NRP-icon

There’s more to Japanese genre fare than giant mon­ster movies.  Internationally-savvy schlock fiends have been get­ting an edu­ca­tion in the extremes of this country’s cin­ema over the last few years thanks to a hand­ful of brave indie DVD labels that have been explor­ing the wilder cor­ners of Japanese film­mak­ing.  Synapse is one of those labels, hav­ing released titles like the Ohyaku/Okatsu series and the con­tro­ver­sial Horrors Of Malformed Men, and they recently com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing this trend by acquir­ing the rights to 25 of Nikkatsu’s “Roman Porno” films.  Nikkatsu Roman Porno Trailers Collection is the inau­gural release in this series and it’s one of the wildest, most fas­ci­nat­ing DVD’s to come out this year.

The main pro­gram offers a col­lec­tion of trail­ers that run about an hour in length.  Each has received an anamor­phic trans­fer and can be played sep­a­rately or as one con­tin­u­ous pro­gram.  Some of the trail­ers are pre­sented in 1.78:1 ratio while oth­ers are pre­sented in a 2.35:1 ratio but they all look sharp and col­or­ful.  The orig­i­nal Japanese sound mixes are used for the trail­ers and English sub­ti­tles are included for each: thank­fully these trans­late most of the fre­quent super­im­posed titles in each trailer in addi­tion to the dia­logue and nar­ra­tion.  It’s also worth not­ing that the disc opens with a hilar­i­ous and bizarre ani­mated intro that includes an unfor­get­table mon­tage of las­civ­i­ous high­lights from these films.

There’s only one extra on the disc but it’s a doozy: Ryoko’s Lesbian Flight is a half-hour Roman Porno short from the lat­ter era of Nikkatsu’s out­put in this genre.  It was shot on video in a full-frame for­mat so it’s not quite as cin­e­matic as the trail­ers but sleaze fans aren’t likely to com­plain as it deliv­ers plenty of smut dur­ing its slen­der run­ning time.  It also offers an inter­est­ing exam­ple of how some Japanese film­mak­ers would choose to dig­i­tally “fog” or pix­i­late gen­i­talia within a shot rather than frame it out.  The end result isn’t as deliri­ously inspired as the trail­ers but it unde­ni­ably deliv­ers the soft­core goods.

The pack­age is rounded out by an insert book­let that includes a 2-page essay on Nikkatsu Roman Porno films by Jasper Sharp.  If you don’t know the name, Sharp wrote Behind The Pink Curtain, a pop­u­lar his­tory of Japanese pink films, and is thus uniquely suited to the task.  He cov­ers an impres­sive amount of ter­ri­tory in a short space, giv­ing the reader a thumb­nail his­tory of Nikkatsu’s role in Japanese erot­ica as well as some inter­est­ing details about film cen­sor­ship in Japan.  It’s the per­fect cap­per for an eye-opening pre­sen­ta­tion like this disc.

In short, Nikkatsu Roman Porno Trailers Collection offers an impres­sive intro to Nikkatsu’s sin­gu­lar style of erot­ica.  Whether you’re a new­comer to Japanese genre fare or a vet­eran schlock fiend, this is guar­an­teed to singe your eye­balls with oth­er­worldly cine-madness.