In The Thicket (1996)

During the Heian period, whilst travelling through deep forest young samurai Takehiro and his wife Masako are waylaid by a robber. Takehiro is tied to a tree and forced to watch his wife being raped in front of his very eyes. But there are other witnesses to the crime lurking in the bushes too.

A surprisingly poetic rendition of "In The Thicket", the Ryunosuke Akutagawa short story that former the basis of Kurosawa's Rashomon, here directed by none other than the notorious Hisayasu Satô (The Bedroom, Naked Blood), one of the legendary "Four Devils" of the early 90s pink film.

Released to the straight-to-video market, Satô's version is not a pink film by strict definition of the term, but that said, the material is rather more erotically played than other versions of the same tale. Given the low budget, the film looks gorgeous however. Akiko Ashizawa's luscious super-16mm cinematography results in some beautifully lyrical sequences, such as the dreamlike coda of the two main characters roaming naked through a desert landscape.

Satô should be praised for spinning the source material off into a completely different direction from Kurosawa's undisputed classic whilst managing to shoe in enough of his trademark grotesquery to ensure his own ghoulish identity is not completely lost beneath the gloss. But the film suffers from a few pacing problems that could have done with some tightening up. As it is, whilst no classic, it is certainly far better than Misty, the NHK co-production released the following year directed by Kenki Saegusa and starring Yuki Amami.

This film by Hisayasu Sato is based on the same short story that yielded the film "Rashomon." It starts with a detective trying to unravel the story of a man and a woman encountering a bandit-rapist in the woods. The forest environment is very atmospheric, and it is nicely assisted by moody lighting and dreamy score. This has a fairytale feel to it, and a few scenes are quite creepy. Not quite as "sex/nudity packed" as Sato's exploitation films, but there's enough of it. Good performances, bloody violence, and sword fights round this one out.

This work of art is better than Akira Kurosawa's film (which I'm not a fan of). Check it out!

My Blog - Check it ;)

password: Avaxhome
5% recovery record included