consciousness. To actually have an effect on a viewer, it's better to go to the extent Shozin Fukui does in audio assault then be sedate. And what a film, cyberpunk cinema, based on stories around dehumanising industry, slum based fiction whose name evokes punk rock and its D.I.Y ethics. Here, Fukui wanted to depict a theme of his of catharsis through physical pain, and it appears here in the submerged underground laboratory the film is mostly set in, depicted in stark ink black and burnt-out white monochrome photography.

From http://horrorhappyhour.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/1538997732_d2a1ac3e96.jpg

This is a prequel of sorts to his previous film 964 Pinocchio (1991), his debut, not in the same subject, but of the same vibe of psychic power and transgressions with bodily and sexual undercurrents. I would like to imagine too, if one attempted to make a giant narrative encompassing both, that film started some time before its narrative when someone found out about the aftermath of this film and cut their losses by going into the living sex cyborg business that makes part of 964 Pinocchio's story. Better to try and salvage the remnants of the scientific experiment that failed messily here and try a different area with more chance of financial reward. Here, two scientists, and a comely nurse (Mika Kunihiro) in Lolita Goth costume who molests the human guinea pigs, are attempting to bring mankind to psychic abilities like many films before it, but with two potential options for doing so of their own design, the Digital Direct Drive, a piece of technology for monitor and enhance one's mind, and a drug called Ether. The two scientists, Motomiya (Sosuke Saito) and Hitosubashi (Norimizu Ameya),  are butting heads about which is the superior method for doing so. One thing they can agree upon is that, in the final stages, their test subjects are wrapped up in an all-rubber body suit, and not just because everyone is exceptionally kinky, but for a practical reason. The rubber suffocates the skin, preventing it from breathing, causing an insulating affect that, with noise blasting your mind away and the Ether drug in your system, will make your everyday senses mindless allowing psychic powers to come to the surface. Thus the title is explained and the S&M aspect of the film is shown. And its based on real research by Fukui before preparing this film, including contacting S&M practitioners, that is explained in a filmed interview that was included with the film's US DVD release. I don't recommend the reader try any of this in an attempt at expanding the mind. The amount of finance and underground space required is steep, and as this film suggests, it would lead to someone being a mess of organs on the floor by the end.

From http://www.honekoubou.jp/en/filmo/rubbers_2.gif

The psychic project is a failure. They're wasting money and killing human test subjects, and not producing the results their benefactors want. And they're clearly going insane, Motomiya, spearheading it, is a "muscle monster", as their nurse calls him, with the muscles of a body builder, who mostly wears only a thong and a see-through raincoat, so on edge and psychopathic I'm not surprised any one would like to close his projects. That or his tendency to rape people which rightly would prevent anyone wanting to assist him in continue said project. Members have gotten addicted to the Ether drug, and the last test subject unfortunately disintegrates on the operating table in splatter fashion when their nurse puts too much Ether into their veins. A female employee of the higher ups Kiku (Nao) is sent to tell them the project is to be closed within a week, but the three remaining members of the staff refuse to finish. The fourth Shimika (Yôta Kawase), an addict to Ether, is planned to be the next test subject in a last ditch attempt to prove to themselves they can succeed, and if Kiku tries to intervene, or accidentally cause the power to go off briefly trying to use an elevator during their experiment, Motomiya has no issues with sticking her between two speakers as a test subject too and blasting her ears with mind shredding noises.

From http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y121/
Liquid_Static/vlcsnap-2011-07-11-15h55m57s158.png

Rubber's Lover is a claustrophobic film. You are grateful it eventually gets out into the real world, to see some neon signs of Japanese streets of the time, or inside a supermarket briefly, trapped in the stark and choked world of the test labs for the most part. The actors were told not to talk to each other during takes, which would've added to the tension onscreen. Unlike the expansive, delirious tone of 964 Pinocchio, with its Andrzej Zulawski inspired moving cameras and hyper active acting, this is a complete 180 degree turn. A refined, subtler form of the hyper violent, assaulting content as Shimika ,during the experiment, does develop psychic powers but still has the will to take his revenge on his former co-workers. Not through the conventions though, blowing someone's head off Scanners-like, but with Kiku the catalyst he is linked to now, through destroying someone's brain, disintegrating their body, or flat-out cannibalism whilst in an entire different body. Add to this a moment of blistering strobe effect that distorts your retinas, and it's an intense experience, but the quietness of most of the film baring the electronic trance score that occasionally is heard creates an interesting mix. Its oppressive even before the fake gore effects are seen, or the sexual aspects seep into front of your eyes, already unnerving in its rundown, industrial locations.

