Pink Line

These listings are for the standard and limited edition Blu-rays. The limited edition and standard edition versions are identical, aside from the packaging and booklet.

The 1970s through 1990s saw a boom in transgressive genre filmmaking throughout Asia, but particularly in Japan where the "Pinku Eiga" became one of the most popular types of films produced in the country. With young filmmakers seizing an opportunity to hone their craft, countless soon-to-be celebrated directors created work which were more daring, unusual, and often shocking than just about any of the other genre cinema ergering across the globe. Pink Line will present exclusive new restorations of select works from key Asian erotic filmmakers, with a focus on Japan's Pinku Eiga genre.

VOLUME #1

One of the most esteemed and transgressive filmmakers ever to work in Japan's explosively popular Pink Film genre, Hisayasu Satô crafted erotic films that were both genre-defying and artfully-minded. While Satô's work is infused with horror and thriller tropes, it boasts a punk and avant-garde aesthetic singularly his own. In this debut release, Pink Line begins to explore this immense body of work with three of Satô's most outlandish and profound features, each newly and exclusively restored in 2K from their 35mm original camera negatives with newly-translated English subtitles, all under the supervision of Satô himself.

In LUSTMORD (aka Pleasure Kill), Satô commences his meditation on the fusion of sex and death. Eiji, a reclusive and awkward teenage boy, is fixated on creating a serum capable of breaking down the barrier between pleasure and pain, much to the dismay of his research physician mother. Deciding to conduct his own experiments, Eiji slips the serum to several women, but is unprepared for the horrifying results. Later remade by Satô as the straight horror feature Naked Blood, this early directing effort conjures a remarkable waking nightmare approach, as the impending threat of violence and insanity permeates every scene as it builds towards a typically cynical and cryptic conclusion.

RE-WIND (aka Celluloid Nightmare) functions as Satô's tribute to Michael Powell's masterpiece Peeping Tom. After a grisly, point-of-view snuff videotape is found in a refrigerator, a young man becomes obsessed with discovering who made it and whether or not the brutal murder was real. As he delves into Tokyo's underground video scene, his own perversions come to the fore as he grows ever closer to uncovering the shocking truth, alongside a female reporter who calls herself Crime Hunter. Fusing gruesome gore and raw sex while wryly playing with the artifice inherent to the video format, RE-WIND remains one of Satô's most powerful and impressive early works.

LOVE LETTER IN THE SAND (aka Pervert Ward: Torturing the White Uniform), is Satô crafting a noir-inspired erotic thriller, using blazing, heavily-gelled color. During a month of unusually heavy rain in Tokyo, a mystery assailant has been brutally assaulting and killing people with a metal bat. When a handsome young man with amnesia is found outside an area hospital, the nurse who discovered him begins to suspect that he may in fact be the assailant. But her own strange erotic fixations with him, and the questionable involvement of the doctor tasked with the amnesia victim, lead them all down an increasingly twisted path of deeply-rooted trauma and violence.

directed by: Hisayasu Satô 
starring: Masae Abe, Sayaka Hitomi, Kiyomi Itô, Maya Shiraki, Yoko Fujita, 
Shigeru Sasaki, Nanako Fujitani, Yui Hoshikawa
1987, 1988, 1988 / 58 min, 64 min, 61 min / 1.85:1 / Japanese DTS-HD MA 1.0

Additional info:

• 2-Disc Region Free Blu-ray

• Reversible cover artwork

• Newly translated English subtitles

LUSTMORD

• Commentary track with Japanese cinema expert Jasper Sharp for Lustmord

• "Kill Kill" - an interview with director Hisayasu Satô

• "Written in Blood" - an interview with writer Taketoshi Watari

• "Walking in Circles" - a locations featurette with director Hisayasu Satô covering all three films

RE-WIND

• Commentary track with film critic Simon Abrams

• "Visual Pleasure" - an interview with director Hisayasu Satô

• "Caught in the Act" - an interview with actress Kiyomi Itô

• "Shooting His Shot" - an interview with writer Yumeno Shiro

LOVE LETTER IN THE SAND

• Commentary track with film historian & author Samm Deighan

• "Medical Mayhem" - an interview with director Hisayasu Satô

• "Pretty in Pink" - an interview with film critic Risaku Kiridoshi

VOLUME #2

As pink film auteur Hisayasu Satô evolved as a filmmaker, he both expanded and refined his fascination with connecting elements of melancholy, violence, voyeurism, and repressed sexuality. In this second installment of THE FILMS OF HISAYASU SATÔ, Pink Line presents two of his most celebrated and also most controversial features from his prolific early 90s output, presented in new director-approved restorations from their 35mm original camera negatives.

