Red Account: My Bloody Angel Review from Nikkatsu!
Many ask the question of how far a film can go. What exits the world of good and bad taste into the nastier and darker realms of cinema? If you ask someone new to this world of film, they will bring up a film like Megan is Missing or even something like the newer film Skinamarink (read review here). I’ll go out on a limb and say they are right, because all of this is so insanely subjective. Every movie has a significant impact on people in many ways. Many films have a profound affect on me so this is why I will talk about a movie I saw recently after hearing about it on the Show Me Something Wrong Podcast, that has very much made an impression on me and has kind of stuck with me for a while now. That film is Toshiki Satô’s Red Account: My Bloody Angel (Akai Hokokusho: Senketsu no Tenshi) from 1988.
Before I go deep into the movie itself, I need to talk about the world of Pinku cinema (also known as Pinku Eiga). Pinku cinema is a very interesting genre of film, as it is the Japanese equivalent to erotic thrillers or softcore porn in the western world. These films have the common trait of featuring a lot of sex and sometimes can even be incredibly violent. Enter the Four Devils of Pinku (aka The Four Heavenly Kings of Pinku): Hisayasu Sato, Takahisa Zeze, Kazuhiro Sano, and of course the subject of this review Toshiki Satô. These four men are the essential directors of the genre, as they have all made some of the most influential works that would come out of Pinku cinema. Toshiki Satô is probably more well known to readers for his critically panned live-action remake of Perfect Blue, but his film Red Account: My Bloody Angel is one of the nastiest films I have seen from any Pinku director or studio.
The film opens with a truly bizarre scene of two men and a woman sitting on a floor. One of the men appears to be speaking in tongues. We soon figure out this isn’t too far off from the truth, as the woman gives us the story of what is transpiring in front of her. Her name is Tomoko, and her loving husband Masao seems to have been possessed by the devil himself… at least that is what we are led to believe. The priest in the room with them, Mr. Kawakami, was called upon by the couple as Masao began showing strange and obsessive behaviour towards his musical works. Then through a series of flashbacks, we are given the backstory to what has led to this drastic measure.
Masao was in an accident leading to him being hospitalized, where Tomoko worked at. It was love at first sight, and soon the two got married. We are then treated to not one but two very lengthy sex scenes. I don’t want to go on about this for too long but, these scenes go on for-fucking-ever. They take up at least a quarter of the film’s runtime. Keep in mind, this is a porno. Not the softcore stuff we are accustomed to in Pinku movies, but there is the blur and everything that is well known in JAV (Japanese Adult Video, or just Japanese porn). This is when Masao rekindles his friendship with Mr. Kawakami from high school (at least that’s what the subtitles I have said, because this man does not look like the priest from earlier). The two have very odd and kind of esoteric conversations about life and of course music. Masao wants to be a rock star, and Mr. Kawakami and him go over the pieces of music he has written. This is when Masao becomes obsessed and possibly possessed. Masao writes his sheet music again and again, but nothing is up to his standards, so he wads up every sheet and throws them onto the ground. Tomoko, very concerned, watches him and we see his entire floor is covered in crumbled pieces of paper. The couple call up Mr. Kawakami and it is time for an exorcism that does not have a very happy ending. I won’t spoil what is to come but it is some of the craziest shit I have seen in a movie recently.
Red Account: My Bloody Angel is a wild and extremely transgressive piece of Pinku cinema, that has stuck to my bones for a while now. It pushes the envelope in ways that I have seen before, but not from a film this early. You can see direct correlation from this movie to films like Tumbling Doll of Flesh (read review here) and the modern works of directors such as SamHel and Jonathan Doe. Intentionally or not this film has to have an influence on these movies and their directors. However, I will say the middle of this film does hurt it a little as the sex scenes are long and very boring. I can see people watching this and fast forwarding past them just for brevity’s sake. Red Account: My Bloody Angel is an incredibly solid movie though. The camerawork of this flick is stellar and gives us, the viewer, an almost voyeuristic look into the lives of our characters. The ending is legitimately not only startling, but incredibly disturbing and will have some gorehounds out there a shock for sure. There are problems with this film but all in all it is certainly worth your time if it remotely seems interesting to you.
AKA: Akai Hokokusho: Senketsu no Tenshi, 赤い報告書 鮮血の天使
Directed by: Toshiki Satô
Written by: Toshiki Satô, Takao Nakano
Produced by: Yasushi Satô
Cinematography by: Satoshi Shimomoto
Editing by: Toshiki Satô
Special Effects by: Toshiki Satô
Music by: Isao Yamada
Cast: Tomoko Shinomiya, Daikei Shimizu
Year: 1988
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese (English Subtitles)
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 55min
Distributor: Nikkatsu Corporation, Japan Shock
