Seishun no satsujinsha

Would have to say on the whole it's pretty dreadful. It wouldn't be stretching it too far to say it is mainly a vehicle for nude scenes by Harada Mieko (then just 17 years of age, not something which would generally be allowed today..) with some gruesome stabbing deaths thrown in for good measure. The film-making is uniformly gloomy, with almost all scenes being shot on rainy days (or at least with the rain machine going full bore..). The cinematography is occasionally inventive, and this is perhaps the only feature that renders it watchable to the end.

Its interest today is mainly in its portrait of 1970's Japan. The tail-end of 1960's political radicalism in Japan found its expression in the ongoing protest against the construction and expansion of Narita airport, and this forms the fascinating if unlikely backdrop of the film, which is otherwise a somewhat Oedipal mash-up of patricide, matricide, rape, and attempted suicide.