In AN ARIA ON GAZES (aka The Bedroom), an exclusive Tokyo club offers a safe haven for its clients to anonymously indulge in perverse and deeply personal erotic fantasies as the lines between reality and imagination become increasingly opaque - and dangerous. One of Satô’s most lyrical and structurally experimental films, which effortlessly blends moments of tenderness and brutality, centers on a stirring performance by Kiyomi Itô (Muscle) and an appearance by real-life cannibal Issei Sagawa.

In LOVE - ZERO = INFINITY, Satô’s focus on bonding and connection through voyeurism hits a fever pitch in this simultaneously unsettling and romantic saga of two disturbed outsiders finding unexpectedly kindred spirits in each other. Tōru Bessho, a lonely voyeur whose feverish desire for companionship borders on stalking, is hired by a doctor to follow his mysterious young wife. But as they each grow increasingly aware of the other’s presence, violent desires also begin to erupt within them in this fatalistic piece, blurring intimacy and blood ritual.

directed by: Hisayasu Satô 
starring: Kiyomi Itô, Momori Asano, Kyôko Nakamura, Issei Sagawa, Takeshi Itô, Ryûmei Homura
1992, 1994 / 127 min (combined) / 1.85:1 / Japanese 1.0 Mono

Additional info:

• Region Free Blu-ray

• Reversible cover artwork

• Newly translated English subtitles for both films

AN ARIA ON GAZES:

• Commentary track with Asian cinema historian Pierce Conran & critic James Marsh

• "I’m Being Watched" (14 min) - an interview with director Hisayasu Satô

• "Lost in the Bedroom" (12 min) - an interview with actress Kyôko Nakamura

LOVE - ZERO = INFINITY:

• Commentary track with Japanese cinema expert Jasper Sharp

• "Unidentified Followed Objects (UFOs)" (10 min) - an interview with director Hisayasu Satô

• "Walking in Circles: Part 2" (24 min) - a locations featurette with director Hisayasu Satô

VOLUME #3

A master of combining the macabre with nihilistic and ill-fated character studies of women on the brink of madness, this third volume of THE FILMS OF HISAYASU SATÔ collects a trio of the master filmmaker's most unsettling (and unpredictable) looks at doomed and demented relationships, all newly restored in 2K from their 35mm original camera negatives, under Satô's supervision, and presented by Pink Line on Blu-ray for the first time.

Satô's study of the psychosexual world of loneliness, KYRIE ELEISON tells the story of a socially isolated medical researcher who begins a series of bizarre experiments she hopes may heal her boyfriend left comatose after an accident. But as her wild experiments in wiretapping have increasingly violent and masochistic results, the lines between reality and nightmare start to irreparably blur.

In RAFURESHIA, Satô takes a much lighter, almost absurdist tone, in this equally bizarre approach to the Pink film, as he explores the interwoven lives of a set of very different women, as each tries to explore and harness their sexuality in the face of unavoidable abuse. Set in an almost fairytale arc, albeit one with incestuous fathers, dominatrixes, and lecherous homeless men, RAFURESHIA plays with mood and comedy with surprising results.

Satô updates the tropes of a classic “rape and revenge” drama in the highly voyeuristic TURTLE VISION, as a traumatized young woman grows into a cynical and vengeful adult, focusing her carnal and often bloodthirsty rage on the men who court her. Dramatically photographed with exemplary use of Satô’s fixation on video and TV monitors, the story is framed around a professional cameraman (working for an unknown shadowy outfit) whose work takes him to shoot covert footage of sexual acts.

directed by: Hisayasu Satô 
starring: Takeshi Itô, Kinako, Yumi Yoshiyuki, Kiyomi Itô, Rei Takagi, Naomi Sugishita, Miki Fukada
1991-1995 / 186 min (combined) / 1.85:1 / Japanese 1.0 Mono

Additional info:

• 2-disc Region Free Blu-ray Set

• KYRIE ELEISON commentary track with Japanese cinema expert Jasper Sharp

• RAFURESHIA commentary track with Asian cinema historian Pierce Conran & critic James Marsh

