THE KYOTO CONNECTION (a.k.a. Journey To Japan) **** Japan 1973 Dir: Sadao Nakajima. 72 mins
Ingrid Jacobsen (Christina Lindberg of They Call Her One Eye fame) arrives in Japan and takes a ride with a local man who appears harmless, they go out for coffee and she ends up going back to his apartment, where he brutally attacks her and rapes her. She is then subject to being beaten and put in restraints and continually raped by her abuser, who becomes slowly obsessed by her body and sultry beauty. He begins to take photographs of her in numerous positions, he then starts to read a guide book on how to please women sexually and tries his new found techniques. Ingrid seems to get pleasure from this, and soon he removes her restraints only to find she later escapes and ends up tortured and beaten by a local gang. She then runs into her attacker again and Stockholm syndrome ensues.
There’s a lot more to all this, as all this happens within the second act of the movie. There are twists and turns a foot, more nudity and fulfilled sexual desires and so much more.
The film looks at the issue of Stockholm syndrome , but it goes deeper than the in your face scenes of rape and nudity throughout.
To sum this film up, you feel like you need a long soak to wash the nasty away directly after watching it. This is video nasty style grindhouse right here, nudity a plenty and perverse rape scenes. Don’t brush this film off as just another 1970’s exploitation piece, because it’s so much more than that!
I adored this film. I remember watching a copy of this years ago, but I appreciated it more on this recent viewing than I did around 20 years ago, I’ve always been a huge fan of foreign cinema and love this style of grindhouse film. The director Sadao Nakajima has over 68 credits to his name, he’s a cult Japanese filmmaker who, up until a few years ago, continued to make movies!
The ending of this great piece of foreign cinema is pure perfection, it still shocks me to this day! So, even if you don’t normally watch films unless they’re perfectly dubbed, take a chance of this subtitled dark cinematic gem.
A true cult movie right here…that deserves so much more praise than it gets!
Review by Tony Newton
THE KYOTO CONNECTION (a.k.a. Journey To Japan) is available on DVD via the links below:
https://www.cheezymovies.com/product-page/kyoto-connection
