Jokôsei: Tenshi no harawata

Angel Guts - High School Co-ed (Japan, 1978) dir: Chûsei Sone

Kawashima and his two biker friends spend their time riding around and raping unsuspecting young girls. Much younger than them. His sister, Megu is coming of age, and men are starting to notice her. Ironically being overprotective he starts to feel conflicted. One day while out with his sister he saves a girl from his friend trying to rape her, which ends up leading to even more conflicted feelings. Has he fallen in love? What makes her different from the other rape victims he shares with his friend? Does he see his sister in this girl? Is he attracted to his sister? Is he distancing himself from his gang?

Director Chûsei Sone shoots this like the viewer is there, hanging out and observing, privy to the private conversations and shocking behavior. That makes it all that more realistic and difficult to look away from.

It's part of a series obviously meant to titillate and yet it goes to great lengths to show us the ugliness and the pain of the victim. Machiko Ohtani as Nami, the girl who the gang fights over, gives a pretty brave performance considering especially what she has to go through in here (and Megu Kawashima as well, as the sister). This is still an exploitation film, but it's been made as a well-crafted movie, with something more to show you than just bikers punks raping school girls. That's just an ugly world that happens to exist - we're thrust inside of it when it suddenly tries to gain a conscience.

The ending is unsatisfying, as a way to finish a story. It was summed up better when, late in the movie, Kawashima asks one of the victims "Who did this to you?" and she answers, "It doesn't matter who does it" as if in the end it's just a foregone conclusion in the world they live in.