Tatsuya is just your regular Japanese guy. His father broke into his mother’s house and raped her while forcing her husband to watch. Then growing up with his mother who is still married to the same guy, he would peek through the keyhole and watch his step father bump uglies with his mistress while Tatsuya’s mother was forced to watch. It’s pretty much The Waltons but seen through the lens of Japanese popular culture.

For some strange reason, Tatsuya is not well liked by his father. I don’t have a lot to go on as far that opinion goes, except for the fact that his fake dad hits him a lot and says mean stuff to him. One would have hoped that this would have provoked a couple of those “you’re not my real dad” moments, but alas, all that happens is that Tatsuya and his fake dad take a trip out on the ocean and the next thing you know the weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed, and so was his fake dad’s ass – overboard!

Little Tatsuya is now all grown up and has his fake dad’s money and sweet house. Apparently there was some other guy that looked after him when his fake dad took the Long Swim. There’s a scene where Tatsuya tells this geezer that he is asking for permission to sell some land. Later it is revealed that Tatsuya has a ton of money and it didn’t matter whether he could sell the land or not. I have no idea what that was all about, but it did introduce us to the old goat’s daughter who thinks of Tatsuya as a brother. This means she wants to lay him of course. You know how fake brothers and sisters are.

Tatsuya goes and builds himself a torture chamber in his basement (next to the wine cellar) and decides to break it in on his father’s old mistress. You’d think she would be pretty old by now, but those geisha girls wear their miles well. He comes on to her, drugs her and hauls her down in his torture chamber.

Later during his birthday party, he tells people that he’s going down to get some good wine, but he makes a pitstop at the torture chamber, strips, humps, and kills the mistress, all before toweling off and going back to the party. He even remembered the good wine!

Oh, do you remember Tatsuya’s real dad? You know, the escaped rapist/killer? He’s still on the loose and meets up with Tatsuya. They hit it off immediately and I guess the movie wants to give us that old “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree especially when the apple is into suspension bondage” angle.

There isn’t really any point to the rest of the movie other than to follow this demented dude as he kidnaps a few more chicks. First, he sees some high school girl on TV winning a speech contest about how man should be nicer to his brother man. Oh, the irony of it all! When he goes out to kidnap her, he puts on such a fake beard and hair that you could have sworn he was in a kung fu movie or something. He eventually lets her go and everyone chalks up her MIA status to stress over the upcoming college entrance exams. He later sees her on the street cheerfully telling her friends that her “time away” was great and has made her a happy and better person. Tatsuya smiles – another job well done!

What’s next for our “hero”? Well, there is this world famous singer and he goes out and kidnaps her and her assistant with the old “so and so sent me to drive you somewhere” routine. This is great, because it allows him to break out the cheesy beard and wig again. I think he was also wearing really big, ugly dark glasses for the complete “70s dude who is about to sexually assault you” look. He gets them back to his dungeon and puts them up in some pretty sweet cages.

Remember the fake sister Tatsuya had? He was always real nice to her and treated her well even while he was killing off chicks in his basement? She kind of puts the move on him and then later he invites her back to his place and the next thing you know, he decides he should show her his world, if you know what I mean. Dad is still around, but he’s been put in a cage because he’s made an ass of himself. And you know that when your serial killer/sex torturer son thinks you’ve done something annoying, you’ve really gone over the line.

At some point in time Tatsuya and this girl get it on and in the morning there is only a finely lettered note from his dream girl. It is one of those notes that we all get from our lovers from time to time. You know – the one where she says she killed his dad and herself or maybe it said it was against God to kill herself or it might just have been a “honey do” list.

It doesn’t really matter because down in the basement everyone is dead. Tatsuya gets nostalgic while sitting in his garden and he thinks he sees this woman running through the flowers and the next thing you know, we see his favorite ornamental helmet that he wore while torturing his victims lying in the surf. I’m not too big a man to admit that those scenes involving ornamental helmets in the surf always choke me up!

Beautiful Girl Hunter has no scary moments, nothing inventive, no gore to speak of, no humor, and a world populated solely by people that are either predators or pieces of meat for the predators. The movie fails in everything it attempts. Whether it was the father/son angle, the references to the Nazis, Tatsuya’s parents’ relationship, or the blather about bringing out these girls’ immorality. No explanation is ever given for anything that happens, but more importantly everything that happens is so idiotic, you don’t care that it wasn’t explained. You’re just glad when the movie is over and your torture finally ends.

© 2008 MonsterHunter