From what we can tell, there has been some truly gray lines between what is classified as CAT III and what is not. As far as American markets go it’s closer to a NC-17 rating. Though I tend to believe that CAT III films go much farther in visual content extremes than our NC-17. Films that feature extremely gory content such as “Tokyo Gore Police” (note: Tokyo Gore Style) seem to somehow fall outside of the CAT III category suggesting that CAT III films all contain graphic sexual content in addition to the violence. Tokyo Gore Style also tends to fill a more specific profile, that is over the top, but done in a comedic dark tone. The distinction is pretty clear once watching those films (SEE Tokyo Gore Style for listing of films in that category). Another classification that is thrown around is J-Sploitation which is clearly extreme content worthy of a CAT III class. J-Sploitation has been used in the same essence as CAT III, though obviously originating from a Japanese base. Niku Daruma is in the same vein as the Guinea Pig films, but filmed about a decade later and not quite as (in)famous. We open with separate scenes of a woman, then a man, sitting on a couch and discussing something with an off-screen voice (this is one of those no subtitle movies, but honestly, aside from these first couple scenes, dialogue is irrelevant in this movie). It would appear that they have contracts in front of them, and we soon discover, after a van ride to a convenience store, that the two have signed up to film an amateur P*rn film together. Note: we excluded films that purely rely or eroticism without any traits of violence, gore or controversial subject matters such as rape, incest and torture. Many of “those” erotic CAT films would better fit the classification of “Pinku”. The list or that alone is long, we’ll try and slim this list down if we run into ones that better fit THAT classification. CAT III, otherwise known as Category 3 is the rating system used on Extreme horror and exploitation films from the Asian market. While the films range from extremely disturbing horror to p*rnographic, this list is primarily focused on the Horror rela(1986)ted titles. Soft p*rn for Asian films are also classified under “ Pinku” (pink film) though when the filmmakers blend extreme violence, torture, gore or taboo subject matter with these elements it is more commonly referred to as a CAT III classified film. Originally CAT III wasn’t implemented until year 1988, by which is was focused primarily on Hong-Kong-only films that exceeded a classification rating system as we might view NC-17 films. The tag, so to speak, was to red flag movies that were too adult or too controversial for normal viewing circles.

Some titles such as “BUTTERFLY LABYRINTH” 1 & 2 seem to allude even IMDB existing in collection offerings only and are largely out of print. A search on the director revealed some results. This list is constantly evolving, but for the record, is rooted in the above mentioned subject areas. CAT III, in this sense, is flagged by being of Asian origin and extreme horror. Because of that, many of these titles are hard to come by, even for review purposes.Written and directed by Tamakichi Anaru, the same man who gave us 1999’s Women’s Flesh: My Red Guts, Tumbling Doll Of Flesh (also known as Psycho: The Snuff Reels) revolves around a woman named Kana (Kanako Ooba). She’s an adult film actress, paid to have sex on camera. She shows up at her latest shoot and things go normally enough – she has sex with her male partner, Kiku (Kiku Rin), and then they break for a bit. After the break, however, things get increasingly unsettling as the director and the cameraman (Tamakichi Anaru and Yujji Kitano) get in on things. From here on out, it’s no holds barred. We have amputations, bludgeoning, screaming, bleeding, and, of course, more hardcore sex, but now with so many new and creative avenues to explore. Feet are cut off, tongues are cut in half, arms are severed, and all in a very realistic, almost found footage/snuff film style. If there’s one thing about Tamakichi Anaru that we know, it’s that he loves seeing women mutilated on screen, and some will say that Niku Daruma is his personal masterpiece in this arena. with more and more non-erotic movies being labelled cat III, the movie industry was not happy with the new usage because it still had the reputation of being sleazy, featuring nudity & sex, all that – so IF you want to compare cat III to the american system, the old ‘X’ would (in my opinion) have more in common with cat III rather than nc-17.

