Zoom Up: The Beaver Book Girl (1981)

Studio: Impulse Pictures
Theatrical Release: Feb. 20, 1981
DVD Release: June 12th, 2012
Rating: Unrated!
Directed by Takashi Kanno
Review by Craig Sorensen





Impulse Pictures continues their rapey, urine soaked Nikkatsu Roman Porno series with Zoom Up: The Beaver Book Girl.  And once again, you get a morally repugnant, dramatically ridiculous slice of Japanese sleaze filmed with style and class.  The film plays out more like a horror film than something designed to titillate (of course, maybe something’s just getting lost in translation here as I’ve felt this way about the other two films in the series, Debauchery and True Story of a Woman in Jail: Sex Hell).  Anyway, the film begins with a woman being tied to a dirty bed in an abandoned warehouse and assaulted.  The assailant tosses a wad of money at the woman and drops his lighter while fleeing the scene.

Cut to a few years later and a nudie photographer with a rape filled past (his publisher calls him the ‘Gauguin master of rape’, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean) meets a strange woman who wants to become his new model.  Could this photographer be the mysterious assailant from the prologue?  Could this mysterious woman be his victim?  Well, of course, those are stupid questions.  Much like a giallo, the solution to the central mystery isn’t really the point, it’s the journey that counts.  Actually, I think the film plays more like a giallo than a sex film (at least how I think a sex film should play), of course sans bloody murders.  Those have been replaced with lots of peeing.

Yeah, this is another Japanese film obsessed with peeing (see Sex Hell for another example) and I just don’t get it.  I know that there are people out there who get turned on by pee and poop but it doesn’t do anything for me.  It comes off more funny than anything else for me.  So these segments don’t so much inspire boners (or disgust I guess) as much as laughs.  They’re just too ridiculous.  Of course, I’m not complaining as it is entertaining at the very least, I just assume that that’s not what the filmmakers were going for.  There is plenty of ‘regular’ sex though (and I do use ‘regular’ loosely) for those of you who don’t enjoy getting peed on.  Really, I’m surprised that things are able to get as graphic as they are without crossing that line of full frontal nudity (or rather pubic hair for the Japanese).  Censors are never really known for their common sense and things like this kind of prove it.  It doesn’t matter how demented, how depraved, how despicable the acts that are performed are, as long as you don’t show a stray labia it’s a-ok.  Which is the more damaging thing to be exposed to, some girl’s bush or a fairly graphic depiction of rape?  Not that I’m advocating censoring the subject matter of the film.

Zoom Up looks pretty great on DVD from Impulse Pictures.  The film is presented in it’s original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and is anamorphic.  Colors look great and skin tones especially (and there are a lot of them) look natural.  Black levels look pretty solid too.  Detail looks pretty strong here throughout.  I certainly have no complaints.  The only audio option is a Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono track in Japanese.  Everything sounds great as far as I’m concerned.  You also get an English subtitle track so you can follow all the ridiculous dialog.  The only extra that you get is an absolutely nuts theatrical trailer.