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Woods Are Wet
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (16th November 2024). |
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The Film
 Accused of murdering her mistress, young servant Sachiko (In the Realm of Passion's Hiroko Isayama) flees on foot through into the mountains where she is picked up by the Rolls Royce of Yoko (Man & Woman Sexology: Private Lessons' Rie Nakagawa), a beautiful and kindly-seeming woman of wealth who intuits that Sachiko has had a hard life and reveals that her own misery doing the bidding of a dreadful husband. Taking Sachiko back with her to her mountaintop inn, Yoko offers Sachiko not a job but half of her estate for the consolation of her company. As soon as Yoko's husband Ryűnosuke (The Demon's Hatsuo Yamaya) returns, however, the couple's real intentions are revealed. They know well who Sachiko is and are aroused by her innocence and morality. Ryűnosuke reveals that their inn is a front for divesting guests of their money, and challenges Sachiko to warn their new arrivals (Branded to Kill's Akira Takahashi and Naked Rashomon's Kôichi Hori). Their survival means her freedom; if she chooses to run away, then Ryűnosuke will call the police and no one will believe an accused murderess. Despite a title that suggests a Nikkatsu Roman Porno romp in the fields, the scenario of Woods Are Wet sounds inspired by the Marquis de Sade's "Justine" with its innocent heroine repeatedly offered shelter by people who mean to abuse her; indeed, the end credits – there are no credits at the start apart from the title card – cite "Justine" and the Sachiko's backstory sounds like it was derived directly from the Sade text. The brief film itself which runs just over an hour, however, is less an adaptation of specific episodes than a distillation of Sadean morality – we have no idea if Ryűnosuke is a reader of Sade or if his perspective is born out of experience – argued over a delirious set-piece involving flogging, rape, sodomy, and death – blood from simple gunshot wounds spurts like ruptured arteries in samurai films but here evokes monstrous ejaculations of the entire life force – culminating in a feast on the stripped, dead bodies (literally atop them). While some Roman Porno films used optical fogging or compositions with foreground elements blocking genitalia, Woods are Wet mattes off the offending bits in black squares that sometimes threaten to swallow the frame. While the open ending is nowhere near as dark as Sade's novel or many other Roman Porno films, it might actually not be an "open ending" promising a follow-up but a means of conveying Sachiko's despair as she holds to her beliefs yet must remain complicit as her hosts "do things we could not bear not to do" rather than having her killed off or turning on her tormentors (since this is a Roman Porno film, actress Isayama can only resists participating in the physical action for so long but this scene at least allows her to convey something more than screaming and moaning). Director Tatsumi Kumashiro but he worked almost exclusively in the genre as director and writer from 1968 into the eighties including the acclaimed Roman Porno The Woman with Red Hair. 
Video
Although it made the rounds on the gray market as a VHS, Woods are Wet was not one of the Nikkatsu Roman Porno titles that found its way stateside on DVD via labels like Mondo Macabro or Synapse's Impulse Pictures line. We have no idea of the provenance of Nikkatsu's master for 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.45:1 widescreen Blu-ray but it looks quite good given certain technical limitations. The "wide" 2.45:1 framing seems to expose the more of the frame than intended including some matte box vignetting along the right edge – although that may have just been a technical gaffe – and the focus is off in a couple of the location scenes early in the film including a close to wide zoom out and an entire dialogue scene between Sachiko and Yoko beside the Rolls Royce. Fine detail is not exemplary, but that may lie in the overall softness of the photography in addition to some digital filtering that marks this as an older Nikkatsu HD master possibly prepared a decade ago. There is an occasional vertical negative scratch that was probably printed onto the interpositive and internegative. Blacks are deep from the shadows to the optical mattes without the color space issues of some earlier Japanese SD and HD masters. The image coarsens considerably during some of the opticals, which is more evident during the moodily-lit orgy scene as it cuts back and forth between optical shots and those untreated. 
Audio
The Japanese LPCM 2.0 mono audio is in fine condition, sounding free of distracting hiss with clear delivery of post-dubbed dialogue. Sync is loose in a few scenes but that may be for stylistic effect for just the nature of the production as it is mostly in the case of Ryűnosuke while he is running around singing/reciting a song heard elsewhere on the soundtrack that seems like a "perversion" songs touting Japanese nationalism (his recital might not even have been what he was saying on the set so there might have been no way of matching his mouth movements). Optional English subtitles are free of errors. 
Extras
The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by Japanese film experts Jasper Sharp & Lindsay Hallam who discuss the Nikkatsu Roman Porno genre (Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema), Sharp having written on the genre specifically and Hallam on cinematic representations of Sade (Screening the Marquis de Sade: Pleasure, Pain and the Transgressive Body in Film). Hallum notes that Sade adaptations actually work better when transposed to different times and places, and that the film adapting "Justine" solves the issue of the novel feeling episodic to the point of monotony as illustrated in the Jess Franco adaptation. She also provides a rundown of the different revisions of "Justine" published during Sade's lifetime, and its intentions as a parody of Samuel Richardson's "Pamela" which had been subtitled "virtue rewarded" and Sade's argument that the "path of vice" rewards. Sharp compares the film to another Nikkatsu Sade adaptation The Prosperities of Vice that came at the end of the Roman Porno line, as well as Woods are Wet's 1920s setting during the Taishō era marked by an influx of Western influences, while Hallum notes that Sachiko's backstory references the Bressac episode of "Justine" but that there is no real analogue in the novel for the married hotel owning sadists although she does note that they are Sadean characters and notes the ways in which specifically Ryűnosuke embodies such a mold, as well as the political subtext which has parallels with Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo. Sharp does distinguish the Roman Porno films from "pink films" as well as discussing the career of Yamaya who was a stage actor whose film works were primarily in the pink genre – one of his first film roles was as "Marukido Sadao" in The Embryo Hunts in Secret directed by Kôji Wakamatsu who directed Pink Films independently before the studios jumped on the bandwagon – and that he had once belonged to a theater company of Shűji Terayama (who dealt with S&M in his "Story of O" sequel Fruits of Passion). In "Pleasure and Pain: Mio Hatokai on Woods are Wet" (9:40), the editor of "Nikkatsu Roman Porno: Sexual Aesthetics and Politics" discusses the anti-establishment elements of Kumashiro's filmography and that he made the film as a reaction to the trial charging Nikkatsu of violating the obscenity law that would last eight years. She also reveals that the film was only screened for three days before Japanese censorship body Eirin had it pulled from screens objecting not to the sex but to the violence during the sex scenes, making it hard to see for some time. Hatokai also discusses the cast, noting that although the film was dubbed Kumahsiro was enraged when Nakagawa started speaking in a "pompous aristocratic" voice but she refused to back down and it remains even in her post-synched performance, the evidence of the Taisho era in the westernized setting, and Kumashiro's distinctive touches within the style of Roman Porno filming of sex scenes (along with the contribution of genre regular cinematographer Yonezô Maeda). Also included are a stills gallery (2:40) and the theatrical trailer (1:51). 
Packaging
The case includes a reversible cover with original and newly commissioned artwork by Silver Ferox while the first pressing includes the DVD copy – presumably it is Region 2 but it was not supplied so we do not know if it is NTSC or PAL (the DVD in the 88 Films' 2015 Blu-ray/DVD combo of Umberto Lenzi's Eyeball was NTSC – an OBI strip, and booklet notes by Dr. Virgine Selavy (not provided for review).
Overall
Running just over an hour, Tatsumi Kumashiro's Woods are Wet manages to deliver sufficient perversion while also being a concise distillation of Sade and his mammoth episodic work "Justine".
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