Coming a decade after Suzuki’s exile from studio film directing, and not long before his awesome Taisho Trilogy, I wasn’t sure where this movie stood in Suzuki’s career and I’ve put off watching it due to the dour title. Turns out it’s a real hoot, a brightly colored golf/advertising/stalker melodrama.

Taisho star (and a drunk pimp in Ronin Gai) Yoshio Harada plays the shitty boyfriend of a not-top-rated golfer, who hires trainer Takagi (of a handful of Ozu films I haven’t seen) to turn her into a golf champion, but only so an agency can sign her to a modeling contract. She succeeds, and on her first ad shoot they put her in all brown with a fluffy wig – I’d think they don’t know what they’re doing, then again it’s the 1970s.

Golfer Y?ko Shiraki was only in one other film:

The hot new star moves into a custom house with her little brother, where the neighbors don’t accept her, except for Ky?ko Enami (she starred in a Lady Gambler film series) who is starstruck, until she feels wronged by the golfer and the shitty boyfriend and turns dangerous. In the end the golfer is fired from her modeling job and getting pimped out by her stalker, the boyfriend is arrested (by Jo Shishido!) and goes violently mad on a golf course, then the little brother kills both women and burns the house down, all in high wild style.

From the writers of Naked Rashomon, Karate Bear Fighter, and Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands, and the cinematographer of Female Teacher in Rope Hell. Japan is a source of neverending delight. The commentary promises to talk about “idols” in their culture, something that’s been bugging me since Perfect Blue, but I only listened to the first half hour.