Sex Rider: Wet Highway – 88 Films

Director: Koretsugu Kurahara
Screenplay by: Tatsuya Asai
Starring: Mari Tanaka, Ken Yoshizawa, Yuki Seto, Akira Takahashi, Kinji Takinami, Ken Mizoguchi
Country: Japan
Running Time: 68 min
Year: 1971

88 Films continue to delve into the previously under-represented back catalogue of Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno line by releasing Koretsugu Kurahara’s Sex Rider: Wet Highway (a.k.a. Sex Rider: Nureta Highway) on Blu-ray. I’ve enjoyed the titles 88 Films have put out in the range that I’ve seen so far, and I’m keen to promote the release of less widely known films like these, so I got hold of a copy to share my thoughts.

Sex Rider: Wet Highway centres around Mina (Mari Tanaka), a young bride-to-be in Tokyo. The film opens on the eve of her wedding, when she meets her ex‑lover Ozaki (Kinji Takinami) at a seedy love hotel near Yokohama for one last fling, or possibly to sow the seeds of an extra-marital affair to follow.

However, on the drive home, Mina hits Ryo (Ken Yoshizawa), a scruffy, hippie‑ish drifter. Ozaki tells her to leave the victim and drive off but, after her lover leaves, Mina drives back, places the seemingly unconscious man in her backseat and heads towards the hospital.

Unbeknownst to Mina, Ryo is fine, other than having a sore head. However, liking the look of the young woman, he pretends to be out cold so that he might take advantage of her.

Mina, however, thinks that Ryo is dead, so she turns back from the hospital and, instead, takes his ‘body’ to a secluded mountain lake. There, Mina takes a small boat to the middle of the lake and attempts to dump Ryo into its depths.

However, when she realises someone else is nearby, she panics and pretends to be out on the boat with her lover. She proceeds to make love to the still-pretending-to-be-unconscious Ryo.

This strange incident, involving the very much alive Ryo, kickstarts an unusual relationship between the pair.

Sex Rider: Wet Highway, as you may have gathered from the synopsis above, is quite an odd film. It is one that I found myself curiously drawn to though. It starts like a fairly typical domestic sex drama but takes a surprising turn partway through and never ceases to surprise after that. One seemingly major character, in fact, never appears again after the first act.

It was quite an early Roman Porno from Nikkatsu, only the seventh, made in the first year of the studio’s 17-year period of producing the range. As such, the genre was still finding its feet, which might explain why the film is so unusual.

Like with a lot of Roman Pornos, Sex Rider: Wet Highway’s director was fairly green. This was only Koretsugu Kurahara’s second film as director and his first of the genre. He had worked as an AD on a few films though, and his brother, Koreyoshi Kurahara, was a much more established and popular director.

This relative inexperience and the fact that directors like Koretsugu Kurahara were given so much freedom on these Roman Pornos (so long as there was enough nudity in them) helps imbue the film with an experimental, hard to second-guess energy. There’s minimal plot here and an often quite deliberate pace, but the filmmaking is exciting enough to hold your interest.

Most notably, the film contains some striking sudden contrasts in tone and style. In the scene where Mina drives to dump the ‘body’, for example, the sound suddenly switches to a religious sermon. Also, during Mina and Ryo’s first love scene, the scene cuts to a bizarre 60s-style dance freakout.

The characters make some very odd choices in the film that likely would never happen in reality, but these types of films rarely strive for authenticity. Everything that happens is in service of the film’s theme and, whilst it takes some bizarre twists and turns along the way, it all makes sense by the time it reaches its audacious, strangely liberating ending.

The film lost me for a portion in the middle where it got too rapey for my tastes. This is par for the course with most Japanese exploitation films, sadly, but it doesn’t make it any more palatable. Thankfully, the new dynamic that is unveiled in the final third of the film pulled me back in.

Aesthetically speaking, it’s all very effective too. It looks great, with pleasing use of colour, composition and locations. I liked the music too, with a jazz vibe that fits both the sexier scenes and the more abstract passages.

Overall, Sex Rider: Wet Highway is a trippy ride that may not always follow real-world logic and gets quite unpleasant in places but presents a strangely bewitching portrait of a woman seeking a way out from her soon-to-be shackled existence. Taking some bold and intriguing turns, it’s a fine example of what makes the Nikkatsu Roman Porno line so interesting.

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