Hisayasu Satô

Four short films, based on stories by Japanese mystery writer Rampo Edogawa, explore dark themes of obsession, sex and death. In "Mars Canal," a naked man wanders alone through a swamp recalling a former lover. "Mirror Hell" follows a serial killer with a fixation on hand mirrors. "Caterpillar" centers on a crippled veteran, his sadistic wife and their unhealthy relationship. And in "Crawling Bugs," a chauffeur plots to seduce a starlet.

Alisa's father tells her that "there is nothing beyond the sea" in an attempt to keep his fully grown daughter captive in his island home to feed his incestuous desires. One day day, she just starts swimming and ends up in a city in Japan meeting different people while her father searches for her.

A necrophiliac (Kazuhiro Sano) lives in a secluded house with a female amnesiac and a woman who murdered her sister. Sato centers his attention on the psycho-sexual deterioration of his protagonists. The film is quite unsettling with two graphic bestiality scenes involving a dog and a horse. (imdb)

A young scientist named Eiji decides to follow in his father's footsteps to help humanity by developing a drug that converts pain into pleasure. To test it out, he secretly adds his drug to a contraceptive that his mother has been performing clinical trials on with three young women at a local clinic.

A perverted social outcast lures young sailor-suited virgins to the back of his truck where he torments and murders them before disposing of their corpses in an acid bath. (Midnight Eye)

Seizou, a tattoo artist, dreams of creating lasting works of art that exist long after he passes. One day, he sees the perfect canvas: the unblemished back of a female grad student.

Based on a novel by Nakatori Ramo, NIGHT OF BODY'S MODEL is a grotesque and surreal tale of alienation. A young woman has moved into a new apartment to continue her laboratory work, and quickly finds herself the center of attention among her new neighbors, including an upstanding student and his invalid father, a goofy busy-body, and a quiet OCD neighbor... do they just want to be nice, or could these men be dangerous?

A heavily supernatural take on the 1922 Japanese short story YABU NO NAKA, which inspired the world famous Kurosawa film RASHOMON! A noble samurai is found dead in a bamboo forest near Kyoto, and several witnesses all have differing accounts as to what really instigated this heinous and bizarre crime... but where does the truth lie?

Erotic drama set in an underground Tokyo club called The Bedroom, where the female clientele are drugged into a trance-like state and are subjected to different styles of bizarre, fetishistic sex by the male clientele.

Reporter Nukada's next big assignment is the secret world of Japanese phone sex clubs. He gets in touch with Midori, a part-time employee at the Banana Club, but is startled to hear she's been implicated in the bloody death of a client with perverted tastes. (Amazon)

When a jobless drifter, whose days consist of randomly following strangers, is paid by a doctor to track his wife, he has no idea what he's letting himself in for. As he spends more time chasing after the doctor's wife he starts to uncover a disturbing motive to her movements. Under special medication that leaves her with a serious skin irritation, and unable to enjoy normal sex, she may have transformed into a modern day vampire.

Cult filmmaker Hisayasu Sato achieved a bizarre sort of success with his 1990 film Uma To Onna To Inu, leading him to return to the same tainted well with this warped look at a woman who lives in the middle of nowhere with a horse for a lover. The horse is also her best friend, and they communicate through telepathy as well as engage in intimate acts too unnatural to describe here. Unfortunately for all concerned, some photographers and models show up to upset the idyllic romance. (All Movie Guide)

Taxi driver who rapes women runs into a former victim and begins a decidedly peculiar affair. (Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide)

Cult director Hisayasu Sato teamed up with actor-screenwriter Taketoshi Watari once again for this raunchy tale of a family driven completely mad by rock music. The mother does half-nude aerobics until her son rapes her, the father turns into a homosexual pedophile, and the daughter falls into bed with a female teacher. Despite the shocking goings-on, the film is much more in keeping with Sato's usual themes of alienation and corrupted innocence than its brutal predecessor. (Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide)

A new drug that turns the feeling of pain into pleasure could change medical science forever, but a shrewd young man who's mother is on the research team decides to take the mad experimentation into his own hands.

