This first installment in the ANGEL GUTS series is the loudest and rawest. It focuses on three street punks who behave like Kubrick's Droogs in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. They spend most of their spare time raping women, harassing women and plotting to rape more women. Their routine is interrupted when one of the trio exhibits a conscience.
Director Chusei Sone employs a rugged, hand-held approach to the material and milks entirely convincing performances from the youthful cast. As rape is a consistent staple of this series, there is plenty of it in this outing, although none of it is pictorially graphic. One nightmare sequence, in which a young woman is stabbed repeatedly in the groin, does possess a poisonous cinematic power.
There is an erotic edge to the film's sexuality and, as per expectations, an emphasis on female underwear and garment tearing.
Plaudits should go to cinematographer Nobumasa Mizunoo who embellishes the film with stark, white-hot visuals and toys with both color and black and white.
The film is a character study of the dangerous miscreants who walk among us and portrays sociopathic behavior as being just one step sideways for most of us.
