Rape! 13th Hour (Japan, 1977)

I'm back! Committed to further adventures into Asian cinema on a regular basis. In a world of motherfuckers getting excited about Jackie Chan steel books and other assorted cultural detritus, it's about time someone made a stand for the hard-boiled nasty shit. Yeah! Come on! I begin with easing us into the back half of 2024 by covering  asleazy movies from  Japan. Snuggle up and let's get to it.

Rape! 13th Hour is a Nikkatsu roughie sex film directed by Yasuharu Hasebe and was released in 1977. These things were always short and sleazy with the sole intention of being so yet sometimes they were kinda arty, like getting beat over the head with an Italian bust by Michelangelo I guess.  Story wise it covers an anonymous red-coated, sunglasses wearing serial rapist who takes a young petrol station attendant under his wing, sort of like how Batman would have Robin, only these guys like to rape women and rob them. Stalking the red-coated rapist is a duo of homosexual thugs as their young disco boy boss saw him rape someone and now he wants the guy to fuck him. Red Coat isn't interested and so the chase is on!



With a name like 

Rape! 13th Hour you would guess easy that this is a film liable to offend and you would guess right. If someone isn't getting raped, they're getting slapped about or beat over the head with a wrench or a hammer. The rape sequences are drawn out and squirm inducing, most of the women seem to enjoy the experience in that usual ridiculous exploitation film fashion. Yet it also works as a sort of sleazy and unpredictable thriller, shot with an artistic, almost Argento, bent. Hasebe had a strong visual sense, crafting subtle metaphors with colours and images, such as Red Coat's tattoo which I won't spoil. The soundtrack also swells with baroque and jazz themes, almost in a Clockwork Orange fashion, fusing these violent images with soft but sterile music. Hasebe was a proven director for Nikkatsu, helming many a Yakuza picture there prior to Nikkatsu's turn to soft porn. You can tell as there's not a wasted shot or second of film.

I haven't got much experience with Nikkatsu's other dirty movies so I haven't got many points of reference but Hasebe's product seems more hard boiled than the typical product, a story of predatory outsiders and misfits coming together in a mess of lust, rape and violence. Red Coat has this sort of enigmatic, mysterious cool about him that the film manages to cast him as a weird sort of anti-hero role. In a movie about rape that can't be very good but Rape! 13th Hour is trash so it may as well be well made nihilistic trash. If you've never seen a movie of this ilk or from this era, it's as good a place as any, especially for those who're more used to Hong Kong Cat III films, it's like a distant cousin of something like Red to Kill.