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| Images courtesy of Toei |
I think you only love one person in your whole life.
--Sada Abe
Teruo Ishii was the king of anthology films, with many of them exploring sexual violence, punishments, and torture. With Love and Crime (1969), he ventured into true crime territory and explored transgressions performed by women, and in one case, implied to be perpetuated by women's "nature" (a problematic suggestion, to be sure). Nowadays, true crime is a trendy hobby, with numerous miniseries on Netflix and thousands of podcasts dedicated to it. YouTubers film themselves putting on makeup while chatting about cases, savoring each gruesome detail, and centering their personalities and brands around it. The disgusting details of any murder case are a Google search away, instantly available for gawking. In the late sixties, it must have felt even more taboo to see these cases reenacted on the screen, as the only information would be whispered secondhand stories, short news snippets, or newspaper articles.
Like most anthologies, the film starts out with a wrap-around story, and this one follows Murase (Teruo Yoshida), a forensic pathologist. He is shocked when the dead body of his wife Yukiko comes across his examination table (you would think they would send her body to a different examiner, but I digress). She apparently committed suicide, which prompts Murase to research crimes committed by women to maybe glean some insight into his wife's actions. Each case he looks into is turned into a vignette based on a real-life crime and takes place in different eras of Japanese history.
The first case is a "crime of passion" and is based on the Hotel Nihonkaku Murders. Kunie Munakata (Rika Fujie) works at an inn with Shibuya (Takashi Fujiki), a handsome handyman. Kunie schemes to take over the business by murdering the husband and wife who own it, and she instigates her plan by using her beauty to seduce the husband, all while sleeping with Shibuya as well. This is the most straightforward of the tales, and it also explores the volatile relationship between Kunie and Shibuya, who seem to find killing people a powerful aphrodisiac.
The second case is the most infamous one, as it concerns Sada Abe, who murdered her lover by strangulation and then cut off his penis and testicles and kept them as mementos. In an astonishing aside, Ishii was able to secure an interview with the real Sade Abe, and she is shown speaking to Teruo Yoshida on a bridge. It's a brief interview shot from a distance, so as not to spook Abe, but seeing her standing gracefully and demurely as she is asked about her crimes is surreal. She only seemed regretful about the loss of her love and not the fact that he was gone because she murdered him. Ishii's version of the tale is kind to Abe, and if one looks into her life story, she went through a lot, especially during her days as a sex worker. Her story was adapted years later in the 1976 film In the Realm of the Senses, directed by Nagisa Ōshima, which was quite controversial because it contained unsimulated sexual acts.
Ishii employed a more arthouse style for the third case, which covers serial killer Yoshio Kodaira's terrifying spree in the mid-1940s. It shifts to black-and-white, and it follows him as he kills several young women in post-WWII Japan. One of the most despicable parts of his plan was using food to lure women into a false sense of security around him since it was scarce and promising them jobs and more food in the future. Initially, it feels like a strange aside because the premise of Love and Crime is supposed to be about female criminals, yet this part is focused on a man. The way it is explained is that the women have a "quality" about them that drives some men mad, and that is why Kodaira is compelled to rape and choke them to death. It's pretty off-putting and comes off as victim-blaming, plus the murders themselves are incredibly upsetting to watch. It wouldn't be an Ishii film if it didn't randomly dive straight into the deep end of depravity, though.
In the final story, Ishii turns his attention to Oden Takahashi, who had the distinction of being the last woman put to death by being beheaded. Her executioner is played by none other than Tatsumi Hijikata, inventor of a dancing art known as Butoh and who also appeared in Ishii's earlier film Horrors of Malformed Men (1969). The standout aspect of this tale is the disgusting leprosy makeup for Takahashi's husband, who then follows her around, trying to force her to make love to him with pus squirting everywhere and his eyeball popping out. It almost feels like a zombie flick at times.
Unfortunately, the wrap-around story ends on an anti-climatic note, with Murase not finding out anything about the motive behind his wife's suicide, and he just strolls off into the hall musing out loud, "I guess we will never know what happened." Quite a disappointing ending for a mixed-bag of a film, but that is par for the course with anthology works in general. Even so, Ishii's penchant for the sordid and sometimes dark humor makes for a compelling mixture and a peek into the darker corners of humanity.
Extras:
The full-length commentary with Jaspar Sharp and Amber T. is entertaining as they switch between analyzing the film and joking around a bit as well. They discuss topics ranging from color grading, the history of the production, facts about the criminal cases, feminism and women's liberation, and Ero-Guro in general. Mark Schilling has a short interview where he talks about different eras in Japanese history as they pertain to the film, as well as stylistic tropes that Ishii likes to use in his work. Nathan Stuart's essay is an excellent examination of the themes of the film as well as providing some interesting tid-bits from behind-the-scenes.
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SPECIAL FEATURES:
- High Definition Blu-ray presentation in 2.35:1 aspect ratio
- Original Mono 2.0 audio with new English subtitles
- Audio Commentary by Jasper Sharp & Amber T.
- Brand new filmed introduction by Mark Schilling
- Stills Gallery
- Trailer
- Original and newly commissioned artwork by Ilan Sheady
- Booklet by Nathan Stuart