Woman in a Box: Virgin Sacrifice (Impulse Pictures DVD Review)

Is Woman in a Box Trash or Treasure?

DVD Distributed by Impulse / July 9, 2019

A young woman (Saeko Kizuki) is captured by a sadistic couple, locked in a wooden box and sexually tortured and abused. This uncomfortable mix of sex and horror was created at the height of the VHS home video era and designed to go straight-to-video. Scripted by Kazuo “Gaira” Komizu (Entrails of a Virgin), this Japanese “roughie” is certainly one of the strangest films in the entire Nikkatsu catalog.

Travis’s Take (4 / 5)

The Roman Porno series usually doesn’t disappoint. From the cover this one looks like some kind of Boxing Helena type story, so I am going in expecting some more rough material in this chapter. And plenty of yellow skin.

This one starts off in less than a minute with two people screwing around in a parked car in the middle of a busy intersection. Take that BangBus! The credits roll over some simulated sex that has less of the technique of some previous entries. More pornographic, less artistic. Once they are done the guy has her hand feed him some fried chicken, which gives him energy for a second round in front of a park full of people playing tennis. He spots homeless men whose shanty boxes are getting pummeled with tennis balls (hilarious) and threatens “to make you suck their dirty penises”. This couple is in love, obviously.

Once the title card comes up you feel like you are already in a weird interzone. This is from 1985 but the theme song has more of a 70s disco-y beat to it, but this looks more like it was shot on video versus to the lush film look of older Roman Pornos. I think that helps make it seem a bit more prurient.

The couple decides to spice up their obviously staid sex lives by kidnapping the most wholesome, attractive girl they can find. This starts to get pretty dark, with not only sexual abuse but also starts to have some borderline Guinea Pig feel to it. And don’t you worry urine fans; terrorizing this girl has her pissing her pants in record time. There is enough (optically fogged) rough rape in this to make David Hess blush. It’s not like that wholesome, funny rape of White Rose Campus. This one is non-stop degradation that I can’t even start to list all the shit they put this poor girl through, not to mention trying to take screen grabs that won’t get this review taken down.. This might be the most grim and mean spirited one that I’ve seen so far. I think it goes so far over the top that it becomes funny.

Eventually it starts to cut forward to the couple being interrogated by some cops, so one can hope they at least face some punishment for what they did. There is some good angry Japanese cop yelling in these scenes. It seems the couple turned themselves in to the police after what they did. Not for any altruistic reasons, more to just become famous and make people who read about their crimes get super horny. Kind of makes all those pretentious “disturbing” Bonnie and Clyde rip-offs seem pretty lame in comparison to something Nikkatsu whipped up. Somehow this ends on an upbeat pop song about school girls wanting to have sex. Woman in a Box is absolutely nuts.

As for the disc, as usual there are basically no extras. While this seems to have been shot on video, it actually didn’t look as bad as some SOV of the time period looked. There are still a few attempts at direction and framing, so it’s not like pure gonzo porn. Sadist and roughie fans will most likely enjoy this one.