TRUE STORY OF A WOMAN IN JAIL

TRUE STORY OF A WOMAN IN JAIL

SEX HELL: Applying Eastern Methods To Western Schlock

It’s always interesting to see how different countries trans­late pop­u­lar film trends from other coun­tries to fit their own cul­tural and com­mer­cial needs.  Consider the women in prison film: it was hugely pop­u­lar in the U.S. and Europe from 1970’s through the early 1980’s but Japan didn’t pro­duce a lot of films in this sub­genre dur­ing that time.  However, the small hand­ful that Japanese film­mak­ers made show them adapt­ing the women in prison film to their own film­mak­ing designs.

A worth­while exam­ple is Nikkatsu’s 

True Story Of A Woman In Jail: Sex Hell.  

It takes the women in prison film and gen­tly reworks it to fit the mold of Roman Porno sex­ploita­tion line that had become a vital part of Nikkatsu’s out­put dur­ing the 1970’s. 

The plot seems tra­di­tional enough for this kind of movie, begin­ning with the intro­duc­tion of two new “fish” to a juvenile-level facil­ity: Harumi (Maya Hiromi) is pros­ti­tute who is chatty and famil­iar with the sys­tem while Mayumi (Kozue Hitomi) is quiet, with­drawn and mysterious.

Once they are in gen­eral pop­u­la­tion, both new pris­on­ers have to deal with its res­i­dent Queen Bee (Seri Kaori).  Harumi plays up to her, even becom­ing a sex­ual sur­ro­gate for her, while Harumi locks horns with her and avoids befriend­ing any­one.  Flashbacks sprin­kled through reveal the rea­son that Harumi ended up in jail, explain­ing her bit­ter atti­tude as well as her desire for escape and revenge.  After suf­fer­ing enough indig­ni­ties at the hands of the sys­tem, Harumi and Queen Bee see past their dif­fer­ences to make an escape.  That said, one shouldn’t expect happy end­ings in a film like this.

The end result doesn’t attempt to inno­vate upon its genre tem­plate or add twists to any of the genre’s expected ele­ments. The women in prison com­po­nent of the film hits all the nec­es­sary marks: women done wrong, preda­tory pris­on­ers and guards, cat­fights, shower scenes and a cli­mac­tic escape attempt.  There are no real sur­prises in this area but every­thing works as it is sup­posed to.

What makes 

True Story Of A Woman In Jail: Sex Hell 

inter­est­ing is the Roman Porno part of the equa­tion.  For exam­ple, the nar­ra­tive is orches­trated around a series of erotic set­pieces incor­po­rated in a clever way: the flash­backs not only fill us in on the character’s back­sto­ries but allow the film­mak­ers to incor­po­rate a series of male-female sex scenes that would oth­er­wise be dif­fi­cult to include in a women in prison film.  It also weaves in the kind of kink­i­ness nec­es­sary for the Roman Porno crowd, like the meth­ods used to cre­ate sex toys in prison and a guard who gives a woman in soli­tary con­fine­ment food so he can have sex with her through the door’s food tray slot.

True Story Of A Woman In Jail: Sex Hell

 also impresses with its crafts­man­ship.  Director Koyu Ohara keeps the nar­ra­tive tight and his pac­ing lean, bring­ing in the fairly involved plot at a tidy 70 min­utes.  Yoneza Maedo’s scope lens­ing infuses the grubby nar­ra­tive with style and a bluesy rock score from the Downtown Boogie Woogie Band enhances the moody, for­lorn qual­ity of the film.  The act­ing is also solid: Hitomi gives an appro­pri­ately stoic per­for­mance as the venge­ful hero­ine (she’s got a great angry stare) while Maya brings a know­ing sauci­ness to her vet­eran call girl role and Seri is appro­pri­ately impe­ri­ous as Queen Bee.

In short, 

True Story Of A Woman In Jail: Sex Hell 

works both as a Roman Porno and a women in prison film thanks to its thor­ough, dis­ci­plined sense of crafts­man­ship.  As a result, it is well worth the time for any exploita­tion film buff curi­ous about the won­ders of Eastern-meets-Western schlock fusion.