Angel Guts: Red Classroom (1979) - By Duane L. Martin

Film Reviews: Angel Guts: Red Classroom (1979) - By Duane L. Martin
Posted on Thursday, March 31, 2005 @ 23:00:00 Mountain Standard Time by Duane

The series of Angel Guts movies are all based off a manga created by Takashi Ishii and all five films revolve around the rape and abuse of the main character, Nami and a guy named Tetsuro who is usually the good guy with some dark things in his past who tries to help her. In this case, Nami is a girl who appeared in an adult film where she was raped in a school classroom, and Tetsuro is a porn producer who's become so desensitized to sex that he has a hard time enjoying it anymore. It's not until he sees Nami in that film that he truly felt alive and turned on again.

After a lot of searching, he manages to track her down, and after meeting with her, he discovers that the film she was in wasn't just a film. She actually was raped in that classroom. After that, she became a nymphomaniac, not caring who she had sex with and feeling like nothing more than a piece of meat to be used. Tetsuro tries to make her understand that he doesn't see her that way and that he wants to go out on a regular date with her so they can get to know each other. She agrees, but when it came time to meet her for the date, Tetsuro was no where to be found because he had been arrested for unknowingly having a fifteen year old girl accuse him of rape, even though he didn't do it. When he didn't show up, Nami went to a bar and hooked up with the first guy she saw, and then spend the next three years moving from guy to guy until she finally ended up working in a live sex show in some sleazy bar.

Tetsuro finally found her, but by now he was married to another woman and had a baby with her. Nami was so wrapped up in the life of sexual degredation by this time that there was no way out for her, even though Tetsuro tried to get her to leave.

Despite the varying quality of the Angel Guts movies, they all do one thing particularly well. They show how being raped affects the lives of women in the longer term rather than just at the moment of the incident. In this story, the girl is turned into little more than a zombie, moving from one sexual encounter to the next, not caring how abused or degraded she is. She's completely lost her identity as a human being and sees herself as nothing more than a toy to be used for men's pleasure. At some point after the rape film was shot, she tried to commit suicide, but failing that, she just gave up.

Both the acting and the sex scenes in this film were quite good. The sex was very hot at times and both Yuuki Mizuhara (Nami) and Keizo Kanie (Tetsuro) did a great job in bringing out the torment both of their characters felt right down to their very souls.

The film had a decent story, but I do have two problems with how it was executed. The first is the pacing. There were points in the film that seemed to drag on way longer than they needed to, and some of the sex scenes felt overly extended. This actually lead to creating the second problem which was a lack of story. There is a story here, but with more dialogue and character development, as well as a bigger role for some of the side characters, the whole thing could have been played out far better than it was. As it is, you'll find yourself caring about Nami and wanting her to get out of that life so she can find something better, but there's always this feeling like you're missing a lot of the story and you don't know enough about the people in it. Basically, it leaves you feeling like there could have been more substance to it all.

I guess when I watch rape films like this, I want them to be more personal. To really explore the woman and how she's feeling and what she's thinking. While this film does that, it doesn't really go into it as much as I would have liked. Basically this is a take it or leave it kind of a film. If you see it, you'll probably think it's an ok film. If you don't see it, you're not really missing out on anything important. When you look at the series as a whole though, the individual films do have some important and disturbing messages about how rape affects people's lives, and the series as a whole is more than just the sum of it's parts.

If you'd like to pick up this disc, or check out some of ArtsmagicDVD's other releases you can check out their website at http://www.artsmagicdvd.com.