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Sex Rider: Wet Highway
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (17th July 2025). |
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The Film
 On the eve of her wedding to a minister, Catholic priest's daughter Mina (Female Coed: Sexy Dynamite's Mari Tanaka) sneaks away to a love hotel intending to cut things off with her lover Ozaki (Bodyguard Kiba's Kinji Takinami); however, they instead decide to continue seeing each other after the nuptials. Celebrating in the car afterward and distracted by a tape Ozaki has made of their lovemaking, Mina accidentally runs down Ryô (Violent Cop's Ken Yoshizawa). They speed off and only then does Mina feel remorse. When she wants to go back and drive the victim to the hospital, Ozaki cuts ties with her, going from "I love you" to "We had some fun." Mina drags Ryô into her back seat, not realizing that he is "playing dead" and has second thoughts and instead drives him to a secluded beach. Rowing him into the middle of the lake to dump the body, Mina feels that she is being watched and play acts that she and the corpse are having an assignation after which she pushes him overboard. When Mina gets back to the shore, she is held at gunpoint by a hunter (Stranger's Akira Takahashi) and "rescued" from rape by Ryô who then takes her on a road trip that is alternately terrifying and liberating with a deadly "climax" when the bodies of the two finally collide. Running just over an hour, Sex Rider: Wet Highway from director Koretsugu Kurahara (True Story of Sex and Violence in a Female High School) is an early Nikkatsu Roman Porno that thankfully does not go the expected path of man plays dead and then turns up to blackmail the woman after her wedding. It is instead a fast-paced exploration of the self-destructive psychosexual impulses of two characters, with Mina's background and her feelings about her future presented at the outset and Ryô's unfolding as a series of black and white flashbacks to his relationship with his promiscuous mother (Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss' Yuki Seto) and his near-death experience on a motorcycle racing track that lead to a fetish to combine sex and speed. In a short amount of time and the space of a few incidents, the film builds to a denouement similar to that of the first Nikkatsu Roman Porno Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon but it seems more mutual, deliberate, and even defiant rather than morally-imposed. Although Sex Rider: Wet Highway did not launch a franchise like some of the other films within the Roman Porno line, Kurahara did follow it up with Sex Rider: Injured Lust. 
Video
The effect of the Nikkatsuscope and Fujicolor photography and the film's color schemes is that the color sequences have a natural slight softness to them that flatters the performers while the black and white sequences look startlingly sharp in comparison from the discomfiting stare of Ryô's mother at her son while underneath a man to the older Ryô's discombobulated stare at the camera after his crash (cinematographer Yoshihiro Yamazaki shot roughly a hundred-and-fifty films between 1957 and 1993 including several prominent Roman Porno titles as well as director Kurahara's debut Bad Girl Mako made at Nikkatsu's transition from New Action to Roman Porno). 
Audio
The post-dubbed Japanese audio track is rendered in 24-bit LPCM 2.0 mono with whisper-quiet silences, clear dialogue, and a lively music track ranging from the jazzy scoring of Tsutomu Sanada to the rocky non-sequitur cutaway to Mina's subconscious. Optional English subtitles are free of errors. 
Extras
The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by film historians Earl Jackson and Jasper Sharp who reveal that Sex Rider: Wet Highway was only the fourth Roman Porno film when the genre was still trying to find its footing and experimenting with multiple sources and forms, noting the sketchy nature of the plot and its ambiguities – like a Catholic priest's daughter engaged to a Protestant minister – and parallels as far flung as Knife in the Water and the Jane Russell film The Outlaw. They also discuss the career of Kurahara who was less prolific than his brother Koreyoshi Kurahara who left Nikkatsu at their transition to Roman Porno (although the studio would continue to distribute his independent work and his much earlier The Warped Ones was distributed stateside as a sexploitation film by Radley Metzger's Audubon Films as "The Weird Love Makers") along with the cast including half-Russian Tanaka who was related to Russian-born, Japanese-nationalized baseball player Victor Starffin, and Yoshizawa who was actually better known for his pink films with Kōji Wakamatsu than his few Roman Porno credits. The disc also includes "Highway to Nowhere" (10:46), an introduction by film historian Ken Terawaki who reveals that Sex Rider: Wet Highway was the first Nikkatsu Roman Porno film that resonated with a younger audience, noting how the line of films gave opportunities to a younger generation of directors who had previously been assistant directors at the studio, and how the film still possessed elements of Nikkatsu's earlier New Action Film cycle. The disc closes with a stills gallery (1:05) and the film's theatrical trailer (1:30). 
Packaging
Not provided for review is the booklet "Sex at Speed" by Caitlin Casiello included with the first pressing only.
Overall
Running just over an hour, Sex Rider: Wet Highway is a fast-paced exploration of the self-destructive psychosexual impulses of two characters.
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