After his investments in the stock market fail, the broker Sakata Kenzo is not able to repay the 2 million Yen he had borrowed from loan-shark Uchiyama. He tries to kill himself, but is stopped by his wife and daughter. In exchange for extending the time to pay back the debts, Sakata’s wife “loans” herself to Uchiyama, but when he expects her to also comfort his mentally retarded son, whom he keeps locked away, the woman flees in shock, is hit by a car and dies. Hearing the news Sakata has a stroke and ends up paralyzed.
His daughter Mariko starts working as a nightclub dancer and call girl in order to raise the money to pay back the debts. When her father kills himself, Mariko vows to take revenge on Uchiyama who has destroyed her family. Her perfidious blackmail scheme, however, gets her into trouble with the local yakuza gang.
Blue Film Woman was one of the first pink films shot completely in color. Because of the film’s tight budgets, the industry’s switch to the more costly color film came late and only gradually. The first pink films were all shot in black-and-white, from the mid-1960s on so-called part-color films appeared in which several scenes (usually the more juicy ones) were filmed in color, but the rest in black-and-white. From the 1970s on color film became the standard.
After his debut in 1965 Mukai Kan had quickly established himself as a hit-maker, and several of his films were also exported to Europe. In Italy his film Forbidden technique (Kinjirareta tekunikku, 1969), which was released under the title Naomi, stirred a scandal when it was banned on charges of obscenity. In 1979 Mukai established the production company Shishi Production, which raised a considerable number of pink film directors such as Zeze Takahisa, Sato Hisayasu, Tajiri Yuji, Enomoto Toshiro and Imaoka Shinji.
For the role of the loan shark Uchiyama Mukai cast Fujii Mitsugu, who in the 1930s rose to stardom with Shochiku’s “Young master” (wakadana) series.
Roland Domenig