Lost Paradise: Riding Habit Harakiri (1990)

Being that this film is of a very specialized genre, I'm going to rate it against the few other films of the harakiri genre that I've seen, not necessarily as a horror film on it's own merits.This one has a girl dressed in military garb gutting herself. She takes her knife, wraps it in cloth, and shoves it into the left side of her abdomen. She slowly pulls the knife across her stomach to the right-hand side, and her guts spill out. This all takes somewhere in the ballpark of 20 minutes...That's it...Anyone who has had the "pleasure" of seeing this sort of material knows that it's pretty much all the same thing from film to film - at least the ones that I've seen, namely - girl is wearing some sort of costume-like outfit or traditional Japanese robe, girl shows tits and maybe panties, girl caresses her stomach and midsection for a while, girl guts herself. I have seen 2 notable exceptions to this in Tamakichi Anaru's WOMENS FLESH, which is a far more graphic and "disturbing" take on the harakiri genre, as the lead in that film not only disembowels herself, but then decides to chew on her own guts. That one is pretty rough...and also in the same directors PSYCHO: SUICIDE DOLLS, which has a pretty average harakiri scene, but is shown in closer detail, and the "gut-pulling" scene in that one is pretty protracted and rough, too. So to sum up...in terms of judging against other harakiri type films, I would give LOST PARADISE a 7/10, as it is not the worst of the genre, but also not the best. As an "enjoyable" film - even for a hardcore horror/gore fan - 3/10, as there's just nothing to it. I think I'll leave this genre alone for a while, there's just not much going for it and I find myself steadily on the fast-forward button, waiting for the pay-off which USUALLY isn't worth it...

Always looking for movies that can still shock me like Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood or August Underground: Mordum did, I stumbled upon this short movie of a woman performing ritual suicide.Yes, that's the "story", a woman performing ritual suicide. With a setup like that you can assume the director wanted to at least shock his audience, but he fails miserably because of the bad special effects (we never see a wound, just lots of fake blood and what is probably animal intestines).Well, maybe he wanted to make a fake snuff movie, like the movies mentioned earlier? This doesn't work either because of the many camera angles and the artsy beginning and ending of the movie.Having said this, it's still at the very least an interesting movie, worth hunting down if you like rare and weird stuff, and it has some nice atmospheric noise music, but it's definitely not for everyone.Rating: 3/10

"Lost Paradise" is directed by Masami Akita,who is also one of Japan's leading noise musicians under the name Merzbow.With a soundtrack by the director himself,this intense and ultra-gory seppuku film shows a young woman taking her own life by an act of ritual harakiri.Dressed in militaristic attire,the girl(Asako Mochuzuki)kneels,removes her jacket and opens her shirt to the waist,exposing her naked breasts and stomach.Lowering the waistband of her white panties,she caresses her belly before taking up a sacrificial knife,whose blade she wraps in a white bandage.Pressing the point into her left side she punctures the flesh,then slowly and deliberately pulls the knife across to the right.First blood leaks out,then as the gash widens her entrails start to ooze onto the floor.She continues to cut,her moans strongly reminiscent of those made by the actresses in porno films.Finally she collapses,still groaning,in a lake of blood and coiling viscera.Her death throes are extremely protracted."Lost Paradise" is an extremely gory Japanese shocker which looks as real as possible.I was really shocked whilst watching it and that's a compliment.The suicide scene is extremely long and painful to watch,because it lasts 18 minutes.The soundtrack by Merzbow is truly disturbing and hard to forget.This film is not entertaining,so fans of mindless teen horror should not bother.Check it out,but good luck finding a copy.

OK, so I'm a fan of that racket-making kind of industrial ruckus that is referred to as noise and I've been a fan on Masami Akita's noise work under his Merzbow moniker for quite some time (even though his material of late has been somewhat unchallenging and tame) and I've always been interested in (but perhaps not a fan per se) of arty film and experimental movies and cinema in general. So I was of course excited when I found out that Masami-san had actually made his own movie. I was equally excited to actually stumble upon it on one of the lesser-known p2p networks lately (in divx format) and so I promptly downloaded it.I had no idea what the film was about, not an inkling as to what to expect, though I think I expected it to be at least loud. But it wasn't. It's quite subdued actually. And, to be blunt, quite boring as well. It's about a Japanese girl, dressed as a schoolgirl who flips through some photographs and after a while starts to fondle herself. After a couple of minutes she pulls out a knife and starts fondling that for a while. Then she promptly starts to commit seppuku (or is it harakiri? I never get that right for some reason). After she has sliced her abdomen up she pulls out a piece of intestine and wiggles it about for a bit before she collapses and dies, apparently from blood-loss (all the while with a vaguely pleased look as if this somehow sexually arouses her).That's it. The special fx are good but not spectacular. The point of this piece eludes me. I admit I'm no art critic nor am I crazy about gore for gore's sake, but to me this film is pretty much useless. The camera work is decent, the editing OK and so on, but really: what is the point? I'm bewildered and confused and also a bit disappointed. I guess I had expected more somehow. I'm just not sure what.