A sequel in name only, we have another decadent journey into the realm of horror perversion. While this is notably improved over the first installment, it still has much room to improve.

First of all the movie is really short, only about 66 minutes. That's hardly feature length. Though I digress, given what the film is most concerned with showing (graphic rape scenes) I think a short run time is just fine.

A woman witnesses her friend commit suicide and decides to investigate the matter on her own. In the course of her investigation, she uncovers a criminal group marketing a new designer drug and taking woman for slave trade. She tries to put an end to it, but is ultimately taken captive and viciously (and I do mean viciously) raped. She is injected with the drug, but OD's and dies, only to return as a slimy, mutant hermaphrodite.

The sex is handled more competently than the first film, but is ever bit as uncomfortable. The blood and gore are noticeably less until closer to the end when the blood monster goes on it's rampage. Those scene will stick with you for a while.

This could have worked, but is killed by the same problems as it's prequel, that and it's near obsession with graphic depictions of gang rape.

5/10

If they gave out awards for the most depraved and messed-up movies in the world, Japanese cinema would clean up: their exploitation cinema wipes the floor with most other contenders, the most extreme examples being absolutely jaw-dropping exercises in bad taste, nauseating gore, freakish weirdness, and misogynistic sex.

Guts of a Beauty is a prime example of such whacked out filth, offering discerning viewers just over an hour of full-on debauchery and gratuitous violence topped off with some very insane J-splatter goodness.

The film opens with a young woman named Yoshimi, whose search for her missing sister has led her into the hands of some nasty yakuza, who proceed to rape her and shoot her full of strong dope called Angel Rain. After the gangsters have finished having their fun with the poor woman, she manages to escape and flees to a nearby hospital where sexy psychologist Hiromi (Megumi Ozawa) attempts to help. However, the distraught and confused Yoshimi ends up throwing herself off the hospital roof, turning into a water melon as she hits the ground (at least that what it looked like to me!).

Seeking to avenge Yoshimi's death, Hiromi lures Higashi, a member of the yakuza, to her office, hypnotising him into attacking his fellow gang members. After Higashi goes slash happy with a knife in the yakuza HQ, he is severely beaten and stabbed, forced to tell of his meeting with Hiromi, and then hacked into itty bitty pieces.

The psychologist is then captured by the gang, forced into performing some sordid sex acts, and injected with Angel Rain—after which she promptly carks it. The gangsters then plonk her body in the boot of their car, along with the remains of Higashi, ready for disposal.

Before they can ditch the corpses, however, the super dope has an unexpected effect on Hiromi: she returns from the dead as a hermaphroditic monster with a toothy wang and a ravenous cooch, and, hellbent on revenge, sets about killing the yakuza one-by-one; this leads to some memorable scenes of outrageously gory splatter, including a messy head squish, a man being suffocated by the monster's oozing orifice, and a woman being screwed to death by its giant, gnashing dong.

As you can most likely tell from the above synopsis, this is some crazy, screwed up stuff, and probably not to the taste of most sane people, but for those weirdos who have long tired of mainstream cinema and are already well versed in Asian excess, Guts Of A Beauty should prove to be delightfully diverting and deviant fun.

7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.

GUTS OF A BEAUTY is a bit better than its predecessor GUTS OF A VIRGIN. Although this film isn't really a sequel in the sense that it has absolutely nothing to do with the first installment, I did find BEAUTY to be a little stronger and better put together all-the-way-around than VIRGIN...but then again, that's not really saying much.

BEAUTY starts off as a pretty rough and straight-faced exploit film. A couple of Yakuza cats are holding a young woman prisoner and begin gang raping her in pretty brutal fashion. As this nastiness is going on, the head guy tells the girl that they did the same to her sister and sold her into slavery in Africa, and that they're gonna do the same to her. They then shoot her up with some drugs and rape her some more. She somehow gets away and ends up at a clinic where the nurse there listens to her sob story. The rapee ends up freaking out from the stress of her prior experience and commits suicide. The clinic worker, moved by the young lady's story, decides to take revenge on the gang by seducing one of the lower-level guys and trying to hypnotize him to make him kill the Yakuza leaders. This whole plan backfires, so now Ms. Vigilante-Clinic-Worker gets exposed to much the same treatment that our original rapee got - only worse (some pretty rough butt-rape ensues along with the pre-requisite gang rape...). She too is drugged, but the drug has a strange side effect on our seemingly hapless victim ----- it turns her into a raging hermaphroditic BLOOD DEMON!!! (no sh!t, that's what really happens!!!) This is when BEAUTY really takes off with some pretty f!cking insane kill scenes - including a very classy chest-burst-rape that looks like a cross between ALIEN and a bad porn, and my favorite - a head-engulfed-by-demon-vagina kill (complete with demon vagina-slime...)that has to be seen to be believed...

Definitely some promising stuff going on in GUTS OF A BEAUTY, but still very disjointed feeling. BEAUTY almost feels like two different films being forced together in a non-compatible way. Still, I have to give the film credit - the rape scenes are very rough and misogynistic, and the kill scenes are just totally off the wall. A solid 7/10 for another crazy J-horror "classic".