FEMALE PRISONER 101: SUCK
Color, 1977, 70 mins. 30 secs.
Directed by Kôyû Ohara
Starring Naomi Tani, Tokuko Watanabe, Hirokazu Inoue, Midori Mori, Michio Murakami, Kenji Shimamura
Impulse Pictures (DVD) (US R0 HD/NTSC) / WS (2.00:1) (16:9)

WOMEN IN HEAT BEHIND BARS
Color, 1987, 68 mins. 23 secs.
Directed by Junichi Suzuki
Starring Shinobu Wakana, Rena Hatta, Yûko Chiba, Keiko Hiraide, Susumo Morioka, Shirô Shimomoto
Impulse Pictures (DVD) (US R0 HD/NTSC) / WS (1.78:1) (16:9

One Female Prisoner 101: Suckof the twisted Female Prisoner 101: Suckpleasures of following Impulse Pictures' line of Nikkatsu pink films on DVD is the grouping of films into long-running series around a common theme, be it depraved office buildings, salacious shell divers, or unrepentant nurses. One of the most reliable has to be the women in prison film, a popular international formula given its own kinky spin by Nikkatsu in the '70s and '80s. Here are a couple of them demonstrating how far the studio was willing to go in each decade and just how different the final results could be.

Welcome to Female Prisoner 101: Suck at a women's prison where the inmates are going crazy from sexual frustration, and they'll turn to anything to satisfy their urges from a mop to a the bars of their cells. Enter Prisoner 130, Momoko, who gets assaulted just after she arrives by a woman whose man she stole. Then there's Prisoner 101 (Tani from Fairy in a Cage, Wife To Be Sacrificed, and Flower and Snake), who escapes from watching one girl rub her butt all over another one in bed by having flashbacks to her life outside with guitarist/troubadour boyfriend Kenichi Wizushima (Watanabe). A former hooker, she ends up making a very bad call to advance his career courtesy of a corrupt former crony, Akama, a blackmailing junkie she clubs to death when he tries to rape her. Female Prisoner 101: SuckOne day out working in the fields, Momoko (who's just gotten a snake shoved down her pants, which leads to some upsetting real animal abuse) starts singing one of Kenichi's Female Prisoner 101: Sucksongs, spurring our heroine to find a way to break out and get back to her beloved -- at a great cost.

Reliable sleaze merchant Kôyû Ohara (Fairy in a Cage and the astounding White Rose Campus: Then Everybody Gets Raped) definitely knows his audience for this one, with at least two bodily functions spotlighted in the first ten minutes and some form of sexual delirium or cat fight turning up every five minutes or so. The obvious influences here are the Female Prisoner Scorpion films and the Roger Corman Filipino WIP cycle starting with The Big Doll House, but the film definitely has a few nasty tricks up its sleeve including a shocking, macabre twist ending that suddenly hurls the film into flat-out horror territory. It's easily worth picking this one up just for the last ten minutes alone.

Made a decade later when Nikkatsu had stopped shooting its pink films in scope, Women in Heat Behind Bars offers another twist on the women in prison formula with the tale of Shinobu (Wakana), who's stuck in the Women in Heat Behind Barsslammer and recalling how she got there because of Sakae (Morioka) -- her first boyfriend, whom she joined track for and hooked up Women in Heat Behind Barsafter six years to lose her virginity. A flower salesgirl by trade, she gets framed for a botched jewelry robbery by Sakae and his pals, landing her in a living hell of abusive wardens and insatiable female inmates. From the rough lesbian initiation to the guards who demand finger-sucking satisfaction, it's an insufferable situation that gets even worse when the notorious Mr. Kiya (Shimomoto) is brought in to whip everyone into shape. No place from the cafeteria to the toilet is safe, and the other women -- whose tragic stories involve smack addiction, prostitution, and other forms of degradation -- are so fed up they're willing to join her in a bloody uprising.

As usual for most of the '80s offerings, this one goes even further with the sex scenes including lots of sweaty close ups while avoiding any dreaded pubic hair. The narrative here is pretty much in line with the WIP offerings coming out of America at the time and not as bleak as Suck; like that one it gets pretty gruesome in the final stretch but ends on a more traditional and hopeful note.

Women in Heat Behind BarsBoth films are released on their own DVD, with Female Prisoner 101: Suck featuring a bare bones presentation and the weakest transfer of the Impulse Nikkatsu line. Women in Heat Behind BarsIt's taken from a visibly dated master with limited detail, and the 2.00:1 framing is a dead giveaway of its compromised nature with several shots looking a bit cramped on the sides. That said, the film itself is definitely worth checking out for that finale alone, and where else are you going to see it with English subtitles? Women in Heat Behind Bars looks great, on the other hand, sporting what's touted as a 2017 remaster and looking as fresh as the majority of the other '80s studio titles out on DVD. The sole extra on that one is a squishy theatrical trailer, which promises a look "Inside a prison filled with the scent of hungry females!"

Reviewed on June 3, 2018.