Assault!: Jack The Ripper — Assault!: Jack The Ripper( Blu Ray)
Assault!: Jack The Ripper is a tonally unbalancing/troubling blend of awkward romantic drama and sexualized serial killer thriller/horror. The mid 70’s Japanese film is part of Nikkatsu Studios Roman Porno cycle- sitting in the sub-genre of Violent Porno. Here from 88 Films is a new Blu-Ray release of the film- taking an HD scan of the film, a new commentary track and an intro.
Assault!: Jack The Ripper( aka Bôkô Kirisaki Jakku) is from the year 1976. The film was directed/ co-written by Yasuharu Hasebe. He has thirty-six features to his name- these go from female ninjas meet adventure spoof Black Tight Killers (1966), peeping tom action thriller Sukeban Deka: Dirty Mary (1974), more than a few rape-based titles like Rape! (1976), Rape! 13th Hour (1977), Secret Honeymoon: Rape Train (1977), and Raping (1978).
The film focuses on two café employees- Yuri(Tamaki Katsura), a tightly black permed and brash waitress, and Ken( Yutaka Hayashi) a quiet, bespeckled cake decorator/ delivery driver. One night, the former forces the latter to drive her back from work on a lashing rainy night. On the way home, they come across a woman standing in the middle of the road in a blue hospital gown. She jumps in the back of his work car- proceeds to strip off and smear cake all over her breasts, and starts manically laughing, playing with a knife and a handful of razor blades. With shock, the pair pushes out of the car- she hangs on, and one thing leads to another- the woman ends up dead.
Ken is understandably very upset/ shocked, but Yuri goes into cool & calm mode, dragging the body into a nearby/abandoned junkyard to hide it. They get back to her flat- she strips off and pushes him to undress- before they make pushy ‘n’ passionate love.
From here, the pair go on a killing spree, with Ken using a razor-sharpened palette knife to do the deeds. The killings are very sexually motivated, with him ripping the women upwards from the genitals. The attacks are initially played over by bright/loved-up music, with each kill getting steadily more extreme/ disturbing, moving from a naked strung-up/pants-in-mouth attack, all the way to multiple slashing & gruelling gut-ripping attacks.
Both leads are most effective- Hayashi as the cake decorator shifts from being nervous and shy, to cool and fully psychotic. And Katsura, as his main love interest shifts from being in control and manipulative, to rather losing her grip.
As you’d expect with a Roman Porno- the runtime here is nicely tight at one hour and twelve minutes- with whole thing nicely shifting along. The blend of loved up/ mellow and nasty sexualized is wonderfully unbalanced, though towards the end both the tone & music shift to unpleasant and edgy.
The region B Blu-ray features a nicely bold and bright scan, which I’m guessing is new/exclusive to this release. On the extras side, we get two things on the disc- first of these is a commentary track with genre experts/ critics Amber T and Jasper Sharp. I’ve heard a few tracks from this pair now, and once again, it’s well researched, with great observations and amusing banter. They start by talking about how the film is such a wild ride, and talk of both going to similar cafes where the two lead characters work, and how Japanese cake largely doesn’t taste very good. We find out that this film was the first lead role for Katsura, and she, surprisingly, considering the film's content, got nominated for an award for her acting in it, and the film was a box office hit. They talk about at their height Nikkatsu were making six Roman Porno films a month. They discuss how the picture has a graphic, mean-spirited edge, yet it also has moments of ridiculous fun. They talk about its music and how this elevates it to another level. Later on, they discuss how director Hasebe didn’t like film sex scenes, and how the murders are shot better than the sex in the picture. They discuss the work of Hasebe, and the film's two leads. So, most certainly a must-play track, which I will return to.
Otherwise, we have Body and Blood (11.41) which finds Kei Chiba talking about the picture- this features some interesting titbits of info/ observation, like the writers liked American B movies and hardboiled novels. They were inspired to write the film after reading Colin Wilson’s book about the Moors Murders. And they couldn’t decide on an ending. Though he does give us a beat-by-beat reading of the plot, which feels a little pointless, and due to this, you most certainly don’t want to watch this before the film!.
In finishing, I'd say if you have a penchant for where sleaze and violence meet, and dig tonally unbalancing filmmaking Assault!: Jack The Ripper will be of interest. With a great-looking scan and a small but decent selection of extras on this new 88 Films release.