Ozploitation!

This year, Fantastic Fest is dedicated to making everyone we know into giant, committed fans of Ozploitation cinema. That is - the peculiar brand of exploitation films that bubbled to the surface in Australia in the '70s and '80s. Certainly the best known are the MAD MAX films but those didn't emerge in a vacuum. The industry was already pumping out films as rude, tough and resourceful as the primal Aussie himself, kicked out of the British Isles for being ungovernable, forced to carve out a...

Behind the Pink Curtain

Almost everyone has the same tingling response to the bright, shiny world of Japanese pop entertainment. It tickles the roof of the mouth like ginger-ale. But for hardcore addicts, that's just the gateway stage. The terminal phase is the Japanese pink film. More than just sexploitation movies, they're like the entire culture's autoerotic asphyxiation reveries. Filled with crushing weirdness and experiments on the extreme edge of filmmaking, the pink films provide much greater insight into the nation's character than the mannered civilities of mainstream films, largely due to the fact that young film-makers are given the freedom to go as far out on the chain as they want to, provided they expose the requisite number of
naked bodies onscreen. And they must strike a pretty resonant chord since they're still going strong, as evidenced by some of our favorite Fantastic Fest titles of the past few years like UNCLES PARADISE and THE GLAMOROUS LIFE OF SACHIKO HANAI. (Lars)

BLUE FILM WOMAN
Monday, September 22, 10PM, Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
Dir. Kan Mukai, 1969, New 35mm Print, 80 min, NR (Adults Only!)
A girl avenges her mother's death and family's disgrace by becoming a high class call girl who blackmails her nemesis with a secretly shot film of their encounter. A highly stylized wash of color, wild camera angles and
sheer '60s style.

GUSHING PRAYER
Tuesday, September 23, 10PM, Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
Dir. Masao Adachi, 1971, New 35mm Print, 72 min, NR (Adults Only!)
A young woman, already a jaded sexual veteran, embarks on an odyssey of self-discovery to find out the true reasons for her dissatisfaction and total desensitization. This parable is told in a jagged avant-garde style
that must have baffled the target audience of businessmen seeking cheap thrills on their lunch hours.

A LONELY COW WEEPS AT DAWN
Wednesday, September 24, 10PM, Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
Dir. Daisuke Goto, 2003, Digibeta, 65 min, NR (Adults Only!)
In the Japanese countryside, a young widow, Noriko, lives with her senile father-in-law, Shu, on a farm. He believes his favorite cow is still alive. Noriko pretends to be the cow and lets him milk her every day - a satisfying arrangement for both. Shu's daughter Mitsuko discovers this strange relationship and tries to end it. A very strange and kinky modern pink film from genre superstar Daisuke Goto.

S&M HUNTER
Wednesday, September 24, 11PM, Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
Dir. Shuji Kataoka, 1986, Digibeta, 59 min, NR (Adults Only!)
An exercise in manga-style outrageousness that is guaranteed to offend everybody. The black clad S&M Roper is a kind of bondage super hero who has a supernatural genius for tying women up in configurations that leave them helplessly aroused. When the all girl gang, The Bombers, kidnap a man for their personal sex toy S&M Hunter accepts a mission to infiltrate The Bombers' hideout and show them the ropes.

It should be noted that S&M HUNTER is a hugely politically incorrect film, loaded with swastikas, delirious patriarchal anxiety, Catholica used for sexual purposes and worse, but few will be able to resist its spiraling craziness for long. The climax, in which the rope-mad antihero employs a 200 foot tall construction crane to execute his bondage masterpiece has to be seen to be believed. Not for the weak! (Lars Nilsen)

Author and Pink Film expert Jasper Sharp will be in attendance at all screenings to introduce the films and will be signing copies of his book BEHIND THE PINK CURTAIN.