Ryuzaki, an editor of Muscle Magazine, becomes involved with a man named Kitami. Their affair soon becomes dominated by sadomasochistic games, with a horrid result. (imdb)

A harrowing S&M roughie from erratic cult filmmaker Hisayasu Sato, this gay-themed pinku-eiga entry deals with an abused man who literally turns into an insect. Naturally, Sato borrows heavily from Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis and several of his other works, but the overall effect is far more Sadean than Kafkaesque.

This twisted softcore film from cult filmmaker Hisayasu Sato deals with a fatal lesbian attraction between a university lab technician and her new assistant. The tech is obsessed with motherhood, so she hires a man to rape and impregnate her young girlfriend. She must then eliminate the hated male when he comes to collect his reward. (Robert Firsching)

A suicidal woman decides to blow herself to pieces with dynamite on her birthday, but falls in love with a young delinquent on the subway instead.

The story of a painter, a rich guy who can afford to buy works of art just as easily as any tight butt he fancies, a shy and alienated student, his sister, her sadistic boyfriend and a wire-tapping weirdo. When their fates collide, there will be devastating consequences.

A teenage couple drive around improvising radio shows, following night stalkers and rapists or peeping on various sexual escapades, describing what they see in detail, feigning shock and screams as the attackers become more violent. (imdb)

A young man who films random couples having sex to sell the tapes to perverts discovers a somnambulist schoolgirl who allows older men to have sex with her, after which she gouges out their eyes with a knife.

Former Nikkatsu starlet Moeko Ezawa from 1972's memorable Nureta Kuchibiru plays the mother of a crazy family attempting to come to an understanding, while an other family comes to an unfortunate end when their alienated daughter kills them with a chainsaw

Kiyomi Ito stars as a woman who gets her intellectual kicks attempting to solve difficult criminal cases, and begins to investigate a videotape which shows the results of a brutal murder committed by using the knife-equipped camera itself. (ADC)

A medical researcher working with a blind, mute quadriplegic patient begins to experiment with hypnotherapy as a means to fix his seemingly non-physical ailments. Unfortunately, results are almost impossible to measure on the crippled subject, so she begins monitoring other, healthy text subjects... and even tries hypnosis on herself! What she's unlocking in the human brain may forever change medical science forever, but will she be remain sane enough - or even alive! - to present her findings? (ADC)

This viciously sadistic tale of an orgy of rape and violence in a Japanese high school, scripted by co-star Taketoshi Watari, pushes the brutality envelope a bit far even for Sato, without any of the redeeming characterizations or social observations seen in his usual work. Hiromi Kurita, Megumi Hayase, and Yoko Aimoto are along for the distasteful ride. (Robert Firsching)

Young and beautifull germophobe Ritsuko moves into a picture perfect neighborhood with her parents, being monitored by a research team who want to cure her of her debilitating phobias. Will her new neighbors be able to cure her of her irrational view of the outside world, or will coming face to face with this fairy-tale setting only drive her further inside of her subconsciousness?

Lesbian-themed tale of a schoolgirl who entices her gullible (not to mention slightly warped) female teacher by positing that they are predestined to dance together on the day the world ends.

Japanese cult director Hisayasu Sato made this slow-moving pinku-eiga story for Shintoho, one of two for the studio that year among his four 1989 releases. This is a standard tale of an abusive psychologist (Kazuhiro Sano) whose S&M sexplay becomes too much for his wife (Kiyomi Ito). She leaves him, but happiness arrives in the form of her masochistic twin sister (Ito again), who is perfectly content to be Sano's whipping-girl.

Following cosmetic surgery to enhance her breasts, an office worker is raped. The rapist's son, after setting his distinctly Oedipal gaze on his father's busty victim, locates her and they begin an ill-fated sadomasochistic affair that leads to a bloody killing spree.

The plot line concerns a television newswoman who attempts to boost ratings for her sagging midday news show by creating a plot to get her sister raped live on the air. Graphic and mean-spirited, the film nonetheless shows how effective the "rub their nose in it" school of satire can often be.

This bizarre pinku-eiga combines modern technology and parapsychology against a backdrop of rapes-for-hire and sadistic softcore sex.The center of the story is an alienated young man desperate to find a way to pay his bills. Financial relief arrives in the form of anonymous e-mails directing him to rape women for money. Sordid as his new job may be, the aspiring rapist seems to have solved his financial woes, until a young psychic uses her extrasensory powers to solve the case.

