2/4/08: Kichiku (1997)Here’s a sequel-of-sorts to
Wild In The Streets, picking up on the downward spiral hinted at in
Wild’s final scene. Of course, this Japanese import didn’t become an underground classic for its ugly dissection of young Leftist activists.
Kichiku is beloved despite all that—so you can guess that the film offers some really disturbing and exploitive elements.
Kichiku is not for the faint-hearted. If you enjoy a good gore fest, though, the film offers a brutally realistic setting that trumps the usual routine of rampaging slashers and sadistic hitmen.
It’s sometime in the ’70s, and Japan is going through the same crap that America’s had to endure. There are all kinds of Commie groups blooming amongst the universities, mostly fueled by an anti-American attitude. There’s also general hatred for authority—and, much like in America, the kids have no idea what they’re really trying to accomplish.
This guy called Aizawa is a good example. The (supposedly) charismatic leader has been jailed for his Molotov-mixing militant ways, and he tells his departing cellmate Fujiwara to go check on his followers. Fujiwara doesn’t know the kind of merry mess that he’s going to find. Aizawa has left his girlfriend Masami in charge, and she’s got a typical mindset for the time. She thinks it’s her job to have sex with everyone in the group, since that’ll surely keep everyone happy and satisfied. It also helps inspire her comrades to rob post offices to fund the organization’s activities—which mainly seem to involve sitting around and getting stoned.
Kichiku takes its time in chronicling the deterioration of Aizawa’s followers. They’re a sad mix of eager revolutionaries, lazy bastards, and one naïve yokel who’s like Jerry Lewis in
The Nutty Socialist. Masami’s no femme fatale. She looks kind of like Björk, and acts even spazzier. It turns out that Aizawa isn’t much a leader, either—although it’s pretty inspiring when, with less than a month left in his sentence, the creep decides he’s better off slicing himself open and giving his intestines a good massage.
From there, things fall apart in a reliable fashion.
Kichiku is genuinely horrific in how reasonably it chronicles the decline and fall of absolutely everybody. Characters wander in and out of the story just like they would in any hippie commune. If you’ve ever spent time in one of those (in any era), then you should appreciate the feeling of abruptly realizing that everyone around is deeply disturbed.
Kichiku’s been told a few times from an American perspective, but that was long before the 1990s. You won’t find an American version with this level of bloodshed. Sam Peckinpah couldn’t even make a proper right-wing film by 1975.
Kichiku could get an American remake today, but only if the characters were Young Republicans. That’s a predictable complaint—but not nearly as predictable as that remake would be.
Make it your own: Kichiku can be had
pretty cheap, with a second disc that provides interesting details on the film. There’s some political discussion, but the conversation mostly centers on how this Japanese classic was made by an amateur cast and crew who barely had a budget. Those young people worked hard enough to enjoy the deaths of their characters.
