Gate of Flesh (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Hideo GoshaRelease Date(s)
1988 (May 27, 2025)Studio(s)
Nikkatsu/Toei Co., Ltd. (88 Films)- Film/Program Grade: A-
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: A-
Review
When I agreed to review Gate of Flesh (Nikutai no mon), I assumed I would be looking at a new Blu-ray of director Seijun Suzuki’s 1964 film. But, as Felix Unger once implored, when you assume you make an ass out of “u” and “me.” it wasn’t until I was confused by the Toei logo and the film’s opening shot of Tokyo present-day skyline that I realized that I was looking at something else entirely. It was, in fact, another adaptation of Taijiro Tamura’s 1947 novel, the fifth such version of the story, directed by Hideo Gosha. I had been aware of the film but under its original international title, Carmen 1945, and never had the chance to see it.
It turned out to be something of a revelation. I find Seijun Suzuki greatly overrated, his Gate of Flesh included, mostly insofar as the bulk of his work, as a contract director at Nikkatsu in the 1950s and ‘60s, are generally movies no better or worse than literally dozens of other directors of his generation working in similar genre films at the various studios at that same time: Yasuharu Hasebe, Kinji Fukasaku, Jun Fukuda, Kihachi Okamoto (whose The Age of Assassins is, in my opinion, far better than Suzuki’s similar Branded to Kill), and many others.
Hideo Gosha, on the other hand, was uniquely masterly, especially his ‘70s and ‘80s yakuza movies, which are statelier and more probing than Fukusaku’s and the rest, yet no less cynical or violent. They’re like the difference between Coppola’s The Godfather and a well-made but otherwise ordinary Italian crime film. Gosha’s version of Gate of Flesh is revelatory in the sense that one can compare it to the much better-known Suzuki version, which gets its own Wikipedia entry while Gosha’s does not.
Gosha’s film is far superior to Suzuki’s in just about every respect: the acting is far subtler, the production design, costumes, and even make-up are all striking and almost pop off the screen. The 1.85:1 (“VistaVision Size,” as the Japanese call it) cinematography by longtime Daiei DP and Gosha collaborator Fujiro Morita is outstanding. And the screenplay by Kazuo Kasahara adds new wrinkles to the overly familiar material.
The story concerns a group of “pan-pan,” female prostitutes that have banded together immediately after the end of the Second World War, when many Japanese faced starvation and it was every man (and woman) for themselves. The women live together in a bombed-out, abandoned building in Yurakucho, Tokyo. Protecting their living space, and guarding against being absorbed into the local yakuza gang, is their “god”—an unexploded one-ton bomb caught between floors, precariously held in place by a few ropes. They hope to eventually remodel the building into “Paradise,” a nightclub they’d co-own.
These women—as tough-talking as any yakuza—include their leader, “Kanto Komasa” (Rino Katase), “Borneo Maya” (Miyuki Kano), “Futen no Roku” (Chisato Yamasaki), “Jeep Only” (Naomi Hase), “Drunk Much” (Yoshimi Ashigawa), and the mute “Baby” (Tomoshige Matsuoka), whom everyone looks after. Their only real friend is an elderly tattoo artist and tobacconist (Shinsuke Ashida). The group adheres to a strict code: Profits are divided equally, with 10% going toward “Paradise,” and they must never make love for free.
Their world is upended by the arrival of two strangers along with a rivalry with the Rakucho girl gang. First, seemingly straitlaced army widow Machiko (Mineko Nishikawa) joins the group but soon after becomes the ruthless mistress to local yakuza boss Hakamada (Jinpachi Nezu), who covets the building where the girls live, aware that the land will soon be valuable. The other is Hakamada’s long ago friend Shintaro Ibuki (Tsunehiko Watase), a former army corporal found shot by the women and nursed back to health. Finally, there’s Sumiko Kitagawa (Yuko Natari), leader of the glamorous Rakucho gang of prostitutes operating out of an abandoned bus. (One of her lieutenants in played by Mach Fumiake, the former wrestler-turned Wonder Woman-like heroine of Gamera Super Monster.)
