A woman was brutally murdered. Aya, the editor of a weekly magazine, and the photographer Kajii rush to the site of the crime to take pictures for a scoop. The sight is ghastly because the killer had cut the vagina out of his victim’s body. Aya did get a hint from a photograph published in a photo magazine, which was taken by the 15 year old Shun. Kajii suspects Shun to be the murderer and starts tailing him with the help of his girlfriend.
A few days later the killer strikes again. The victim is Makiko, with whom Aya has had a lesbian relationship. Their search for the killer leads Aya, Kajii and Shun to a park where the first murder has taken place. But who is the High Noon Slasher and why were the women killed?
Takita Yojiro made his directorial debut in 1981 after working as assistant director for Mukai Kan, Watanabe Mamoru, Yamamoto Shinya and other pink film heavyweights. He made himself a name with his Molester Train (Chikan densha) films with the prurient detective Kuroda Ippei, and gained fame as pink comedy director.
High Noon Ripper was Takita’s second foray into the psycho thriller genre after Serial Rape (Renzoku bokan), which in 1983 won all major prices at the Zoom-Up Pink Film Awards. High Noon Ripper was Takita’s first film for Kokuei and his first collaboration with screenplay writer Yumeno Shiro, who is best known for his long lasting collaboration with Takita’s former assistant director Sato Hisayasu.
The capacious but void urban spaces (shot at the newly developed West side of Shinjuku station in Tokyo) and the skillful use of recurring images such as sliding empty elevators or a knife cutting trough an egg yolk give the film a strikingly eerie and claustrophobic atmosphere in which the psychodrama unfolds.
After shooting more than two dozen pink films, in 1986 Takita moved on to become a highly successful director of popular mainstream movies. His biggest success to date is Departures (Okuribito), which in 2009 won the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film.
Roland Domenig