Don't worry, nothing bad happens to the bunny.
(From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JIUmad51doo/UoGNg-lekVI/AAAAAAAAdcg/
Jy2I6Om1kJ4/s1600/Rubbers+Lover_001.jpg)

The director's theme in both films is that transition and transformation is possible through agony, the film structured around effecting the viewer where you feel like you've gone through the same procedures until a waking sensation by the ending. The monochrome images. The sound design and disturbing content, including prolonged repetition of dialogue samples in scenes of pronounced psychokinetic events taking place. It's not surprising Fukui worked on Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), the most significant film in the Japanese cyberpunk subgenre. In fact, of immense interest, you can see three trajectories' come out from that film. That of its director Shinja Tsukamoto, who would continue with the theme of the body and then develop more and more emotion to his work. Co-cinematographer and main actress Kei Fujiwara would unfortunately only make two features as a director herself, the most well known one Organ (1996) I've also reviewed online before [Viewable here], but developed her own unique spin on body horror that would baffle and alarm anyone who went into them expecting a Sushi Typhoon fest of cheesy gore. Fukui decided to concentrate on the mind and the transformation of it. Of course the three of them would have themes that would blur into each other's work, but they took their own inspirations alongside what happened in Tetsuo: The Iron Man.

From http://s3.amazonaws.com/quietus_production/images
/articles/13017/rubbers_lover_2_1375805104_crop_550x412.jpg

In contrast to the first film, Rubber's Lover has a darker conclusion as the dependency on the Ether drug and lost memories leads to an end. The climax involving a discovery of a dark past continually referenced to including a film, on celluloid, in Motomiya's collection. It also involves the sudden appearance of snow falling inside a room, a moment of elegant grace before the closest moment to a Scanners scene taking place. The end is tragic but continues with someone sat against a pillar inside a subway. They have been through torture, until becoming more then they were, leaving them drastically changed. Fukui would not make another feature film for over ten years after Rubber's Lover, returning back with films and shorts that look impossible to see. If it was the last time he made a film, it certainly ends with the right statement, leaving this viewer fried mentally gripping with the content again. The beginning of something new, back to the idea of catharsis through physical violence.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5KMMfm12ybQ/UoGNlplyXyI/
AAAAAAAAdek/8bBtf2QVawI/s1600/Rubbers+Lover_019.jpg

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None) - High

There's an entire wing of this site that's going to be devoted to Japanese cinema let alone their cyberpunk movies, such imaginative but also stark work. The borderline between alternative, underground art - theatre, punk and experimental music etc. - matched by giant drill penises, pig people and in this film's case leather frog man suit fetish and a prolonged scene of the two actresses writhing in a white lit elevator being pleasured by a pocket machine that blatantly stimulates your orgamically. A person's torso being ripped open while they're still awake and a very muscled man, able to make sound with them just through flexing, wearing only a transparent raincoat, repeated again in this review by how bizarre that particular image is to me. In fact you can add the almost nude muscle men in Tsukamoto's Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) and paint this image of large biceped men in underground lairs involved in evolving mankind that's impossible to shake out of your head. But Rubber's Lover isn't pointlessly lurid. Disturbing, yes, and definitely a film that has divided people, but one that at least contains a distinct and provocative point of view. Rubber's Lover is merciless in its abrasive content but for the means for what is felt rather than direct ideas. It is worth mentioning Fukui's background in noise rock about now, the sense of the embracing of the messiness and oppressiveness of noise fitting the style of the content in this film. The result, like a Tetsuo: The Iron Man is completely unique and unrelenting.

Personal Opinion:

It's difficult to choose between this and 964 Pinocchio in which is the best film. Fukui's other work, barring two shorts that came with each film on US DVD, are to my knowledge unavailable to see. Here you get a very idiosyncratic style of filmmaking that feels like putting your head in a vice, not necessarily a horrible situation to be in when the calm final shot is shown and the whole viewing was worth it. They are part of a filmmaking style, like Tsukamoto's work or Organ, which is unconventional even for the extremes of all the violent Japanese cinema I've viewed, and not just because their created worked together, but also in an area of underground filmmaking which is willing to step outside of good taste but also have a clear idea for something a lot deeper. Maybe represented in brutality and fake gore being splattered about, but still an idea or mood. Like a pressure cooker, Rubber's Lover keeps going from one extreme to the next one, tightening and becoming more disturbing as it goes along. The result is impossible not to feel a reaction to.