Simply put, I was not prepared for Entrails of a Virgin. Per imdb, the plot is: "Members of a film crew making a soft core porn are dismembered by a demon in a warehouse." That sounds like it could feasibly be up my alley. Wrestlemaniac was okay, right? What is should say on imdb: "Semi-consensual rape-porn with a "demon" in it, and some demented visuals." It's easily the most pornographic thing I've watched for this movie a day project - I was worried about the sex-noises waking up my wife. And honestly - getting porn when you are expecting a horror movie is kind of weird... I guess any "surprise porn" would be. I assumed the first sex scene would be quick... but then it just kept going, and going, and going... and then there were more. And I'm no international pornography expert, but I'm not sure what the Japanese consider "soft-core." Other than genitals being blurred out, it seemed pretty intense to me. I don't think you can have as much semen in a movie as Entrails of a Virgin has and still be considered "soft core."
Oh, and did I mention that the sex is semi-consensual at best? It's pretty much just sleazy dudes being all like "I can make sure you get a good job" while more or less forcing themselves on the women, who are clearly not into it. But they're not screaming or saying no or fighting too hard... but still - it feels like rape to me. It was a rough watch in that respect. But after looking around online a bit, some reviews were saying that this is a pretty good introduction to director Kazuo Komizu. It's a bit easier to swallow, as his Entrails of a Beautiful Woman is even more misogynistic and is "wall to wall" rape. Yikes. Won't be checking that one out.
And incidentally, I'm getting rather tired of writing about rape - not sure why that is so prevalent in horror movies. This blog is supposed to be fun!
Horrorwise... what do we get? The demon here is some really big muddy guy who kills off the half-dozen-people at an old abandoned house. (They were at a photo shoot earlier in the day, but were sidetracked by fog and had to spend the night at the house.) The gore is pretty cartoonish, but brutal at times. Unsurprisingly, the nastiest bits are when both sex and violence are involved. I was considering giving some examples, but I don't want to get this blog flagged by some government agency scanning the internet. Needless to say, Entrails of a Virgin nearly made me vomit on two separate occasions. And prior to watching this, that hadn't happened even once since I started up this blog. (And only when discussing horror movies would I need to qualify that "almost made me vomit" is not a good thing in this case.)
In addition to sex and violence, there are some just plain weird bits to the film. At one point, the crew encourages a guy to show off his wrestling moves... so he takes a woman of questionable sobriety and straight-up suplexes her in the living room. He gets in a couple more moves in too - the subtitles don't say it, but he very clearly yells "Scorpion Death Lock!" It would be funny, but of course since it's this movie, they have to strip her down first and make sure you see her cry in pain. Way to take something fun and ruin it. Also, there is another scene where the demon scares a guy by throwing plates at him. Which could scary and/or dangerous if it's in close quarters - but this guy is on a tennis court and the plates are coming from hundreds of feet away.
Entrails of a Virgin just was not for me. There's a whole underbelly of the horror community that I don't understand. I don't think that mean-spirited/sexual violence against women is ever entertaining. True, it is disturbing, but not in a way that is fun or creative or interesting. There's this disconnect - whenever I see a film reveling in rape/sexual violence, I'm disturbed less by the content of the film itself and more by the fact that (a) someone made this, and (b) people like this. Free speech and all, but still. I want to be scared by the film, not the filmmaker or the audience, you know? And I guess there is a conversation to be had about sexual violence being a real-world problem that these films are trying to address, but I usually think that's just a faux-intellectual excuse.
So while Entrails of a Virgin had a few fleeting moments of craziness, it wasn't worth wading through all of the skeezy porn to get to. I'm sure there's an audience for this sort of thing, but it ain't me.
I would not recommend this film.
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