In Gosha’s hands, the plot isn’t so much important as the characterizations are. He opens the story up considerably, since so much of the novel takes place in the shelled-out building’s interior, but regardless his focus is on the women’s backstories, their loneliness and sexual longings, their survival-mode toughness, and how they teeter between hope for their futures and utter despair at their present fates, living in rubble with not much to eat, when even a stray dog seems like a grand meal. Gosha contrasts this with the bright primary colors of their costumes and makeup, with especially bright red lipstick worn by most of the women.
They may be miserable and even pathetic wretches, but they retain a kind of dignity through their fierce independence. Their group’s strict code, theoretically, protects them, shielding them, for instance, from falling in with yakuza looking to become their pimps and stealing all their money. The movie has a lot of nudity and flashes of explicit violence, but in one sense this is a classically Japanese story, the subject of hundreds of movies, of women at the bottom rung of society struggling to get out of poverty and usually failing.
Gosha’s adaptation opens and ends as none of the other adaptations do, with a shot of the modern-day Tokyo skyline, specifically Shinjuku, the financial center of Japan, seen in long shot over an undoubtedly ironic enka song (enka being sentimental ballads) whose lyrics, unfortunately, aren’t translated here. While the film is certainly critical of the Japanese Occupation, suggesting American soldiers did little other than constantly rape Japanese women, it’s mostly a portrait of how cruel early postwar Japan was, that while the criminal underworld could profit from the black market and elsewhere, capitalism benefiting independently-minded women was basically unattainable in such an unforgiving environment. Basic humanity and empathy have no place here, but there are little flashes of it here and there, taking unexpected forms, particularly in Komasa’s rivalry with Kumiko.
Like Toei’s “Female Convict Scorpion” film series with Meiko Kaji, Gosha’s Gate of Flesh straddles a fine line between exploitation (extensive female nudity, simulated sex scenes) and a strange kind of liberating feminism. That’s certainly the case with the best of Female Convict Scorpion film, Jailhouse 41; despite its myriad rapes and attempted rapes and humiliations of women, ultimately that film absolutely is a portrait of fiercely independent, empowered women, and true here as well.
Equally impressive is Gosha’s depiction of early postwar Japan and its bombed-out black-market Tokyo neighborhoods. (And the little girl seen singing there—a young Hibari Misora, perhaps?) It doesn’t have a documentary-like realism—the too-contemporary musical score doesn’t help—but instead has a kind of heightened sense of good and bad nostalgia. The bright, colorful costumes worn by the prostitutes, some looking like movie stars, give it the air of how Japanese who lived through might want to remember those times.
One side note: The IMDb lists All-American line-backer Dick Butkus in the cast, presumably as one of the amorous American soldiers. That’s incorrect; he’s not in the film.
The 88 Films Region A/B Blu-ray of Gate of Flesh looks outstanding. No mention is made of the video transfer anywhere, but presumably this is at least a 2K, maybe 4K scan of the original negative. Color and contrast are excellent, and the film shows no signs of age-related wear or damage. The packaging does mention stereo audio, but the LPCM 2.0 mix sure sounded monophonic to my ears, and is listed as mono on 88’s website. It is, however, similarly excellent, like the video transfer, and supported by well-translated English subtitles.
Supplements consist of an audio commentary track by Amber T. and Jasper Sharp; an exclusive interview with Toei tattoo artist Seiji Mouri; a gallery and trailers; and what’s billed as an “Introduction by Earl Jackson.” It’s highly informative and recommended, but not as a pre-watch introduction as it runs more than 20 minutes and includes scads of footage from the film, including the ending. There’s also a full-color booklet that includes essays by Robin Gatto and Irene González-López.
Hideo Gosha’s Gate of Flesh is one of those titles ripe for rediscovery. Highly Recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV