The Slit-Mouthed Woman

Sacrament Films

Salvation Group

All Region DVD

Japanese with optional English Subtitles (in white)

The Slit-Mouthed Woman is an intriguing and haunting ghost story. It is only a shade over an hour in length and yet with stylish filming and careful directing it is a disturbing work of cinema. The Slit-Mouthed Woman is a traditional Japanese tale but here it has been given a very modern twist. The film opens with a doctor and nurse slipping off for a “bit of rumpy pumpy”; they enter a sealed off section of the Tamai hospital and they start to get down to it. However, they both begin to feel uneasy and slowly a dark menacing presence appears with long black hair and the screen goes black. We then see the hospital empty and deserted; it has been left in a state of disrepair and has a do not enter sign on the front. A newspaper reporter begins to investigate the tale of the “Slit-Mouthed Woman” and finds that all the doctors and most of the patients have died or vanished after a series of strange events and they are all connected to a “forbidden room” at the hospital.

In the first third of the film there are quite a few sex scenes, these are explicit but at a soft porn level, lots of tits and arse but not XXX. Each sex scene seems to strongly emphasize mouths and tongue kissing and this brings attention to what later develops. At first the film seems to be simply a Japanese “Pink” film with lots of sex with a horror plot, but soon it becomes clear that the Slit-Mouthed Woman is actually a rather more interesting horror tale.

The ghost becomes more and more confronting as the plot evolves and uses mirrors and sex to take her revenge. We finally find out that she was in love with a married man and when her family (and ultimately the married man she loved) rejected her, she became obsessed with her looks. When she could not get the plastic surgery she wanted, she deliberately crashed her car. While she now got the surgery she wanted she was left with two large scars at the sides of her mouth. She left the hospital to face her ex-lover but was chased by the locals who tore off her bandages and ridiculed her for her scarred face. She felt so humiliated that she returned to the hospital and split her mouth open with a blade and committed suicide.

Her unsettled and vengeful spirit began to haunt the hospital and soon any who came in contact with her room or indirectly with others who had come to the hospital (even through relationships and sex) would pay a high price.

While the Slit-Mouthed Woman could have simply been a soft porn excursion into horror, it also explores aspects of Body dysmorphia and addiction to plastic surgery. It brings together such themes such as love, sex and betrayal, body image, plastic surgery and even familial acceptance of diversity (her father rejected her due to her love of a married man) and unites these in a successful erotic ghost story. Not a mean feat for a relatively short film !

This edition from Sacrament also includes a short film called Birds Of Prey, a text based introduction to Japanese Pink cinema, some trailers (Hurt, Black Mass, and The Witching Hour) and stills.

This review will appear in Volume 2:1 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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