• TURTLE VISION commentary track with critic Amber T

• “Lord, Have Mercy” (9 min) - an interview with Hisayasu Satô on KYRIE ELEISON

• "Escape 3" (14 min) - an interview with Hisayasu Satô on RAFURESHIA

• "Revenge in S&M" (12 min) - an interview with Hisayasu Satô on TURTLE VISION

• "A Guide to Pink" (20 min) - an interview with critic Yoshiyuki Hayashida

• "Walking in Circles: Part 3" (27 min) - Shinjuku with Hisayasu Satô

• Reversible sleeve artwork

• Newly translated English subtitles

VOLUME #4

Between his earliest films in the mid 1980s and his 1990s "golden age," Hisayasu Satô consistently developed and honed his cinematic voice. Drawing on contrasts in his work across radically different career stages, these three films offer a range of insights into the artist's most compelling and recurring obsessions.

One of his earliest features, SAVE THE LAST DANCE FOR ME (1986), Satô offers a meta-reflection on learning his craft through the story of two former film students facing the world and their own troubled relationship, through video-voyeurism and sex work. When violence manifests within sexual situations, a sense of fatalism threatens to take the lovers to darker places. A profound meditation upon loneliness and especially distance, both physical and perceived, Satô begins his visual experiments involving rephotographed video textures and discordant dialogue.

In SURVEY MAP OF A PARADISE LOST (1988), an investigative reporter gets wrapped up in a story about phone sex clubs, and a sex worker named Midori who worked in one. Unexpectedly thrust into a world of sadomasochism, isolation, and suicidal musings, he struggles to fulfill his job responsibilities. But when it emerges that a recent death involving a sex worker was videotaped, and the reporter obtains the tape, they can hardly avoid becoming more deeply involved. Maintaining his obsession with the poetry of loneliness, Satô weaves a story of characters obsessed with death and exploring the most violent sides of pleasure.

As the theatrical heyday of Pink films was winding down, SOFT SKIN (1998) shows Satô's lens turning to the absurd and comedic, eschewing the cynicism and unhappiness experienced by the characters in his earliest work for something more whimsical. When Minako, a lonely housewife neglected by her busy, self-centered husband and adult children, finds a suitor, they concoct a false kidnapping narrative to tease her family. Meanwhile, a young woman responsible for a series of chainsaw murders is also on the run. While television news (including Minako's daughter as a newscaster) devours these sensational stories, all manner of bizarre interactions unfold as Minako contemplates her future.

Details

Director(s): Hisayasu Satô

Starring: Moeko Izawa, Toru Nakane, Junko Asahina, Tomomi Kuribayashi, Kiyomi Itō, Rio Yanagawa, Bunmei Tobayama, Ai Kobayashi, Yutaka Ikejima, Hiromi Kuronuma, Kenji Mizuhashi

Release Year: 1998, 1986, 1988

Runtime: 88 min, 60 min, 65 min

Aspect Ratio(s): 1.85:1

Language(s): JPN- Japanese

Sound: 1.0 Mono

Subtitles: English

Format: Blu-ray

Disc Info: 2-disc Region Free Blu-ray Set

Restoration: New director-approved restorations, performed by Vinegar Syndrome

Packaging Artist(s): Steak Mtn.

Genre: Horror

SKU: PL-004 CASE

Bonus Content

• "She’s a Star" (13 min) - an interview with Hisayasu Satô on SOFT SKIN

• "No Caller ID" (15 min) - an interview with Hisayasu Satô on SURVEY MAP OF A PARADISE LOST

• "Office Lady" (13 min) - an interview with Hisayasu Satô on SAVE THE LAST DANCE FOR ME

• "The Abnormal Family" (18 min) - an interview with Kyôko Godai, co-writer of SOFT SKIN

• "Walking in Circles: Part 4" (13 min) - Shinjuku with Hisayasu Satô

• "The One They Don't Want You To See!" (23 min) - a bonus interview with Hisayasu Satô on HORSE, WOMAN, DOG

• Commentary track for SOFT SKIN with Japanese cinema expert Jasper Sharp

• Commentary track for SURVEY MAP OF A PARADISE LOST with film critic Simon Abrams

• Commentary track for SAVE THE LAST DANCE FOR ME with Asian cinema historian Pierce Conran & critic James Marsh