The background is Yuraku-cho in Tokyo and the film shows how desperately the women, who had led sheltered lives before the war, struggled to keep alive and the innate strength of post-war women.
Social & External
The people behind it
Reiko Kayama
Maya
Miyako Yamaguchi
Sen
Izumi Shima
Mino
Tokuko Watanabe
Oroku
Seiji Endō
Rei Okamoto
Prostitute A
Kenji Shiiya
Asai
Akira Ōizumi
Furuta
Kenji Shimamura
Farmer
Maya Kudô
Prostitute D
A team of girls go on a killing spree across the country.
André is the powerful owner of an illegal casino and popular gambling ("Jogo de Bicho") on the streets. His gang is in war against the gang of Fiore that is trying to steal the gambling establishments of André. When the prostitute Margot sees her old friend and ex-con Sarja working as a waiter in the casino where she tricks clients, she invites him to stay with her in her apartment. When André, who is gay, sees the handsome Sarja, he falls in love with his employee that becomes his protégée. Meanwhile, Sarja and Margot plot to steal the high stakes on St George's Day and they invite André's henchman Lobão and two gangsters to participate in the heist. Meanwhile Fiore also plots to steal André's money with his gang.
Brash businessman Hideki (Arata Iura) convinces his Tokyo bosses he can turn a profitless Montana cattle ranch into a premiere-performing asset. However, when his Japanese Wagyu-beef expert fails him, Hideki is poised to fail unless he identifies a missing element that's key to the transformation: himself.
Young-Woong is a psychiatrist (Kim Kyeong-Ik). He has been married to Soo-Hyun (Jin Hye-Kyung) for 10 years, but their love has waned and they now feel indifferent towards each other. One day, Soo-Hyun's daughter Haru (Ayaka Tomoda) appears before them. Soo-Hyun gave birth to Haru while she was studying in Japan. Haru carries a wounded heart from her boyfriend's betrayal. Soo-Hyun asks Yoong-Woong to treat her daughter. Through their consultations, Young-Woong begins to dream of more than just a doctor and patient relationship.
Early summer, Keiichi had just moved to a remote mountain village. As he becomes close friends with a group of girls, he was enjoying his life in the village. However when he starts to become suspicious that his friends may be deeply involved in successive murders that occur every summer, the situation around Keiichi gradually starts to turn into something more sinister.
A man prepares a surprise for his wife on their 5-year-anniversary. One day, a couple, a man in the middle of a divorce and his mistress, come to visit. An entangled romantic web ensues.
Mondo Cane and the Schoolgirl Report series stand as obvious influences on this occasionally amusing but generally rather tedious exploitation film that alternates between documentary, fake documentary and docudrama. The theme is Satanism and the linking thread is a recreation of what is supposedly the real-life case of a murder and attempted murder of two Munich teenage men by a quartet of girls who had been dabbling in devil worship. During the ensuing trial, the lawyer resorts to dilatory tactics while the hearing is frequently interrupted by the girls breaking into incantation, temper tantrums or shivery fits ostensibly bearing on demonic possession. When the subject of the Manson killings is brought up, the most obnoxious of the defendants breaks in indignantly, claiming that Sharon Tate’s “execution” was justified as she posed dangers to the Satanic community.
Five unrelated tales: (1) "The Ravishing Queen" / "La Reina Bella", in which the queen choses a king by devious endurance tests of the pretendants; (2) "The Punished Lovers", in which a fake blind husband is 'cured' after having the culprits banished from the tribe; (3) "The Old Prostitute" who manages to take revenge from all the village dignitaries who wrongfully condemned her brother; (4) "The Endless Search" that does not end until a hunter finds his perfect end-game; (5) "The Crazy Woman" whose illness was not exactly of the mind, but of an (almost) insatiable lust.
In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.
A man who loves pictures of Japanese women falls in love with one of the girls in his photos. He heads to Japan to find her and happens to stumble across her in the street. They begin to date and eventually he meets her mother, who is shocked to see the Korean man looks like her late husband in his youth. The widow is attracted to him, but he is attracted to her, too.
Pre-war Asakusa was a riotous district of cabarets, dance-halls and brothels - a striking backdrop for Shimazu's story of innocence and experience. Pretty, young Reiko is the new dancer in an infamous theatre troupe, and her fellow performers try to protect her virtue in a land of vice. Meanwhile, an ageing actor wants to be a hero off stage as well as on, and the troupe matriarch Marie has to keep them all together.
