Women's Flesh: My Red Guts Review from Aroma Planning!

Away from the mainstream of films it’s not hard to imagine what exists as catacombs taking you lower and lower to some unseen core. Maybe a video game with bosses waiting at the end of every level. Tamakichi Anaru is that end of level bad guy who’s almost impossible to defeat.

Yeah, there is far darker creations out there than his short films, but it’s how they’re presented. They are gritty, grainy and worn. His most famous beast is the unforgiving, Niku Daruma, aka Tumbling Doll of Flesh. Women’s Flesh: My Red Guts just has that even nastier edge and proudly has no readable credits available so many may question whether what they are seeing is real or fake. I assume he did his own FX work.

Women’s Flesh takes its time in a build-up. We begin with lots and lots of stills showing the gruesome aftermath of what is to take place soon. I mean, the quality is purposely poor and this adds to the unease and eeriness. Yep, the girl is dead and all messed up in her bath.

After the brief title, we watch her glare into her bathroom mirror whilst thumbing at a toothbrush. In black and white flashback moments which are devastating to the eyes in quality, we learn she’s been dumped by her fella. Without ceremony or question he chucks his ring onto the table between them. Our girl is in a slow moving daze now, running the blunt edge of the toothbrush around the inside of her mouth whilst staring into space.

Next thing you know, she’s perched on the side of the bath and being rather unhygienic with it. Damn, it’s deep inside her pussy. Being a Japanese production, as the obligatory porn/Jess Franco close-ups occur, it carefully doesn’t show any flesh below, but you can see the thing is quite a way up and she’s writhing it passionately. Afterwards it’s time for a little suckle, then she pushes it back in and begins lusting for more feeling to conquer her numbness. She goes deeper and a bit wilder. So much in fact that she drips with blood. Oh, so now you know where this one is going – downhill to Hell very soon. The crimson really picks up the more she cries and thrusts the hard plastic in.

After that sensation seeking act, she spends a few minutes licking the blood from her fingers. This lapses into more pain as she begins to bite at her fingers. With lingering close-ups and the sound of bone crunching, she gnaws the end of a finger off. Blood squirts noisily and you can only wait for what she’s going to do next to herself.

Then there is a second scenario with another woman who sits quite happily stabbing at an apple. In pure David Lynch style, it is the same actress probably playing the same tormented lady, but possibly this is in her mind as she rips her outer shell to pieces. This version of her begins gently enough, prodding at her skin with her fork, testing grounds. Bang! It’s in and it looks very real. Now it’s the turn of the knife. Yeah, this possible inner mind part of herself is far less forgiving on the viewer, she rips her guts apart at one point and happily massages her organs then chews long dangling bits – all in lush close up of course. The gratuitous violence continues….

Women’s Flesh is performance art and a canvas in which shocking and challenging images exist. This is nowhere near Anaru’s famous outing, but of course it’s always unfair to compare anything in the underground. It still delivers you slap after slap. The intensity is a totally different realm to before, for the subject in this film mutilates herself, rather than other people do it to her. She consciously takes herself through so much agony and erotica to arrive at a place only she knows she wants to go. Many state this isn’t as impressive as Tumbling Doll of Flesh due to its slower pace. Maybe it’s because they are more uncomfortable observing a woman destroy herself rather than seeing men do it to her. Interesting.

The choice of film and the way it looks like a well battered VHS recording quite frankly does it justice. The movie looks ugly and vile. It could be the worst behind-the-counter tape you’ve ever seen. Blurry, sometimes out of focus and looking amateur, Women’s Flesh couldn’t appear any more real if it tried. Segment two delivers with static sounding noises and bloops — what the hell is going on? As you watch this woman disfigure herself, this gnarled and fucked up repertoire of noise lingers just behind.

There’s a lack of dialogue — aside from a small handful of sentences in the break up scene — so don’t worry about any subtitles. My version had an extra thing strapped onto its back – a quick trio compilation of real dead folks, decomposed, accidents with brains splattered on the ground, that sort of stuff. Some of these bodies are totally annihilated, and one scene of a cop trying to scoop gore into his hands off the road is a stunner. Basically contained within a nutshell ten minutes or so is far more shock value than the Traces of Death series. They are by a company called Baroque (these appear to be trailers! Imagine what the whole documentaries are like!!!), which had a short life span, but distributed a fair bit of nasty material, including many Tamakichi Anaru titles.

All in all, Women’s Flesh: My Red Guts is worth the visit. Admittedly some of the minutes could have been better spent, but when the wet moist gore starts to flow, oh baby it flows. As Jarvis Cocker of Pulp sang many years ago: “Oh, this is hardcore! There is no way back for you!”

AKA: Women’s Flesh, Hungry Mouth, Watashi no akai harawata (hana)

Studio: Baroque | Distributor: Aroma Planning, Massacre Video