Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands

Forum 2018

Meeting in a blasted, barren wilderness, the hitman Sho is hired by wealthy real estate agent Naka to track down his kidnapped lover, Sae. Naka shows him a poor quality film of the girl being attacked by a gang of four yakuza, which sends Sho on a journey that brings him back into contact with the gang leader, Ko, who was responsible for the murder of his own girlfriend five years before. As he embarks on his quest through the dreamlike cityscapes of the late-60s Tokyo underworld for a fateful 3pm barroom rendezvous with his nemesis, Sho becomes increasingly unsure as to whether the girl really existed in the first place.
Yamatoya wrote Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands concurrently with his anonymous contribution to the script for Seijun Suzuki’s legendary Branded to Kill, which was released four months earlier. Similarly shot in stunning monochrome scope, it is as hallucinatory, fragmentary and surreal as its companion piece, and stands as a testament to just how flexible the pink film formula could be in its first decade.

by Atsushi Yamatoya
with Noriko Tatsumi, Yuichi Minato, Miki Watari, Shohei Yamamoto, Seigi (Masayoshi) Nogami, Hatsuo Yamaya, Mari Nagisa Japan 1967 Japanese 86’ Black/White

With

Noriko Tatsumi (Sae)
Yuichi Minato (Jo)
Miki Watari (Mina)
Shohei Yamamoto (Ko)
Seigi (Masayoshi) Nogami (Naka)
Hatsuo Yamaya (Doctor)
Mari Nagisa (Rie)

Crew

Written and Directed by	Atsushi Yamatoya
Cinematography	Hajime Kai
Editing	Shogo Sakurai
Music	Yosuke Yamashita
Production Design	Toshihiro Asakura
Producer	Daisuke Asakura / Keiko Sato Kokuei, Kazuto Morita Interfilm

World Sales

Rapid Eye Movies

Produced by

Kokuei

Interfilm

Atsushi Yamatoya

Born in 1937. He joined the Nikkatsu studio in 1962 as an assistant director before leaving in 1966 to work with the ‘pink film’ company founded by producer-director Koji Wakamatsu. In two of the four features he directed – Koya no datchi waifu (1967) and Aiyoku no wana (1973) – he used elements from Koroshi no rakuin (1967), a thriller he co-wrote with its director, Seijun Suzuki. In the following years, Yamatoya largely worked as writer and co-writer for Nikkatsu, and wrote screenplays for a number of Suzuki’s films. Atsushi Yamatoya died in 1993.

Filmography

1966 Uragiri no kisetsu (Season of Betrayal) 1967 Koya no datchi waifu (Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands) 1968 Mo no haeta kenjû 1973 Aiyoku no wana (Trapped in Lust)

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2018