I just finished a triple-feature of films released in 1999 by adult video director Daisuke Yamanouchi.

Those interested in extreme cinema usually view the three films Yamanouchi made in 1999- Red Room, Celluloid Nightmares and Girl Hell 1999– as the high point in the director’s career. These films are widely considered to be some of the best successors of the Japanese Guinea Pig series released in the decade prior and continue today to enjoy a strong cult following. And though each film is different in their approach, they all combine elements of fetish porn with extreme horror and gore. And like Guinea Pig: Mermaid in a Manhole, the films have an oddly hypnotic charm and each somehow ends up being far more intelligent then they have any right to be.

Yamanouchi’s 1999 run of films absolutely nails the pitch-black humour that runs through many of Japan’s best extreme films. In retrospect, many of the ideas in Yamanouchi’s films seem ahead of their time and we may never fully understand or appreciate how much these films influenced modern horror cinema in the years to come.

(I should point out that Yamanouchi made one other film in 1999 called Dead a Go! Go!, but nobody really discusses it.)

I had quite the night watching these films, so I am going to do something a bit different with this review and say something about each of the films to help better explain the experience I had watching them.

Red Room

When I started my Yamanouchi marathon, I actually didn’t know anything about the director. In fact, I hadn’t even heard of Celluloid Nightmares or Hell Girl 1999 until after I finished Red Room, and I only heard of Red Room because its intriguing Saw-like premise (even though it pre-dates the first Saw film by five years) has made it the most popular. The idea behind Red Room is that four people are willing participants in a winner-takes-all game show that requires them to invent torture challenges for each other until only one person is left.

What makes Red Room interesting is watching the escalation of the challenges which are decided by the person who randomly picks the crown card. The victims of each challenge is random as well. Failure to complete a challenge or calling it quits takes you out of the game, but this group is desperate for the money so tapping out is not going to be used as an option. The challenges begin with the younger women tricking the only man playing into challenging them to french kiss. It’s something that’s easy and painless. But inevitably the contestants want revenge for prior humiliations and when each pulls the crown card up, they start turning more and more to the box of weird items that look like they were collected during a five-minute shopping spree at a Home Depot. There is duct tape. Wire. Scissors. A screwdriver. A light bulb. 

The budget for Red Room, like all Yamanouchi films, is extremely low and the sound effects feel a bit over the top. Plus a lot of time is spent trying to make the other people do gross acts that might appeal to some viewer’s strange sexual fetish. (I only gagged twice.) But considering the exploitative purpose of the film, it ends up surprisingly sensitive in its treatment of a trans character and offers an ending that actually resonates on an emotional level. 

After watching Red Room, I knew I enjoyed it for what it was, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to add it to The Midnight Selections. Then I saw I had access to another film, Celluloid Nightmares, that was also directed by Yamanouchi and I put it on without knowing a single other thing about it. Best choice I made that night. But more on this later.

Girl Hell 1999

Each of the three Yamanouchi films from 1999 are barely over an hour long and when Celluloid Nightmares ended I figured I’d round out my Yamanouchi marathon with Girl Hell 1999. (It was just a bit after midnight.) Unlike Red Room and Celluloid Nightmares, both which include obvious horror elements, Girl Hell 1999 reminded more of Takashi Miike’s Gozu because of its bizarre assemblage of characters that our relatively normal protagonist is forced to engage with. 

Girl Hell 1999 starts with a young man talking to a friend about being in love, while his friend scoffs at him saying he’d rather just keep having his way from one girl to the next. The reveal at the end of what started out sounding like an everyday conversation is that they both are serial rapists.

Then we meet our seventeen-year-old protagonist, Misaki, and slowly learn about the people in her life. She has an overweight best friend who is a prostitute. She often kills time bringing food to a homeless lady that obsesses over a plastic doll. Her older sister is trapped at home, bandaged and bedridden, after being disfigured in a car accident. And her monstrous father spends his afternoons raping his defenseless and disfigured eldest daughter. 

Meanwhile, Misaki is unknowingly stalked by the young rapist who thinks he is in love with her even though they’ve never met. Plus, there’s a wealthy middle-age pervert looming about that has taken a special interest in her. 

