The elderly Senzô Tôyama orders his employee, Makoto Katagiri, to kidnap and train his wife Shizuko in order to break her pride so that she will submit to his desires.
Hana to hebi
Flower & Snake ’74
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Masaru Konuma
Naomi Tani, Nagatoshi Sakamoto, Hijiri Abe, Willie Dorsey, Hiroko Fuji, Yasuhiko Ishizu, Hiroyuki Mikawa, Toshihiko Oda, Haruhiko Sugawara, Akira Takahashi, Kôji Yashiro, Setsuko Ôyama
Japan
Another eye-opener from Nikkatsu.
Having just seen and enjoyed Takashi Ishii’s outrageously raunchy 2005 Flower and Snake 2, based on a cult S&M novel by Oniroku Dan, I was quite keen to watch the film that preceded it, primarily to see some more of gorgeous star Aya Sugimoto; however, being rather confused about the whole history of the Flower and Snake series, I ended up watching this 70s Nikkatsu film instead. As it happens, I wasn’t too disappointed with my mistake: not only is this one an impressively jaw-dropping piece of classic Japanese sleaze, but it also introduced me to the delightful Naomi Tani, who is every bit as stunning as Sugimoto.
Tani plays Shizuko, the beautiful wife of ageing businessman Senzô Tôyama (Nagatoshi Sakamoto), who is reluctant to satisfy her perverted spouse’s sexual demands, having been sold to him by her lover. Disatisfied with Shizuko’s behaviour, Senzô convinces one of his employees, Makoto Katagiri (Yasuhiko Ishizu) to abduct his wife, break her pride, and train her to become an obedient sex slave. Makoto is only too happy to oblige—even more-so when he discovers that the lovely lady is able to cure his impotence, which was caused by a disturbing childhood incidence involving his mother and a big, black G.I.
Whereas Ishii’s film was purely designed to be as erotic as possible, this earlier version of Oniroku Dan’s novel is just as much about delivering the utterly depraved as it is intended to arouse. Amongst all of the S&M rope-trickery that is standard for such fare, this one also offers up such eye-opening stuff as a fumble in a flower bed involving the use of caterpillars, an incredibly tasteless forced enema (the effluence captured in a plastic bag), some strangeness involving a foul muck designed to irritate Shizuko’s snatch, and Makoto’s mad mother reenacting the traumatic event from his childhood so as to once again make her son impotent.
