Fantastic Fest 2008

Check out all the films in this year's Pink Retrospective. Click here for a show listing.

Among the first all-color pink films, Kan Mukai's BLUE FILM WOMAN looks like it is making up for lost time, exploding into its super-saturated hues from the very first frame, as the credits appear over a score dominated by bongos and sitars and the screen is crammed with distorted 8mm images taken from a mock blue film, flooded with prismatic blotches of primary reds and blues and silhouettes of naked female bodies - not unlike a more lysergically-inspired version of a Bond movie credit sequence.

The plot of BLUE FILM WOMAN is an equally delirious mishmash of horror, sexploitation and trippy nightclub sequences, centered around the family of a stockbroker whose unexpected financial crash results in him offering up his wife to his sleazy, saurian creditor Uchiyama. After prodding and pawing over her in the standard fashion for films of this genre, Uchiyama then locks her up in the garden shed inhabited by his mutant son Hiroshi, who arrives from the reafters clad in carnationi-colored robes. She manages to escape from his clutches in the nick of time, only to be mowed down by a passing car.

With her father now reduced to a gibbering wreck, it is left to the daughter Mariko to seek revenge for her mother's untimely demise. Rising from her job as a nightclub go-go dancer, Mariko winds up as a high-class call-girl catering for a group of prosperous businessmen, whom she blackmails to help her bring down Uchiyama after their nocturnal dalliances are captured on camera. (Jasper Sharp, Midnight Eye)

Jasper Sharp, pink film scholar and author of the new Fab Press book "Behind The Pink Curtain - The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema" will be in attendance to introduce the film. Expect to learn a lot about this shadow world of Japanese film culture.

Very special thanks to Marc Walkow of Outcast Cinema for crucial programming and logistical assistance.