Female Market: Imprisonment (1986)

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I thought that I would have enjoyed FEMALE MARKET more based on the strong subject matter and the copious amount of rape and sexual torture on display - but honestly - this Nikkatsu violent-pink entry is weak on story-line, and unfortunately - the "shock" scenes don't really make up for it...A woman is kidnapped and brought to a warehouse where it is soon made clear that the women residing in the compound are being kept as slaves to be sold on the black-market. From here we witness various acts of soft-core-but-rough "training" - where the girls are put through heavy sex and torture paces in hopes of breaking their will. Eventually one of the more "headstrong" women escapes with the help of a drug-addicted captor who has a change-of-heart - but will justice be brought to the ring-leaders of the slavery-ring??? FEMALE MARKET isn't a bad film by any means - there's just nothing really to it. There is plenty of hard-rape and misogynistic beatings, ho-slappings, bull-whippings, and other abuses on display - but with no real storyline to back it up, the whole thing starts to feel kinda pedestrian after a while. If the film would have been hard-core in terms of the sexual material shown, it would have been far better - but being a Japanese production, I knew that would never happen, so it sorta fails on that level as well. If the storyline would have been better, I could have gotten more "into" it also. Being that this film was written by Gaira (the man behind the GUTS OF A VIRGIN series) I guess I shouldn't have expected too much, as I haven't really thought that any of his other ventures were all that notable. For a better example of Nikkatsu rape-themed sleaze - try STAR OF David (aka BEAUTIFUL GIRL HUNTER) or perhaps ASSAULT! JACK THE RIPPER. If you want twisted hard-core (and yes - I mean HARD-CORE) Asian rope-bondage/humiliation porn - try TALES OF NAKED HUMILIATION 2. I will say that overall I personally thought FEMALE MARKET was decent (despite it's faults) and would recommend it to the genre completist - but there is "better" material out there...7/10

I liked this movie! It's very dark in how it show us the world of today, don't get your hopes up. You are left on your own and nobody is going to help you.The story is not that special and does not really leave an imprint, but the pictures and the mood make it a nice view. The gloom and the feeling of being unable to make a difference kind of get to you.It have the basics for it's genre: rape (repeatedly), torture, violence, nudity (but censored - kind of funny here in the western world where some nudity is OK, but the violence showed in this movie would make our censors go nuts), help from people you don't expect. Downright Evil bosses of some strange trafficking organization. Drug abuse, Malplaced showering scenes. Evil for it's own sake.This is not a movie that I'm gonna see over and over again but I would recommend it to my friends (but not to my parents).If you like the genre this is slightly more than one hour well spent.It have a nice twist at the end and does not finish like you expect.

The Japanese have a way of showing violence in a gritty manner. Not necessarily only because they show the violence in full view, but also because they manage to represent the evil that lurks within the human mind. The slave traders in this movie have no respect for human life. They are aware of it, and they love it. Nihilism has become a trademark in Japanese cinema. This movie has very little blood, but a lot of nudity, sexual violence, rape and torture. We follow some average women as they are going through a world of pain and misery, where twisted evil soul seek the ultimate rush of power and supremacy by the suffering and unhappiness of other individuals. This movies running time is not long, but that's exactly enough to deliver the punch in your face. Not a great movie, but good. It does what it can well, and deliver the message.

Japanese Yasuaki Uegaki's film, Female Market: Imprisonment (1986) is one incredibly harrowing, brutal and strong rape related film that won't leave even the most jaded exploitation enthusiasts alone. The film tells the inhuman story of a bunch of young Japanese females who one night get kidnapped and taken to some abandoned looking factory area to be abused by some drug dealers and human slavery bosses. It is soon revealed that none of the girls have too many close relatives so they won't be searched after their disappearance. This all may sound like a plot from some Jess Franco women in prison flick, but it is more. This is Japanese exploitation which means only one thing: extreme.Kazuo 'Gaira' Komizu wrote the film, and this madman is of course best known for his outrageous sleazy Guts/Entrails trilogy consisting of films Guts of a Virgin, Guts of a Beauty (both 1986) and Guts of a Virgin 3: Rusted Body (1987). All these films include almost hardcore level female (and male) nudity and sex and plenty of hyper sleazy goings on including kinky sex, some insane gore, monster semen and the like. The films are pretty harmless and not so "shocking" no matter what casual viewer would think about them (which I won't try to find out!). Female Market, however, goes farther and it is nasty with the capital N. The first 30 minutes or so are nothing but merciless scenes of the girls being brutally raped, abused, tortured and also killed. Soon it turns into some kind of revenge attempt and also escape story, but I won't go into the spoiling details. The first half of the short feature (uncut PAL version runs only 68 minutes) are as depraved, sadistic, misogynistic and brutal scenery as ever possible. It is not about graphic gore or anything like that, it is about the mean spirit and mentality behind those scenes.What makes Japanese exploitation usually so interesting is the fact that no matter how sick, low and sadistic it may be, it may also have some very interesting and effective cinematic elements and details that prove the talent of the makers. The infamous Guinea Pigs are among these, especially the Mermaid episode directed by manga artist Hideshi Hino. That goes to Female Market, too, as the visual style and darkness is among the most impressive I've seen for long time, in a film like this! It is close to the finale of Japanese master Takeshi Kitano's Violent Cop (1989) in its bleakness and calm shadow filled darkness. When this darkness and depressing visual world is delivered with the mentioned hyper strong images of abuse and rape, you can imagine this film will blow you away. And it does, even an experienced exploitation cinema fanatics have admitted this film being almost unbearably daunting an experience and I am among those. Japanese film makers have proven their ability and talent to hammer their messages to the skull and spine cord of the viewer (Shinya Tsukamoto, Takashi Ishii to name just a few masters), and that definitely goes to their exploitation films, too. Something that's lacking from the cheesy Euro trash films from the sixties to the late eighties.Female Market can also be seen as a pessimistic look of our nature and its brute and hidden sides, willing to dominate and humiliate each other as most of the rape scenes and scenes overall are pretty silent, without dialogue, which naturally gives much greater power to the images in cinema, and Takeshi Kitano is definitely among the most striking examples of this. The place it all happened may turn into a seemingly normal harbor warehouse next morning indicating that the human market is a big organized crime activity born in a big city and totally uncontrollable and extremely dangerous. This is the kind of film that can make the viewer hate himself just because of the fact that he realizes belonging to the same race, human race. But still the imagery is unnecessarily too graphic and gratuitous to make the above analyze as valid as I'd like it to be, and it seems they wanted to do an exploitation film with some brains in the other half of the piece. The actors are very good, some of the acts are so graphic that the prints include the traditional Japanese optical fogging to not show the pubic hair, and that goes to all of the mentioned Guts films, too. The cinematography is impressive, the editing always peaceful, and the screenplay hasn't got unnecessary bits of dialogue and speech. This film really is something I won't forget too easily, nor am I willing to see it ever again too soon I think. If you've seen Jess Franco's Sadomania (1980) or some other of the low budget (s)exploitation films from Europe and elsewhere, imagine that to the nth sadism degree filled with dark visuality and you have a CLUE what kind of an experience Female Market will be. The kind of film that is quite impossible to recommend to anyone, and the 3/10 rating I'll give was not also too easy a choice. Again, Japanese cinema has amazed me, but not quite in the way I would've prefer.