Love Hunter | |
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Theatrical poster
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Directed by | Seiichirō Yamaguchi |
Written by | Kiyomi Kōyama (pseudonym for Seiichirō Yamaguchi and Tatsumi Kumashiro) |
Starring | Hidemi Hara Mari Tanaka Sumiko Minami |
Music by | Riichirō Manabe |
Cinematography | Shōhei Andō |
Edited by | Atsushi Nabeshima |
Distributed by | Nikkatsu |
Release date
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Running time
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72 min. |
Country | Japan |
Language | Japanese |
Love Hunter (恋の狩人 ラブ・ハンター Koi no karyūdo: rabu hantaa?) is a 1972 Japanese film in Nikkatsu's Roman porno series, directed by Seiichirō Yamaguchi and starring Hidemi Hara, Mari Tanaka, and Sumiko Minami. The film was banned for obscenity, and director Yamaguchi arrested. The resulting trials were the last time that a film was prosecuted for obscenity in Japan.
Kyōko is a woman with a promiscuous past who is sexually unsatisfied with her marriage. Her frustrations lead her to have hedonistic dreams, such as her mother and grandfather having sex together. Seeking to rejuvenate her marriage, she throws a wild party. The ploy is a success.
The screenwriting credit, Kiyomi Kōyama, was a stage name for director Yamaguchi and prominent Roman Porno director Tatsumi Kumashiro. Sumiko Minami was a Nikkatsu veteran from the Nikkatsu Action days. Many of the studio's staff from this pre-Roman Porno era had left rather than make films in the softcore pink style that the studio had adopted in 1971. Minami was one of the few performers who remained, and audiences were given a shock to see this actress in previously conservative roles performing perverse scenes such as sex with her father in the dream sequence.
No Japanese film had been prosecuted for obscenity since Tetsuji Takechi's Black Snow (1965), which ended up in a victory for the filmmaker. When Nikkatsu started its Roman Porno series in November 1971, it opened to critical and box-office success with the double-release Apartment Wife: Affair In the Afternoon and Castle Orgies. The interest of the authorities was also aroused, and with the release of Love Hunter in January 1972, they took action.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested director Yamaguchi as well as other Nikkatsu employees. Inspectors for Eirin, the Japanese film industry's self-monitoring organization, were also indicted for passing the film. All copies of the film, as well as the accompanying features, Katsuhiko Fujii's Office Lady Diary: Scent of a She-Cat and Kaoru Umezawa's independent pink film, Highschool Geisha were included in the raid.