And then comes the P*rn (pardon the pun). The full-on, Japanese hardcore, genitals-blurred P*rn. And we sit and watch as the guy and the girl have sex in a small room while two other dudes watch/film/direct the action. It’s awkward, to say the least. But it only gets more awkward from here on out. To add further confusion to the titles, some of these have several titles used over the years…some of which we have included. If in doubt, your best is to do a search on IMDB to see what other names the film might be listed under. Examples might be the “ENTRAILS OF A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN: previously listed under “GUTS OF A VIRGIN” or the film “PSYCHO SNUFF REELS” also referred to as “TUMBLING DOLL OF FLESH”. Other references include the films listed under their original Asian names such as “ALL NIGHT LONG 4” listed as “Ooru Naito Rongu R”. Directed by the man who brought us Suicide Dolls and Tumbling Doll Of Flesh, Women's Flesh: My Red Guts is pretty grotesque, but at the same time, a little bit more than just a typical gore film. Released legitimately for the first time in the United States, this release contains proper English subtitles for the dialogue scenes that exist between husband and wife to give them atrocity exhibition that makes up the bulk of the picture some welcome context. As such, we know why the self-mutilation is occurring - it's out of sadness. This gives the first portion of the movie a bit of dramatic weight. Clearly Tamakichi Anaru is fascinated by what is physically inside of us and how to get it out, but without reading too much into it, so too does the movie explore the depths to which a broken heart can drag someone down to. At the same time, it's exploitative in how the camera lingers on certain shots, how it focuses in on certain parts of the character's anatomy and how it pushes gore over anything else. A few instances are titled in numbers as a series of franchise releases, though in the case of “STOP THE BITCH CAMPAIGN 2”, it is simply referred to as “STOP THE BITCH CAMPAIGN (HELL VERSION)” further confusing the sequence. A good giveaway is the release date of the film. “STOP THE BITCH CAMPAIGN” (the original that is) was released twice under the same name – once in 2001, and then a remake in 2009. The second woman (who may or may not be an alternate persona of the first) makes no noise at all, even as she slices into her abdomen and plays with her own innards. The sound design during this second part of the film is a mess of bizarre electronic sounds (coming off like a cross between a purring cat and a malfunctioning Atari 2600), dipping into bursts of white noise. There are constant shifts in color grading and image processing too, cycling through a variety of grainy, low-resolution video formats.Low-grade, Japanese obscurity Women's Flesh: My Red Guts consists of two shot-on-video segments depicting gruelling scenes of graphic self-mutilation, all designed to appear as gut-churningly real as possible: in the first, a woman chews off one of her fingers and chokes herself to death with a scarf; the woman in part two stabs herself in the leg with a fork, cuts open her belly, chows down on her guts, slices off her tongue, and eventually kills herself by thrusting the fork into her forehead. A rating garnered by the Hong Kong Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA). The rating system in Hong Kong is as follows: N.B. Like the others who have commented on this film, my copy also featured a couple of trailers for some really harsh documentaries. For mostly non-Asian Extreme Cinema films, please see this article on Extreme Cinema (which also contains its own extensive list)

Kana tries to end her starring role in an abusive P*rno. For her, the end comes only after she’s been reduced to a “Tumbling Doll of Flesh”. Watch your titles and dates! For instance, there is a release titled “HELL GIRL” (Jigoku, “The Girl from Hell” ) (2005) which is a different release than “GIRL HELL” (“Injure Rape Murder Film”) (1999). Nurse Hunting:Female Body Laboratory” is a part of strikingly erotic Japanese fetish/p*rn series produced by a sub-label of the AV company Dogma.It includes the following movies:”Tohjiro:Abnormal Rape”,”Tohjiro:Butterfly Labyrinth”,”Tohjiro:Butterfly Labyrinth 2″,”Tohjiro:Rare Fetish”,”Tohjiro:Baby Doll”,”Tohjiro:VS425″,”Tohjiro:Hentai Kazoku”,”Tohjiro:Outraged Boobs Nurse”,”Tohjiro:Lascvious Confessions Room”,”Tohjiro:Anal Trance”,”Tohjiro:Sailor Bondage”,”Tohjiro:Body Trance” and “Tohjiro:What’s Wrong with Perversion”.Japanese AV star Kurumi Morish*ta plays a masochistic nurse,who enjoys being sexually abused by her doctor.The film is loaded with oral sex,sadomasochism,bondage and sexual degradation,so fans of sleazy Japanese p*rn won’t be disappointed .Still there was not enough wall-to-wall depravity for my liking. Writer/director Tamakichi Anaru (Japanese for “anal”) cemented a spot for himself in the annals of extreme cinema with his 1998 debut Tumbling Doll of Flesh (or Niku Daruma). Long before the glut of so-called “torture P*rn” that continues to constipate the horror genre, Tamakichi fused the two acts into a sadistic misogynist’s wet dream. The first half of the film offers hardcore P*rn; in the second half, the unwitting actress is molested, tortured and finally killed – by the film crew. Pseudo-snuff at its cheapest and vilest – and for many, its most effective. CONCRETE – SCHOOL GIRL IN CEMENT, (CONCRETE-ENCASED HIGH SCHOOL GIRL MURDER CASE) (1995) – Katsuya Matsumura

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