This film exists in three versions with different ratings. I don't know which I watched, but I can understand trying to get this to the widest possible audience. It's strong stuff. I was impressed. It's dark and twisted, though, even for Daisuke Yamanouchi, and it definitely won't make you happy.

YURIKO's husband beats her and chains her up. She denies that she's unhappy, even when her face is black and blue and she's got surgical gauze covering one eye. Her husband's an industrial grade dick. When she makes dinner, he pours away the misoshiru (accusing her of trying to kill him) so that he can force her to her lick it off the table.

YOSHII makes Yuriko's husband look like nothing. He's been released from jail for murdering his wife (which we witness in disgusting flashback). Now, he molests women on trains, threatens them with knives, forces his way into their houses and rapes them. Sometimes he also hamstrings them. Bloody hell, that was horrible. Another girl he strangles, like his wife. He'll use violence to extort a credit card number from everyone he meets, including women who had sex with him voluntarily. He's pure evil, even if we've seen enough of his past and motivations to understand the damaged man inside and the few points of gentleness he still contains.

Yoshii breaks into Yuriko's house and finds her chained to the wall, bruised and naked. So he rapes her. Afterwards, though, he feeds her and recommends dumping her husband before she gets murdered. (He's speaking from experience.)

Yuriko's husband comes home. Extreme choices are considered and/or made, including (a) murder, (b) suicide, (c) Yuriko going with Yoshii. She's grateful. She thinks he's better than her husband. She sees it as a new relationship, even though he won't stop raping, robbing and possibly murdering other women.

"Let me go, please! I'm getting married next month!"

There are distractingly goofy special effects. When Yoshii strangles anyone, her tongue will protrude ridiculously before she drowns in her own blood. It looks stupid... although for all I know it's realistic. I've never strangled anyone. Maybe that happens. I honestly don't know. Tongue protrusion is indeed a thing in asphyxiation death, probably caused by the compression of neck tissues and vessels. There's also a deformed super-ugly dog that Yoshii's looking after, which looks undead and has been realised as a latex puppet. Imagine a Jim Henson zombie animal.

There's a bit of sleaze (probably depending on which version of the film you watch), but it's not sexy. Trust me.

This is a deeply unpleasant film, full of wrong and misguided behaviour. Mother Teresa herself would pull the level at Yoshii's execution... but then the film makes you understand and empathise with him, even as he keeps committing his crimes despite having started a relationship with Yuriko. Daisuke Yamanouchi keeps finding new ways to upset you with a new level of horror, e.g. the ending where we meet all of Yoshii's victims and the state he left them in. (One's a vegetable with a metal head plate, although Yoshii's not the only culprit in that.) There are razor blades, knives and more.

And what the hell is that final shot? Seriously.

This might be Daisuke Yamanouchi's strongest film. Possibly, maybe. I'd need to watch more of his work to be sure. Mind you, it's been associated with a confusing variety of English titles, none of which is a translation of the original Japanese, e.g. Rapist and Bonded by Sorrow. The latter fits rather well, but it's actually the title of another Daisuke Yamanouchi film from the following year (with which the internet often gets this confused).

"This is the job I was given by God."