Fairy in a Cage – 1977 – Bondage and Torture
The nature of Fairy in a Cage kinda makes it hard to add any pictures from the movie. It’s not really violent and bloody or gory but a lot of stills do have exposed breasts in them. That in itself might not be a huge problem but when I post this to social media it might get taken down for showing nipples. That’s the reality we live in. It’s kinda stupid but on the other hand, I realize you’ll have to draw the line somewhere. It’s not as stupid as the Japanese law to blur all genitals though. That’s really annoying. This is not porn though so there are no blurred pubic hair or anything like that. In this case, the filmmakers cleverly hide all that would come into question for such censorship. It might be hidden behind a vase or something like that.
No Blurring
Breasts and nipples are ok in Japanese legislation though, så we see plenty of those. Women are tied up to emphasize this part of the female anatomy. But let’s start from the beginning. What the movie essentially is about is this rich guy who really gets of on torturing women. He does it under the pretext that they’re enemies of the state and that he needs to find out the truth about this and that. But that is just not true. He does this for his own amusement. So…he sees this beautiful woman that he wants and asks his friends in the military police if they can arrange something for him. You’ll know the answer to that.
At the same time, he has this wife or mistress that is totally in on being degraded and bound herself. Of course. she also gets off on participating with male victims. It seems like every excuse for the showing of bondage and sexual situations are taken care of. But if the intent is to be horrifying I think it misses the spot. Of course, being degraded and getting your genitals exposed to itching substances is horrible but I’ve seen a lot worse in other movies. But maybe the strength here is that its off-camera. Even if the act is in the shot you can never really see what’s going on in detail, something that is not the case in the Guinea Pig movies for instance. I think this was made with erotic intentions for sure.
Dark Ending
But, either way, it misses the spot. I won’t judge anyone, but I don’t find it very attractive with upsidedown bound women implied to get water poured on their genitals. If it were boiling water there would at least be some horror element to it but not regular water. But on the other hand, it’s claimed in an earlier statement that pleasure is a more effective way to get to the truth than pain. I don’t know, maybe it’s true.
Fairly in a cage clocks in on around 70 minutes and that’s enough of this. I do think it’s refreshing to see something different from the Hollywood blockbusters once in a while but this one didn’t give me so much. I’m glad I got to see it to the end though because even if the journey there is pretty light, the actual ending is really really dark! And that should count for something!