When his father flees from debt, carefree college student Osamu sees his life turn upside-down. Expelled from school and evicted from his apartment, he becomes one of Japan’s many ‘net cafe refugees’, barely scraping by each day with temporary and part-time work. Even though he’s still in Tokyo, his circumstances drive him to see and experience his home city in new ways. Trying to survive, Osamu gradually acquaints himself with the ‘invisible’ spaces occupied by the wanderers and homeless of Tokyo… people just like himself.
A young boy named Pelle falls in love with the drug addict Lena. Then he and his friend Proffen try to save her from drugs.
Otsuya, the daughter of a rich merchant, elopes with her lover Shinsuke, an employee of her father's. During their flight, Otsuya's beauty attracts the gaze of Seikichi, a mysterious master tattooist who sees her pristine white skin as the perfect canvas for his art. The image of the large demonic spider that he emblazons across Otsuya's back marks her as the property of another man, radically altering her relationships with all around her as her personality seems to transform under its influence.
This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar, a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda. When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.
The special secret to a successful noraebang is revealed! The noraebang where Hee-jin works is for customers who want a call-girl. When they start turning around and leaving, Hee-jin decides to become a call-girl herself and even brings her friend Seong-hee in. Rumors of Hee-jin and Seong-hee's beauty and service quickly spread and more customers come. When they've made enough money, Hee-jin and Seong-hee decide to open their own noraebang and display a hidden special service.
A young couple becomes involved with a sexy new stranger in this steamy adult thriller.
The story is about Sheelavathi, a prostitute. The film revolves around the situations that forced her to choose the path of prostitution.
A young man decides one day to start killing yakuza. After he kills his first two he gets roped into helping a wannabe gangster and his bumbling underlings to perform a hit. While things work out in the beginning, this young psychopath quickly becomes more trouble than the gang expected. Will they be able to rid themselves of him, or will they be his next victims?
In the shady black markets and bombed-out hovels of post–World War II Tokyo, a tough band of prostitutes eke out a dog-eat-dog existence, maintaining tenuous friendships and a semblance of order in a world of chaos. But when a renegade ex-soldier stumbles into their midst, lusts and loyalties clash, with tragic results. With Gate of Flesh, visionary director Seijun Suzuki delivers a whirlwind of social critique and pulp drama, shot through with brilliant colors and raw emotions.
A submissive hooker goes about her trade, suffering abuse at the hands of Japanese salarymen and Yakuza types. She's unhappy about her work, and is apparently trying to find some sort of appeasement for the fact that her lover has married.
Prostitutes in burnt out Tokyo ghetto of post-WWII Japan peddle their flesh and save one-third of their money for a proposed dancehall to be named Paradise. The hookers live in a bombed-out building, but they accept the precarious situation with typical resolve.
Kiyoha rises from the lowly courtesan ranks to the high class position of Oiran in the steamy red-light district of Yoshiwara. She is determined to stand on her own two feet and live life as she pleased.
Kyôko, a traumatized young Japanese girl, finds herself struggling with her self-confidence in her adult life. Growing up in a family without her mother and her sister, she constantly questions the rationale of sex and the notion of liberty in modern Japanese society.
Follows five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation debates the passage of an anti-prostitution law.
A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.
A former American G.I. joins a yakuza family after his release from prison in post-World War II Osaka.
Eddie Kenner is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson, a former GI who has formed a gang of fellow servicemen and Japanese locals.
A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.
A porn magazine editor stumbles upon an amateur gang rape film and, struck by the girl's acting, decides to find her.
Noriko is perfectly happy living at home with her widowed father, Shukichi, and has no plans to marry -- that is, until her aunt Masa convinces Shukichi that unless he marries off his 27-year-old daughter soon, she will likely remain alone for the rest of her life. When Noriko resists Masa's matchmaking, Shukichi is forced to deceive his daughter and sacrifice his own happiness to do what he believes is right.
Ocho is accidentally captured by a drug trafficking cartel who use Chinese women to smuggle drugs into Japan by hiding it in their vaginas. She is tortured, and manages to escape, fighting both the male yakuzas and a gang of female thieves.
The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.
Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
A woman, Tome, is born to a lower class family in Japan in 1918. The title refers to an insect, repeating its mistakes, as in an infinite circle. Imamura, with this metaphor, introduces the life of Tome, who keeps trying to change her poor life.
In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.
Widower Shuhei Hirayama's caretaker is his 24-year-old daughter, Michiko. Gradually, he comes to realize that Michiko should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life, so he arranges a marriage for her.