Girl Hell 1999 is absolute nihilism. For the most part, Misaki seems like a good person, but her world is an absolute nightmare. Of the three Yamanouchi films I watched, this is the one I liked the least, but only because it has no obvious message. But that probably is its point. Yamanouchi has created a hellish landscape where nothing really meaningful can take place and tragedy is inevitable, so the only lesson Misaki can learn is to just give into her rage. The film is a subversion of the usual coming of age tale. And to its credit, the most haunting images in this film linger with you after it’s done.

Celluloid Nightmares [Muzan-E]

But of the films in Yamanouchi’s 1999 collection, I think it is Celluloid Nightmares that ends up rising above the rest. For one thing, it’s the only one of the three movies that doesn’t have someone swallowing another’s piss as a plot point. (Jesus, what did I spend the night watching?) It’s also the closest to a real horror film. Admittedly, it also contains scenes that show a graphic, but satirical, take at pornos, but Yamanouchi is actually able to turn this into one of the film’s strengths as it gives its pseudo-documentary format an added layer of authenticity.

Celluloid Nightmares tells the story of a documentary crew investigating the disappearance of popular porn star Mai Tsurumi. There are also rumours of a copy of a rarely seen snuff video that shows the star being brutally murdered, but the existence of the video has never been verified.

There are two satirical pornographic sequences in this film. One shows a sample of Tsurumi’s work in menstrual porn, though the starlet’s face pixelated. But yes, Yamanouchi makes menstrual porn look as disgusting as it sounds.

But it’s in the second sequence where the mad genius of Yamanouchi really shines. The documentary film crew walks onto the set of a menstrual rape porn to talk with the director that was suppose to film Tsurumi’s last movie. The crew is ready to shoot a scene but the actress on set complains about stomach problems because she is menstrating. Of course, this just causes the director start the shoot immediately after complaining that she’s losing good blood. Once the camera is rolling, the two hired male actors begin to seemingly force themselves on her as the script requires. 

While this scene is taking place, the documentary’s cameraman occasionally pans to show the reaction of Kazuyo Fujimori (Yûki Emoto), the female face of the documentary investigating Mai Tsurum’s disappearance and her discomfort conveys all the of our concerns over what we are watching. It is a powerful scene with lots of interesting and unexpected meta-aspects. Despite the fictional rape, the long single-take shoot also contains a lot of self-aware dark humour because the whole concept of menstrual porn is ridiculous and disgusting and Yamanouchi absolutely leans into this.

The more legitimate horror elements in Celluloid Nightmares do not take place until the second half, after the crew gets ahold of a copy of the snuff tape and makes the decision to show its found footage contents. (What year did The Blair Witch Project come out?) When the horror starts, it quickly gives us an idea of what The Poughkeepsie Tapes might have been like if it decided to kick things up a notch. Turns out the creator of the snuff film is a porn-obsessed superfan, which adds a further level of subtext. 

But Yamanouchi saves his most extreme gore moments and the film’s most surprising twist for the end.

It wasn’t until after I saw Celluloid Nightmares that I learned of the film’s reputation as one of the most disgusting films ever made- a label I’m starting to think does more damage than good. I came into Celluloid Nightmares with no expectations, so I was happy with what I saw. But those who criticize the film online mostly complain that the film didn’t live up to its “most disgusting” reputation instead of commenting on the quality of the film they just saw. There also seems to be a lot of copies circulating about that are unsubtitled or blurry, adding to the negativity. (The version I watched was fine. I even used it to splice together my own fan-made trailer after I gave up on finding an official one.) 

For fans of extreme cinema, Celluloid Nightmares is a must-see film. I was shocked by how intelligent a film that blatantly includes scenes of intentionally off-putting pornography can be. And embedded in its best scenes is a potent meta-critique of exploitation films that only a handful of other directors have been able to achieve. Celluloid Nightmares may not be the most extreme or disgusting film out there, but I personally would rather a film be great.

And if you end up liking it, I have given you two other recommendations to watch as well.