Go, Go Second Time Virgin (1969)
Image Entertainment
Cast: Mimi Kozakura, Michio Akiyama
Extras: Interview with director Koji Wakamatsu
Rating:

Not only does ’Go, Go Second Time Virgin’ get the prize for the most amusing title of the month, it also garners a huge award for being one of the bleakest and most disturbing movies that I’ve ever seen. Any movie that opens with a rape and then cuts to… a rape (!) is not the kind of movie to watch when Granny is around. (That is, of course, unless Granny happens to be pretty kooky.)

The majority of ’Go, Go Second Time Virgin’ takes place on the rooftop of a Tokyo apartment building. The film opens with a girl (Mimi Kozakura) being raped by a gang of thugs. One of the boys (Michio Akiyama) stays back and doesn’t participate. When the gang leaves, the boy and the girl start talking about life and death. From here on out, the movie becomes a misanthropic whirlwind as we witness more rapes, an orgy, and a mass-murderer. Add to this the fact that the boy and girl keep threatening to kill one another, and you’ve got a movie that makes David Lynch’s films look like something from the Children’s Television Workshop.

Yet, for all of its bleakness and disturbing images, cult director Koji Wakamatsu brings a certain degree of style to the film. His camera never flinches during the atrocities, which we witness, but he also manages to capture some strangely beautiful images as well. Most of the film is presented in black-and-white, but there are two brief passages in color. Wakamatsu uses the juxtaposition of black-and-white and color very well, and the second time the color photography is used, the effect is staggering. It can be hard to recommend a film like ’Go, Go Second Time Virgin’, as it’s not the kind of movie that you just thrown in at a party. But, the movie is well-made and shows that Europe and the United States are not the only places where avant-garde filmmaking grew over the years.

’Go, Go Second Time Virgin’ comes to DVD from Image Entertainment. The film is presented in an anamorphic widescreen and is letterboxed at 2.35:1. Taking into consideration the fact that the film is over thirty years old and that black-and-white film is typically pretty grainy, it must be said that Image has done a wonderful job restoring ’Go, Go Second Time Virgin.’ The image is sharp and crisp and the level of grain is often negligible. The two color segments look very nice as well, with the red on black in the second segment showing a very nice contrast. There are some minor defects noticeable in the source print. The framing appears to be accurate and there is no obvious disturbance from artifacting.

The audio on the DVD is a Dolby Digital Mono, which provides adequate dialogue and sound effects. The DVD features white subtitles which appear on the image, so they are a bit hard to read at times. The lone special feature on the disc is a 50-minute interview with director Koji Wakamatsu. This is a very casual interview (which is presented with subtitles and a translator), in which the director discusses his films and his career. Although, be warned, he gets a bit odd at times. But after seeing ’Go, Go Second Time Virgin’, a little oddness is to be expected.