A hospital nurse treating a patient for amnesia discovers that he is the serial killer who has been roaming the city armed with a metal baseball bat. (Robert Firsching)

A timid young woman who lives with her domineering mother accepts an Adult Video scout's offer to "become somebody else" by performing in porn videos. As she rises in popularity, the boundaries between her two lives begin to disintegrate. (imdb)

Transfer student Mizuki is bullied mercilessly by her classmate. Nevertheless, she is always able to maintain her composure. Kirie, who is also bullied, becomes interested in Mizuki and longs for her. The two become close. (imdb)

Kazuhiro Sano plays an adopted orphan who is in love with his stepmother and repeatedly raped by his new father. When he grows up, the traumatized boy becomes an arsonist, only to find some fleeting taste of love with the male detective investigating him. (AllMovie)

A police detective investigating a vicious string of homosexual murders discovers that the latest victim appears to be the married executive who was his college lover ten years before. (Robert Firsching)

This softcore effort from cult pinku-eiga director Hisayasu Sato concerns the perfect couple. Of course, they don't know that they're the perfect couple because they each keep a "terrible" secret from the other. This prevents them from enjoying a normal sex life. The husband is impotent unless he can watch another couple having sex, and the wife pleasures herself to thoughts of being raped while someone else watches...

The story follows a female artist who attends a meditation center that advertises a relaxation session in a large tank filled with water. She is drugged by the clinic's doctor who rapes her in the tank and film's the act. (imdb.com)

A mentally disturbed prostitute claims to have lost her baby in a heavy S&M session. As she begins a similar relationship with a man whose wife left him because of his kinky urges, their mutual mental deterioration leads them down a spiral toward a double-suicide pact.

Although its title indicates three personalities, the heroine of cult filmmaker Hisayasu Sato’s downbeat multiple-personality tale actually exhibits four, going from loving wife to crazed slut to insane child to depressed adolescent. As usual, Sato fills the film with alienation, kinky sex, and psychological subplots.

A complete change of pace for cult pinku-eiga filmmaker Hisayasu Sato, this softcore farce set in a women's clinic looks more like one of Siggi Gotz's German romps than a film from the director of OL Renzoku Rape: Kyonyu Musaboru or Kamen No Yuwaku. The zany antics include the misadventures of a voyeuristic nurse, an exhibitionistic patient, a doctor and nurse who engage in S&M, a hypochondriac, and a lesbian nurse who sleeps with the patients.

The true story of a pair of college students who attempted a double suicide to end their doomed romance becomes fare for legendary pinku-eiga director Hisayasu Sato in this feature. Fatalistic and sad, this is one of the more depressing Japanese softcore films, and Sato makes it even worse by including footage from the lovers’ actual 8 mm experimental film throughout the story

Cult filmmaker Hisayasu Sato's second comedy of the year, this silly softcore effort stars pretty Nao Kikuchi as a young married woman who takes a job at a call-girl agency with the mistaken belief that it is a maid service. After she is raped on her first assignment, Kikuchi is understandably shocked, but quickly warms to her new career and becomes quite the professional. Unfortunately, her husband soon discovers the true nature of her work.

Kasumi Yuka heads the cast of this silly softcore film from Hisayasu Sato, the usually far more sober cult filmmaker known for grim depictions of alienation and sadism. Yuka plays a cranky harridan who uses her vibrator to administer questionably effective punishment to people who annoy her.

A high-school girl with a hobby of documenting stuff with her video camera films a woman getting raped in a dirty alley. She gets in contact with the rapist and starts blackmailing him to let her film when he assaults his victims, whom he chooses because they are all patients of his psychologist sister, and he's been eavesdropping on their sessions.

This routine effort from cult pinku-eiga director Hisayasu Sato centers around a divorcée who opens a beauty parlor and begins selling sexual services to boost her business.

Murayama Kaita, a Japanese painter, novelist and poet died in 1919 at the age of 22, leaving behind an impressive and time-defying body of work. In his most recent film, Sato Hisayasu offers a surreal, time-crossing, meta-layered essay on the artist, his originality and his legacy.