| Female Cats | |
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Theatrical poster for Female Cats (1983) |
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| Directed by | Shingo Yamashiro[1] |
| Produced by | Yutaka Okada Kimio Shindō |
| Written by | Makoto Naitō Kochiho Katsura |
| Starring | Ai Saotome |
| Music by | Tarō Morimoto |
| Cinematography | Yonezō Maeda |
| Editing by | Akira Suzuki |
| Distributed by | Nikkatsu |
| Release date(s) | December 23, 1983 |
| Running time | 86 minutes |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
Female Cats (女猫 Meneko) is a 1983 Japanese film in Nikkatsu's Roman porno series, directed by Shingo Yamashiro and starring Ai Saotome.
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Innocent female doctor Mineko was seduced by Sachiko, an aggressive lesbian, in her younger days. Mineko begins dating a male coworker, and accepts an invitation to a party at the home of a transvestite patient. Sachiko comes out of Mineko's past, enraged with jealousy, and begins tormenting Mineko and her boyfriend.[2][3]
Female Cats director Shingo Yamashiro was best known as an actor, having debuted in 1957.[5] He appeared in the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series, and one of his better-known appearance for Western audiences is in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Sweet Home (1989).[5][6]
In his Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema, Jasper Sharp uses Female Cats as an example of the range of themes possible in the Roman Porno genre, calling it an Argento-esque thriller.[3] In their Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films, the Weissers compliment Yamashiro's direction as the best thing about the film. They write that he, "goes the extra mile to compose many astonishingly good-looking sequences, punctuated by some creatively stylish camerawork."[2] A lesbian shower sequence between Mineko and Sachiko is singled out for praise. The scene is shot from the shower faucet's point of view, through a spray of water.[2] However they fault the film's unimaginative script and its "lurid plot".[2]
Female Cats was released theatrically in Japan on December 23, 1983.[7] It was released to home video in VHS format in Japan on March 16, 1984 and re-issued on June 22, 1990. It was released as part of the Nikkatsu Roman Porno Series of VHS releases on December 6, 1991.[8][9][10] It was released on DVD in Japan on December 4, 1998, and re-released on DVD on June 23, 2006, as part of Geneon's fourth wave of Nikkatsu Roman porno series.[11][12] In this format it was issued in the 4-disc Roman Porno series DVD Box, Vol. 1 on March 7, 2008.[13]
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