It's reminiscent of Daisuke Yamanouchi's Female Loan Shark films, although its female protagonist is less evil. Is that the right word? Villainous? Liable to destroy lives? Instead of loan sharkery, Rio (Mami Nagase) lures women into prostitution. Is that less harmful? Both are linked to organised crime. Yamanouchi's Female Loan Sharks are more likely to get you stabbed, tortured, etc. but don't imagine for a moment that it's safe to mess with Rio.

She has a yakuza boyfriend, for instance. He's the one who lured her into the sex industry five years ago, but she doesn't hold a grudge about that. At one point, Rio gets raped. She's accustomed to sex as a commercial transaction and she endured far worse from her stepfather when she was a teenager, so she doesn't seem too bothered and gives the impression that she regards her attackers as rather boring johns who didn't pay. (Mind you, they also beat her up.) Afterwards, though, that yakuza boyfriend hunts them down. What happens next will make you deeply scared of that friendly chap and you might even find yourself feeling sorry for the rapists.

The women can be scary too. One arranges for a pregnant rival to be beaten in the stomach with baseball bats.

There's a romantic B-plot that's warm and nice... until it encounters the rest of the film. That creepy bloke with a knife is only the beginning, with the finale being even colder and more hurtful. "I phoned you any number of times."

There's a john who's offering a million yen. DON'T GO NEAR THIS MAN. He and his sick kind are worryingly common in Daisuke Yamanouchi movies, but this subplot leads somewhere I hadn't expected. Still gruesome and off-putting, of course.

When it feels like it, this film can be light and fun. It stars with Shijimi and that outrageous old ham who played the porn director in the Space-Time Perverted Virgin movies. You can't go wrong with those two. (Shijimi is Rio's latest potential recruit and she can't wait to pass a Licky-Licky-Land audition.) Mostly, though, this film is a study of cold, untrustworthy people who'll lie to your face because they see you as nothing but a moneymaking opportunity and they don't care if someone gets hurt or killed as a result. Lies will end in blood. Anyone who believes the romantic things people say to them is a sucker or worse, while there's no such thing as good sex with someone who loves you. To believe otherwise is to set yourself up for betrayal. There are sick, sick people and some of them have box cutter knives.

It's less horrible than most Female Loan Shark movies. It's based in victimless crime (although that's open to discussion too), whereas borrowing from loan sharks means hoping you don't get kneecapped. It is, though, easily as cold as any of them.