If they gave out awards for the most depraved and messed-up movies in the world, Japanese cinema would clean up: their exploitation cinema wipes the floor with most other contenders, the most extreme examples being absolutely jaw-dropping exercises in bad taste, nauseating gore, freakish weirdness, and misogynistic sex. Guts of a Beauty is a prime example of such whacked out filth, offering discerning viewers just over an hour of full-on debauchery and gratuitous violence topped off with some very insane J-splatter goodness. The film opens with a young woman named Yoshimi, whose search for her missing sister has led her into the hands of some nasty yakuza, who proceed to rape her and shoot her full of strong dope called Angel Rain. After the gangsters have finished having their fun with the poor woman, she manages to escape and flees to a nearby hospital where sexy psychologist Hiromi (Megumi Ozawa) attempts to help. However, the distraught and confused Yoshimi ends up throwing herself off the hospital roof, turning into a water melon as she hits the ground (at least that what it looked like to me!). Seeking to avenge Yoshimi's death, Hiromi lures Higashi, a member of the yakuza, to her office, hypnotising him into attacking his fellow gang members. After Higashi goes slash happy with a knife in the yakuza HQ, he is severely beaten and stabbed, forced to tell of his meeting with Hiromi, and then hacked into itty bitty pieces. The psychologist is then captured by the gang, forced into performing some sordid sex acts, and injected with Angel Rain—after which she promptly carks it. The gangsters then plonk her body in the boot of their car, along with the remains of Higashi, ready for disposal. Before they can ditch the corpses, however, the super dope has an unexpected effect on Hiromi: she returns from the dead as a hermaphroditic monster with a toothy wang and a ravenous cooch, and, hellbent on revenge, sets about killing the yakuza one-by-one; this leads to some memorable scenes of outrageously gory splatter, including a messy head squish, a man being suffocated by the monster's oozing orifice, and a woman being screwed to death by its giant, gnashing dong. As you can most likely tell from the above synopsis, this is some crazy, screwed up stuff, and probably not to the taste of most sane people, but for those weirdos who have long tired of mainstream cinema and are already well versed in Asian excess, Guts Of A Beauty should prove to be delightfully diverting and deviant fun. 7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.

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