green fingers.

Just received this thru' the post alongside a newly subbed, widescreen version of L'Isola Delgi Uomini Pesce (cheers dad) and, being intrigued by the colourful cover design and it's subtle use of Photoshop (plus I'm desperately trying to improve my Japanese) I thought I'd give it a go.

Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Shokujuu Marunomi Acme (2008).
Dir: Ishikawa Hitoshi (as Ishikawa Kin).
Cast: Sanada Haruka, her big white pants, an industrial sized tub of KY jelly and a large slimy tentacled plant thing.

Smart and sensible shoed office girl Brenda (boss eyed and buck toothed AV starlet Haruka, whom you may recognize from the arthouse classic Multipronged) is heading home after a hard day photocopying important stuff, sorting the pens out and the like, looking forward to a nice salad and a large glass of Lambrusco.

kicking off her Mules and heading straight for the kitchen Brenda is surprised to find a large green slimy thing in her knife drawer. Bending down to examine it closer she fails to see the mass of other wriggly, giggly slimy things slowly slithering towards her.

Yikes!

Haruka (bless you): A damn good rooting.

Before she can even scream the tricky, sticky tentacles have wrapped themselves around her tiny waist and begun to show a rather unhealthy interest in her undies (and the contents therein).

Brenda vainly struggles against her green assailant but only manages to get even more and more slimy and (more upsetting for her) a huge ladder in her best tights.

Kicking and screaming as more and more of these pervy penile plant things begin to wrap themselves around her our hapless heroine becomes alarmingly aware that for what are effectively long skinny plant roots they're incredibly adept at removing clothes.

Are they just interested in the latest smart office fashion or is something more sinister afoot?

Managing to flip herself onto her back in order to kick the tentacles away (and tearing her by soaked and by now transparent blouse along the way) Brenda is horrified to see, hiding in the corner of the kitchen (next to the bin) the owner of the frisky tentacles.

A giant fluffy (and possibly foul) mouthed plant, dripping with sticky goo and lustfully licking its lips as it drags Brenda ever closer....

Haruka: "Leaf me alone!"

Being a plucky kinda gal, Brenda tries to pull free one last time, but the pull of the plant alongside the slimy floor/sticky arse interface causes all her clothes to fall away leaving Brenda stark bollock naked and slipping along the lino toward the beasts quivering maw.

Not one to give up without a struggle, Brenda fights and wiggles with furious abandon as it tries to pull her inside, eventually managing to make it as far as her apartment door (tho' by this point she's probably cursing having all the floors tiled rather than carpeted).

Just as it seems that Brenda is free of this hornily hosepipe-like horror the creature lets out a massive fart and drags her kicking, screaming (and squishing) into its mighty mouth.

Coming to inside what looks like a huge blood red bouncy castle and wearing nothing but an ample coating of slime and being prodded by all manner of long sticky things Brenda (understandibly) starts to panic, shouting loudly and desperate to make her way towards the creatures lips as even more gooey things appear and attempt to hold her back.

Will she escape?

Remarkably it seems like she will, seeing as the sounds of her screams appear to be causing the tentacles to shudder and panic, waving around like a sea of weird worms and losing their grip on poor Brenda.

Noticing this she turns and screams some more.

Which is (in hindsight) a wee bit of a mistake, seeing as it causes the tentacles to fire out at high speeds and bury themselves into every orifice available.

I'm sure this is accidental tho' and the poor things are just trying to hide.

Plus you can tell that they're scared because they appear to be crying milky tears from the single slitty eye on the ends of their tentacles.

At least I think it's tears, cos the picture is all pixelated at this point.

The cover in full (just in case you want to
order it for your Gran this Christmas).

At this point the movie takes a bizarre twist as Brenda stops trying to fight the tentacle intrusion and, gulp, begins to enjoy the experience.

I've asked a few female friends that have been in this situation to see if this would really happen or is merely for titillation purposes and they all seem to agree that the film is quite accurate on this count (tho' Brenda's choice of shoe doesn't really match her outfit so there you go).

Slowly, lustfully and very, very stickily the plant drags Brenda back towards it's dribbling pulsating mouth....

Will Brenda escape?

Does she really want to?

Will the couple end up married with 2.4 saplings?

or after 40 minutes or so of hot rubber tentacle on nude, glistening Japanese girl action will Brenda awake screaming inside the plant as it begins to digest her?

Clue: it's the latter.

A sex crazed, vagina faced plant yesterday.

Yup, it's another classic from Ishikawa Hitoshi, the genius writer/director behind the fantastic love triangle weepies Captured for Sex 1 and 2 as well as the high school hooker/possession/knockabout comedy hybrid The Big Slaughter Club (amongst other great family favourites) and just like those mentioned, this too is destined to be remembered as the top quality piece of cinematic greatness that it so obviously is.

As with the other chapters in Hitoshi's Shokujuu Acme series, this fifth episode analysises the cold hard truth in regards to the sexual politics of modern day Japan according to the theoretical frameworks of Tzvetan Todorov and Sigmund Freud, exploring aspects of both the Uncanny and the Fantastic.

The traditional and playful view of female sexuality (as symbolized by the ever probing tentacles, an image that can be dated as far back as 1820, with Hokusai's erotic masterpiece The Dream of The Fisherman's Wife and based in part on the animism aspects of the Shinto religion) is frighteningly inverted through the prism of Barthesian semiotics, as if the modern Japanese Alpha male (in this case not just director Hotoshi, but the complacent young men the series is so obviously aimed at), terrified by the openness of old world Japanese female sexuality have taken it on themselves to reclaim (as it were) the males rightful place of sexual power (in their eyes), replacing the thrusting sword with the (up until now) soft tentacles so loved by artists of the Edo Period.

A frightening upsurge in violent sexism based on 17th century erotic art?

Only in Japan.

Although I could be reading way too much into this and Ishikawa Hitoshi has actually just made a common or garden tentacle porn movie aimed at the undersexed teenage masturbator market.

You decide.