When life turns on you.
Girl Hell 1999 is directed by Daisuke Yamanouchi, who also made the two Red Room movies. He’s known for low-budget productions, and the Red Room movies are fun trash movies.
In Girl Hell 1999, we follow a woman who is not a happy person. The only thing that makes her happy is giving some food to a crazy homeless woman. Every time she returns home, she’s reminded of the hell she lives in. Her sister was in an accident and looks like a monster, and her father is a monster who does what monsters do inside the four walls of hell—and I don’t have to explain more than that, do I?
Then we have two freaks who must be fans of Ted Bundy. The tallest of them is in love with the protagonist, and he’s willing to change to become a better person so they can live a happy, normal life. Will this freak win the heart of the purest character in this tiny universe?
And lastly, we have a freaky pervert who has a secret and likes yellow liquid. He doesn’t get much screen time, but that kinky man steals the show.
Girl Hell 1999 is yet another Japanese nihilistic movie that disappointed me. After watching some of Katsuya Matsumura’s movies, especially the first four All Night Long movies, it’s clear his nihilistic style hits harder than anything I’ve seen from Daisuke Yamanouchi so far.
This is a low-budget movie with a surprisingly good score, and the cinematography is impressive for the budget. The universe is tiny, and the characters you follow have no real depth. They exist to make the protagonist’s life a living hell, and you just sit there waiting for her to snap. The characters are broken, perverted, and better off dead—except for the innocent, pure woman.
My favorite scenes are the milking scene tribute to Takashi Miike’s Visitor Q—and you know I like fresh milk, don’t you? If you do too, you’ll be satisfied by a couple of dirty scenes.
But my absolute favorite is the scene with the creepy pervert who steals the protagonist’s bicycle seat. What he does to the woman is supposed to be disturbing and messed up, but it was just hilarious. I wish that perverted man could have been a character in Twin Peaks.
Girl Hell 1999 offers the usual Japanese cocktail of violence, sex, and perversion. In the end, I didn’t find anything special about it. If you want something truly disturbing and memorable, skip this one and watch All Night Long II instead.