is a 1980

1980 in film

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 violent pink film in Nikkatsu

Nikkatsu

is a Japanese entertainment company well known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio. The name Nikkatsu is an abbreviation of Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally "Japan Cinematograph Company".-History:...

's Roman Porno series. It was director Naosuke Kurosawa's debut work.

Synopsis

A woman living in an expensive Tokyo apartment suspects that the piano tuner living on the same floor is the man who raped her years before. When she witnesses the man raping another woman, she becomes convinced of his identity, but is unwilling to report him to the police because of a mysterious attraction she has towards him.

Cast

• Erina Miyai as Saeko
• Yōko Azusa as Sachi
• Yūko Ōsaki as Mayuko
• Miki Yamaji as High school girl
• Beniko Iida as Young housewife
• Keijirō Shiga as Takaya
• Toshikatsu Matsukaze as Kōichi
• Ren Seidō as Keigo
• Rei Takagi as Glamorous woman
• Yūko Araragi as Woman in the gym
• Yūko Katagiri as Opera singer
• Hidetoshi Kageyama
• Setsu Midorikawa
• Yōko Ōyagi
• Midori Mori

Background

Zoom In: Rape Apartments was an unofficial sequel to director Kōyū Ohara

Koyu Ohara

is a Japanese film director best known known for his popular Roman Porno films, Fairy in a Cage and the Pink Tush Girl series...

's Zoom Up: Rape Site

Zoom Up: Rape Site

is a 1979 Japanese film in Nikkatsu's Roman porno series, directed by Koyu Ohara. This film is the first in Nikkatsu's "Zoom Up" series and its success led to six more sequels in the same motif...

(1979), inspired by the success of that film and written by that film's screenwriter Chiho Katsurako. For Zoom In: Rape Apartments, Nikkatsu intentionally cut back on the extreme violence displayed in Ohara's earlier film. The surrealistic elements of the film, such as a scene in which liquid dripping from a woman's vagina bursts into flame upon hitting the ground, has led some to compare Kurosawa's style to that of Seijun Suzuki

Seijun Suzuki

, born Seitaro Suzuki on May 24, 1923, is a Japanese filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter. His films are renowned by film enthusiasts worldwide for their jarring visual style, irreverent humour, nihilistic cool and entertainment-over-logic sensibility...

.

The film inspired a series of films using the Zoom In/Zoom Up title, including Zoom Up: Woman From The Dirty Magazine (1980), Zoom Up: Sexual Crime Report (1981), Zoom Up: Genuine Look At A Stripper (1982), Zoom Up: Graduation Photos (1984), and Zoom Up: Special Masturbation (1986).

Critical appraisal

Japanese critics praised director Naosuke Kurosawa's use of imagery in Zoom In: Rape Apartments and the film's cinematography. They were not as impressed with the script, however, complaining that it was weak. In their Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films, Thomas and Yuko Mihara Weisser give the film a rating of two-and-a-half out of four stars. They judge that the film's strong visual sense compensates for the writing, noting that pink film scripts are not generally the best. They write, "Kurosawa's 'color-and-shadow' work is akin to that of an erotic Seijun Suzuki

Seijun Suzuki

, born Seitaro Suzuki on May 24, 1923, is a Japanese filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter. His films are renowned by film enthusiasts worldwide for their jarring visual style, irreverent humour, nihilistic cool and entertainment-over-logic sensibility...

." Allmovie warns that the film's subject matter is not for all audiences, but judges it to be "one of the Nikkatsu studio's most unusual pinku eiga films."

Availability

Zoom In: Rape Apartments was released theatrically in Japan on March 15, 1980. It was released on DVD in Japan on March 24, 2006 as part of Geneon's third wave of Nikkatsu Roman porno series.