is a

1983 The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to Internet protocol suite, TCP/IP is officially completed (this is consid ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese film in Nikkatsu's ''Roman porno'' series, directed by Shingo Yamashiro and starring Ai Saotome.

Synopsis

Innocent female doctor Mineko was seduced by Sachiko, an aggressive lesbian, in her younger days. Mineko begins dating a male coworker, and accepts an invitation to a party at the home of a transvestite patient. Sachiko comes out of Mineko's past, enraged with jealousy, and begins tormenting Mineko and her boyfriend.Weisser, p. 140.

Cast

* Ai Saotome: Mineko Kagami * Sachiko Itō: Kotoe Hiratsuka * Koichi Iwaki: Shari * Hiroshi Nawa: Tarō Iruka * Kōji Minakami: Mamoru Iruka * Akiyoshi Fukae: Takehiko Ōbayashi * Yoshishige Ōtsuka: Eiko Kanzaki * Yoshishige Ōtsuka: Akiko Kanzaki * 美露: Tommy * Mitsu Senda: Jōji * Kotomi Aoki: Akane Minakawa * Mariko Nishina: Hiromi * Keiichi Satō: Mikami * Ryūji Katagiri: Abe * Madoka Sawa: Julie * Akira Takahashi: Keiji * Hiromichi Nakahara: Movie star

Critical appraisal

''Female Cats'' director Shingo Yamashiro was best known as an actor, having debuted in 1957. He appeared in the '' Battles Without Honor and Humanity'' series, and one of his better-known appearance for Western audiences is in

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a Japanese film director, screenwriter, film critic and a professor at Tokyo University of the Arts. Although he has worked in a variety of genres, Kurosawa is best known for his many contributions to the Japanese horror genre, his honorific n ...

's ''Sweet Home'' (1989). In his ''Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema'', Jasper Sharp uses ''Female Cats'' as an example of the range of themes possible in the ''Roman Porno'' genre, calling it an Argento-esque thriller. In their ''Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films'', the Weissers compliment Yamashiro's direction as the best thing about the film. They write that he, "goes the extra mile to compose many astonishingly good-looking sequences, punctuated by some creatively stylish camerawork." A lesbian shower sequence between Mineko and Sachiko is singled out for praise. The scene is shot from the shower faucet's point of view, through a spray of water. However they fault the film's unimaginative script and its "lurid plot".

Availability

''Female Cats'' was released theatrically in Japan on December 23, 1983. It was released to home video in VHS format in Japan on March 16, 1984, and re-issued on June 22, 1990. It was released as part of the Nikkatsu Roman Porno Series of VHS releases on December 6, 1991. It was released on DVD in Japan on December 4, 1998, and re-released on DVD on June 23, 2006, as part of Geneon's fourth wave of Nikkatsu ''Roman porno'' series. In this format it was issued in the 4-disc ''Roman Porno'' series DVD Box, Vol. 1 on March 7, 2008. It is currently scheduled to be released in the USA on DVD May 7, 2013, under the title 'She Cat'.

Bibliography

English

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Japanese

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Notes

{{Reflist 1983 films 1980s erotic thriller films 1980s Japanese-language films Japanese LGBT-related films Lesbian-related films Japanese erotic thriller films Nikkatsu films Nikkatsu Roman Porno 1983 LGBT-related films 1980s Japanese films