Noboru Tanaka

A true-life tale of a broken woman whose hedonistic tryst with a high-class restaurateur resulted in a horrific crime of passion that littered Tokyo headlines in 1936.Read More »

Little known 1980’s exploitation flic with violent ending

During the Second World War, a young man from a secluded village is denied the chance to serve in the Japanese army through his tuberculosis. Highly intelligent, although isolated, he lives with his kindly grandmother. Taking advantage of the times he enjoys the company of several married women, but once news of his disease spreads he becomes increasingly socially ostracised and plots revenge…Read More »

There’s a Nobura Tanaka masterpiece lurking behind this lurid title. Today many critics feel Tanaka was the best director in Nikkatsu’s pink film stable, but in the 70s his work was constantly overshadowed by other studio masters like Chusei Sone and Tatsumi Kumashiro. This film was his first major “break-through.” Despite the “objectionable” necrophilia scenes, the movie was applauded by the mainstream press, praised for Hideo Murota’s remarkable performance , and honored by the Japanese Academy of Films and Motion Pictures and Kinema Jumpo as the best film of 1979.Read More »

The second of Nikkatsu’s trilogy of softcore melodramas looking at prostitution in various Japanese cities, this dark look at ritualistic temple sex in Edo from director Noboru Tanaka is quite a departure from the light, comic tone of Chusei Sone’s Maruhi: Joro Ichiba. Resembling nothing so much as an Asian version of all those Roman-set Italian sex films of the 1970s, the film deals with various members of Japanese royalty subjecting women to sadomasochistic sexual practices in the temple for supposedly religious reasons. Rie Nakagawa stars with Yuri Yamashina, Moeko Ezawa, and Hijiri Abe.
~ Robert Firsching, All Movie GuideRead More »

The series really hits its stride by the third film, Nami, which is both the artistic pinnacle of the Angel Guts cycle and a roaring good time for devotees of outrageous cinema. A spate of sexual assaults motivates tenacious reporter Nami (Kanuma) to investigate the victims and the circumstances of the crimes, but her probing leads to the awakening of some very dark impulses within herself. Chasing down the girls with her crew and indulging in masturbatory bathtub fantasies afterwards, Nami eventually crosses the line when she prods one subject into sheer insanity. Read More »

Watcher in the Attic is a 1976 Japanese film in Nikkatsu’s Roman porno series, directed by Noboru Tanaka and starring Junko Miyashita.

In 1923 Tokyo Lady Minako is the owner of a shabby boarding house with a collection of bizarre characters for tenants. Gōda, one of her tenants, spends most of his time in the attic spying on the other tenants through holes he has drilled into the ceiling. During one of his peeping sessions, Gōda witnesses the murder of one of the tenants at the hand of Lady Minako. Gōda becomes obsessed with Lady Minako, and determines to commit a grotesque murder in order to prove to her that he is her soul mate. He kills another tenant – a priest – by dripping poison into his mouth through the ceiling. A series of grotesque murders follow. The film ends apocalyptically with the Great Kantō earthquake which kills both of them during their intercourse. Read More »

Synopsis:

Junior High School Student Yudo spends his nights hanging out at the disco; his parents are more interested in dealing with their swapping partners than taking care of their son. One evening, while he is shoplifting, a young woman gives him a hand and helps him pull off the snatch. Yudo, mesmerized by the woman, follows her to find out where she lives. Then attacks her..Read More »

Plot

Bathhouse prostitute Masako and her street-whore friend Jun are pawn for their Yakuza Pimps. These girls have lost control over their own existence, passed from one client to the next…Read More »

Critical Appraisal (From Wiki)
Midnight Eye’s review of A Woman Called Sada Abe compares it to In the Realm of the Senses, notes, “Aside from being less sexually explicit, it is also smaller scale, more intimate, more cinematically stylised and arguably more erotic.”[5]

A Woman Called Sada Abe is generally considered one of Nikkatsu’s five best Roman porno films.[1] Many Japanese critics consider it to be superior to Oshima’s internationally better-known In the Realm of the Senses, and Junko Miyashita is called a more realistic Sada Abe than Eiko Matsuda.[2] Miyashita’s performance in the film has been judged one of the best of her career, and the film has been called director Tanaka’s masterpiece.[1]Read More »