Inflatable Sex Doll Of The Wastelands

INFLATABLE SEX DOLL OF THE WASTELANDS (KÔYA NO DACCHI WAIFU), 1967, 86 min. "Every day at 3 o'clock I've been killing you in my daydreams," murmurs low-rent hitman Shô (Yûichi Minato), haunted by the death of his girlfriend five years earlier and seeking revenge on the gangster who killed her, in director/writer Atsushi Yamatoya's eerie, seedy and dreamlike noir with fractured, time-bending overtones of John Boorman's POINT BLANK and Christopher Nolan's MEMENTO. Yamatoya co-wrote Seijun Suzuki's BRANDED TO KILL (released the same year as this), and the films are companion pieces in many ways: subversive and jarring with strange flashbacks, inexplicable dialogue and song lyrics ("My burning dumdum goes flying, bites the enemy's neck"), inserts that shatter the fourth wall, and a dissonant free jazz score. Produced by Keiko Satô, one of the few female producers in the underground Japanese pink film genre, the absurdly-titled INFLATABLE SEX DOLL is comparable to similar movies by American erotic auteurs Russ Meyer (FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!) and Radley Metzger at their most arthouse. The feverish S&M vibe and lurid B&W cinematography is like a junkie's smack-induced nightmare: basically the cinematic equivalent of listening to the Velvet Underground's "Venus In Furs" and "Sister Ray." Recently rescued from the only surviving 35mm film elements by Rapid Eye Movies in Germany, and newly digitally restored by Craig Rogers for Deaf Crocodile.