You learn something new everyday people.  Last night for instance as I was placing this film from Japan ‘The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai’, I learned that this was a Japanese Pink Film.  A Pink Film, as it has come to my attention, is sub genre of Japanese films which we hear on the other side of the Pacific they call Soft Core Porn.  Think Cinemax on a late Saturday night.  This genre of films has been around in Japan since the mid-sixties, with an output of over a hundred films a year, and is still going strong today some 40 years later.  That would mean that there are literally thousands of these movies floating around out there, but this is the first one I have ever seen, and apparently one of the first to snag an American distro deal.  So what possessed Palm Pictures to snag up this little wacky film and assault the world with it?  You’d have to ask them that, but I’m kinda glad they did.

To assure watchers of the Pink Film genre what this film is ultimately about, despite the strong political overtones, we meet Sachiko (Emi Kuroda) who is a somewhat slow witted prostitute in what I guess is Tokyo, allegedly helping a young man with his English assignments.  We can guess that something may be a little skewed as Sachiko asks the young man what the capitol of the USA is and he replies ‘New York’.  For this ‘correct’ answer dude is rewarded with sexual favors ending with a scene where he ejaculates on Sachiko’s breast for about a minute.  This is a Japanese flick so there are strict censorship laws against genitalia and penetration and the like, but apparently there no law against showing a guy blow his load (fake though it may be) as long as you don’t show his dick.  Anyway, after this little encounter our bountiful heroine goes into a café for a latte where a North Korean and an Arab are making some kind of deal.  The deal goes wrong, the North Korean shoots the Arab and accidentally puts a bullet in Sachiko’s forehead. 

Now the weirdness kicks in full bore as the bullet has made Sachiko an existential spouting genius who accidentally has possession of a silver tube with the cloned finger of President George W. Bush that the North Korean killed the Arab over.  Why a cloned finger you might ask?  Why to launch all the USA’s ICMB’s of course.  The North Korean is now trying to track down Sachiko who is still having sex with almost everyone she meets for whatever reason, while a superimposed head of George W. Bush follows her and advises her on what is expected of her.  That might include saving the world or destroying America’s enemies for the superimposed GW’s ‘New World Order’.  Hell, I couldn’t tell you.

After watching a few supposed Japanese exploitation flicks and complaining that these guys don’t thing the first about exploitation, it is obvious that I’ve never seen a Japanese Pink Film because this thing is without a doubt the most exploitive, raunchy, and graphic film – That’s not hardcore porn – that I’ve ever seen.  I would have really liked to have been an actor on the set of this flick because it practically GUARANTEED that I would have gotten a chance to grope actress Emi Kuroda.  Guaranteed.  Miss Kuroda should really be congratulated for her tireless efforts in this flick as she had to suffer through getting fake f**ked by a half dozen dudes, had to pretend to get fake fingered by George W, Bush’s disembodied finger while rolling naked on a Tokyo roof, and also endure getting fake ejaculated on twice with the last one being all over her face.  If all of that doesn’t offend you, then director Mitsuru Meike is sure hoping his politics do.

In between the graphic sex scenes, Meike is delivering a rather damning message about our president, basically portraying him as a violent, homicidal enemy of humanity and imbecilic mindless puppet of the arms industry.  Now I may have some issues with my president’s foreign policy but damn.  I suspect it is this, and not the sex scenes, which have brought so much attention to this particular Pink Film, and it also helps that Meike found ways to squeeze in his required smut and his pronounced political views into his film that were actually quite clever and innovative. 

Japan simply fascinates me.  This a country that has a film industry that shows a woman being drowned in vat of feces (Miike’s ‘Dead or Alive’), shows another woman taking a semen filled facial but if it show a penis, that sucker better mosaiced out or someone is doing hard time.  Needless to say ‘The Glamorous life of Sachiko Hanai’ isn’t a film for everyone.  Hell, it may not be a film for anyone but it is original and Emi Kuroda is as about shapely as they come.  So if you’re a GW hating liberal who also doesn’t mind the outright objectification of women – yes, those two are generally mutually exclusive -  then ‘The Glamorous life of Sachiko Hanai’ is the soft core porno flick that you’ve been begging for.