Kichiku dai enkai (aka Banquet of the Beasts) is a semi-professional Japanese film from 1997. It's notable for being a student work of director, writer and editor Kazuyoshi Kumakiri and was shot almost without budget. It combines the story about a left student group with over the top levels of gore.
The storyline is inspired by the Asama-Sansō incident
, when members of the United Red Army took a hostage and seized a mountain lodge near Karuizawa.
In the year 1972 a small group of left-wing students (consisting of Yamane, Kumagaya, Shugihari, Okazaki and Fatso) live at a small Tokyo apartment. While the group leader, Aizawa, waits to be released from prison, Fujiwara (who doesn't say any single word) joins the group and sees that Aizawa's promiscuous and wayward girlfriend, Masami, has taken charge and things go downhill from there.
When the group's leader commits hara-kiri only some days short of his release from prison, Masami completely loses control and the group quickly falls into self-destruction. As the movie goes through three so-called "enkai parties", lots of violence, splatter and Gorn ensues.
This movie provides examples of the following tropes:
- Annoying Laugh: Masami has a very annoying giggle that she crackles after going berserk.
- Ax-Crazy: Masami is highly psychologically unstable and as soon as she gets her hand on a shotgun, she is a huge threat to the other group members.
- Conflict Ball: In the very end Fujiwara just goes berserk and kills everybody who is still alive and then commits suicide. Since he didn't have any characterization beforehand, this is completely unexplained.
- Crapsack World: The world is very fucked up in this movie and basically everybody is either incompetent, violent or a jerkass.
- Crippling Castration: Masami castrates Kumagaya with a knife during the 2nd enkai party, and bites off Okazaki's dick after being raped during the last one.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: While many characters fit, Masami gets the worst, her womb gets blasted away with a shotgun.
- Downer Ending: The movie ends with all people of the group dying and their cause being lost completely.
- Draw Sword, Draw Blood: Fujiwara plays around with his katana a lot. He won't discard it until lots of blood is spilled with it, including his own.
- Driven to Suicide:
- Aizawa commits suicide in prison just shortly before his release.
- Fujiwara kills himself with his sword after everybody else is dead.
- Dysfunction Junction: The movie doesn't have any real hero as everybody is either incompetent, dysfunctional, violent or all of this at the same time.
- Elective Mute: Fujiwara doesn't say a single sentence in the film but seems to be capable of speech.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: All members of the group die in the end. Masami does a lot of killing, then Okazaki kills Masami and Fujiwara kills Okazaki and Shugihari and afterwards commits suicide, then the movie is over.
- Fetishized Abuser: Masami is completely crazy and causes nothing but trouble, but still is Aikawa's girlfriend.
- Freud Was Right: Masami seems to believe that everything is about sex. She's very promiscuous, tries to make fellatio to a stuffed bird (or similar) and seemingly has a castration fetish.
- From Bad to Worse: The group already is in a bad situation when their leader is in prison, but thing go completely nuts when Masami takes over.
- Gorn: The film starts out very slowly and culminates into an over the top gorefest by the end.
- Hysterical Woman: Masami has clear traits of this as she doesn't have herself and her emotions under control and freaks out to the slightest provocation.
- Japanese Spirit: Implied with Fujiwara, being a katana wielding neo-samurai and judging from what he does in the end, but he doesn't get much characterization.
- Jerkass: Masami doesn't take long to show everybody that she isn't capable of leading the group, is Ax-Crazy and does stupid things just whenever she feels like it.
- Kabuki Sounds: Masami puts on a kabuki mask and makes a wild dance during the 1st enkai party and this comes with lots of sound FX too.
- Karmic Death: This seems to be the idea behind Masami's death. She has an irritating fetish for castrations and dies in a way similar to this.
- Katanas Are Just Better: No matter which weapons might show up, Fujiwara will always stick to his katana.
- Ludicrous Gibs: How some characters die, most notably Masami, she gets her womb blasted with a shot gun, with quite messy results.
- Nasty Party: What the title probably refers to and how the three enkai parties more and more work out:
- The 1st party is actually a real party, Masami dances around with her kabuki mask and seduces Kumagaya after having had an argument with Yamane. No casualties here.
- The 2nd party takes place in a forest and has Masami going berserk. Yamane gets his head blasted off, Kumagaya gets castrated (but survives) and Fatso gets shot too.
- The 3rd (and last) party ends with a gorefest where everybody dies: (castrated) Kumagaya dies in a bath tub, Okazaki rapes Masami, she castrates him in return and he kills her with her shot gun, Fujiwara kills Okazaki and Shugihari with his katana before committing suicide.
- Non-Indicative Name: Although the Japanese title roughly translates to banquet of the beasts, there's not a single banquet in the movie (they're students and very poor), so probably banquet refers to the gore.
- Prolonged Prologue: The prologue of the film takes very long. After very little exposition for the first 10 minutes, the group only engages in everyday activities for 35 more minutes until the plot finally takes off.
- Really Gets Around: Masami is very promiscuous and seduces most of the group members throughout the film.
- Rebel Leader: Aikawa is the leader of the group, although he's in prison and his girlfriend has taken control.
- La Résistance: What the group was before Aikawa has gone to prison (they have a vaguely defined left-wing cause). Everything goes downhill from here.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The story is inspired by the Asama-Sansō incident, that got much media attention. However no real abduction is involved in this film.
- Rule of Symbolism: The movie takes many opportunities for symbolism, like splattering blood on a photo of smiling girls or on the Japanese flag.
- Sawed-Off Shotgun: Masami gets one from a chicken farm and brings it to the 2nd enkai party.
- Seppuku: Fujiwara acts similar to a samurai and does a variant of this when he holds his katana to his neck until he bleeds out.
- Stock Footage: Lots of stock footage about rebelling/rioting youth is seen in the beginning.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: The group's members are technically friends but treat each other very bad to say the least.
- We ARE Struggling Together: Without their leader, the group isn't able to continue fighting their (rather vague) cause, but when Masami appears, all of them completely abandon any political activities and fight each other.
- The X of Y: The banquet of the beasts. The Japanese title roughly translates to the same thing.
